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angelic-ish-phantom · 2 years

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Order

Day 3

If Danny had to describe his ghost half in a word, it would be hungry.

Not in any familiar way; there was nothing painful about it, no clawing feeling in his stomach.

There was only craving.

Ever since he’d seen those first ectopi come through the portal, he had felt that deep seated need, that urgency.

To consume.

It felt strange and a little too inaccurate to call it an instinct. It was so much less complicated, foreign…

Trying to describe it in human terms made feel confused. Thinking about it with his human mind made him feel nauseous. He’d much rather just stew in his core as it whirred intricately, whispering impulses into his very ectoplasm.

Danny understood that his core worked like a second mind, intimately so. But is wasn’t a brain… wasn’t human. It was such a foreign way to think, if you could even call it that.

But Danny had the compulsions that came with it under control. Really he did! Sure, he still reflexively bit the odd monster in a fight, and couldn’t help drinking in emotions when he was particularly drained, but it was fine! He could ignore it. It wasn’t a problem.

At least it hadn’t been until Lunch Lady. Not until the first ghost that was a person came through the portal and Danny was just as hungry as he’d ever been.

oOo

“It’s really not as bad as I’m making it sound!” Danny groaned into his hands. This was exactly why he hadn’t wanted to tell his friends; it was hard to put into words that didn’t make it sound sick.

Sam’s eyes narrowed, “Isn’t it? Danny, wanting to… eat the ghosts your fighting doesn’t sound bad to you?”

“Sounds like it’s just another mostly harmless ghost thing. I mean, you’re all made out of ectoplasm, right? So you need more ectoplasm to ‘live’? As established, other ghosts just happen to be a source of that.” Tucker suggested, trying to rationalize his hunger. “All ghosts have cannibalistic tendencies confirmed.” He joked, but Danny could (taste) see he was unnerved.

“But Danny doesn’t need to eat ectoplasm to live.” Sam said, before whirling on Danny, concern under her alarm, “You don’t do you?”

“…I don’t need to, no.” Danny surrendered. “It’s nice though. Not that I would eat a person for it. That’s not why I would want to at least. It’s not- it wouldn’t be for ectoplasm energy. It’s just- guys I swear, this isn’t a bad thing!”

“…You know those monster and animal ghosts have to eat you before. I just thought they were doing what they do, but this could be the reason. But I don’t think any of the ghosts that talk have ever tried that.” Tucker said, shaking off his unease at Danny’s prior words.

He was wrong. Technus had definitely tried to. And Lunch Lady. Box ghost made a pitiful attempt to every time he was alone. Even Spectra had made to, but she’d seemed almost repulsed.

“Probably because they wouldn’t eat another person!” Sam explained, as though it were obvious.

Danny thought they would. If they were feeling what he’d felt, they only wouldn’t eat him if he was too big.

And Danny wondered, what if there was a ghost big enough to try and eat him, and win?

(That should have been a more worrying thought than it was…)

What about the reverse; what about a ghost small enough that eating it wouldn’t be a challenge for him.

Not that he ever would.

oOo

Danny really hadn’t meant to do it.

He’d thought he’d had a pretty good handle on the whole urge to consume any ghost in front of him.

But just he’d been so tired. He hadn’t known the time exactly, just that it was dark, and he’d been operating on so little sleep even before he’d had to take care of the beastly looking ghost that had crawled out of a natural portal in the dead of the night.

And after shooting a quick text to his friends, telling them he’d come out of the fight in one piece, he’d come back to his room.

And glowing softly in center of his bed, was a blob ghost.

Danny had seen blob ghosts before—massive, shapeless, wailing things. But this one was different. It was like the round, ones he glimpsed crawling through the shadows of Skulker’s island, and slipping in and out of the walls of Pointdexter’s lair.

He’d never seen one on the side of the portal before.

Danny looked down at it, a bit suspicious. It appeared to be harmless, but it was also a ghost. One that had been in his room while he wasn’t there.

The thing tilted it’s head curiously as though inspecting him back. Well, not it’s head considering it didn’t really have one; the entire front part of his body shifted, it’s eye spots wide and empty.

Danny couldn’t help but find it cute. Still he raised the thermos and-

The blob ghost flopped over as though in submission, core thrumming a low pitch that made that ever present hunger Danny felt rise to the forefront.

Danny bit his tongue, stepping back a bit. What was it doing, did it want him to- to-

He couldn’t stop himself from lowering the thermos, from locking his eyes on the blob and practically prowling across the space between them.

What was he doing? The thought almost stopped him, but it was too fleeting. Too irrelevant in the face of the ghost’s dull glow.

Danny needed it. Need the strength it could give him, however small. He needed the knowledge. The completeness that would surely come with consuming it, making it an extension of himself.

It trilled as he got closer still, soft approval.

It was so tiny. So weak. It needed him. It needed to be bigger, to be part of him. That way he could protect it.

That thought ran through his obsession in all the right spots. Danny shivered as his human mind expressed the utmost repulsion. Danny licked his ectoplasm-green tongue over ghostly fangs.

Danny opened his mouth.

oOo

For the record, Danny had been going to tell his friends what had happened that night, what he’d done. Really he had been!

