Half-Blood? No, I'm a Halfa.

by DoodlebugWritesStuff

Summary:

About a week ago, Danny Fenton met three teens who claimed they were the children of Greek gods. They recommended he ask his parents about the mythological world, because what was the worst thing that could happen?

The answer: a lot of things.

Danny feels like someone's made his life one big cosmic joke where he's the punchline, getting smacked over the head with one problem after another. Hopefully, he can parse out his confusing existence before someone or something makes Danny take a more permanent dirt nap.

Notes:

Hello, everyone, and happy birthday to Percy Jackson!

I'm excited to share this wonderful, wacky, weird (and possibly heart-wrenching) story with you all! After many months, here's the long-awaited sequel to "Puns Man, Freaking Puns."

So without further ado, I hope you enjoy the start of Danny's adventure into the admittedly confusing world of gods and monsters.

Chapter 1: Danny Fights a Snake Lady (It Does Not End Well)

Danny was having a rough day, even before the snake lady attacked.

 

Like, it was one thing to fall asleep halfway through the school day, get rudely awoken by some random ghost that he’d rather not be dealing with, and then realize that he’d missed a very important test. And yet, the universe always found some way worse to screw him over. Case in point: snake lady.

 

“You cannot run forever, half-blood! I can smell you!”

 

Danny screeched to a halt midair. “Excuse you, I do not smell.” 

 

To prove his point, he sniffed his sleeve, only to immediately recoil. He had been flying around Amity Park for at least an hour, after all. But what the snake lady said confused him—how could she trace him just by regular teenage BO? As far as he was aware, being half ghost—or half-blood, as the snake lady referred to him—didn’t make him smell worse than anyone else. 

 

“Half-blood” was definitely a weird way to say “halfa,” now that he thought about it. Even the strangest ghosts on his enemy roster, like Skulker, called him things that made more sense! Skulker called him “whelp” because of hunting…or something. It was on theme, at least. Honestly, it’d make a lot more sense if the snake lady called him “prey,” as terrible as that sounds. 

 

Theming was important to ghosts, which reminded him that he’d been meaning to ask, “Also, do you know why my ghost sense isn’t going off around you? Like, did your powers distract it because you thought it’d be hiss -terical to sneak up on me like the overgrown danger noodle you are, or—?”

 

She lunged for his feet with a snarl, but his lower body instinctively shifted into a snake-like curl of dark ectoplasmic mist to avoid her claws. Maybe her power is making things more snakey, he panicked. 

 

“ Enough of this, ” the snake lady hissed, lip curling to reveal pointed teeth that extended past her chin. Wait, since when were her teeth that big?! “I require sustenance that only a powerful half-blood like yourself can provide. Tremble before me, for I am the mother of monsters: Echidna! ”

 

Danny’s nose wrinkled. “And here I thought you weren’t nearly as bad as Skulker—the dude just wants my pelt. But you want to eat me? Yuck.”

 

Echidna swiped again, getting more frustrated with each failed jump as Danny’s anxiety spiked. Didn’t she know that she could fly? He considered for a second. Maybe she was a newly-formed ghost and wasn’t used to the whole “being a ghost” thing yet? But that couldn’t be right—even blob ghosts and ectopi (ectopuses?) could somewhat fly when first formed. Besides, despite being sickly green like a lot of ghosts, her scales looked startlingly solid…

 

Danny really hoped that Sam and Tucker would find him soon. Nothing he was doing seemed to stop her—his ectoblasts skidded off her scales and his ice only temporarily slowed her down. And based on the burning pain around his abdomen where Echidna managed to land a scratch back in the school courtyard (and simultaneously knock the Fenton Thermos out of his hand so he couldn’t capture her)? Well, he figured out that her talons were poisonous real quick. If his increased ghostly healing factor was having trouble against the wound, he didn’t want to see what would happen if a regular human managed to get swiped. 

 

So, all he could do for now was stall and divert her attention away from civilians. 

 

“Lady, I would taste like nothing to you! This is the Midwest”—she managed to claw at his now-reformed ankle in his sluggish state—“ ouch! We don’t use much spice here!”

 

“Why aren’t you dead yet?” Echidna fumed, chest heaving. “My poison should have killed you already!”

 

Alarm bells blared in Danny’s head, but he pressed, “Lady, my name is literally Phantom. ” Through slightly hazy vision, he made a grand show of gesturing at his glowing green eyes and phasing his body in and out of existence. “I am already dead.”

 

“Well, Phantom, you smell like demigod,” she sneered, slit eyes focusing on a point just beyond Danny’s shoulders. He didn’t risk looking behind him, head absolutely throbbing. “And he smells it too!”

 

Before Danny could parse out what she meant by that, a solid wall of muscle rammed him from behind, sending him skidding down all the way down the street until he was right outside an amalgamation of a regular suburban house and sci-fi nerd paradise. Truly a HOA violation in the making, there stood Fentonworks. 

 

“Good boy, Sonny!” Echidna crooned off in the distance. Danny’s ears rang as he picked up her grating voice with his enhanced hearing. 

 

Danny groaned in pain as the lion-snake creature (he shrugged off the strangeness easily—he had fought weirder) pressed against his ribcage. He also groaned at being so close to home. Danny really didn’t want his parents involved with Echidna, as he was beginning to think she wasn’t a ghost after all. 

 

Once he got his bearings straight, Danny barely managed to phase through Sonny’s skull just as a maw of uncomfortably close teeth tried to bite his head off. He rolled out of the way and forced himself to float back up, breathing much too heavily to be considered normal for his ghost form.  

 

Ancients, where was his backup?

 

“ Die, monster scum! ”

 

That voice seemed familiar, but it didn’t sound like English. No, surely not—

 

“That’s the ghost we want to tear apart molecule by molecule!”

 

No, yeah. That was—

 

“Meet the upgraded Jack o’ Nine Tails: now with celestial bronze!”

