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#or you can have them track him down to Amity Park but Danny thinking the jl is coming after him bc of anti-eco acts and just deciding
polter-heist · 1 year
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Dp x Dc prompt 6
Danny, Mary, and Billy were triplets. After the death of their parents and Mary's kidnapping, Danny was put up for adoption meanwhile Billy was sent to live with Ebenezer. Danny was adopted by the Fenton family.
Now years later, a reunited Mary and Billy set out to find their lost triplet.
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DPxDC : The Phantom ARG
I have been watching a lot of ARG’s and conspiracy theory on youtube lately and decided to combine the two so here we go.
The ghosts in this au will be like Deadman, you can’t see him unless you have magic, a magic artifact, or highly contaminated by ectoplasm. meaning only danny and his friends Sam and Tucker who were near the portal when it activated can see the ghosts in this au, they are invisible to everyone else in Amity Park.
In the beginning, after his accident Danny believed that he was merely hallucinating the small ghost blobs and ghost animals that initially made it through the portal thinking it was only an after effect from getting an extreme shock, and it isn’t until the first ‘incident’ the mystery meat that attacked the shool cafeteria that he realizes that what he is seeing is real.
So like any self respecting teen he tells his best friends Sam and Tucker. They both reveal that they too have been seeing strange things since the accident although not as clearly as Danny, they could still see them like watching youtube in 240p. They gather after the mystery meat incident, which they have named INCIDENT-1 or IN-1 for short as they later name it, in Danny’s room afterwards to discuss what happened. They find out that other than the three of them no one seemed to see the floating lunch lady or even head her when she talked , they only reacted after the meat started gathering and taking the shape of a monster.
Sam says that they should document what they see and what is happening in amity park and the boys agree with her. Danny become the main cameraman and investigator being the only one strong enough to get close without major injury or harm and also being able to see, hear, and feel the ghosts clearest. Sam is the main documenter and researcher she’s the one that writes down their findings and goes over the videos they have to discover new findings to note down. Tucker is the main hacker and editor he hacker the cameras in the streets and school to get footage and other information that might be needed while also making sure that they can’t be tracked. Despite having their main area of expertise they all pitch in to help each other.
While documenting they start figuring out a few key details about documenting ghosts. 1 being that unless you are using an ecto-camera the less technologically adavanced the devices you use are the better results you get. 2 the stronger the ghost is the more visible they are, the stronger they are the more dangerous they are ( danny in ghost form is by far the most visible on camera, and in real life extremely clear to his friends). and finally 3 as time goes on certain objects/ places around town have started to become strange or gain peculiar features.
Jazz ,still not believing in ghosts because they are not visible ,becomes suspicious of what the Trio are doing, so they lie to her and tell her that they are making a sort of anolog horror based on their town to cope with the stress of the recent events happening.
realizing that ‘hey this actually a really nice way to destress from our problems’ and with that one lie that they told jazz the Trio became fully committed to making a full on ARG , with hidden messages, pictures and code. so with Tucker’s coding and editing skills and knowledge of ciphers and wordplay, Sam’s organizing skills and eye for hints and details, and Danny’s obsession with stars and everything space and his way with emotions, along the very much real ghosts and they were all set to make the best ARG.
They named it THE PHANTOM ARG, finishing up the last details they finally post their first video on youtube titled ‘IN-1 : Mystery Meat’. Later on once they get the hang of it they post about ‘how to deal with the ghosts’ ‘evacuation procedures’ ‘cooking with ectoplasm’ and artwork depicting the ghosts and short presentations explaining their characteristics. They even make a fully functional website thats called ‘welcom to Amity Park’ where there are hidden messages, codes and information.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
In Gotham
Bernard Dowd is watching youtube when a video thumbnail catches his eye, it looks like a strange meat monster, he was intrigued. having nothing better to do, he decides to watch it. he looks at what the chanel is about and is instantly hooked, theory’s are exploding from his mind.
he can’t wait to tell Tim about this he would absolutely love this type of mystery solving.
random ideas for this au
The GIW are a big thing in this au, they can’t take down what the trio are posting because Tucker is a hacking god.
Danny is only called to as phantom when he is a ghost never as a human ( because of this no one knows that danny is a halfa)
the trio could go by code names, polaris(danny),pharaoh(tucker),gaia(sam). or any other name you think is sutable.
all codes, ciphers, and hints are based on either science and technology(tucker), plants and animals(sam), or space and ghosts(danny).
the ghost portal accident and opening is unkown to the public and is only referd to as the Accident and people are never told what this accident is only ‘since the accident’ or ‘after the accident’.
there is an extremely hidden video that requires you to solve an impossible amount of hints and clues, that is of the portal opening. it’s called IN-0:The Accident.
(the video shows two people a man and a woman jack and maddie in hazmat suits standing in front a large metal tunnel, two kids jazz and danny siting in front of them, the scientists plug the machine but it fails, they disappointedly leave,*fast foward*, three kids, the trio are standing in front of the portal, they talk, danny puts on a hazmat and walks into the tunnel, it whirls on, the doors shut, the video glitchs as the sound of the machine starting up get louder, the screen turns black but the sound of danny screaming are loud and clear, the screaming goes on for a few minutes before suddenly cutting off, the screan clears up but its still a bit glitchy, the portal is open swirling green with sam and tucker standing in front of it, danny is nowhere to be seen)
danny may or may not be ghost king
This is my attempt at drawing the LUNCH LADY.
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DANGER: ⭐️⭐️
( rating may change)
please add, use, change as much as you like. i’d love to see what you come up with and how this idea could expand.
just make sure to tag me or tag it as The Phantom ARG.
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ew-selfish-art · 5 months
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DP x DC AU: Danny desperately wants to find the explosion guy. Tim is really good at covering his tracks... he didn't account for ghosts.
The explosions make it onto TV as purported terror activity and most people haven't heard of that part of the world much less ever given a second thought to care about it. The only real reason it gets reported on has something to do with the Justice League and... Danny knows too much.
He's been in training for Clockwork's court (which he's suspicious of- feels like kingly duty bullshit- but Danny is playing along out of curiosity for now) and he's learned a lot about how the living and non-living worlds collide. That means learning about CW's usual suspects- one of which just happened to have a ton of bases around the area Danny was seeing on the news.
It didn't take long for Danny to try to piece together that whoever blew up Nanda Parbat was trying to fuck with the League of Shadows, and was doing it successfully. Less green portals in the world the better, same goes for assassins. But it gets Danny thinking... Maybe he can employ similar tactics on the GIW Bases that keep spawning on the edges of Amity Park. It would at least set them back while he and his friends navigated the help line desk to request Justice League intervention. None of them can leave Amity Park, so outreach is going to have to be creative.
So Danny figures he'll just find the guy. Call up some ghosts who were there, or er, came from there and get a profile and track him down. But the ghosts keep saying it was The Detective. Annoying!
Danny goes full conspiracy theory, gets Tucker and Sam involved, and begrudgingly asks Wes Weston his thoughts.
He hadn't expected Wes to garble out a thirty minute presentation (that had 100 more slides left to go before he cut it off) about how Batman totally trained with a cult and so did his kids. Danny kind of rolled his eyes but... hey, new avenue of searching in the Infinite Realms at least.
The ghosts confirm that Bombs is for sure not Batman's MO- But maybe his second kid would know? The second kid was already brought back to life though, so no way to easily reach him... Danny starts to realize that this might be the work of a Robin now. Wasn't the red one known for solving cold cases? (Sam provides this information- its a social faux pas to not know hero gossip at Gotham Galas- everything she's learned is against her will).
It all comes to a head when Danny goes about the hard task of opening a portal for the guy to come through at just the right time, explain the infinite realms so he doesn't panic and then describe what the fuck was going on with the GIW. It takes months, just over a full year, of random (educated guesses) portal generating- Finally, Red Robin drops into the land of the dead.
"So, you're the guy I've got to talk to about explosions right?" Danny enthusiastically asks.
Tim thinks he's died and landed in the after life following 56 hours of being awake and plummeting off the side of a building into a Lazarus pool. Nothing makes sense about the kid in front of him.
"Yeah, I got a guy for munitions." Tim answers cooly.
"How do you feel about secretly sanctioned government operations that violate protected rights?"
"Gotta get rid of 'em some how. Need me to point you in the right direction?" This might as well be happening.
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nerdpoe · 10 months
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DPxDC prompt idea
Had to get it out but don’t quite know how to write it
Jason Todd is a halfa. He doesn’t know it yet but a certain part of the government is tracking him down. They have plans to capture and experiment on him alongside with another halfa from Amity Park. They eventually capture him via using ghost hunting equipment and he’s whisked away with barely a trace left for the Bats. Jason learns the kid’s name is Phantom and they bond while in captivity.
They can get rescued. Or not. If they do I think it should be by Dick or even Jazz in all their glory. This was meant to be a hurt/comfort and angsty kind of fic or oneshot. With maybe a lil bit of fluff thrown in.
What do you think? :D
Hmmmm...could start with Jason noticing he's being stalked by dudes in white suits, and every time he beats them they come back in greater numbers.
That would make the whole "minimal trace" thing even creepier, because multiple CCTV witnessed Jason vanish into a warehouse, then being followed by an insane amount of people in white suits.
But that's it. No evidence of a fight, no nothing. They walked into the warehouse and then they were gone.
GIW with Jason not knowing he's a halfa? He'd just be pissed they keep calling him an "it" and doing stupid experiments. He gets classified as more dangerous than Phantom cuz he never goes in his ghost form, and yet he still keeps managing to find ways to maim GIW operatives.
But that's just cuz he doesn't realize he has one yet.
Him and Danny bonding because holy shit, this is a kid.
Danny forcing himself to stay in Phantom form for as long as possible, because that form can take more punishment than his human one.
And when Jason's had enough and Danny's coded double-speak finally starts to click, he manages to go into his ghost form.
But it isn't a visage of himself as Robin.
No, Jason's been exposed to the pits. He died in fire and smoke and was reborn in poison.
His ghost form is positively eldritch.
Too many teeth, too many eyes, arms with too many joints, a form that keeps glitching out of existence-he's positively terrifying.
Add that to the fact that in his ghost form, he's always going to be a little Pit Mad?
He's murdering people left and right, and then eating their ghosts as they form.
Danny's ghost type is a Banshee, Ellie's is Poltergeist, (she never got caught tbh she's been hiding in Mount Justice) and Jason?
His technical classification is Reaper. (because i get you, Jason, and i deeply understand the need to be edgy)
By the time Danny manages to calm him down enough to go human, he and the kid are the only ones with pulses in that compound.
When the Bats arrive to break him out, the GIW compound is a smoking wreck littered with corpses, and Jason is wholly unimpressed with Bruce's rescue timing.
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ghostadjacentfae · 2 years
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Okay so I’ve got a bit of a kinda sorta really specific af idea that I am 90% I’ll never get to despite loving to bits so imma throw it to the wild and maybe some of you will like parts of it too. Okay? Okay. 
Basic version: DP x DC prompt where Danny’s gotten deaged as part of another bid for the power of Ghost King. The title that Danny now is heir to. Jazz takes the now like 4-to-8 year old Danny, who barely remembers anything besides Jazz Good and Vlad Bad, and flees to Gotham to find help from somebody that Vlad won’t expect them to seek out help from. To leave Danny with while she goes into the Ghost Zone herself to look for help/a solution.
Longer one where I’ve gone a little very insane: 
DP x DC prompt where Vlad’s deaged Danny as part of another bid for the power of Ghost King. The title that Danny now has/is heir to. Either reveal gone wrong when trying to explain because how do they hide this or no reveal at all, just Jazz grabbing her even-littler-than-usual brother and booking it because there’s no time to explain if they’re to keep Danny way from Vlad. Couldn't go into the zone bc for as many allies as Danny has there, there's also so many enemies that could intercept them before they could reach those allies to inform that help is needed (and who knows, maybe the parent's Fenton removed access to their portal from their kiddos for some reason). Danny is still halfa obvs but he doesn’t remember any details about anything. Jazz is Home. Creepy vampire man Bad. Furries in black with masks Do Good (and Jazzy tells him to trust them so he will). Clowns Very Bad. 
 In Gotham, Jazz doesn't try the keeping low thing. Well she does; not using anything besides cash and fake names, ancients what she wouldn’t do for a shower but places want credit cards goddamnit, to not bring attention on them from Vlad. Maybe she’s got a burner to get updates from Sam and Tucker on, about the status of Amity or if they’ve gotten anywhere on their end of the search for a solution, but they all know Vlad is watching them so they don’t know where she and Danny are or what she’s doing. Which is that she goes out at night looking for the bats and birds on purpose to get help for her brother, making waves in the rumour mill but staying hidden during the day. It takes a while; longer than they have time for really and she gets more stupidly desperate. Danny’s with her for every stupid stunt, usually hidden for safety but never so far that she can’t get to him if in seconds if it turns out they’ve gotten tracked down. She won’t run the risk of leaving him in their safe house of the day without her to come back and find him gone.
She decided on Bats rather than Supers or others bc an overshadowed superhero??? Bad. The bats and birds are either Entities not unlike she and Danny are (liminal!jazz agenda my beloved (honestly most of amity park but that’s not quite relevant here)) and thus immune, or they're very trained regular people. Those can still pack a punch but it's not something she can't fight against if they can’t actually be trusted. Not something she hasn't already fought against in the months she’s been in Team Phantom. Not something she hasn’t already fought against while making her escape with Danny.
Leaving Danny with them is going to take every ounce of trust she can muster.
She finds Red Robin or Nightwing first I think and gives the most bare bones of an explanation. Doesn't mention deaged, simply at-risk heir to The Throne Of Infinity and there's a bid for the crown right now by a man that’ll be another tyrant, and "by the ancients, you need to protect him. I'm the best he's got right now but I can't keep him safe and find our allies". That they aren’t metas but there’s too much to explain. "Maybe Danny will explain if he can but just. It'd be so much simpler if we had super powers. Wouldn't have to worry about enemies overshadowing anyone to get them to shoot us if we were all just metas." 
She’s got a bag of Tech, just whatever she and Danny could grab and Go. And a third of it lost when Jazz dropped half of hers in order to pick up Danny to run faster. Think nearly finished schematics, a blaster or two, one Specter Deflector, what may or may not just be a toaster, and crammed into his bug-bag. Or school backpack. A corner of the bag is green with dried ectoplasm from a broken vial that got shattered in the mad dash. 