But then he’d thought of how exactly he would say that. How would he even broach the topic? Just drop in at lunch and go, ‘Oh hey guys! remember how I was obsessively considering cannibalizing my enemies. Well I tried it out and now I think I’m not gonna stop-‘?

Yeah, no.

He couldn’t stand the thought of how Sam might look at him. At how even Tucker had been unnerved at the idea of his unconventional appetite before he had given in to it. They’d put up with his his weird half-ghost things before, had stuck with him this long, but… this felt like a lot.

Danny didn’t want them to see him, the way his parents saw Phantom.

He knew he was being paranoid. Probably. Especially considering ‘eating’ definitely wasn’t the right word for what he’d done.

Danny distractedly watched the blob ghost loop through his legs amiably.

It had kind of just fazed back out of him in the morning. Or rather Danny had fazed it out of him.

He had taken hold of its body and suddenly extremely susceptible, suggestible mind and had just made it move.

He could let go, and the blob didn’t seem to mind when he did it… it seemed to enjoy it actually.

It was safe and taken care of. Danny could take care of it. It could help Danny, and Danny could help it. It was mutually beneficial and perfectly fine. Danny would tell his friends exactly how fine it was.

Eventually.

oOo

The thing is, the blob ghost could ask Danny for help in a roundabout way. It could need help and Danny would understand.

So when another ghost had been chasing it around dusk, and Danny had already been transformed from an earlier fight, he had swept in to save it.

And as Danny fought the ghost, an odd wolf like animal with snakes instead of a tail, the blob had gotten some very tempting urges. It had actively pushed its thoughts onto Danny. It had told him to eat, to expand his self. To be stronger so he could protect it, to make it so this other ghost wasn’t so mindless and wouldn’t do any more damage.

And Danny would have been able to ignore the hunger as he always did if it weren’t for the argument proposed, if there wasn’t another smaller mind assuring him, wanting him to take and never stop.

And Danny gave in.

oOo

Ghosts that look like monsters out of some mythology are hard to hide. Even with their forms shrunken slightly, even when Danny willed them invisible most of the time, someone was bound to realize there was a ghost lurking around Amity Park that he hadn’t gotten rid of.

Or well, ghosts.

Which brought Danny to his second issue. When a ghost had already ‘eaten’ other ghosts, and that ghost then too gets eaten, it turns out it makes a chain of command.

First was Danny. Then his blob and the wolf ghost. Then the wolf ghost’s ghosts. And then their blob ghosts.

The control Danny had over them wasn’t overwhelming. They were like limbs with their own minds; Danny could move them as he pleased, but they had their own independence and took comfort in this relationship.

They were much less noticeable that an entire extra arm though. More like a big toe. Toes with toes. Something he could move, and could always feel was there. He would notice if they were missing, but he didn’t always notice they were there.

That made sense. It made enough sense for him to be comfortable thinking about it like a human.

Danny was constantly aware of this order, but was also content to just let them roam with little interference. The odd nudge away from people here, turning one invisible there, using one to handle a smaller ghost fight while he’s in school.

It was useful. It was nice.

Sure it was strange to get used to have so many senses, and the range of emotions they were all feeling at any time was complicated to say the least.

His first blob was a lot more smug lately, about being so high in the order, about being so close to Danny, above ghosts many times stronger than it. Many of the others were content to laze around and explore the living world, bathing in the feeling of being protected. Others kept spooking humans for fun, and causing quiet mischief which was harmless enough that Danny didn’t often stop it.

Being so connected to them all made him feel complete. He couldn’t imagine anything more satisfying, satiating that this.

oOo

When Danny’s core had awoken he didn’t fly into the ghost zone blindly. It had been the impression of knowledge from one of the lowest ghosts in his order, a lizard like creature with a form the consistency of sand.

And then Danny had been taken to the Far Frozen. And he had met Frostbite.

Danny had never been exactly scared of what might happen if a ghost ‘ate’ him. He knew what it was to be at the top of an order, but despite feeling the comfort of his charges, he couldn’t imagine liking being in that position.

He’d have nothing to gain the way his ghosts did, minds going from stilted to simple but fast, aware. He’d just have his aim a massive amount of his autonomy stripped from him.

It made him feel bad about having taken his ghosts when he thought about it like that. Like a human would.

Then in Frostbite’s presence, he’d understood.

He’d known intimately in that moment, why his blob ghost had lured him closer in the hopes he would add it to himself. He felt every bit as small as it must have been in his presence.

Frostbite was bigger than he appeared, Danny could see that. He was letting shrunken yet he was still the largest yeti in the Far Frozen, and every member of that place was part of him.

Danny could only imagine the security they all felt under something so all-encompassing. He could feel Frostbite’s hunger, drawing him in, restrained if only because Danny was a hero to them.

It was a strange thing to want to be eaten.

Danny might have even asked. If it weren’t for his obsession and obligations, he might have forgotten humanity entirely and joined this wonderfully hidden, protected place.

But he had his haunt, his humans, his home to go back to. Then he did.

And despite how amazingly he’d been treated in the Far Frozen, despite how kind and affectionate the yeti’s were Danny stayed away. Because he didn’t know when he might not be able to pull himself away.

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