 

“ Honey , I thought we discussed changing the name—”

 

From out of nowhere, a burnished bronze replica of his dad’s face rammed into Sonny’s side, making the monster writhe in agony. And if that weren’t enough, the nine green grabber claws latched on Sonny’s fur morphed into bronze spikes, effectively digging into the golden hide. With an almighty roar, Sonny disappeared into a flash of equally golden dust. 

 

Danny’s jaw dropped as he surveyed the scene. If his parents had half this level of competence on a regular basis, he’d be toast. Ghost toast. 

 

Echidna then screeched, “Not my baby! How could you, you foolish mortals?”

 

Before she could leap at his parents, Danny instinctively shot his hand off to the side, half encasing Echidna's torso in ghostly blue ice and sending her careening to the asphalt. 

 

He heard his mother gasp as she whipped around to find the origin of the icy blast, only for her to snarl and make the universal gesture for “I’m watching you.” She then mouthed, “ You’re next, ” before summoning a Fenton Anti-Creep Stick out of seemingly thin air. In the midday sun, it glittered with a supernatural bronze glint before one Maddie Fenton smacked it over Echidna’s skull with a sickening crack!

 

Despite all the frankly horrific things Danny had seen since becoming half ghost, seeing his own mother brutally beat down a snakey monster lady (who was definitely not a ghost, since last he checked, ghosts didn’t explode into fine golden dust that his parents casually wiped off glittering bronze weapons), took the cake. So when his armed parents came marching towards him, he knew he had to be gone yesterday. 

 

Breath stuttering in half-undead lungs, Danny inhaled deeply and exhaled a thick icy mist, washing the street in a ghostly blue haze. His parents shouted their frustrations to the sky as he made his daring dangerous high-stakes escape by crawling like a wounded wolf through suburbia. 

 

“Di immortales !” his dad cursed. Oh my gods, Danny subconsciously translated. “We almost had the ghost boy! Where did he go?”

 

“We’ll get him next time, Jack. For now, I’m just wondering where the ghost actually went. ”

 

Danny hissed in pain as he managed to detransform in an elderly neighbor’s newly planted rose hedge. Not his brightest moment, sure, but he was desperate for some solid cover. He hadn’t felt this disjointed in a battle for a long time—something was up with that Echidna lady and her…son? Danny shook his head. There was also something up with how his parents reacted to them. And “celestial bronze” sounded vaguely familiar…

 

The mist slowly cleared as Danny’s prominent ghostly aura was no longer there to sustain it. And with its disappearance, Danny suddenly felt like he’d been hit over the head worse than Echidna. He doubled over in pain, clutching his side. When he brought a trembling hand away, it was covered in blood with little ectoplasmic green flecks, blossoming out from the side of his red (now significantly more so) and white NASA t-shirt. 

 

Yet still, he waited until his parents had retreated inside Fentonworks to start moving. Because while his parents sometimes failed to see the forest between the trees, he didn’t want to risk them putting two and two together given their sudden bout of competence with Echidna and Sonny. He desperately hoped that their violent problem-solving wouldn’t spread to figuring out his ghostly alter ego. 

 

Bleeding and barely conscious, he knocked on the door. 

 

His mom was the one who answered, hazmat hood flipped down and face contorted in pure horror at the sight of her baby boy covered in blood. Danny distantly registered his mom calling for his dad from the lab. 

 

Danny weakly smiled, only for a coughing fit to warp his expression into a grimace. “Uh, I got caught up in the snake-lady’s attack on the school.” He clutched his side and his mom gasped at the wound. “She ended up chasing me halfway across town until I managed to get away.” 

 

Only a half lie, Danny thought to himself. Sam always says that the best lies have a kernel of truth…easier to remember…

 

But that was the last thought he remembered before collapsing into his mom’s arms. In his poison-induced haze, a little too late he realized why that might be a bad idea. 

 

Humans don’t have flecks of green in their blood…

 

Chapter 2: Danny Tries Ambrosia (Spoiler Alert: It Doesn’t Have Marshmallows and Mandarin Oranges)

Summary:

Danny begins to realize that something distinctly *not* ghostly is going on.

Notes:

Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

Chapter two posted, let's go!!! Hope you guys are excited to see just where this story is headed...

When Danny came to, he was thankfully not strapped to a dissection table. However, he felt like waking up to the faces of his bickering parents in his room was arguably much worse. 

 

“—we should have told the kids sooner! They deserve to know. And Danny’s eventually going to ask where he came from—”

 

“We’ve discussed this thousands of times, Jack! It’s too dangerous. The more the kids know, the more likely they will be after them! The ghostly energy in Amity can only do so much to dissuade… outside influences. Godly influ— ”

 

Danny’s side spiked in pain, and he let out an involuntary shaky hiss. 

 

Immediately, his mom was at his side, holding a bag of what looked like golden fudge. She pressed the back of her hand against his forehead, likely trying to gauge his temperature, not that it would help much. Disregarding the ghostly ice core he had been chilling with (pun intended) for the past few months, his body had always run a few degrees short of normal, even as a kid. 

 

Apparently satisfied, his mom deftly pressed a little piece of the fudge in his hand with a short command. “Eat.” 

 

The grogginess that usually followed sleep melted off instantly, practiced caution replacing it. In a household where ecto-contaminated food and various questionable inventions were par for the course, one could never be too careful.

 

“Uh, Mom? What is…this?”

 

The fudge (or whatever it was) simultaneously felt much too heavy and weirdly light, all at the same time. It honestly kinda reminded him of ectoplasm in that sense—too much, yet not enough in every conceivable way. In other words: definitely supernatural. Not that he ate ectoplasm like people ate sweets, of course! The ecto-popsicicles from the Far-Frozen were a one-time thing. Okay, maybe he ate them twice. Or seventeen times—cut him some slack! It was a good way to quickly replenish ectoplasm after a difficult fight, like how some kids got those Pedialyte popsicles at the doctor’s to replenish fluids and electrolytes. 