(I’m a little attached to it being Tim she leaves Danny with. Maybe he tries to pawn him off on one of his brothers, but Danny's already like, imprinted on him. Very "YOU promised Jazz to keep me safe. Jazz left me with YOU >:C" y’know? Or cuz she stressed so very much that he cannot be left without someone guarding him, and bats don't exactly want identity reveal he can't really be left in the cave under the watch of Agent A since Alfred needs to do other things, he gets handed around a little bit between them as heroes only and it's just Timmy's bad luck that he really likes this clever snarky little bean 's the one stuck with Danny on the occasion that plot happens. I just like Tim & Danny time.)
I'm thinking plot tool of Jazz with one of Wulf's claws? As a thing that lets her get into the Zone without portal access or the speeder after finding a Bat to leave Danny with. But no control of where she'll show up, hence not using it when their parents portal wouldn’t work. It Works Like That™ because I Say So™, tho if you have a less mystery McGuffin reliant idea this is by no means obligatory. Just an excuse on a silver platter.
Also tiny Danny, barely awake, trying to grab Jazz and saying not to go cuz it's dangerous/he needs her, only for his hand to go intangible through her. Did I mention yet that he doesn’t have control of his powers?
And of course, Vlad tracks Danny down. 
And he’s big bad.
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duchi-nesten · 1 year
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DannyMay Day 26: Art/Fic Switch!
Treats and Threats
Summary:
Valerie was going to kick Phantom’s ass for this! The only problem? She didn’t know where to find him.
Good thing Cujo was more than willing to help in exchange for some treats. Too bad he wasn’t very good at distinguishing which Danny he was meant to find though...
Word Count: 2894 || AO3 Link
Did I use this day as an excuse to try writing something for the shared cujostody au?? Maybe...
it referances this comic a little bit...
[Shared Cujostody AU Masterpost]
---
Valerie was gonna kick Phantom’s ass for this. Did he think she wouldn’t notice?
She looked over to Cujo, who was sniffing all over her room. He just came over as he often did. Phantom liked to think they had a set custody schedule or whatever it was he called it, but in reality Cujo just came by whenever he wanted and to whichever of them he wanted.
She was reluctant to ‘’adopt’’ the ghost dog at first. Yes, she wasn’t as mad at him anymore after she finally listened to Phantom and found out why exactly Cujo was now a ghost, but that didn’t mean she had to like him. He was incredibly persistent though and the more time Valerie spent around the dog, the more she started loving him. He was just a tiny little puppy, a ball of joy who wanted to play all the time.
She even kept some treats for him for whenever he came over and started making and buying him some dog clothes. He loved dressing up, especially when they got to match. And it made Phantom jealous, so it was just bonus points for her really.
Phantom used to insist that the dog wasn’t his, but now it seemed like they were fighting for who gets to have him. Okay, she was fighting. That idiot seemed delighted to share the ‘’custody’’, he kept making jokes about them being a family which was genuinely getting on her nerves. He was so infuriating.
She did agree to a truce with him after finding out he was right about Vlad, but that didn’t mean she had to enjoy sharing Cujo with that menace. He was too careless and brute with the puppy. Which is exactly why she needed to find him right now and kill him, truce be damned.
Unfortunately for her the ghost attacks have been kinda on the down low lately and she had no idea where he hung out when he wasn’t fighting them. She did send him a bunch of text messages and even tried calling (which was still so weird! How did he even get that phone??), but she was sent to voicemail every time.
If only there was a way for her to track him down…
She glanced at Cujo, who had his head stuck in the plastic box of treats. She sighed. Truly nothing could stop a ghost dog. She always tried hiding these from him, but no matter where she put the box he always managed to sniff it out.
Which gave her an idea. If he could sniff these out then maybe…
‘’Cujo, baby. You know you’re not supposed to eat those.’’ she gently pushed his head out of the box. If he really wanted to he could just phase through her hand and continue, but he was a good boy and always listened. Yet he kept his eyes on the treats as if they would disappear at any moment. She chuckled.
‘’I’ll give you a treat if you do something for me.’’ she said and his eyes instantly snapped to her. His tail slowly swayed back and forth. ‘’Can you find Phantom for me? Sniff him out?’’
Cujo blinked at her before barking happily, tail full on wagging now. He phased through her hand and made his way through the bedroom window. She quickly jumped to follow him, nearly yanking the window off its hinges. Her suit making a humming sound as it activated.
He got quite ahead of her, but she managed to keep up just fine. She did have his ecto-signature marked in her tracker just in case she ever lost track of him, but she also had Phantom’s and that one tended to disappear off her radar at random. She wasn’t so inclined to test if Cujo’s wouldn’t do the same.
They flew their way through Amity Park before Cujo suddenly took a sharp turn towards her high school. She saw him growing into his bigger form before he disappeared behind the building.
As she rounded the corner and saw Cujo’s back, tail wagging. It seemed like he was holding someone in his mouth.
Got ya, ghost boy.
She landed behind the dog and could hear his captive yelling
‘’Cujo! I can’t right now! I told you to go to-’’
Cujo turned around to show his catch to Valerie and…
‘’Oh-... Heheh.. hi Red! Uh.. Huntress!’’
That was not Danny Phantom.
That was Danny Fenton.
‘’CUJO NO. Shit, I’m so sorry Da-uh citizen!’’ She quickly raced up to them and coaxed her puppy into releasing her ex boyfriend. Which he did by letting him fall face first on the ground. ‘’SHIT.’’
Valerie knelt down next to him to help him rise to his feet.
‘’Are you okay??’’
‘’Yeah.’’ he said, standing up to his full height, which was only slightly taller than her. He looked at her and sent her a bright smile. ‘’Don’t worry about it.’’
She smiled back knowing that he probably struggled to see it through her visor. His view got even more obscured when Cujo put his huge snout in between them wagging his tail happily. Which ended up with him accidentally knocking over some full trash cans standing behind him.
‘’Ugh. Cujo, I just cleaned that up.’’ Danny said resigned, moving over to the garbage. ‘’Lancer’s gonna have my head if he sees another piece of mutated meat.’’
Valerie looked at the knocked over trash and sure enough it was full of disgusting glowing green meat. Or at least what was left of it. It looked maimed and burned.
Right. He was recording a tiktok during lunch today. She was eating in the library while working on her missed homework, so she didn’t get to see it herself, but she heard the rumors. Apparently he put some sort of new ectoplasmic concoction from his parents lab in his serving of today’s mystery meat. It backfired and spread to every piece of meat in the cafeteria like a disease.
People were saying it was like a zombie apocalypse with all the meat moving around the room. Some even said they saw the Lunch Lady ghost appear for a second before she noticed Danny in the middle of it and left terrified. Which if that was true Valerie couldn’t blame her. Danny’s eating habits probably made her turn in her grave.
‘’You didn’t eat it, did you?’’ she asked, squinting at a small piece of meat that apparently survived whatever happened to the rest of it and was slowly crawling away from them, likely trying to escape. Danny picked it up and squashed it in his hand before it got far.
‘’Obviously I did.’’ he turned to her with a familiar shit-eating grin on his face, moving the thing he caught closer to his mouth as if to prove a point.
Damn him. How could he be so endearing even when he was being disgusting?
She shook her head chuckling and looked at Cujo instead. He was looking right back at her expectantly. Right.
‘’No Cujo, no treats until you find Phantom for me.’’ she said sternly. She saw Danny trip over a trash can lid out of the corner of her eye. ‘’You good there?’’
‘’Wha-Yes! Ha- Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine! Don’t mind me!’’ he tried to act cool, almost losing his footing again. Dork.
Cujo whined at her, stepping from front paw to front paw and cocking his head to the right. He knew damn well he looked cute when he did that, no matter which form.
‘’Baby, no. I’m not gonna cave. Find Phantom and I’ll give you a treat then.’’ she said calmly trying to stroke him behind the ear, but since he was in big mode she had to settle for his cheek.
He whined a bit more letting out a little pathetic bark to go with it. He turned and stalked over to Danny, poking him in the back with his nose, which made the boy squeak.
‘’No, Cujo.’’ she said, sighing. ‘’That’s the wrong Danny you’re thinking of.’’
‘’Y-Yeah, buddy!’’ Danny chuckled nervously, petting Cujo’s snout. ‘’I’m not the one you’re looking for! Definitely not! I’m not Phantom, why would you even think that? You’re not thinking that right?’’
Okay he was acting weird. Almost as if he was hiding something.
Valerie looked him up and down. His eyes were wide, observing her every move with fear. One arm was rubbing his neck, which he always did when he was nervous. The other still stroking Cujo’s fur almost instinctively.
That’s when it clicked.
‘’No fucking way.’’ she uttered absolutely baffled.
It made so much sense.
‘’W-What?’’ he asked, his voice cracking.
‘’How many times did that asshole leave you as a dogsitter?’’
She knew Phantom did that. She caught Cujo in the background of one of Danny’s tiktoks a while ago and when she confronted Phantom about it he admitted to ‘’hiring’’ Danny as a dogsitter sometimes.
If that asshole left Cujo with Danny too often, then no wonder the poor puppy would mistake Danny for his second caretaker. Oh she was going to kick his irresponsible ghost ass even harder now!
‘’Uh… w-wha..?’’ Danny tilted his head questionably.
‘’I know about the dogsitting, Danny. And it looks like he’s leaving Cujo with you so often that the dog thinks you’re him!’’
‘’Oh… you think-’’ he knitted his eyebrows in confusion before his eyes widened. ‘’Oh! Oh, hahah, he didn’t- I mean it wasn’t many times! Maybe like twice! Is this the dog? I didn’t even recognise him, I don’t even remember his name!’’
Cujo whined again, turning into his puppy form and jumped in Danny’s arms, who barely managed to catch him in time. He started sniffing and licking his face distressed.
‘’Cujo stop! I mean! Dog whose name I don’t remember…’’ that made Cujo whine even harder and Danny flinched. He instantly gave up and buried his face in Cujo’s fur. Valerie could barely hear him mutter ‘’I can’t do this to you.’’
That interaction only reaffirmed Valerie’s suspicions.
��’Don’t cover up for him.’’ she said, crossing her arms. ‘’I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at him. He’s going to pay for this too.’’
‘’Uh…why were you even looking for him in the first place? Did he do something?’’
‘’Yes, he knows what he did! And now this! The moment I find him I’m gonna kick his ass so hard he’ll be the gone kind of dead!’’
‘’… well you definitely won’t find him now…’’
‘’What?’’
‘’Nothing!’’ Danny shoved Cujo in her arms and started walking off before she could even react. ‘’Anyway I’ll be going now! Gotta finish cleaning so Lancer doesn’t kill me! Bye Val!’’
‘’Bye-....wait…what did you just call me?’’
Danny stopped frozen in his tracks. She stared at his back bewildered.
He slowly turned around and stared back at her too.
‘’...Bye Red Huntress! It was nice to see you, I’ll go disappear behind that corner now!’’ he yelled nervously and booked it behind said corner.
It took her a second to shake off the shock. Cujo jumped out of her arms as she quickly followed after the boy.
‘’DANNY.’’
She rounded the corner to see that he did in fact disappear. Shit.
She was sure he called her Val. How did he know about her secret identity? She was always so careful! It did explain his weird behavior though, he probably didn’t know how to act around her like this.
She needed to talk to him immediately, he couldn’t just reveal something like this and run off!
Though that is exactly what he did. How did he even disappear like that? This boy was impossible sometimes.
In frustration she knocked her head on the wall a few times. What was her life at this point?
Her thoughts got interrupted when she heard Cujo’s bark and a yelp come from behind her. Turning around only provided her with even more frustration when she saw Danny mcfucking Phantom laying helplessly under Cujo’s once again big paw.
‘’Why must you do this to the hand that feeds you…’’ he hissed to Cujo before turning his attention towards Valerie. ‘’Hey Red! You look very good today! Are those new arm plates on your suit?’’
Danny Fenton could wait. She was gonna deal with this asshole first.
‘’YOU.’’ she roared stalking over to them. Cujo looked up at her coming closer and switched to his puppy form again laying his whole body on Phantom’s chest, wagging his tail and barking excitedly.
‘’Ah.. hahah, have you been looking for me?’’ Phantom said, raising into a sitting position, even though Cujo was making it difficult for him.
‘’I’m going to end you!’’ Valerie yelled, pulling out her gun and making sure to aim it at his face and away from the dog in his lap.
‘’I thought we had a truce! What did I do?!’’
‘’YOU KNOW DAMN WELL WHAT YOU DID.’’
‘’No, I actually don’t!’’
She let her gun disappear back into her suit and angrily knelt beside them. Picking up Cujo from his lap, she turned him around to show Phantom a charred section of fur on his right back leg.
‘’I FOUND SOME SINGED FUR ON CUJO AGAIN. You were playing too harshly with him! again!’’ she put the puppy down, so she could stand up summoning her gun back and aim it at the ghost boy in front of her.
Phantom looked from the gun to her, at Cujo and then back to the gun.
‘’……. Listen in my defense he really likes fetching ectoblasts…’’
‘’He’s gonna be fetching your ectoplasm when I’m done with you! What were you thinking?! He’s not one of your vile rouge buddies! He’s a little puppy! How many times have I told you to be softer with him?!’’
‘’Valerie, with all due respect…That dog can chew off Skulker’s head, he can take a few tiny burns! He doesn’t even react to it!’’ he defended standing up too. He kept his hands in the air as a sign of surrender. ‘’Can’t I just play catch with my own son?’’
Cujo barked from the side.
‘’UgH your SON that you constantly leave with Danny! Apparently you do that so often that he’s more used to Danny’s scent than yours!’’ she yelled irritated.
‘’Uh…I’m a ghost…. I don’t have a scent?’’ he answered, uncertain before nodding to himself. ‘’Yes. Yes! I don’t have… a scent for him to find. Only uh… Only material beings do.’’ he added still unsure and she swore she could hear him mutter something about being a genius.
‘’What.’’
‘’He couldn’t sniff me out and uh… you and Danny are the only humans who have me on speed dial so he thought that was the best next thing. Yes, that’s definitely it.’’
‘’…What.’’
‘’Yeah! It’s true! Totally! So he did good!’’ he motioned to Cujo which made him wag his tail more. ‘’Give him a treat, he deserves it. He’s a good boy!’’
The puppy barked happily.