 

And ectoplasm was a liquid! Well…sometimes. Sometimes it was a liquid. Liquid-ish. Liquid adjacent—

 

“—Danny? Danny, were you listening?”

 

He shook his head, blinking owlishly. “What? Sorry, I must’ve zoned out, I guess.”

 

His mom smiled kindly and explained again, “This is ambrosia. It’ll make you feel better, I promise.”

 

Danny studied the apparent ambrosia for a moment before raising an eyebrow. “Where’s the marshmallows and mandarin oranges?”

 

His dad appeared out of nowhere and clapped Danny on the back, booming, “It’s not that kind of ambrosia, Dann-o!” Then he whispered (or at least attempted to), “It’s magically delicious!”

 

“ Jack, ” Danny’s mom chided over Danny’s head.

 

“I’m not wrong!”

 

Danny just shrugged and popped the whole cube in his mouth while his parents weren’t looking. 

 

The worst that could happen was that it was contaminated with ectoplasm, which unlike when he was a kid, didn’t bother him so much. Sometimes he even enjoyed the citrus-y battery acid flavor! Although, the taste was ten times better in his ghost form as opposed to his human one—Danny distinctly remembered when he had to vehemently dissuade Tucker from trying to lick one of his ecto-popsicles when he was jokingly dared by Sam. He’d failed and Tucker’s taste buds were effectively dead (ha, dead ) for at least three days. Maybe that’s why his parents never tested for ecto contamination? They literally couldn’t tell the difference…

 

“What do you taste?” his dad suddenly asked as his mom fretted about the ambrosia…burning him from the inside out?

 

Danny’s throat didn’t feel like it was on fire, so clearly things were…fine. And totally normal. The ambrosia actually kind of tasted like ecto-popsicles. “Uh, battery acid?”

 

“ What? ” his parents exclaimed.

 

His eyes widened. “Citrus! I meant citrus! It’s a little acidic, like…battery acid?” Danny winced at his terrible excuse.

 

His parents calmed down from their shared outburst. With a hand over her heart, his mom wondered to herself, “Citrus? I always thought your favorite food was toast… what else don’t I know about my own son? ”

 

“A lot of stuff,” Danny muttered.

 

“What?”

 

“Nothing, Mom! Just a lot of questions I have? Yeah, that. For example, why does my side feel like it’s getting squished back together with hot glue?”

 

His mom’s lips pressed in a thin line before forcing herself to smile. “Don’t worry about the ambrosia, sweetie. It’s just…my homemade cooking!” 

 

“Ambrosia makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Almost… magical, one could say,” Danny’s dad jumped in.

 

“‘Magical?’” Danny puzzled, “What do you mean—?”

 

His mom grabbed his dad’s ear and quickly pulled them both out of the room, tossing a quick

“Love you-gotta go-bye!” over her shoulder. 

 

And Danny lay on his bed, alone in his room, wondering what on Earth that was. 

 

Danny had always known his family was a little weird, for lack of a better term. But how his parents were acting right now? That was weird -weird, not just the usual Fenton weird. 

 

Danny’s parents were definitely hiding something. 

 

His dad kept referencing magic of all things and his mom was acting strange about the concept of ambrosia, which Danny still wasn’t entirely sure he should have eaten. 

 

Sitting up with a groan, he pulled back his…pajama shirt? (He dismissed any following thoughts, at least glad to be in non-bloody clothes.) But what he saw caught him a little off guard: his wounds were healing. Fast. Like, double the speed of his ghostly healing factor kind of fast. 

 

“Okay, this is a little weird, even for me…”

 

Danny’s spare set of Fenton Phones buzzed on his nightstand, making him groan. That’s why his friends hadn’t called sooner. It wasn’t like he had his actual phone with him—that was back at school with his backpack. That was a problem for future Danny. Attempting to not make his injuries worse, he reached over slowly and put them in his ears, only to jolt at the tinny feedback. 

 

Sam cursed lowly, “If he doesn’t pick up, I swear I am going to make him wish he were fully dead—”

 

“That seems a bit harsh…” Tucker mused in the background.

 

“Hey, guys,” Danny rasped, cutting in before the argument could devolve into something worse. 

 

Sam and Tucker’s worried shouts overlapped and pounded against his eardrums, making him wince.

 

“What happened?” Sam demanded. “We tried going to your house when you weren’t picking up but your parents didn’t let us in! And that snake lady ghost was acting weirder than usual, which is saying something considering your whole…”

 

“Everything?” Tucker offered. “No offense, dude.”

 

Danny coughed a laugh. “None taken.”

 

“But seriously, are you okay?” Tucker sobered.

 

Danny checked on his side once again. Strangely, it was nearly healed. “You really think I can’t tank some poison?” he joked. When the quip didn’t land, he backpedaled, “I mean, you should see the other guy! She and her pet exploded into golden dust and I’m just here… chilling. ”

 

“ Danny! ” his friends complained. He smiled to himself, imagining his friends facepalming at his puns—truly a favorite pastime of his.

 

“Wait, did you say golden dust?” 

 

Danny frowned. “Yeah, Tuck. Why do you ask?”

 

Tucker cursed in a language Danny didn’t recognize.

 

“Hey, Tucker, was that…Egyptian?” Sam guessed.

 

“ Arabic, ” Tucker corrected without a second thought. 

 

“Since when did you learn Arabic? You had, like, a C in Spanish!” 

 

“I don’t know!” Tucker snapped back. “After the Duulaman and Hotep Ra thing? It’s really freaky being called ‘descendant of kings’ and having a voice in your head going, ‘No, yeah! This is your destiny! Having astral projection dreams as a bird-human thing watching your ancestors blow up monsters into golden dust with a few magic words is totally normal!’”

 

The line went silent as Tucker recollected himself and Sam offered a mumbled apology.

 

“So…golden dust?” Danny prompted. 