‘’Yeah, you are!’’ Phantom crouched to coddle Cujo. ‘’Your mother just couldn’t see it! But don’t worry, your cool ass dad always got your back.’’
There he goes again with the family bullshit. Valerie slumped defeated and hid her gun.
‘’Ugh. Stop saying things like that to him, we’re not a family.’’ she groaned.
‘’Well yeah, we’re divorced.’’
‘’We never even dated!’’
‘’As far as you know.’’ he looked up at her with his dumb trademark smirk.
‘’What’s that supposed to mean?’’ she asked because what the actual fuck did he mean by that.
‘’Nothing!’’ he stood up quickly picking up Cujo to shove him in her arms and woah, did that give her deja vu. ‘’I have to go, can I have a rain check on that ass kicking? I’m very busy right now!’’
‘’Wha- No!’’ she protested trying to keep Cujo from licking her face. ‘’Get back here!’’
‘’Bye Val!’’ he yelled and flew off before she had the time to react. God damn it!
She turned her gaze down to Cujo’s pleading eyes.
‘’Alright.’’ she pulled out a dog treat from a tiny storage in her glove and gave it to Cujo. ‘’You did good baby.’’
She put him down on the ground so he could devour the treat in peace and sighed loudly. Phantom ran off like a little bitch and apparently Cujo couldn’t sniff him out. He would just go to Danny again.
Which reminded her. She still needed to have a talk with that boy. She did trust him not to tell anyone, but she needed to know how he found out in the first place, so she can make sure no one else can find out the same way. She should probably give him a bit of time before she gets Cujo to stalk him out again though.
The puppy had finished his little treat and was now looking at her with those cute red puppy dog eyes. She couldn’t hold back the smile that overtook her face. Whatever. She’ll deal with Danny at school tomorrow. And deal with Phantom whenever she sees him next.
‘’C’mon Cujo. Let’s go home.’’
It was on the way home when a sudden thought hit her.
DID PHANTOM TELL DANNY ABOUT HER IDENTITY THE SAME WAY HE DID WITH HER DAD?
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raaorqtpbpdy · 4 months
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Found in Glimwood Tangle
The story of how Amity and Danny found each other in Glimwood Tangle and together started their journey to beat the gym challenge and take on Galar's champion! Danny Phantom AU where Danny and company are pokémon and Amity Park is their pokémon trainer.
Written for @crossoverdanuary Week, Day six: General video games Pokémon Sword & Shield | Momentum
I never played video games as a kid, and now as an adult I still haven't played that many. (Although I'm really enjoying Paranormasight right now. If I'd finished it, I might have used it for the crossover instead.) Pokémon Shield was my first ever pokémon game and my second ever video game period, and I know people say it's one of the less good pokémon games but I still have a certain fondness for it.
AO3 Link
[No Warnings Apply]
There was a white-haired girl in the forest, probably only seven or eight years old. Her white dress was stained with grass and dirt and moss. She was sitting on a tree stump. She was crying. She was lost.
He could remember sitting right where she was now, lost and crying... back when he was a boy and not a stump. Curiously, he approached her. He moved slowly, cautiously, trying not to startle her. But she startled anyway when she finally noticed him.
"Ah! A pokémon!" she shouted, falling off the stump and scrambling away. "Please don't hurt me!"
He tilted his head, watching silently with big, round eyes, careful not to move any closer and scare her away. 
Her own eyes were wide with fear. She probably knew that wild pokémon were dangerous. But then, why was she here? Why had she wandered into Glimwood Tangle where it was so dark you could hardly see what was in front of you because the only light came from luminescent mushrooms. Why would she come to a place where the paths were so winding and confusing that even grown-ups sometimes got lost? Why would she go somewhere where ghost pokémon and psychic pokémon lived in such large numbers?
The Glimwood Tangle had been scary back when he was a boy. It must have been scary to her, too.
"H-hey," she said with a trembling voice. "You have green eyes, like me." It was true. Hers were even so bright they could almost be glowing, just like his were. "I've never seen a Phantump with green eyes before. I've only ever seen them with red eyes. But... I don't think you're a shiny Phantump, are you? You just have green eyes."
She seemed to be calming down now, so he risked floating a little bit closer to her. He hovered around her, checking to see if she was hurt. Her knees were bruised, but other than that, she looked okay.
"Dad says wild pokémon are dangerous, but you don't seem like you're gonna hurt me," she said, wiping the tear tracks from her cheeks. "My name is Amity, Amity Park. Do you have a name, little Phantump?"
He keened a response. I don't know. I can't remember.
Of course, she couldn't understand. She shuddered at the sound of his voice, but she didn't try to get away.
"Well... you've gotta have a name," she said. "Hm.... How about Danny? I always thought that was a nice name, don't you? You can be Danny the Phantump. Do you like it?"
Rather than try to answer when she wouldn't know what he was saying, he did a little flip in the air to show that he was happy. She'd picked out a good name for him, Danny. And now that she had calmed down a little, it was time to get her out of this forest.
Danny started floating away, back toward the path.
"Wait, where are you going?" Amity asked.
He stopped and turned back to look at her, nodding his wooden head for her to follow.
"You want me... to follow you?"
He did another flip of affirmation and waited as she hesitantly walked after him. She was tense, and trembling like a leaf, and stumbling on shaky legs, but she still followed, trusting him.
It had been a long time since Danny had gotten lost in these woods as a boy. Now, as a pokémon, he knew every path by heart. When they had to pass through tall grass, he floated high enough that Amity could see him, and tried to keep her away from any other pokémon he could spot.
They were almost to Ballonlea when a particularly bold and naughty impidimp jumped on Amity and she screamed.
Danny immediately flew to her rescue, hooking one of his branches around the impidimp and flinging it off. He saw that it was about to attack him next, but he tackled it and it ran away.
"Danny, you saved me!" Amity shouted, and wrapped her arms around his wooden head in an almost splintering hug.
For a moment, he let himself savor the contact. But her scream and shout would have attracted even more wild pokémon to her, and they would be here soon. He phased out of her grip and urged her forward. They weren't out of the woods yet, but they were so close. He could see the lights of Ballonlea piercing through the thick foliage of Glimwood Tangle.
"Right," Amity said determinedly as she realized what he was trying to do. "Let's keep going."
She stayed quiet and stuck close behind him, and he led the way and kept his eye out for other pokémon. Then, finally, A bright pink pokémon center stood before them, its neon sign lighting up the clearing. They had left Glimwood Tangle.
"Come on, Danny it's my turn to lead the way," Amity said. "My house is that way."
He hesitated, turning and looking back at the forest. He didn't belong in a town. Glimwood Tangle was his home. It was too bright here, too loud, too crowded.
"Do you not wanna come?" Amity asked, her face morphing into something very sad. "It's okay. I understand. Thank you for helping me. If you want to go back, I won't stop you."
Then again... Amity was his friend now, wasn't she? A friend. That was all he'd wanted since he died in those woods. A friend.
Danny did not turn back. Instead, unsure though he was, he floated forward. He cautiously followed Amity past the pokémon center, toward a big round building—the pokémon gym.
There were ropes cordoning off the entrance to the gym from the rest of the town. Amity slipped right under them and kept going without a thought.
"This year's gym challenge is going on right now, so they put these ropes up to keep gym challengers from getting lost," Amity explained. "Ballonlea can be hard to find your way around when you're not used to it."
She led the way up a hill, to a modest wooden house at the very top. It looked almost the same as every other house on the street, except the roof had been painted green instead of purple. Amity pushed open the lavender door with ease. It wasn't locked.
"Dad, I'm home!" she called.
"Amity! Sweetheart, where did you go?" A man hurried to the front doorway to wrap his daughter up in a hug.
Startled and uncertain, Danny tucked himself behind Amity, out of her father's sight.
"I was worried sick. I looked all the places you usually go, and couldn't find you. I was just calling the neighbors to see if they knew where you were. Are you alright? Your dress is all dirty. You're not hurt, are you?"
"I'm okay, now," Amity assured him, hugging him tightly back. "I heard someone in the woods calling for help. They sounded close, so I thought it would be okay if I went to help them, but whenever I got close to the voice, it would get farther away, and before I knew it, the voice was gone, and I was lost. I was really scared for a while, but then Danny came and showed me the way home."
"Danny?" her father questioned. "I don't know any Danny."
"He found me in the woods," she said. "It's okay, you can come out."
Cautiously, Danny showed himself to Amity's father.
"A wild pokémon?" he said. "Wait, but it has green eyes. I've never seen a phantump with green eyes before."
"Me neither," Amity said. "But he helped me, and protected me when another pokémon attacked. I know I'm only seven and you said I can't start training pokémon until I'm ten, but can I please please please have a pokéball so I can catch him and take care of him. Please!"
"Well... I don't know," her father said. "A pokémon is a lot of responsibility, especially when it used to be wild. I would feel much more comfortable if your first pokémon came from a breeder. I've spoken to Elena, who lives near the pokémon center and she said she'd be happy to breed a nice starter pokémon for you."
"But Danny saved me!" Amity insisted. "I want him to be my pokémon."
Her father sighed and looked back at Danny, his expression halfway between resigned and scrupulous. "Do you want to be Amity's pokémon?" he asked.
Danny keened and bobbed up and down.
"And you'll take care of her and keep her safe?"
Danny repeated the response.
Mr. Park turned to his daughter next. "And you'll take care of Danny, and make sure to train him properly?"
Amity nodded determinedly and clenched her fists.
Finally, her father sighed, giving in. "Alright, fine. I think I have a pokéball around here somewhere."
From that day on, Amity and Danny were partners, and Amity took her responsibility as a pokémon trainer very seriously. She would feed him every day, and talk to other pokémon trainers about how best to train him.
When his head got knocked around in a training battle with her neighbor's dwebble, Amity sanded away the splinters so they wouldn't turn into cracks.
On the day the whole family gathered around the television to watch the gym challenge finals, Amity sat on the floor, right up close, with a notebook and a pen, ready to write down everything they did so she could learn from them. Mr. Park sat behind her on the couch with Danny curled up on the seat next to him.
"You know," Mr. Park said softly, running his fingers over the wooden grooves on Danny's head. "I've never seen her so serious about anything. She's always been a light-hearted, carefree kid, but she sure cares about you."
Danny had been surprised to hear that. He'd blinked up at the man, confused. To him, Amity had always been like this. Amity was gentle, and caring, and kind. She worked hard, and studied, and did her best. It was hard to believe she was doing all this for him, and not just because it was her nature.
It was on that day that Danny swore to always protect Amity Park, no matter what.
If she was giving her all for him, then he would do the same for her.
The challenger lost to Raihan in the finals, and Raihan lost to Leon, but Amity had apparently taken a lot of notes on all the fights and was eager to apply them to her own training methods.
By the time Amity finally turned ten, she and Danny were inseparable. Everyone around town was so used to them, Danny hardly ever had to go in his pokéball. They were simply another feature of Ballonlea, like that weird guy who made sculptures in an alleyway and wanted to be a pokémon.
Then, on her birthday, something changed.
"Happy birthday, Amity," Mr. Park said, and he reached into his pocket, and handed her a pokéball. "I worked with Elena to pick out a good one for you."
Amity turned it around in her hands while Danny floated closer to examine it, confused. It seemed to be occupied. Danny could even catch a faint whiff of ozone coming from it. How strange.
"A pokémon?" Amity asked. "But I already have Danny."
Her father laughed. "You said you wanted to do the gym challenge this year, didn't you?" he said. "You'll need more than one pokémon if you want to have a chance of beating the champion. Even if your pokémon is as great as Danny."
"No one can beat the champion, that's why they call him Unbeatable Leon," Amity said. "But I guess you're right. As great as Danny is, I can't put all that pressure on him."
She could, Danny wanted to tell her. If Amity wanted to take on the gym challenge with him as her only pokémon, then he would fight like he'd never fought before. But Amity wasn't like that. She never gave him more than he could handle, and she wouldn't make him take on such a huge challenge alone. She was too kind for something like that.
"So which pokémon did you pick?" she asked.
"Throw it out and see," he answered with a smile, and gestured to the door to the backyard.
Once they were outside, Amity threw out the pokéball.
"Alright, pokémon, come on out!" she called.
The ball opened with a popping noise, and in a bolt of light, a little dog pokémon was standing on the moss lawn.
"Yamp! Yamp!" he barked.
"It's a yamper!" Mr. Park said brightly. "Normally, starter pokémon are either fire, grass, or water types, but Elena said especially talented trainers, or ones with more experience, have had a lot of success with electric types, who tend to be difficult to control for complete newbies. We thought yamper would be a good choice. What do you think?"
"Aww, he's so cute!" Amity said, kneeling down to rub her hands on the yamper's admittedly very fluffy-looking scruff. "I think I'll call him Tucker. That's a good name, right?"
"Uh... sure, whatever you like," her father agreed. "Although it's a bit atypical to give pokémon human names like Danny and Tucker, if you like it, that's all that matters."
"Oh, haha," she giggled as she stood up. "Look, the static is making it so his fur is trying to stick to me!"
Tucker ran in excited circles, electricity arcing around him. Danny floated down for a closer look and Tucker zapped him. It didn't seem intentional, but it was still rude. And that silly dog only yapped and rolled over, thinking it was terribly funny. The joke was on him, though. Electic-type moves weren't very effective on Danny.
"Elena says that yamper are best motivated with treats," Mr. Park said. "That should help you train him. He's still young and nowhere near Danny's level, but you have a couple months before the gym challenge to get him there."
"You say that like I'm already registered, but I need an endorsement to even sign up," Amity pointed out.
"Oh, don't be silly, Amity," her father said. "Everyone around here knows you're already a great pokémon trainer. I'm sure Opal is ready to endorse you the first chance she gets. When word got out it was your birthday today, I heard she was thrilled. She said, 'The next champion will come from Ballonlea!'"
Amity laughed. "That didn't happen!"
"Sure it did," her father insisted, though his smile betrayed him. "And anyway, I stand by saying she'll endorse you. I have no doubts about it."
At first, Danny was dubious about the new pokémon, but it was only a couple of days before the two of them were getting along famously.
So Amity and Danny spent the next few months training up Tucker. Amity had Danny remember some of his older, weaker moves for training fights with the much lower level yamper. And just like Mr. Park had said, Tucker wasn't very motivated and often had to be bribed with treats, especially sausages. But Amity was clever, and persevered, and soon enough, Tucker was a strong pokémon too.