 

“I don’t think we’re dealing with ghosts,” Tucker tentatively admitted.

 

Sam huffed and Danny could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “What happened to Mr. Everything-needs-to-be-logical-and-have-a-basis-in-science?”  

 

“ I don’t know! ” Tucker exclaimed again, “And it’s terrifying not knowing that something can’t be explained away with science. That’s literally my thing! Tech-and-reasoning-PDA guy! And it’s not like we have any experience with non-ghostly probably almost definitely magic stuff!”

 

“Actually, we do,” Danny realized.

 

“Danny, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think Tucker’s dream stuff is going to help us with this monster-y magic problem.”

 

Danny flopped back on his bed and hummed before holding up the palm of his hand in the early evening light. He’d memorized the smudged phone number that’d been written there about a week prior out of instinct and curiosity. He grinned, “Have I told you two about Percy Jackson?”

 

Notes:

“Have I told you two about Percy Jackson?” Danny is me whenever I meet a potential, friend lol.

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 3: Jazz Therapizes Danny

Summary:

Danny has a talk with Jazz about some worrying theories of his.

Notes:

Heads up: Danny has a little anxiety spiral, but it's not super in-depth. Take care, folks!

After enduring his friends’ complaints for not telling them sooner about his mythic encounter a about week ago plus his parents involvement with stopping the most recent one (and cries of “Danny, stop making puns to cope!”), he found himself outside his sister’s bedroom door.

 

Danny knocked. “Jazz?” 

 

No response. 

 

A louder knock. “Jazz.”

 

No response.

 

Danny grinned with much too many teeth to be considered normal and repeatedly knocked, singing, “ JA~zzzzzzz!!! ”

 

Light footsteps padded out behind him and he whipped around to see the sister of the hour rounding the corner. With a comically big psychology book in hand, she gritted out a smile that barely concealed her annoyance. “ Yes, little brother? I just got back from the library to hear you nearly smash my door in.” 

 

“Jazz!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. He winced at the slight pain the motion brought. He looked up and up at his sister that had very clearly inherited the Fenton height gene while he very much had not.

 

“Me!” Jazz half-copied his enthusiastic tone as she made her way over to her door. “I assume you wanted to talk?”

 

Danny lowered his arms and began fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “Uh, yeah?”

 

Jazz’s expression softened as she ushered him into her room. “Are you feeling alright, Danny? You look tense.”

 

“I want to talk about my mental state!” he blurted. He immediately cursed himself for the outburst. “And, uh, other things.”

 

Jazz froze, completely caught off guard before mechanically closing the door behind her. “I…was not expecting that,” she admitted.

 

“I wasn’t either, believe me…” 

 

Jazz sat on the corner of her neatly made bed, silently offering the space next to her. Danny declined, preferring to pace wall to wall with his pent up energy. He felt his core thrum in his chest, pounding out an erratic beat in time with each step as he tried to gather his words.

 

“Danny—”

 

“Do you think we’re adopted?”

 

Jazz reeled. “What?”

 

“Do you think we’re adopted?” he reiterated, whirling around to face a very alert and confused Jazz. “Or at least me? Because I recently learned a lot of things—like, a week ago recently—that don’t make a lot of sense. And Mom and Dad—”

 

“Oh, Danny…” Jazz consoled. “C’mere.”

 

For once in his life, Danny did what Jazz suggested and curled up with a huff next to her. His core hummed, pleased with the proximity to his sister, or at the very least, someone he trusted truly and deeply. Maybe it was a feedback loop of simultaneously wanting to protect and wanting to be protected. 

 

“Why do you think you may be adopted?” Jazz asked gently. “Does it have anything to do with having few people to relate to your half-ghost experience—sort of like a fish out of water situation here at home?”

 

Danny shook his head. “No!” His voice cracked. “No. It’s just—I met some people a while back and just—promise not to make fun of me?”

 

“I would never,” Jazz said sincerely. “I appreciate you being so open about your feelings and I am beyond proud of you for coming to me for support. And remember: ‘Don’t forget to take care of yourself! If you can’t help yourself first—‘”

 

“‘—then you might risk others getting hurt,’” Danny recalled the rest of the mantra Jazz had drilled into him. “Like putting on your own mask before helping others on a plane.”

 

“Exactly! And I am also proud that you remembered that! You owe a little kindness to yourself, too.”

 

Danny’s face turned surprisingly warm for having an ice core. “Ew, gross. Sibling communication... ” Jazz gestured for him to go on with an open expression. “So, um, ghosts are very clearly real”—he awkwardly gestured to himself—“and, well, I thought the guys I was talking to were making stuff up! Maybe. Kinda. Sort of-not really. But…do you think ancient deities are also, uh, real?”

 

“What exactly do you mean?”

 

Danny tapped his fingers anxiously against his bouncing knee. He really didn’t want to say it out loud because then the idea would be out there and real and definitely much more difficult to ignore than a passing thought. 

 

He inhaled deeply and in one breath, rushed out, “Like the gods from Greek mythology! Egyptian too, maybe. And all their monsters! And what if the ghosts we deal with are all connected with that? What if everything is so much bigger than we can handle? And what if—”

 

“Danny, take some deep breaths with me,” Jazz cut through his spiral. “In, and out. In, and out. ” 

 

And they did just that for longer than Danny would like to admit. It was embarrassing to lose his nerve like that; even more so in front of Jazz. Danny hated to confront that he was not, in fact, in control of his own emotions, especially since a fine sheen of frost had etched itself into Jazz’s bedspread without his permission.

 

Once his mind had cleared enough, Jazz spoke up. “Wondering about the ‘what ifs’ tends to stress one out more in the long run, remember? You may not have control over what will happen, per se, but you do have control over what can be done in the here and now.”

 

Danny huffed. Now Jazz was starting to sound like Clockwork, or something! And it didn’t help that Danny and Jazz had been through this particular spiral more times than he could count on both hands. 