Once sign ups for the gym challenge opened, Amity was sure her pokémon were ready for it. She took her pokémon to the Ballonlea gym and asked Gym Leader Opal for an endorsement to join. She had faith in Danny and Tucker, but just in case, she made sure to wear her pink dress when she asked. That would surely put Opal in a good mood.
"Why, Amity, I would be honored to endorse you," Opal told her. "But, I am also a gym leader, and it's a point of pride not to endorse just any trainer who asks without first testing their mettle."
"I'm ready," Amity said. "Whatever your test is, I'll take it now."
"Alright then, pop quiz," Opal said. "If I recall correctly from seeing you train them around town, your pokémon are a phantump and a yamper. What will they evolve into?"
"Tucker will evolve into a Boltund once he's strong enough. It shouldn't be long now," Amity answered. "And Danny won't evolve."
"Oh, I'm afraid that's only half-right, my dear," Opal said apologetically. "Phantump can evolve into trevenant."
"Yes, but a phantump only evolves into a trevenant when it's traded, and I would never trade Danny to anyone, even temporarily. You asked what my pokémon would evolve into. And my phantump isn't going to evolve. Besides, I don't think he would want to, anyway."
She was right. Tucker was always yapping excitedly about evolving into boltund, but Danny was perfectly happy just the way he was.
"Hm... I stand corrected," Opal said. "It seems you know your own pokémon even better than you know pokémon evolutions. If you'll come with me to my office a moment, I'll write you a letter of endorsement right now."
And she did just that.
"You take that letter to the gym in Motostoke, and they'll register you for the gym challenge," Opal explained. "It's quite a ways away, so you can call a flying taxi from the pokémon center when you're ready to go, but it's usually better to get to new places on your own two legs from there. You can train your pokémon on the routes between towns, and even catch new ones if you want to."
"I know," Amity said, taking the letter with reverence. "Thank you Ms. Opal. I won't let you down."
"I can't imagine you would," Opal said. "Good luck, Amity. I know you'll do great."
Amity was eager to get started. She went right home, packed her bag, and dressed in her favorite outfit, a white dress, white trainers, bright green leggings, and her favorite white boater hat. She'd gotten a lot better at keeping white clothes from getting dirty over the years, but she could only hope they wouldn't be ruined on her journey.
The ride in the flying taxi was amazing. The driver even let her keep Danny out of his pokéball since he was so well-behaved.
"Look at how small everything looks from up here," she said. Then she looked up at the massive bird carrying the taxi. "Maybe my next pokémon will be a corviknight."
"Oh, I wouldn't recommend that," the driver said. "A corviknight can be a lot to handle from the start. If you want one of these majestic pokémon, you'd do better to catch a rookidee and evolve it through training. That's how we get all the corviknight for the taxi service, that's why they're so gentle."
"A rookidee, huh?" Amity repeated. "Yeah, I like that idea. Danny, from now on, lets be on the lookout for a rookidee. I think Sam will be a good name for it. That will work whether it's a girl or a boy. What do you think?"
Danny keened in agreement, and Amity smiled like the sunshine. It had been a long time since his voice had made her shudder in the woods so long ago. And now, their journey was finally taking off.
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scarletsaphire · 5 months
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Final chapter for EI! Sorry this one took so long to get out I was losing the battle against Executive Dysfunction. This is inspired by @pokkeshii's art that you can find here and here. This was edited by @pricklenettle, so huge thanks to them!
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4
Phantom stared at the floor. His eyes stung, and his back hurt, but he did not move, and he did not blink. He couldn't. He couldn't risk it.
People were looking for him. He knew that they were. He remembered hearing people calling out his name in the streets, whispering about him in their homes.
Some people were looking for Danny too, but that wasn't him. Not anymore. Danny was human, and good, and would never have done the things he did. Danny was dead. Phantom didn't know for how long, but he was, and Phantom was all that was left.
He wished that he was dead too. Proper dead and gone, where he couldn't touch or think or see or exist. He wouldn't be able to hurt anyone there. But he was still here, so he would just have to do the next best thing. He would sit, and not move, and let the world go on without him. It was better that way. Better without him.
He didn't know where he was. He remembered flying, and he remembered landing, but he couldn't remember where. He was still in Amity Park, probably. He wouldn't have heard his name so often if he wasn't, unless people had spread the warning about him farther. He wouldn't blame them if they had. All he knew for certain was that he was out of the way, and he was alone. That's what mattered.
There wouldn't be anyone stumbling across him, no one that he could hurt, on accident or on purpose. It would probably be on purpose. He wished it wasn't.
Phantom had been counting at one point, but stopped sometime after four thousand nine hundred thirty four. It had started as a tactic to calm down, one that Jazz had taught him. Then it was to try and keep track of the amount of time he'd been gone. Then, once the number had gotten too big for him to convert to minutes, it had been to keep himself entertained. He'd stopped after that. 
He didn't deserve to be entertained. He deserved to sit and be bored and in pain and think about what he'd done. 
He found himself wondering if the other him, the future him, still locked away in a thermos somewhere, was sitting like he was. Was it better or worse, for him? Phantom hoped it was better. At least he had an excuse for the things he did. Phantom had nothing.
The footsteps weren't the first Phantom had heard. He'd heard plenty, far enough away that he probably wouldn't have been able to if he'd still been human. These were the first ones that he'd describe as close. They wouldn't be able to find him. He was invisible, and tucked in a corner that he was almost certain a human wouldn't be able to get to. He couldn't risk anyone getting near him.
Despite that, the footsteps kept getting closer . He should get up and move. Even if whoever it was didn't find him, he was clearly too close. He should leave, and find himself a new place to sit. Maybe he'd just phase himself into the ground, let himself get swallowed by tonnes of earth. He didn't need to breathe anyway. He didn't deserve it.
He needed to move. But he couldn't. Maybe it was because he'd been sitting there for so long, but he couldn't will himself to get up and do anything. Even as the footsteps got closer, even as he could hear the labored breathing of people approaching, all he could do was sit there and stare at the same spot on the floor that he'd been staring at for... however long it had been.
They kept getting closer, carrying with them a faint, familiar beeping noise. Phantom kept sitting there. He recognized their breathing. It was probably a concern that he could. Then again, seeing as it was Sam and Tucker, maybe it wasn't a concern. He had known them for so long, it might've been weird to not recognize them. Well. Danny had known them. Phantom had too, but not as long. Not as well. They were Danny's friends. Not his. Danny was dead.
They called to him now. Phantom didn't know if they were in the room or not, couldn't tell if they were able to see him. He could've been invisible. He didn't remember. Phantom didn't answer anyway. They were calling for Danny, not him, and even if they were calling for him, he wouldn't answer. If he didn't answer, then they'd leave. If they left, they'd be safe.
They didn't leave.
He knew this because the rock he'd been blankly staring at for who knows how long was suddenly replaced by Tucker's face mere inches away from his own. That was enough to startle Phantom into finally beginning to move. He tried to phase through the wall, to get as far away from them as they could, but someone's hand closed around his wrist before he could. He tried to pull away intangibly, but was met with resistance. Phase proof gloves, then.
"Oh thank the Ancients you're okay," Tucker said with a sigh, pulling away. He looked tired. They both looked tired, now that Danny could see Sam too. Her makeup was sloppy and barely worked to conceal the circles under her eyes, and Tucker looked like he hadn't slept in a week. Phantom hoped they hadn't been looking for him; that was a terrible reason to lose sleep.
"Danny, we need to bring you home," Sam said. Instead of answering, Phantom tried continued to try and break Sam's grip. "Danny please. Listen to us. We only want to help-"
"Stop." His voice was weak and shaky, barely spoken above a whisper.
"We're not going to stop until you are home safe and we can talk about what's wrong," she insisted. "We're just trying to help, Danny."
"Stop calling me that!" His voice was somewhere between a hiss and a growl, distinctly inhuman. Of course it was; Phantom wasn't human. Why would he make a human sound?
He looked away from Sam and Tucker, not wanting to see their shared look of pity and confusion. He didn't deserve the pity, and he wasn't worthy of confusion. "...why?" Tucker said slowly.
Part of Phantom wanted to say nothing; he shouldn't be talking to them at all, shouldn't be here at all. Another part of him wanted to tell them exactly why. Maybe if they understood that Danny was dead, and that Phantom was dangerous, they would leave, and he could go back to pretending he'd died properly. With both sides arguing, all he managed was a series of garbled syllables.
His nonsense answer worked against him. "Dude, listen, we're just trying to help,"  Tucker said. He reached out his own hand to Phantom's shoulder. It was supposed to be comforting. All it did was send a pang of panic down Phantom's chest.
He was already pinned by the gloves, and he was already trying to get away without snapping again. He couldn't handle it happening again, couldn't guarantee that he'd be able to keep himself from hurting them.
Phantom needed to get them to leave. He needed to prove that he was dangerous, that he could and would hurt them, so they would run and leave him to rot. They weren't listening to him. They weren't going to listen to him. So he'd just have to show them now, before he lost himself to the violence again.
He grabbed Tucker's hand with his one arm and squeezed, not anywhere near his full strength, just enough that he could see the pain in Tucker's face. At the same time, he started twisting the arm Sam had gripped, twisting it further than Sam's could comfortably go and forcing her to follow or let him go.
"Leave. Me. Alone," he hissed, glaring into Tucker's eyes with as much fake malice as he could muster.
Phantom could see the pain in Tucker's pinched expression. He could hear Sam's grunt of pain as he twisted her arm further, just shy of causing permanent damage, and yet when he loosened his grip enough so that they would be able to break it, they didn't even try. If anything, they held on tighter.
"We're not leaving you again," Sam said through gritted teeth. "I shouldn't have left in the first place, and it shouldn't have taken me this long to figure that out. I'm sorry, Danny. We both are, and we want to make things right. So let us. Please."
Phantom loosened his grip on Tucker's hand and untwisted his own arm, letting the two of them return to more comfortable positions. Neither of them tried to cradle injuries, just holding on even tighter. He didn't process Sam's words. He barely heard them at all, mind reeling from the fact that they were still here. He was a monster. He had hurt ghosts and people and them and they hadn't been scared, hadn't tried to run, had stayed despite him trying to scare them off. They were still here.
He wasn't sure when he started crying, only that he felt the tears running down his cheeks. Sam and Tucker both leaned in closer, not trying to hold him in place anymore, just trying to comfort him.
Danny took a deep, gasping breath, and for the first time in what felt like weeks, let his transformation rings move back over him.
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miscmonstro · 2 years
Text
The Uno Reverse Adoption Saga
First: You are here
Next: Chapter 2
Fandoms: Danny Phantom, Batman (DC)
Specifically, Halfa!Trio Au crossover with Batman
Current Characters: Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Danny Fenton, Jason Todd
Summary: Forced to attend a gala by her parents as she is every year, Sam Manson was resigned to suffer through the stifling three-night gala until something pulled at her core. The something turned out to be a someone. Just who is Jason Todd and can the trio gain enough of his trust and help him before his struggling proto-core collapses?
👻 {Chapter 1 Below!)
Danny groaned within the confines of his mind, exasperation and irritation and just a bit of fear welling up in his chest. 
His disgruntlement did not go unacknowledged. Danny wasn’t alone, even in his mind, and he hadn’t been for quite some time. Somewhere in Amity Park Tucker sent a wave of comfort in return, and he too was uneasy of the trip Danny’s eccentric parents had forced him to accompany them on. 
Sam, on a plane to Gotham, had her own problems and replied with a simple vague sentiment akin to ‘what can you do’ with less words. Her weariness seeped into it, making it feel quite resigned. It was as though she was awaiting some awful fate she’d long accepted and… no, that's exactly what it was. 
Tucker broke the relative silence across the link with an unrepentant, “At least one of us is going to survive to Christmas.”
Danny responded with the impression of bashing his own head onto a wall and Sam began to seethe. Despite her best efforts, her mind circled back to the annual gala her parents demanded she attend alongside them. It was hosted by a different snob every year, and while the scenery might have been different, the atmosphere was always the same. Without fail it would be simmering with thinly concealed flaunting and heavy with thick lies pasted atop one another.
Sam wished she could tell her parents no. She wished she didn’t have to do this. She would never voice those complaints and misgivings about the Christmas gala ever again, and not just because of Desiree. 
Every year Sam wanted to scream and every year she smiled and let her parents pick her outfits and acted like the perfect daughter. She couldn’t afford to be anything less at the Christmas galas and it made her want to hurl at the plastic cutout she endured becoming for those horrid days. Hurl, or commit a murder.
“I’m doomed. You’ll have to break me out of jail,” Sam muttered in her mind as the second option grew in appeal. “I swear these rich assholes get dumber every year.”
“And my parents get more insane,” Danny added gloomily. 
There was a hint of something from Tucker that Sam could tell wasn’t thought out and she mentally kicked him before he could put his metaphorical foot in his unphysical mouth. Tucker swatted her in retaliation but understood, switching tracks.
“Uh… yeah. That sucks. But we’re halfway through our junior year and then one more year before we’re free from our parents!” Tucker tried to comfort. Danny’s gloom lightened ever so slightly. 
For a few minutes, Sam looked out the window and imagined that she was going anywhere else to do anything else. There was a growing serene calm shared across the link, the tinges of uncertainty ebbing away. She could hear keys clacking away as Tucker typed and she could feel affection for Jazz from Danny as he texted her. 
And then Mr. Fenton startled Danny and unveiled a new anti-ghost device and Danny’s mood plummeted like a twelve ton rock to the bottom of the ocean. 
Tucker winced and tried to think of any joke that wasn’t a pun to lighten the mood.
Sam sighed. It was going to be a long, long break.
👻 {Boo!)
All too soon the plane landed and Sam zoned out while her parents immediately fought over what she should wear like they hadn’t ordered whatever the clothes were weeks ago. Sam had mentally checked out for self preservation the moment she stepped foot off of the plane. This wasn’t her first rodeo and she had the act down pat. Giggle when she was supposed to as her parents showed her off and stand silently behind them when they weren’t. At the seamstress or at the hotel lobby chatting with other rich people, the script was the same. It wouldn’t change for the gala either.
At least the previous two years hadn’t been as horrible with Danny and Tucker a mere thought away. 
The days dragged like an ant crawling through molasses and then the dreaded day arrived. The first night of the gala. Wayne Manor was old, she noted as their limo drew nearer. She could appreciate the architecture at least, and maybe such an old house had a ghost. At least that would be interesting.