 

“Danny, can you think of anything that can be done to assuage your fears at this current moment in time?”

 

He took a deep breath and briefly explained what happened during his late-night encounter with the three supposed children of gods. Jazz didn’t cut in at any point, completely letting him have the floor. “So after all that, can you stay in the room with me while I call the number?”

 

“If me being here will help provide the support you need, then of course I will stay.”

 

“Thanks, Jazz,” Danny said, some small weight lifted from his shoulders. “Can I, uh, borrow your phone? Tucker and Sam said that they have mine. And also my backpack…”

 

Jazz sighed goodnaturedly and slipped her phone out of her pocket to hand to him. “Sure thing, little brother.”

 

He accepted it with trembling hands. Before he could psych himself out, he dialed the phone number. 

 

Ring.

 

Ring. 

 

Ring—

 

A prerecorded message rang out, strongly reminding Danny of Clockwork’s “wise old mentor” voice. “Thank you for calling Delphi Strawberry Service! Our operating hours are between 9 AM and 5 PM—for business inquiries and questions, please leave a message at the sound of the tone. We will call back during operating hours.”

 

Danny looked helplessly at Jazz. “What should I—”

 

BEEP!

 

Jazz and Danny both startled at the sudden noise. 

 

“Uh, hi?” Danny cleared his throat. “Percy Jackson gave me this number a few days ago—he knows me as Phantom.” His voice pitched, making him want to hide or melt into a pile of ectoplasmic goo. Whichever would get him away sooner. “Just, um—I’m going to do something that might not end well for me. Okay, wow, that sounded bad…I’m planning on calling again when I can.” Danny then rattled off his own phone number for future contact purposes. 

 

Jazz helped him hang up, his hand was shaking so bad. “I’m so proud of you, Danny. But I do have to ask what you’re planning.”

 

“ KIDS, DINNER! ” their dad boomed from downstairs. 

 

Danny bit his lip before rambling out his plan, shrinking further away from Jazz as her eyes widened. 

 

Jazz schooled her alarmed expression into a notably more serious one. “No matter what, I will support you, little brother.”

Notes:

Things are going to go So Well at dinner. Totally not awkward at all, nope!

Also! I have a funny (not-so-funny) note about Danny's description of healing with ambrosia feeling like getting squished back together with hot glue. Earlier today before editing this chapter, I was attaching popsicle sticks to a poster with hot glue and I accidentally fumbled with a hot glue-covered popsicle stick, burning my fingers (don't worry—I'm alright).

As it turns out, my hot glue description (which was originally just a vague painful description that I breezed past while writing) is apt for the kind of uncomfortable pain that Danny experienced. Given how recent the memory of the pain is for me, I applaud Danny for being able to speak coherently and not just screech in pain and flap around like a headless chicken. Truly, this fictional ghost boy has a greater burn-pain tolerance than your dear author. (I guess that comes with the territory of being shot at with burning ecto blasts all the time, as well as being fictional).

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 4: The Boy in the Basket

Summary:

Yeah, the Gods are real
And they have kids
And those kids have
Issues

-Prologue/The Day I Got Expelled, "The Lightning Thief, The Percy Jackson Musical"

Notes:

If this fic were a rollercoaster, this chapter is the hill right before the first deadly drop.

Warnings and spoilers are in the endnotes.

Dinner was just as tense as it was ectoplasmic. And given that the meatloaf tried to bite his face off? Well, it’s easy to get the picture. 

 

Once the vicious electric green meatloaf was contained, the Fentons sat in awkward silence while they waited for the pizza delivery guy to arrive. 

 

“Your friends dropped by earlier,” Danny’s mom noted, voice alarmingly loud in the previous quiet. “But we didn’t want them to disrupt your resting. Sam still has your backpack—you can pick it up in a few days when you feel better. Good thing school’s nearly out for you, huh?”

 

No thanks to making up for the several days where ghosts attacked the school, he wanted to say. And besides that, it was honestly kind of weird that Sam and Tucker weren’t invited in. They’d always been let in the house in plenty of weirder circumstances! His parents were definitely trying to hide something—maybe about his healing process? But that didn’t make sense—

 

“What was that, Danny? No one can hear you when you mumble.”

 

His eyes widened at her comment. Why can’t I keep my trap shut? Danny cursed to himself. 

 

“Are you alright, Dann-o? Maybe you should go get some more rest. That way, you can be up and at ‘em tomorrow! No monster—I mean ghost! No ghost will keep any boy of mine down for long!” His dad then chuckled to himself, “ Ha, nailed it. ”

 

Danny’s mom only facepalmed. “ Jack! ”

 

“What?”

 

“You should know better—”

 

Danny awkwardly cleared his throat. “Mom, Dad, I have a question.” His voice cracked again, but where he would normally wince and wish to become fully dead to avoid critical stares, he held firm. This was a statement; not a question. 

 

His parents stopped arguing surprisingly quickly, turning to face him. If Danny really focused, he could sense the temperature of the room cooling by a few degrees—a true ghostly chill that begged attention. 

 

Then the doorbell rang. “Jazz, honey, can you pay for the pizza? Here’s my wallet.”

 

“Sure, Mom…” Jazz sent Danny a frantic look as she accepted the jangling wallet. “I’ll be right b—wait. Is this all coins?”

 

“We were saving coins to use as conductors in a new Fenton gadget, Jazzy-pants! Unfortunately that plan fell through—”

 

“—and now we have all these extra coins we need to use.” 

 

Jazz muttered, “Ignoring obvious solutions like depositing this and getting cash back…” The doorbell rang again. “JUST A SECOND!” As she stood, she whispered in Danny’s ear, “Try to stall?”

 

And then she left. In the distance, Danny vaguely processed her profuse apologies as she tried to count out the correct change for the delivery guy. 

 

“So, Danny, what was your question?” His mom’s expression held no judgment, but rather a light air of apprehension. 