Danny pointed out that she didn’t have a thermos.
She quietly conceded his point and wished for something regardless while she smiled blankly as her parents greeted Bruce, the host of the gala this year. With a polite greeting of her own the Mansons departed from the entrance and swept into the manor.
Straight away her parents engaged in some conversation and Sam stood a step behind them. Allowing herself one sad, longing look towards the quiet corners of the room, Sam bitterly wondered why the Christmas galas made her parents fanatical every year. They let her get away with whatever she wanted within reason the rest of the year, but as soon as Christmas was involved they expected her to be a doll.
With that last break of character she let a calm wash over her, perfected from years of galas, and let her perfect daughter mask snap firmly into place. 
“At least they’re only like this once a year,” Tucker commented, trying to look at the positives. 
Sam agreed. If they were so controlling year round then she was sure she’d have run away from them.  
“And at least the fruitloop is a shut in,” Danny added. The three shuddered at the thought of Vlad at the gala, Sam in particular. She didn’t want to handle him alone. Even between the three of them it was tricky to drive him off sometimes, never mind one on one.  
The clock ticked on at an agonizing pace. Eventually her parents sent her off to dance with the son of some CEO they were chatting with and she used the opportunity to escape after the dance. So long as her parents didn’t see her doing anything “unseemly” then she’d be golden for the rest of the night. She made her way over to a relatively secluded corner and cursed at the dress limiting her movements. Just walking felt like a chore in the wretched thing. Sam might have come from a family with money but she rarely dressed it. 
“Mission accomplished for the night,” she told the boys. “If I have to dance in these heels one more time…”
“You’ve almost made it through,” Danny encouraged her.
“And now you can scope out the room! Are there any cute girls?” Tucker prodded cheekily.
Before Sam could mentally reply a strange sensation washed over her. It felt like a gentle tug at her chest, at her core. Her lips parted and a faint golden-yellow mist emerged. 
“Ghost. There’s a ghost here,” Sam said, head snapping up from her cup of stuff she technically shouldn’t have been drinking as she began scanning the room with a critical eye.
“Ask and you shall receive. You totally jinxed yourself Sam,” Danny said, though his concern belied the light comment.
“You can handle it,” Tucker added at her uneasiness. “You’re-“
“No, this is different. I- I feel something in my core,” Sam said with growing alarm as the feeling didn’t fade. “Guys…”
Now it wasn’t just Sam who felt alarmed but they knew by this point how to prevent a crippling spiral of positive feedback. Dread settled in her gut and Sam couldn’t even tell if it was hers. 
“I think it’s tugging me,” Sam noted after a moment of observation. She stepped toward the crowd, toward the pull, and Tucker recoiled. 
“Um, hello, reason here. Shouldn’t you not be heading toward it?” he said.
“But what if it’s hold on her core gets stronger? She needs to do something,” Danny pointed out. 
“It doesn’t feel malicious so I’m assuming the worst. I might need you guys to pull me out of a mind trap,” Sam relayed as she weaved between the other guests.
There were twin nonverbal agreements from Tucker and Danny. Being connected to two other people usually meant that items and people looking to ensnare the mind needed to nab all three of them for anything to take effect, and for that Sam was grateful. 
Sam paused as the pull led her to a wall. Wherever she was being led was outside of the main room. Glancing around, Sam spied a confectionery table and she ducked behind it. Without a thought she turned herself intangible and invisible and walked through the wall, following the pull. After several rooms, some occupied by guests and some not, Sam came across a balcony.
Hunched over the railings was someone wearing a tux. Sam couldn’t see anything spectral about him and that put her on guard more than anything. The ones that were strong enough to appear perfectly human were the ones that always brought the most trouble. She stepped into the empty hall and dropped the ghostly aspects from her human form. 
“Are you alright?” she asked. That was usually a good way to start with nonviolent ghosts.
The person stiffened and whirled around. The first thing that Sam noticed was the tuft of white atop his head and the second thing-
A small cry for help. The tug increased and it almost felt like it wanted to yank her core out of her chest. She swallowed thickly and stood her ground. 
He narrowed his eyes at her ever so slightly. 
“Fine,” he replied curtly after a moment.
Sam scowled in return, a spark of temper rising. “Obviously not.” As much as she’d wished for a ghost earlier she didn’t want to deal with one so late at night, especially not one that could do whatever this was to her core-
“Deep breaths Sam,” instructed Tucker.
Sam inhaled deeply.
Danny prodded her and she refocused on the ghost. He hated when their attention was away from potential dangers for too long. 
“Sorry, I’m a bit short after dealing with,” Sam motioned in the direction of the main room, “all that. But seriously, what’s up?”
The ghost man scoffed and eyed her. “I’m not keen on spilling my guts to a stranger,” he said, voice barely above a hostile growl.
“Fair enough,” Sam said, appraising him. She was given the impression that he too found all the rich people business distasteful. Striding forward, she noted how he tensed as though he was ready to bolt at the drop of a hat. Thrusting her hand out in a very ill-bred manner and hoping it would put him at ease, she said, “I’m Manes.”
The man snorted. “Jason,” he said, accepting the handshake. 
Several things became apparent one after another.
Firstly, she could feel his core as it reached for her. This ghost’s core was so weak, so fragile that it wasn’t even really a core. It was a proto-core, meaning that it wasn’t formed from a death, and this ghost shouldn’t even be outside of the Ghost-Zone. He was basically an infant.
Secondly, the hand was warm. Warm as a human hand was, warm like it was alive.
And with how solid the man was and how fragile the proto-core was, there was no way that he was a ghost.
Sam tried not to stare at the very human man who was also a baby ghost. 
Jason raised a brow at her and she yanked her hand back like the contact burned when she realized that she’d been holding his hand for longer than what was polite.
Danny seemed to be coming to some conclusion as he turned the information around in his mind and Tucker was rooting through what they knew about ghost formation from some of his files. 
“Are you sick?” she blurted. It was the only thing she could think of. If Jason was slowly dying and had something he was passionate enough about to become an obsession then it might be possible that a core had started forming.  
Jason huffed out a puff of air that might have been a laugh. “No.” One of his hands made an aborted motion towards his side, like he was going to grab something and thought better of it. “I just got out here. Can’t I get even a moment to myself?” he complained. 
She snorted. She would’ve been more than happy to leave him to his own devices and would have if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a baby ghost. “Guess not,” she replied instead. 
“Is he a halfa?” Danny wondered.
Sam immediately refuted it, but Tucker wasn’t so sure. 
“It’s better to check,” insisted Danny.
“How can we tell? I have no equipment,” Sam reminded them as she shifted her gaze out over the snowy trees surrounding the manor. Aloud to Jason she said, “This is a pretty spot.” 
She was skeptical. They’d been told over and over how rare halfa were. Besides the three of them, Dani-with-an-i, and Vlad-the-supreme-fruitloop there were no others of their species. The common denominator, excluding Dani who had her own circumstances, was Fenton tech. Sam couldn’t fathom how Jason might have been exposed to a portal unless he was a clone. Turning, she looked him over again.
He was well built, likely had an active lifestyle, and had black hair and blue eyes. Sam found her own eyes drawn to the tuft of white on his head, and now that she thought about it, Vlad had a streak of white in both of his forms. Yet, Jason didn’t look like Vlad. 
Tucker added that he could’ve been a test tube baby and you didn’t have to have one person for that. 
“I don’t think he’s a Vlad experiment. Vlad would’ve never let him go, weak core or no,” Sam pondered.
“Unless he escaped,” Danny agreed.
“But then how’d he end up here?” asked Tucker. That was the most damning question, but life was stranger than fiction. However unlikely it was, they couldn’t discount it until they had proof.
There was a mental knock from Tucker and Sam let him in. He was seeing though her eyes, she could tell, and she made sure Tucker could see Jason’s face.
“Wait- that’s Jason Todd!” Tucker exclaimed with disbelief.
“Who?” Sam and Danny chorused.
“One of Bruce Wayne’s adopted sons. He supposedly died before he turned up alive. Or well, maybe he’s not so alive…”
Danny’s presence joined Tuckers in seeing through her eyes.
Sam was going to have to look into more Jason Todd later, but right now she was incredulous. “He might actually be like us?”
“Or maybe that’s just typical of resurrection?” Danny tentatively offered. “It’s not like we know if he really died or not. And we deal with the already dead. Have we ever even met a resurrected person? Can you really resurrect a person?”
“What do you mean, might be like us?” Jason asked. The hard edge to his voice was back.
“I’m going to tell him,” Sam decided. 
Tucker agreed enthusiastically and Danny cautiously. Jason had a core, however faint, and that meant the Anti-Ecto Acts applied to him.
Sam looked around. “There’s no one nearby, right?”
“No, there isn’t,” Jason replied guardedly.
Sam squinted at him but decided to get on with it. “Alright. Look. You have a core. A weak one, granted, but that’s enough to get you captured and vivisected.”
“What the hell?” Jason asked, rearing back with wide eyes. 
“I have your attention? Good,” Sam said, leaning toward him. “You really died, didn’t you? And when you came back you… well look. Ghosts are real, alright? And you are basically a baby ghost. It… your ghost part is basically screaming for help, that’s how I found you. But!” she said when he opened his mouth, likely to interject, “This means a set of laws called the Anti-Ecto Acts apply to you. By law you are not sentient, never mind other rights. If you get caught you’re toast.”
“Lady you’re insane,” Jason barked, stepping away from her. His core was agitated. 
“I’m trying to keep you after-alive,” she corrected. “The government has these floozies called the Ghost Investigation Ward, but everyone calls them the Guys in White since they wear white. If you see them, run, alright? They’re the ones who will capture and hurt any ghost, even if you’re just minding your own business.”    
Jason shook his head and inched into the hall. “How drunk are you?” he asked.
“Not at all. Listen, just be careful,” Sam sighed.   
Without a backwards glance, Jason left her on the snowy balcony with a snickering Tucker and a pensive Danny.
“Dude, you scared him off,” Tucker chortled.
“I needed to give him the important stuff in case we never meet again,” Sam replied dryly. “Ghosts are hard to accept outside of Amity.”
”I think I’m going to look into how he died and how he might have been brought back,” Tucker announced. Sam could tell he’d already connected with his PDA and was delving into the web for preliminary information, looking for promising leads. 
Danny was nervous but determined. “That’ll help us figure out what he is.”
“It is a new situation,” Sam thought to them as she peered down the hall. 
With a sigh, Danny mentally flopped onto a floor. “I guess I could ask Frostbite about coming back to life and baby ghosts when I get back.”
Sam’s initial, knee jerk reaction was to object and say that they should all go together, but Tucker was already in Amity so Danny wouldn’t be alone.
The two would be fine.
Oh who was she kidding? This was Team Phantom she was thinking about. Something was bound to go awry and she was in no position to help them when the inevitable other shoe dropped.
White, misty condensation swirled in the air as Sam exhaled noisily. She hated this time of year with a passion.
👻 {Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.)
Next: Chapter 2
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bibliophilea · 1 year
Text
tension (release)
Written for the @dpauzine. Special thanks to all the mods for working with me to get this story in the zine on time, and to @ecto-american in particular for being an excellent beta!
And thank you, SleepySpacey, for illustrating this work! All images here belong to SleepySpacey on twitter, deviantArt, and tumbl!
Contains: TUE Farmboy AU, Grief/Mourning, Alicia POV, Alicia and Danny bonding, Danny being a bit of a cryptid, Flynn mention
ao3 | ffn
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“I’m not okay! I will never be okay!”
The outburst is sudden. Explosive. Like the kid’s been holding it in for far too long. Alicia has known this was coming — saw it in the tension in the boy’s shoulders, in the redness of his eyes, in the way he never smiled and never cried and was always terse around her — and yet. And yet. She is not prepared for it.
“You — you don’t get it! You’re strong, and you’re tough, and I’m — I’m not, I’m just not, okay?!” His voice cracks, but the floodgates are open now. Alicia doesn’t think he can stop, even if he wants to. “You’re fine, ‘cause you’re you, and you’re always fine! I can’t — I can’t do that, okay?!”
He glares at her, and oh, he looks just like Maddie. When their momma died, Alicia needed to be strong enough for the both of them, strong enough to carry them through, and Maddie, she cried and cried, but she got angry, and she glared so hard, too hard and too old and it broke Alicia’s heart to see it. Maddie bellowed — Don’t you care?! — and Alicia couldn’t say anything because of course she cared but she had to be strong and she had to be tough and she had to keep going and couldn’t let it get to her and Maddie screamed something fierce, screamed so loud and so long it was amazing her tiny body didn’t give out, she was so small —
Just like her little boy.
He’s so small.
*~*~*
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Alicia needs to find him.
He doesn’t know these woods — probably doesn’t know any woods, and that bit of scrub Amity Park calls conservation doesn’t count. This isn’t some patch of green in the middle of a city where the most you’ll see is a stray cat. This is rural. This is wilderness and farmland, where the nearest anything is two miles away.
And this is nighttime. No local would dare go out at night. Alicia more than anyone knows why. Her city slicker fool of a nephew doesn’t stand a chance out there. And like hell she’s gonna just stand by and wait for it to happen. She ain’t giving up the only family she has left to the woods without a fight.
But she’ll be damned if she doesn’t go out there prepared.
*~*~*
“Danny!”
Alicia knows it’s foolish to call out his name like that. She knows it might not be Danny that answers.
But she’s at a loss.
His tracks should have been easy to follow — and they were, for a time. Danny may be smart, but he’s a city kid. He never learned how to hide his tracks the way Alicia and Maddie had growing up in the backwoods of Arkansas. Never learned to pass through these woods without a sign, like the ghosts in the stories Alicia’s momma liked to tell her and Maddie before she died. Never learned to navigate any woods, Alicia reckons, without help from his mom.
But his tracks disappear.
They stop abruptly, in a small clearing, not too far from the fairy circle she hasn’t had the chance to warn him about because he’s hardly ventured off the farm, let alone this far into the woods and —
She takes a breath, and she realizes she’d been holding it for the past minute. Calm down, Alicia. Panicking here won’t do anything but make her lose him for good. And she can’t have that. She won’t have that. Not again.
She takes another breath, steadying herself, and scans her flashlight over the tracks she can see.