 

“Uh, shouldn’t we wait for Jazz? She was—”

 

“Nonsense, Dann-o! You said the question was for us, so it should be fine to just go ahead and ask!” 

 

Something inside Danny begged for him to escape-go-leave! Not safe-not safe!

 

He promptly told that something to shut up. 

 

“…Danny? Danny? Are you—”

 

“Do gods exist?” he blurted. 

 

Silence. Complete and utter silence. His mom and dad just stared, jaws dropped. “Wha—”

 

Danny shot to his feet, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. Up to his room, out the door, or down to the lab’s ghost portal, based on how the rest of the conversation went. 

 

“Not to get all theological or anything,” Danny rambled, realizing that he was in way too deep thanks to his big mouth, “but I’m starting to think that there’s a lot more out there than just ghosts. I’ve been doing some digging”—never mind that that “digging” was one conversation with three kids who claimed to be the sons of immortal gods, plus whatever he could scrounge in his brain from classical literature lectures with Mr. Lancer—“and everything points to ‘not ghosts.’ Pens that turn into swords. Snake ladies who are way too solid to be ghostly. Whatever ambrosia is! All of those things lack a certain ghosty vibe and I think you two know more than you’re letting on.”

 

Somehow, Danny felt like someone in the universe was out there just laughing at him. His face burned, either from not taking a breath or his rising anxiety, but it didn’t matter—he felt like he was the butt of some cosmic joke. Danny blamed Clockwork. 

 

And then his dad laughed. 

 

Danny already felt himself sinking into a puddle of pure embarrassment, mentally preparing himself for the “run away to the Ghost Zone option.” Then he could at least die in relative peace. The other ghosts would respect someone fully dying, right?

 

His dad nearly tipped his chair all the way back before rocking forward and catching himself on the kitchen table. “Ha, Mads! I told you that one of them would figure it out! I was right. How much drachma do you owe me, again?”

 

She sighed and leveled an unimpressed look at her husband. “You do realize that we have to have The Talk with the kids, right?”

 

“Oh, yeah! When a mommy or daddy god loves a mortal very much—”

 

“ Jack. ”

 

Danny’s mind reeled. Gods were real. Gods were real. This wasn’t something that he could brush off and go, “No, yeah! The ghosts I faced based on different world mythologies probably weren’t just people who were obsessed with it when they were alive!” 

 

Oh, Ancients. When those demigods asked how Danny was still alive after everything, they weren’t joking. They were genuinely curious because Danny wasn’t just fighting mythically-themed ghosts. Sometimes he was dealing with beings related to—

 

“…gods, are you alright?”

 

Danny blinked up at his mom, trying to take in features that he could have inherited. Because that’s what that blond flying kid—Jason—said, right? A half-blood was half mortal and half god. And Danny was likely to be just that, according to him. Well, Danny was probably some secret third thing, given the whole “getting zapped by a portal to an alternate ghost dimension” situation. Oh, Ancients. So which parent was he actually related to? Mom or Dad? Mom or—

 

“Hey, I finally got the pizza! Mom, please never make me do that again. It was so embarrassing and—oh my gosh, Danny!” A couple of pizza boxes crashed to the floor as Jazz rushed to his side. “Are you okay? What happened?”

 

“Gods are real.” 

 

“Danny, what?”

 

“Gods are real.” He shrugged off the hand she gingerly placed on his shoulder, feeling horribly numb. Danny truly felt like he put the “dead” in “deadpan.”

 

“How about we all sit down and have this conversation in the family room?” his mom(?) suggested. Danny couldn’t help but find the irony in the name—he might not be considered family at the end of this. At least, not fully. 

 

She picked up the dropped pizza boxes and placed them far away from where the ghostly meatloaf had been disposed of. Danny certainly hoped that he wouldn’t be the next one in the trash bin. 

 

Jazz, Danny, and their dad(?) filed onto the family, the tension in the air so thick that only a sharpened blade could cleave through it. Maybe Percy Jackson’s pen-sword could manage it. 

 

Danny opted to take a seat next to Jazz while their dad remained standing. Then from around the corner, their mom appeared, holding a large object obscured behind her back. She mumbled an apology for the short delay. 

 

“So, the gods are real and they have kids—”

 

“Before you continue, Mom,” Jazz interrupted, “I’m a little confused. Ghosts are real—we deal with them on a daily basis. But an entire pantheon of gods and monsters? I expect Dad to believe in them, given his track record with other figures of legend, like Santa Claus”—he mumbled a protest at that—“but Mom? This just seems a little out of character for you.”

 

She chuckled lightly. “Believe me, when I was a few years younger than you are now, I’d have said the same thing. But as it stands, I have seen more than enough proof in my time—I myself am living evidence.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“My mother is the goddess of wisdom and battle strategy, crafty as she is cunning—”

 

“Athena,” Danny noted, only half recognizing the words he was saying. “She put Andromeda in the sky as a constellation when she died.” Everyone looked at him strangely. When Danny realized the staring, he meekly defended, “I like space.”

 

What he didn’t add is that Mr. Lancer’s classical literature lectures were some of the most interesting ones he’d actually been in class to experience (they were at least better than analyzing each line in Romeo and Juliet for the billionth time). And Danny was able to accrue some extra credit points for answering and asking questions about the significance of each star or constellation in myth thanks to his over a decade long obsession for all things space. Also given his time-consuming ghostly extracurriculars, the extra points certainly didn’t hurt (never mind the fact that it did when bullies picked on him for being a space geek).

 

“And I’m a son of Hephaestus!” his dad exclaimed, jolting Danny from his musings. “He’s the god of forges and flame, so inventing’s the game!”

 

Jazz steepled her fingers and dug her elbows into her knees to stop the nervous bouncing. “So, Danny and I are considered what, part human and descendants of Athena and Hephaestus?”

 

Their parents shared a nervous look before their mom stepped forward. From behind her back, she cradled a small boxy basket made of dark wood and lined with soft blue blankets. 

 

“When your father and I were younger, we went to a place called Camp Half-Blood every summer. And later, we attended the same university so we could watch each other’s backs—demigods often attract monsters, so it was an act purely driven by necessity.”

 

“But we soon fell in love during a project we were working on with your Uncle Vladdie!” their dad cut in. Danny curled his lip at the reminder of that annoying fruitloop. “We started working on a theoretical portal to punch through reality! The goal was to make a portal that could potentially make it easier to dispose of monsters. Just throw them back directly to Tartarus instead of having to fight life-threatening foes! We just told the mortals it would be an alternative way to take out the trash, but we weren’t lying! Monsters are technically trash.”

 

“That unfortunately didn’t quite work, given the portal overloading and blasting Vlad with what we later discovered were ectoplasmic contaminants. Some more research later led us to discovering the possible existence of a ‘Ghost Zone’—a world that was the flip side of our own; a crossroads of sorts between the realms of mortal and supernatural. A place where concepts and monsters alike twisted into intangible creatures comprised of corrupt emotion and obsession for forgotten lives—simply ‘ghosts’ of their former selves. Ghosts that needed to be studied in order to be destroyed for the safety of humanity.”

 

Danny’s ghostly core clenched painfully at her callous descriptions and his mouth felt drier than his self-deprecating jokes. So he tried to redirect, “What does any of this have to do with me and Jazz? Or gods, for that matter?”

 

His dad cleared his throat. “The gods didn’t particularly care for the whole ‘messing with magic and technology in front of mortals’ thing. We didn’t want to get struck down by lightning, so we accepted banishment from the godly world and settled here in Amity Park where the veil between worlds was thin and most monsters were afraid to go. And we continued experimenting away from godly influence to prove that our work was useful!

 

“Later Jazzypants was born, and we couldn’t be happier! But we regretted the fact that she could never freely experience Camp life or interact with kids like her. Despite the communication block with the gods, they somehow answered our prayers with this basket on our doorstep.”

 

Danny’s mom carefully took a knee in front of Danny and gingerly passed it to him as if it were a sizzling frying pan that would burn her. When his skin made contact with the woven fibers, a sense of overwhelming calm washed over him, followed by the scent of freshly turned dirt and pressed flowers. 

 

He nearly dropped the basket in surprise. “What…what is this?”

 

The woman in front of him sighed. “We were told that if we protected whatever was in the basket until maturity, the banishment would be lifted enough for us to rejoin the godly world—we could reconnect with our family at camp. For each year of protection, the better the chances of reconnection.”

 

Like a horrible chain reaction, little pieces of vague information fell into place. 

 

The man fidgeting with the sleeve of his orange jump suit dyed his hair, for one. Since forever, he’d been trying to hide the steadily spreading grey. Danny remembered the way black dye smeared across the man’s neck and hands when ungloved (he also remembered when he tried and failed to use that color to dye his ghostly white hair back to its original black a few days after his accident—a desperate attempt to feel normal again). The man’s hair had always been a shade or two darker than his natural brown hair, but Jack Fenton was never one to admit that he had made a simple mistake like purchasing the wrong color. 

 

The woman before him and the girl to his left were lean like Danny, yes, but where they were graceful and lithe, he was very much… not . Their faces were angular like his, sure, but ultimately more of a heart shape, unlike his own. 

 

Danny’s hands shook so bad that he had to force  himself to remain tangible, lest he accidentally phase through the basket he clutched in a death grip. Otherwise, he’d have a whole different host of problems. 

 

As it stood, the three half-bloods Danny met prompted him to start asking questions. And now? Now, he was beginning to feel like he should have just kept his mouth shut. 

 

“What…what was in the basket?” Danny whispered, although the answer was painfully clear. 

 

The woman in front of him ducked her head which was evidence enough. 

 

“Why…why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, choking up, but refusing to let tears fall. Danny had better control than this—he had experienced much worse. He didn’t cry when his loved ones were in danger when he himself was. He even refused to weep when faced with a twisted reflection of his future self destroying all he loved. Danny took a shuddering breath. “Did you ever really care about me as a person or was I just some means to an end?”

 

His mom The woman reached out, trying to cup his cheek. “Sweetheart, we—”

 

“ Don’t touch me. ”

 

She recoiled. “Danny—”

 

“What’s that behind you?” Jazz suddenly shouted. 

 

When the adults turned on instinct with surprised shouts, Jazz hissed in Danny’s ear, “Your eyes.”

 

At the edge of his vision, he recognized the electric green glare and forced down his rising anger. The glow subsided. 

 

The adults turned back around not a moment too soon, and the man asked, “What did you see, Jazz? There was nothing there!”

 

“Oh, my mistake!” Jazz claimed with a nervous laugh. “I guess I’m still a little in shock from this…news. Oh, and Danny! You look a little tired, too. I’ll escort him upstairs to his room to make sure he gets all the rest he needs. It’s very important for a growing teenager, you know.” She pulled Danny to his feet with a grounding hand behind his back. 

 

Before Danny knew it, they were upstairs and at the threshold of his room. The basket still hung clenched in his death grip. 

 

“What can I do to help?” Jazz asked, although to Danny, she sounded like she was underwater. 

 

“ Leave me alone, ” he muttered, maybe too harshly based on Jazz’s flinch. “Please?” he amended weakly. 

 

Jazz nodded shakily. “O-okay. Just knock on my door if you need me, alright? I love you, little brother.”

 

That title equally warmed and stung Danny’s heart as he closed the door in her face.

Notes:

Content warning for...

-Theological discussion in the sense that many characters are trying to figure out how to deal with pantheon pandemonium and how that fits in with their various worldviews.

-Neglectful Parents in the sense they're kind of "meh" since they don't always know what's best for their kids or how to deal with ideas they're not fond of.

-Egregious lore dumping via tense familial conversations.

---------------------

So, how are we feeling, folks? "Feeling ready? Feeling stoked? Feeling queasy?" (I love TLT musical, lol.)