Danny had broken through several branches and a thicket of thorns to get here — then fallen to the ground. Probably tripped on one of the roots that arched just above the dirt, hard to see those in the moonlight. She winces in sympathy — a fall like that would leave a mark.
But even so, he had gotten back up again. She sees it clearly in the footprints that follow the fall — stumbling at first, but they grow stronger as they push on into the clearing. The final tracks he left are the clearest — deep footprints facing the other side, the faded treads of his sneakers’ soles pressed firmly into the soil. It’s like he had jumped into the air.
But there’s no sign of where he landed. No hint of where gravity could have pulled him back down to Earth.
Like the moment his feet left the ground, he had disappeared.
Just like —
No.
She wouldn’t think it.
Not here, out in the wilderness at night, where anything could breathe life into those very thoughts.
Not now, when the only family she has left is all alone out here.
But how is she supposed to find him?
Alicia stands up straight, grimacing in frustration at the pop of her back. She’s getting old. Too old to be out at night searching for her fool of a nephew. Not that she’s any wiser, when she’s the one who drove him away.
She takes a deep breath to call Danny’s name again — then chokes on her voice as a wail brutally murders the silence of the night.
The wail — she can’t call it anything else, the way its cries linger in the air — howls through the night, making the hairs rise on the back of her neck and setting her teeth on edge. It echoes over itself, multiplying into a cacophony of moans and keens and shrieks — voices of the damned, screaming in agony and grief.
And before she can think, she finds herself sprinting towards the ghastly sound, gritting her teeth as it grates at her ears and pierces her soul. But she can’t give up, can’t slow down, can’t — can’t think as the wail fills her head and pounds against the inside of her skull —
Only one thought breaks through the cacophony, tolling like a funeral bell, pushing her to move faster, to get there before she’s lost him forever.
Not again.
Not again.
Not again.
*~*~*
“Danny, I’m so sorry.”
It’s all Alicia can say; but it isn’t enough, and they both know it. She’s losing him, she can feel it — feel the gulf between them stretching further, even when she steps forward, even as she wraps her arms around him, engulfing him in a careful hug — as if holding him too tight would shatter him; as if holding him too loose would let him slip away.
Foolish.
She isn’t much of a hugger, but even she can feel that this hug is awkward and wrong — in the way his muscles tense when she gently pats him on the back, the way she towers over him and holds him in place, the way he holds himself like a wall of ice and doesn’t hug her back.
She finally lets go, and he steps back, away from her, glaring at the floor, shoulders risen to his ears.
Then his eyes snap to hers, and they are icy blue like his fathers, and deadly sharp like his mother’s — but the fire in them is cold, and it chills her to the bone. His voice matches his eyes.
“I don’t need your pity.”
And before Alicia can do anything, he brushes past her, and he storms out the door, into the night. Into the wilderness.
He doesn’t look back as he slams the door shut.
*~*~*
By the time she finds him, the wail has long since petered out, leaving a deathly silence in its wake. She spots him facing away from her, kneeling at the edge of the lake just northwest of her property, the moonlight catching on the edges of his figure but leaving the rest in shadow.
She wants to run to him, to look him over, make sure he’s okay, to bring him back inside. But that’s not what he needs. So instead, she surveys the area, and she approaches slowly, making her footsteps loud in the unnatural silence.
Alicia knows this part of the lake — has spent a good amount of time sitting where Danny kneels, thinking or just taking in the world. There’s always something a little bit different every time she comes this way — some new growth in the plant life, or some new animal tracks after the rain, or even a tree fallen in the wake of a storm. A couple storms have passed since she last came here.
Nothing natural could have changed the landscape to be what it is now.
Multiple trees have been torn from the ground, violently uprooted and radiating outwards from the lake. Some of them almost look like they’ve been hit by gunfire — large chunks of them missing, splintered wood clawing outwards from the gaping wounds. Greenish smoke rises from the exposed wood.
The same smoke curls from Danny’s fists at his sides.
Carefully avoiding the craters and downed trees, Alicia makes her way to the edge of the lake. Not too close to Danny — she doesn’t want to spook him — but not too far, either. She wants him to know that she’s there, that she’s there for him, for as long as he needs it.
She lowers herself to the ground with a huff.
And she sits with him, in the stillness of the night.
Out of the corner of her eye, she watches as the smoke dissipates from Danny’s hands; as his fists relax; as he slowly shifts from kneeling, to sitting, to holding his knees. She can’t help the small sigh that escapes her — the way he’s curled up, hugging himself, staring intently at the lake so he doesn’t have to look at her — it’s just like her son.
Just like Flynn.
She sighs again, deep and long. Then she speaks.
“You had a cousin, you know.”
Danny doesn’t respond. But she knows he’s listening.
“Flynn,” she continues. “He was my son.”
She pauses as memories wash over her. “He could name every fish in this lake — and he would, too, when given the chance. Tell you all about the peepers, too. Sometimes, I caught him just sitting and staring into the lake — right where you’re sitting now — just thinking, I guess. He was a smart kid.”
Alicia takes a breath, and can’t help the way it shudders.
“He’s gone now. And it was my fault.”
She swallows, and feels her throat click. “We had a fight — can’t remember what about, it was so long ago — but he ran out of the house. And I went after him, of course I did, but it was broad daylight — he should have been safe — and I didn’t get there fast enough.”
She can remember it like yesterday: the way the sunlight had shown as he ran, warming her skin against the gentle, cool breeze that ruffled the grass and the trees. She’d been glad it was nice out — meant neither of them would catch a cold when she could finally catch up to her fool of a son. She remembers her confusion when Flynn had stopped running — then her dread as the dark green of the forest in front of him had slowly warped to something brighter, swirling and glowing and radioactive and growing with each passing moment — then her panic as she had realized what it was.
“It was one of them ghost portals,” she tells Danny. “I’d never seen one before, but your momma, she’d told me all about them. And she’d told me what all came out of them, too. I ran as fast as I could, and I told Flynn to run; but something reached out and grabbed him. And by the time I got there, it was too late. The portal closed. And my boy was gone.”
She can’t help the shudder in her voice, in her chest as she breathes, in her arms as she tenses them to hold herself together. It’s been a long time since she’s talked about Flynn. Too long. But she can’t break over it. Not yet. Danny needs to know — she gets it.
“Losing Flynn like that — knowing he was right there, that if I’d been a bit faster, or if I’d just listened, he’d still be here — it does something to you. My no good ex-husband, he didn’t get it. I’d be a fool to say he didn’t grieve, in the end — but he wasn’t there. He didn’t see. He didn’t understand.”
She watches from the corner of her eye as Danny stiffens.
“I hunted these woods for anything to get my son back,” she continues. “He just thought I was crazy — me spouting about ghosts and fae, like he knew anything about these woods. It ruined our marriage. And I don’t regret that; but it was a bad time. I had nightmares every night about losing him; and every day I did everything I could to find him. Your parents came out here, too, with all their fancy equipment. Didn’t find a thing. And everything I found out in the woods — none of it helped.”
She sighs and ignores the way her breath shakes.
“I never found Flynn, or the thing that took him. It was my fault. And by now, my son is probably dead.”
Danny’s head lowers into his knees as Alicia speaks. She doesn’t expect him to say anything once she’s run out of words. But a moment later, his voice, hoarse and quiet, echoes out from him.
“How do you do it? Keep going?”
Alicia huffs gently. “One step at a time, I suppose. The world keeps going. No matter how much it feels like it should all stop.” She rubs her face, and she’s only a little surprised to find it damp. “It’s hard, with him gone, knowing it’s my fault. There are times the guilt eats away at you.”
“Does it ever go away?” Danny squeezes his legs to his chest. His voice is small. He’s just a child.
Alicia takes a deep, shuddering breath, then lets it go. “No, Danny. It doesn’t.”
She’s not going to lie to Danny — he deserves better than that.
“Losing someone like that? It never goes away.” She pauses. “It gets easier — or maybe you get used to it. Hell if I know. But it never goes away.”
“Then what’s the point?” Danny sounds… angry. Frustrated. Desperate. He’s on the brink of tears, and he looks tired, so so tired, exhausted even — but it reminds Alicia of… something. Maddie? Maybe Flynn? And she chuckles ruefully.
“See, that’s the hard part. Is there any point to death? To losing someone and knowing it’s your fault?” She sighs. “Danny, I’ve had a long time to think. Ain’t much else to do around here.”
She takes a moment to gather her thoughts.
“You’re always gonna miss them — that won’t change. And they’ll always be a part of you — that won’t change, either. But the world keeps going, one step at a time. And that’s how you gotta take things. There’s work to be done. And there’s people you gotta keep going for. When Flynn was taken, it was your momma that kept me going. Then your sister and you.
“But out here, in the middle of nowhere, that don’t work forever. Here on the farm, you got structure, and you got hard work to keep things going. But mostly, you got solitude. And you got a lot of room for thinking.”
She pauses. “It took a while, but I think I learned how to keep going for myself. Not saying it’s easy — but anything worth doing takes hard work. And I’ll be there for you, as long as you want it, and as long as you need it.”
Alicia looks down properly at Danny then, from where she sits. His face is buried in his knees, and he’s gripping his legs like he’ll fall apart if he lets go. His whole frame trembles with tension.
He’s so small. And it breaks her heart to see him hurting like this.
Alicia puts her hand on Danny’s shoulder, and it nearly engulfs his upper arm. His head shoots up, and he stares at her with wide, glowing green eyes.
Then he starts to pull away from her, turning his head away and blinking his eyes.
“Hey.” Something in her tone makes him stop. She continues. “You don’t have to hide from me, Danny. You can let it out.” And so should I.
Danny searches her face for something — Alicia doesn’t know what. But after a moment, his face crumbles, and he gasps out a sob before launching himself into her arms. Alicia rocks back a bit with the force of it — then catches herself, and holds him tight, rocking him and rubbing circles in his back like she used to do with Flynn.
“I’m here, Danny. I’m here.”
She won’t tell him it’s okay — they both know it’s not.
Maybe they’ll never be okay.
But she’s there for him. And she’ll be there for him, for as long as he needs. Maybe forever, if Maddie was right about ghosts, if Danny is somehow ghostly.
“I’m here.”
She’s there for him when he lets go and leans against her in his exhaustion. She’s there for him when she keeps her arm around him, and they sit, and breathe, and stare out at the lake, under the stars, under the moonlight.
I’m here.
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ghosttrolls · 3 months
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HI I Love your Posts about trollhunters and Danny Phantom.
they are things i gad trollhunters is different form Danny Phantom
Jim only date one girl and everyone agrees that she is the best Choice for him.
and the main creator isn't a Dick.
but my Question for is if Dash were to become Like Steve was Expose the Ghost world Just Like him how do you think would've involved and this Time his memory stays Like Jez did.
Hi, thank you! Before I say anything else I would like to clarify that while I spend a lot of time comparing themes between the two shows, I don't really feel like one could replace the other - they're both so unique in their execution! Honestly, all the characters in both shows have personalities that couldn't be copied over between the two without the status quo of each show drastically changing. I don't really think of Danny Phantom and Trollhunters in terms of "Danny and Jim are the same person," but more like "Danny and Jim experience things that are interesting parallels of each other and I like to explore those narrative parallels," which I can understand being a kind of complicated distinction.
There definitely is a thing with both of these shows where they pick sort of Traditional Character Roles to some extent, like The Bully, The Hero, The Best Friend, The Romantic Interest, etc. So thinking in terms like that, Dash and Steve do fill kind of similar roles in their shows. I am pretty sure that Dash knows ghosts exist by the end of the show, even if you're writing off Phantom Planet (the final episode that people like to ignore happened). There's an episode where all the adults in Amity Park are brainwashed to go on a "cruise" which ends up just being a way for some ghosts to use them as a power source - but because the adults are brainwashed, the kids are the ones that have to save them, and Danny uses his parents' ghost tech to work together with all the other kids to fight the ghosts. This includes Dash. They all fight ghosts on the deck of a pirate ship, and Dash and Danny stand back to back as Dash says, "When I wail on you tomorrow, I'll be wailing on a hero. But I will be wailing on you." At this point in the show, Dash and other people know about and are fans of Danny Phantom... I don't think his memory gets wiped of the incident, but Danny does get in trouble for using the tech without asking and that makes him "lame" again in the eyes of the other high schoolers. I think that's meant to be the show's explanation for why it doesn't get brought up again later.
I'd love to consider what would happen if Dash had actually been more active within the ghost fighting community - I'm pretty sure he's one of those people who thinks it's "weird," so he'd probably need some convincing. But it would be super interesting if he learned that Danny was Phantom and joined the team! I'm not the first person to say this, but still. It would be cool. I did really enjoy in Trollhunters when Steve and Eli had just formed Creepslayerz but they were trying to keep it on the down low, and acted comically to cover their tracks. I imagine Dash would have to do something similar to keep his jock friends in the dark about Danny's secret... In general, DP never really gave us that big of a look into what Dash's life is like outside of school, other than throwing a party when his parents aren't around. If he joined the team in some way we'd be able to see more of his backstory and he'd become a much more fleshed out character!
And I know you didn't ask for my opinion on this, but I do wish that Steve had more development after the end of Trollhunters and 3Below. Like, he stopped bullying Jim and Eli, he got a girlfriend - and now we learn he's really scared all the time! And they make him kind of like a knight in Wizards but he's still like, terrified of everything, and bad at very simple tasks to an almost annoying extent. It makes me wonder if the trio really explained very much to him, because we didn't see any explaining happen on screen... and then it felt like they were hinting that Steve would learn some cool stuff from Lancelot, but that never happened. And WHY didn't Aja WARN HIM that he could become pregnant like that! That was so out of the blue too. I really liked how they had Steve develop as a character over the course of Trollhunters, so when he kind of stopped changing for most of the other TOA content, I was a little sad.
I guess this is just an appreciation post for bully characters that decide to become nicer. They deserve more love, for sure.
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minnesota-fats · 2 years
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If danny didnt know he was a twin and Dami thought his twin was killed for being the weaker of the two
I wrote just bits of a fic I can’t write right now! I was inspired by someone else’s post but I can’t find it anymore 😫
— meeting—
Idk why by maybe Robin is sent on a solo mission (unlikely if he is 14 so something) or maybe he just hears about glowing green people and decides that it’s the Lazarus Pit and he feels responsible as an Al Ghul to do something about it. Or maybe a field trip for school? (That one can have even more chaos because Damien is in civilian wear)
Anyway-
Danny and Damien glared at each other, inspecting the other for any differences but from the outside it looked like a mirror image— save for the difference in clothes and a few scratches here and there. Damien spoke up first “I'm starting to think mother lied to me when she said that my twin was killed off….”
“Wait, why would anyone kill your twin?” Sam asked with a suspicious glare.
Damien stared at the goth girl for a moment before saying, “no reason.” Causing Tucker to laugh.
“Oh yeah! Definitely Danny’s long lost twin!” Tucker says as she walks over to Danny and wraps an arm around his shoulder, “he can't lie for shit! Just like you!”
Danny looked like he was about to argue but stopped, “that's fair.” He says with a shrug.
“I'm not bad at lying,” Damien says, “you all are just looking too hard into things that do not concern you.” He crosses his arms and looks away from the group of teens.
“Yep, he’s lying.” Danny says, Damien glares at him causing the other to smirk.
—heart to heart—
A big reveal or something (Danny probably doesn’t know Damien is robin but he knows about the league now and Dami knows about the ghost thing after some more chaos. Danny try’s to cheer up Dami (who got his hopes up that he has his brother back but then finding out about all the crap Danny had to go through in amity park(read:half dying))
Danny sits down next to Damien on the roof of FentonWorks, looking out over the town Danny has grown up in ever since he could remember. Danny sits in silence trying to think of what to say before he just sighs and looks up at the sky. “Look,” he says, causing Damien to look at him, “I'm not gonna sugar coat it, we’ve been dealt shitty hands in life….” Damien lets out an in dignified humpf causing Danny to chuckle a bit before continuing, “you with the whole, “trained to kill” thing, and me with the whole— you know, being dead thing….” Danny looks down at his hands, “what was she like? Our mother?”
Damien looked at him with a raised brow, “Tt, you ask as if she is dead.” Damien states.
“And you talk like she was ever going to let me meet her.” Danny says, looking at damien.
Damien stared at danny for a moment before sighing and looking away, “she is cutthroat and ruthless, she is strong of body and mind,” damien glared off into the distance, “she cares more for the league of assassins more that she cares for us it seems….” He says.
Even though he kept his voice level and calm, Danny somehow could tell that that really hurt Damien, “yeah…. That checks out….” He says before leaning back and actually looking at the night sky. They stayed like that for a few seconds before Danny got an idea, he bumped his shoulder into Damien’s, “do you know anything about stars?” He asked with a little smile.
“Of course I do, I know how to track and find my way using stars. I don't see why you felt the need to ask.” Damien states.
“Yeah, but do you ever, like, stargaze?” Danny asked.
“Stargaze?” Damien asks.
“Yeah, just look at them!” Danny says as he turns his gaze up to the sky once more. Damien follows his gaze and see’s the bright lights that speckle the black sky. “…It's my obsession, you know?” Danny adds, “well one of them… ghosts have these things called obsessions, think of it as something that keeps a ghost going…. Kinda like hyperfiations but to the extreme. You can see the stars out here ok, but once there was a power outage, I came up here and sat in complete darkness and I could see so many!” He says
Damien watched as Danny explained his love for the night sky and he couldn't help but look in awe. His brother looked so peaceful and at ease as he spoke, the stars reflecting in his own eyes. Brother. That felt right…. Damien never thought he would call anyone that. other than that unnamed child that died before he could even meet them, now that unnamed child had a name and it was Danny. His lost brother that he had found only by accident, that if anything was different then he might have never even known he existed. Damien had decided that he was going to do everything in his power to keep that look in his brother's eyes, even if it killed him to do so, even if he had to fight grandfather to keep him safe. He would do it.
— and that’s all I got Folks!—
Maybe they stay in contact, maybe they try and forget about each other (probably not)
Maybe Bruce finds out on accident maybe Dami tells him (probably not) Bruce wants to meet his second son he never knew about. Danny is pouty because he didn’t want to meet Bruce because he didn’t want to complicate things (at least Bruce doesn’t know about Phantom, but we all know it’s a matter of time)
Who knows, if you want to use this scenario go for it! Just tag me or link the fic if you do cuz that would be dope!!!!
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threewaysdivided · 2 years
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So, in YJDW, Danny is still very much a solo-hero type. I imagine that's going to potentially cause some issues down the road, both with learning how to work as an equal with other supers and bonding with them since his own hero development is so different from the Team's. No mentor, the discomfort that the nature of his powers can cause, the mixed history he DOES have that's public knowledge, and the lack of real exposure to the rest of the superhero sphere of influence.
(Young Justice: Deathly Weapons)
So this is interesting because you're completely right; those are things that should complicate Danny's interactions (and potential integration) with established heroes and hero teams.
However, the specifics of Danny's circumstances and road to joining the Team in Deathly Weapons kind of alleviate or sidestep a lot of those potential issues. At cost of giving him a new catalogue of complexes to deal with but beggars can't be choosers.
I think we discussed a few of the particulars a while ago in this post thread with @doodly-doop, so I might gloss over some of those finer points here.
Suffice to say that, if it was a immediately-post-series Phantom, there's a lot of potential stumbling blocks to do with him already having ingrained instincts/ strategic impulses/ reflexes/ fighting styles that are specifically geared towards him being the lone powerhouse/ point guard/ tank in a group of otherwise Badass Normal support members. (Compare Superboy, who might be best suited to the specific role of tank/ threat management but who knows most of his teammates can take hits that would incapacitate regular humans). There's also potential for personality clashes given that Phantom is somewhat used to being the de facto leader in his own environment, and also the possibility for him to be carrying some resentment over being left un-mentored or having to deal with ghost problems entirely by himself if it becomes clear that the others knew something was happening in Amity but chose not to intervene.
If you want fic recs, Communication Issues (DP x YJ) by @nerdofspades is specifically about the resentment thing, and the solo-act-joins-team-operation issue is something that comes up in MirrorandImage's DP x TT fic Ghost of A Chance.
When it comes to Deathly Weapons, the details of the setup have kind of brushed aside some of those issues or reduced their severity. Danny's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad nine months of being a fugitive in between leaving Amity and finding Batman (which we will learn more about in coming chapters) has made him a lot more amenable to feedback and groupwork.
Rather than being fresh from overt frontline heroing he's spent almost a year in hiding; a time where he and the rest of Team Phantom had to work a lot more collaboratively, in situations where Danny was very conscious that the others' skills and connections were just as, if not more important than his powers (which at times were even a liability since they could potentially be tracked). Trying to pull a solo-act or otherwise splitting up the group is a really risky move when you're being hunted, and it curbed a lot of the impulses that might have led him to break ranks or otherwise deviate from a team plan without checking in first.
It's also worn down a lot of his pride in a few ways. First, simply traveling around America has made him much more conscious of how small scale he and Amity Park are, both geographically and in the grand scheme of heroism. It's something he thinks about in Chapter 15:
Everything here was too big for him - the manor, Gotham City, Batman and Robin, top-tier heroes... Sure, maybe back in Amity he'd been something special. Or at least, half of him might have been. But if months on the road had shown him anything it was that, in the eyes of the world, Amity Park was just another small, no-name town. Just like he was. Small-town. -Roads to Safe Places (Chapter 15)
There's also the fact that he's just... extremely tired. Being the de facto head of a group in a time of crisis is an exhausting level of responsibility, especially when you have no reliable fallbacks and prohibitively huge consequences for failure. In Chapter 8, Danny is very resistant to cooperating with Batman and Robin, but that's not pride that's survival mode: Danny and Co. endured the last nine months primarily by being aggressively self-reliant and not trusting other people. (There's also a little bit of grief and survivor's guilt in the mix: a sense that this is his torch to bear alone, and that it wouldn't be fair to pass the burden.)
Part of him desperately wanted somebody to step in, to take the load. But that wasn't how it worked. This was his mess. He couldn't just shove it off onto someone else because he wasn't up to the challenge. - Interference (Chapter 9)
Not only that but Team Phantom did not do well during their time on the run - they sacrificed a lot just to get out of Amity Park and were mostly met with more losses as they went - which Danny feels responsible for as the one who was supposed to be leading them. In some ways Phantom and his team went through their own nine-month equivalent to the Failsafe training exercise, and Danny walked away from it with a similar mindset:
I was desperate to be in charge. Not anymore. - Robin, YJS1 E17 Disordered
Once he accepts that he can safely take the help, the suggestion of being on a Team where Batman, Aqualad (and sometimes Robin) are ultimately the ones responsible for calling the shots is less likely to be met with a how dare you as much as an oh thank god.
On top of that, the Danny of Deathly Weapons has a touch of literal hero-worship going on. This Danny grew up with the cultural presence of heroes on Earth-16; from the history of the Justice Society, to living through the formation of the Justice League. By the time he had the accident that turned him into Phantom, Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash and Speedy would all have been publicly active as proteges for at least 6 months. And in the absence of a mentor of his own, well... I'm going to share a sneak-peak snippet from the CH21 draft:
Maybe it hit harder coming from other heroes.  From the kinds of people whose stories he’d looked to when he was first starting out - that some young, secret part of himself had fantasised might meet and understand him some day. - Equilibrium DRAFT (Chapter 21)
In combination, you might be able to see how the Danny of Deathly Weapons has been shifted just enough to the left of canon!Danny to play better with others. If anything, he's uncharacteristically passive and submissive in their first standalone mission due both to his unfamiliarity with the situation and stakes, and to all that baggage squashing him down. This is a Danny who has new raw patches exposed, but whose experiences have sanded away some of the edges that would otherwise have clashed with a teamwork setting.
It also helps that he's being placed on The Team specifically. Unlike say, the Teen Titans or Justice League, this is a covert squad that's doubling as a proving ground for starting proteges. Between Superboy, M'gann, Artemis and Zatanna they're pretty used to assimilating a mixed bag of powers and skills from members who don't have a lot of direct exposure to the rest of the superhero sphere. And because they're a covert squad whose main advantage lies in being unexpected and underestimated despite how often their plans seem to end in arson, they have their own motivation to stay as publicly invisible as they can manage, which not only lets Phantom operate with lower risk of being personally discovered, but also helps limit them and the League's potential exposure to ectophobic public sentiment.
That isn't to say that this Danny doesn't still carry some resentment or bitter feelings about how he's perceived and what he's been through (especially if someone whose name may or may not start with Kid and rhyme with Dash was to specifically antagonise him about it) but he comes to it with an additional nine months of perspective that make him more likely to respond to collaboration with a quiet sense of relief. At least once you can get past the defensive prickle and general awkwardness about accepting help.
This is all stuff I'm looking forward to elaborating on across the story and especially in the upcoming Flashpoints/ Combustion/ Equilibrium chapter set (CH19-21). It'll make more sense after those releases but hopefully this explains well enough for now.
Thanks for stopping by! 💜
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sp00pygal · 2 years
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Never bring an alien and an astronomy nerd to a ghost fight
Prologue :
It was 9 am in Gotham time when Wonder Woman contacted the watch tower. A very weary looking Batman picked up her call with a grunt.
"What."
"Bruce, it's Diana. Clark and I teamed up to fight Lex Luthor and Circe on paradise island. We won the battle, but Luthor, he... He used red kryptonite on Clark. I was barely able to hold him back this time before he flew off, and he is no longer on the island." Wonder Woman reported, looking very concerned.
Batman narrowed his eyes. "If you can't find him, what makes you think I can?"
The Amazon princess had to hold back a scoff. "Bruce...the league already knows about your satellite network."
Batman raised an eyebrow. "I assume Green Lantern told?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. So you have his location?" Diana replied
"I already started tracking him 5 minutes before you called. I've narrowed it down to north America."
"Come on `world's greatest detective', we both know Clark better than that. Where would he go?"
"I already checked Metropolis. The results just came back, he's not in Smallville either. But he is near the west coast. According to the computer he's in..." Batman froze, and his blood turned to ice, he whispered an almost imperceptibly quiet "No, it can't be...."
Diana folded her arms. "Bruce, where is he. This is not the time to withhold information."
Batman quickly regained composure "Diana, do not Persue. Tell the rest of the league to be on standby. Contact justice league dark, have them ready to step in on my say. We have a code white."
"but that could only mean... Great Hera, Superman is in Colorado?!!!" The Amazon exclaimed, her stance becoming tense.
"Yes. Amity Park, to be precise. One of ithe most powerful heros on the planet is in a town overrun by hostiles with unknown extra dimensional powers and mind control capabilities. Nobody moves in unless I say so." Batman responded in an eerily calm tone, but Wonder woman could tell by the look in his eyes that something was bothering him.
"He's going to be alright Bruce. the kryptonite will wear off in 11 more hours, and then we will all grab a meal together and laugh." She paused. "Well, Clark and I will laugh. You will probably do that thing that almost resembles a smile with your face."
Batman sighed. "Thanks; but it's not Clark I'm worried about. We both know he's overcome this before. He'll find his way out like he always does." He paused and reluctantly admitted "it's.... My new ward. He lives there."
Diana looked puzzled. "A new Robin? Or maybe a Batgirl this time?"
"No, not.... Exactly. He's... Complicated. I can only hope he's ready to handle this. " Batman admitted, sounding hesitant.
"Bruce, if he's anything like your other children, he'll be fine. They were trained to be strong, brave warriors by the best. Just let him know to stay safe, the league will handle this. "
A message pinged on the watchtower computer and after quickly reading it, Batman sighed. "... Apparently, there's no need. He has this under control. I'll meet him for extraction in 11 hours. I'm telling everyone to stand down. Batman out."
And with that, he hung up, leaving the Amazon princess confused and curious on the other end of the line.
....
Chapter 1:
Sam Manson and Tucker Foley stared at 'Superman' with twin looks of shock. Finally, Tucker spoke. "Do you think.... He's alright in there?"
"He's done this before so he's going to be okay. I've been with him on an overshadowing trip, and we came out alright, remember?" Sam replied, sounding more like she wanted to convince herself than Tucker.
"I mean, yeah, but those were different circumstances. Who even knows what Superman is? And Danny has already been in him for -" Tucker checked his PDA " 17 minutes and 42 seconds. I'm telling you, we should get him outta there. Or at least, figure a way to get him outta the public."
Sam shook her head. "Don't you think Superman was acting freaky? His eyes were red, but on the news, they're always blue."
"And you'd know, with how bad you crush on him, even though he's old enough to be -" Tucker was abruptly cut off by Sam's withering glare.
"I do not have a crush. Aliens are passe. Sure I used to like them, but ghosts are where it's at. Like cellphones." She retorted, and quickly added "anyway, if Superman has some weird mind control thing going on like with ghost freak, it's probably safer to let Danny stay in there instead of using the Fenton ghost catcher, especially after what happened last time."
"True, but we definitely should at least get him down. He's starting to attract pigeons." Tucker pointed up at the man of steel, frozen in mid flight and true to the techno geek's observation; several birds were beginning to land on his shoulders.
Sam nodded. "I agree there. Got the Fenton ghost fisher?"
Tucker pulled out a fishing pole with luminescent fishing line attached. "By now you even have to ask?"
"You forgot the thermos last week Foley, a boyscout you are not. Now give it here, I have an idea."
Reluctantly Tucker handed the Fenton ghost fisher to Sam. "What are you gonna do? Even if you would get a sweet fishing story, I don't think that the hook is gonna do much. Superman is supposed to be invincible,same for his clothes."
"Which is why I'm trying something else. Now hush, I need to focus so I can get this right...." Sam muttered, untieing the line from the hook, then fashioning it into a makeshift lasso. "Alright, should be good, the knots are always the tricky part. How's your aim?"
"Good enough, why?" Tucker asked, before Sam quickly handed him the newly fashioned Fenton ghost lasso.
"Because mine sucks. Has ever since girl scouts. Don't. Ask. You take that to your grave." She gave Tucker a scowl to let him know she meant business.
"Okay, touchey subject, gotcha. Question. How tall is Superman?" Tucker asked, holding his thumb in front of him to measure distance while doing some mental mathematics.
"6'3. Most people think it's 6'4, but actually that's just his hair being extra curly." Sam responded without missing a breath.
"uh huh. Totally didn't have a crush." He smirked and held up a finger to stop Sam's indignant retort. "alright, accounting for local wind density, height off the ground, and the hope that this stunt doesn't get us both half killed by a pissed off Superman...." Tucker threw the lasso at the man of steel, caught his foot on the first try, and pulled the line tight so it wrapped around his ankle. "Boom! Tucker Foley sinks the shot, and the crowd goes wild!"
"Uh huh. Sure. I don't think basketball metaphors apply to lassos Tuck. Now help me pull him out of here." Sam replied dryly
"Hey! What makes you think I can't handle him myself?" Tucker said indignantly
"Because the sum total of all the muscles in your body are in your thumbs from gaming. You forget, I helped you pass PE."
Tucker rolled his eyes. "Whatever dudette. All I'm sayin is he's not that heavy. It's like how Danny weighs nothing when he flies, gotta be some sort of mollecular minipulation or a psionic feild or something."
Sam took a moment to think it over. "Hey, yeah, you're right. Come to think of it, even with both of us, shouldn't he be pretty heavy? I wonder if he's catatonic. Maybe when Danny overshadowed him, Superman's body went into this state as a subconscious defense mechanism..." She caught Tucker's smirk "oh, wipe that look away, it's impossible to hang around Danny without getting a psychology lecture from his sister. She's almost as obsessed as his parents. Anyway, some of it is surprisingly helpful, once you get past the boring stuff."
Tucker nodded, wearing a poker face that didn't really hide his continued amusement very well. "If you say so. Question is, if Danny's stuck that way, how do we get him out? Jazz ever say anything about waking up someone catatonic?"
Sam frowned. "Maybe? I zoned out at that part, I think it had to do with giving the person a shock."
"Sounds simple enough. Alright Supes, wake up!" Tucker yelled, and then tried to slap him, quickly recoiling in pain on impact with the man of steel "Ow! What the- oh, right, invulnerability. Guess the news articles weren't kidding. Did it do anything?"
Sam looked at Superman and shook her head. "Nope, still outta it. Pretty sure unless you got a weird glowing green rock, anything short of a mountain collapsing on him isn't going to register. And, no, before you ask Tucker, I'm not going to have my parents buy a mountain to collapse on him so you can sell tickets."
"Aw man, you never let us have any fun. So how do we shock him then?" Tucker asked
"maybe it's like curing the hiccups? We could surprise him somehow? Hold his nose and have him drink a glass of water?" Sam shook her head "No... That won't work. Which means..." She trailed off.
"Uh oh. No. Nu uh. I know that look Samantha Manson, and it usually winds up with someone in the hospital, jail, or half dead. Not happening!" Tucker protested at the sight of an all too familiar gleam in the goth's eyes.
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Got any better ideas?"
Tucker was silent for a long moment. "....Dammit. Okay, fine, but the moment this involves a hospital or cops I'm out. I'm not even kidding."
"Relax. I have a plan, and it's 100% fool proof." Sam reassured him.
"I was afraid you'd say that. What we gotta do?" Tucker asked.
"Just take Danny/Superman and meet me outside the mattress factory in 20. I have to go get ready. Oh, and keep the birds away from him. And no selling photos to strangers." Sam told her friend with a smile as she slipped into a nearby alley,headed for the old factory.
"Sam, that makes no sense." Tucker called after her and was met with silence as she had quickly dissapeared into the shadows. "ugh, hate when she does that, right big guy?" He looked nervously up at Superman. "Whatever, what would you know? Alright, can't keep you all frozen forever, Danny is probably getting freaked out in there... Weird psychology mumbo jumbo or not, I still think it wasn't a good idea to go in alone. We talked about this man, we're a team. Sam and I don't have powers, but we can still kick ass! Just... For real, Don't keep us sidelined anymore, okay dude? Especially Sam. You both are my best friends, and I don't want to see you getting hurt." As ever, Superman remained unmoving and catatonic, showing no sign he or Danny had heard a word Tucker said as he dragged Superman's body alongside him like a balloon on a glowing string. Tucker sighed. "I hear you my dude. Good talk."
....
End of chapter 1
@impyssadobsessions so, I took your suggestion and decided to write the Superman/DP possession crossover! It turned out that once I got started, there was a lot of content I wanted to include, so this is part 1/? Instead of just a oneshot, but for my general sanity I'm going to try to keep it short! Hope everyone enjoys!
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can't stop thinking of this op danny/guardian spirit/young justice crossover that I can't write because I don't have the DC universe background knowledge for it so I'm gonna just dump the concept here
be prepared for a lot of rambling
so the JL consider Amity Park a Safe Zone in case of dire emergencies
but nobody is told why, only the top members of the Justice League know anything about the place, Robin probably breaks into Batsy's computer and finds something about some hero there named Phantom but he can't find any other info about him or the town other than that he's trustworthy
and maybe the Young Justice crew get fucked up and the JL are indisposed or being distracted or something and the safe houses are compromised so Robin has to be like 'alright team I know this One Place that's supposed to be like a last resort safe space' so they all end up in Amity Park, and their pursuers are right on their tail until they hit the edge of town and then some fucking force of nature comes down on the bad guys following them out of nowhere and fucks them up
they would just be like 'holy shit who is this guy how come we never heard of him??'
and Robin is like 'oh hey so you're Phantom? Batman said this was a safe place to go when we're in trouble'
and he's expecting Danny to know some shit or have a plan or a safehouse to take them to
but Danny's just all 'uhhh this place gets attacked by inter-dimensional monsters every other day why would he send you here for safety? also Batman knows who I am???'
Robin is just confused as all hell because apparently Batman has this town listed as the Ultimate Safehouse and its hero is listed as Trusted but he's never even spoken to the guy?
real sus
but Danny takes them in and finds some abandoned house for them to stay in, and promises that whoever is chasing them will not set foot in this town, like they might have to deal with some ghosts popping up but human threats are no problem
and they're in this empty house that's, okay well it isn't dilapidated or anything but it has no power or water or even security, Phantom just tells them he's got their backs while they recover and don't worry about it
but Robin wants answers so he's quizzing Danny on who he is and why Batman trusts him
but Danny's got no idea, he's surprised the JL even know who he is because nobody has ever come to see him, nobody has ever given him any indication that they even know he's here, which he was kinda peeved about because he had to tackle every ghost attack by himself
but the Justice League not only knew he was here but apparently volunteered him to look after them?
he's a little bit pissy about that, Robin cannot entirely blame him, Robin thinks this whole thing is weird, like there has to be a reason, the JL don't just ignore kids fighting crime on their own, they would have invited him into their team, offered him help and training, not left him to figure it all out alone
although the kid was pretty powerful, he took out a whole crew of bad guys in one breath, literally
true to Danny's word, nobody finds them, the guys who had been hunting them down and chasing them everywhere can't seem to track them here, either that or Phantom just keeps getting in their way when they try, they feel so safe here, safer than they've ever felt before
Megan picks up that there's something unusual about the place, it's like the town itself is telling them that they're safe here, the air is full of love and warmth and comfort, somebody here wants them to feel at ease, somebody here wants them to feel safe
Robin still thinks it's sus
he starts to wonder if Batman was coerced by this psychic force to mark the town as a safe space, but he's pretty sure Batman's too savvy for that, besides, Megan was certain that there was no coercion or ill intent plaguing their minds, it's just a general atmosphere of safety
and she's pretty sure it's coming from Phantom
they witness a ghost fight or two and are amazed that the JL have been ignoring these pretty significant threats and just let some kid handle it alone, sure he has the same powerset as the enemies plus some, but he's still a kid and he's alone
none of them would ever have been allowed this much freedom or this little assistance
super super sus
after the JL finally get out of whatever issue they've been stuck with, they come pick up the kids and Danny is there like 'oh hey I think I need an explanation because what the fuck guys'
and Batman in all his blunt glory just tells him 'we were advised not to interfere unless absolutely necessary'
Danny obviously Does Not Like this answer and wants to know who this guy is that's ordering Batman around, then low and behold, Constantine shows up, immediately balling out Batman because 'why the fuck are you in Amity Park rn I made it VERY CLEAR that this place is a delicate fucking ecosystem if Superman gets god damn overshadowed we are all gonna have problems'
aaaaaand suddenly it all makes sense
Danny realises that any hero who's powerful enough to take on a ghost literally cannot risk that power in the hands of creatures that can just take over their bodies at any time, especially when this is a standard ability in all of Danny's enemies
but he's still shitty because like 'y'all could still have called me or something it would be nice to know I wasn't totally alone out here ya know'
and Constantine is all 'kiddo I literally had the god of time show up in my bedroom at 3am to tell me to make sure none of these fucks tried to adopt you as a side kick, one of them has a track record with this kinda thing it's a legit problem, I couldn't give these fuckers an inch, this town was off limits. so WHY ARE YOU ALL HERE RN'
aaaand Batman has to explain them a thing, basically Phantom is considered so fucking OP and has such an omniscient connection to the town itself that it makes for the perfect hiding place and defence for anyone in dire straights, and it really is only supposed to be a last resort, the side kicks had absolutely nowhere else to go with all of their safe houses compromised
aaaand that's how Danny learns that he is kind of more powerful than most of the god damn Justice League
hope you enjoyed this because I am never gonna be able to actually write it, have a nice day ✨
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Text
Elements
Dannymay 12,022 Human Era, ao3
Danny was unbelievably thankful for Wulf’s lessons on portal making, getting to the borders of the Far Frozen was so much easier now.  Flying past the guards and waving at them, Danny sped along the crisp air currents to the city within the beautiful tundra.  After a bit of looking around, Danny found Frostbite and dove down to tackle him in a hug.  Frostbite spun around to catch him at the last second and they laughed as he fell into the snow.  “One of these days I’m gonna catch you off guard.”
“I’m certain you will, Great One,” he said, standing up and dusting away some snow from his fur and robes.  “To what do I owe the visit?  It’s always a treat to see you here, Great One.”
Danny grinned and shook the snow out of his hair as well, crossing his legs in the air to be at eye level with Frostbite.  “It’s good to see you too!  If you’re not busy I actually had a question that came up when I was talking with Sam and Tucker.”
Frostbite nodded and started walking, while Danny followed at his side.  “Of course, Great One, it’s always a pleasure to see what kind of questions youthful minds will conjure.  What’s on your mind?”
“Well, I had been duplicating myself as much as I could to see how many times over I can copy myself – I’m at like 6 dups now, by the way! – and I got real proud of myself for the progress on it cause I was struggling real hard with that power at first.  And Sam brought up that I got a handle on my cold powers a lot faster than that, and Tucker said it was weird I even have ice powers cause I hate the winter holidays a lot.”  Danny took a deep breath, even though he didn’t need to.  It was a good way to stop and get back on track, even if Frostbite looked amused by his rambling.  “I was wondering what determines what kind of elemental power a ghost develops, cause it had nothing to do with how I became a ghost and I’ve never been all that fondly attached to the winter.  Don’t get me wrong, I love this place, I was just, ya know, wondering.”
Frostbite chuckled and rubbed his chin in thought.  “Well, there are likely several factors to that, Young One, but in truth, it could simply be the fact that as a young ghost your powers are highly fluctuating, and in order to adapt properly to your needs for survival you’re developing several powers that will atrophy or flourish depending on the attention you give to them.  Are there any other elemental powers you remember using?”
Danny’s legs morphed into a tail and he spun on his side while he thought.  “I uh think during Walker’s invasion of Amity Park I grabbed onto this one fish dude’s cable thing he was using to shock Wulf and I shocked him back through it?  That would probably relate back to the accident.  I also made a couple of fireballs when I was in the woods camping with my class.”
Danny stopped and held out a hand, gathering ectoplasm to his palm.  He thought about what it had felt like to make the fire in that moment, and what fire even was as far as he knew.  “Just see the molecules,” he muttered, “and make them shake.”  Blue-green flames erupted into being just over his hand, flickering in the frosty wind, and Danny laughed.  “Frostbite, look!”
“Yes, very good Young One!  Though perhaps this is not the realm to practice the use of fire in,” he said with a laugh as the wind blew out Danny’s flame.
“Is there a realm of fire dragons out there that can teach me how to use fire powers?”  Frostbite nodded and Danny’s eyes went wide and bright.  “Wait really?”
“Of course, Great One!  There are several elemental realms out there, though I cannot say we have the greatest relations with one another as diametrically opposed necromes mean we tend to avoid each other.  I can, however, direct you to a realm where fire or electrical manipulation is common and someone can teach you how to utilize those powers as well.”
Danny hugged Frostbite tight and let out a stream of rapid-fire, “thank you thank you thank you” at the yeti, muffled as it was.  Frostbite returned the hug, and Danny was nearly buzzing with excitement.
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