Also, because I'm not *totally* evil, I'll give you guys a chance to get the next chapter posted before August 21st (aka I'll edit it ASAP), if you answer this riddle correctly. I will respond to the comment that is the answer/is close to it and needs a little more specification.

Also!! You likely won't be able to just look up the answer because this one comes from my own mind—not the untamed frontier that is the internet. Huh. Suddenly, I am reminded of Annabeth's altercation with the sphinx in the Battle of the Labyrinth...

Here's the riddle:

"I battle you for moonlight; for some just out of reach. Without me, you can feel as though your mind has a breach. I am ever-looming, like the next fated breath. Yet some call me kind, though my sibling is death."

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 5: Ecto Guns Go "Pew-Pew-Pew!" Wait, They're Actually More Like "BLAM, BLAM, AUGHHHHHHH!!!"

Summary:

The one where things get worse.

Notes:

Congrats to RedRock12 for being the first to correctly answer the riddle last chapter!

Warnings and spoilers in the end notes.

Stay safe, folks!

Danny didn’t know how long he’d been sitting against his door, just staring at the basket. The basket that he’d apparently arrived in as a baby. Because Jack and Maddie Fenton were not his biological parents and for some godforsaken (or would it be godsforsaken?) reason hadn’t thought to tell him that! A steadily growing inkling of newfound betrayal writhed just under his skin.

 

Furious energy welled up in his core before he squashed it down once again, like the past however many times he’d done so. He knew it wasn’t healthy, but he could care less.

 

“Danny?” Jack his dad asked.

 

He hissed a curse to himself. He couldn’t deal with this right now, not when he could barely control his powers—they hadn’t been this bad since the month of the accident.

 

“Sweetie, can we talk?” The door rattled with the force of a knock. “Where you came from doesn’t matter; you will always be our little boy—our son. Your father and I didn’t explain things well—”

 

“It’s fine! I forgive you!” Danny squeaked as his energy flared out with a surge of sickly neon green, desperate to say anything to make them leave . “Jazz therapized me so everything’s all good, now!”

 

The door stopped rattling. For a moment, he thought they left, until he heard a terror-inducing order. “Daniel, open this door right now.”

 

“I’m fine, M-mom!” Ghostly energy rolled off him in waves, fueled by his fear.

 

Get a grip, Danny! You’re better than this.  

 

“ Ghost detected! ” a tinny robotic voice rang out. “ You would have to be an idiot not to notice the ghost in front of you. Ghost detected! ”

 

Danny froze in place, petrified. He’d escaped from tighter spots before, of course, but his body just completely shut down. His paralysis was equally likely due to stress stacked on top of stress constantly for the past few hours or, you know, being literally frozen to the floor thanks to suddenly temperamental ghost powers. 

 

His bedroom door splintered below the doorknob, the Drs. Fenton hellbent on capturing an unfortunate target. Danny could have sworn he heard a muffled shout beyond the door before they burst in, guns blazing. 

 

“What have you done with our son, ghost scum?” his dad one ghost hunter accused. 

 

“It’s me!” Danny pleaded frantically, “Your…your son. I’m Danny— ”

 

“It’s delusional,” his mom the other ghost hunter mused. “Come to think of it…irrational and inexplicable behaviors for the past few months—how could we not realize that a ghost replaced our son?”

 

“We’ll just have to tear this one apart molecule by molecule until it reveals where our son is!”

 

Danny cursed Nocturn between panicked breaths—this had to be his doing, right? And he didn’t want to hurt his parents! This was just a really bad nightmare and—

 

An electric green energy blast clipped his arm, tearing a weak ghostly wail from his throat and threatening to trigger his deadly transformation. Through the haze of pain, he spotted a familiar shock of long red hair behind his parents.  

 

“Oops!” Jazz chuckled nervously, “I didn’t realize you were about to shoot!” Then she locked eyes with Danny—a very clear “Run, I’ll handle this.”

 

With no warning, another energy blast exploded into existence; only this time, it struck his chest dead-on. Acrid smoke billowed out from the sizzling wound, setting off the smoke alarm, followed by a worse sound. Triumphant laughter rang out as his instincts took over, a ghostly chill washing over his body as a last-ditch defense. 

 

“ Phantom? ” his dad—no, the man exploded. The man before him was not his dad. Danny’s dad would never direct such a horrible, disdainful tone toward him. And neither would his mom if she said the same—

 

“How dare you steal our son’s face? You…you killed him, you—you monster! ”

 

Danny tripped back into intangibility, stunned. 

 

“Mom, Dad, stop!” Jazz tried to wrestle the ecto-gun out of her grip. “Danny, run! Leave him alone—”

 

In the struggle, the butt of the ecto-gun slammed into Jazz’s forehead, knocking her out instantly. 

 

“ Jazz! ” he cried as he tried rushing forward to help her, only to be stopped in his tracks. The Drs. Fenton stared in shock at their unconscious daughter before whirling back to Danny, weapons charged. 

 

“ How could you do that to her? ” the woman accused, voice more venomous than Echidna’s. Danny recoiled. “First besmirching my son’s face and now infecting everyone with your negative ghostly aura? You’re sick. ”

 

He didn’t know how to respond to that, brain protesting the accusation and his heart—his core—fighting the urge to rush to Jazz’s side. 

 

H̷̠̰̮͔͉̃̊̀ę̵̛̱̗̲͓̐̊̀͗̅ ̸͍̭͔̣̈́̿̓ͅͅn̴̘̲̩̝̹̒̔ẹ̴̡̳̘͌́̃̽̈ḛ̵̑̊̔͠ḍ̸̹̊̽ę̸̧̦̲̬̎͐̐d̸̯͙͖͑̕ ̶̛̝̹̏̒̚͜͠t̶͙̰͚͔̠͝o̸̡̤͊̏͂́̕ ̴̢̩̬̰́͜p̶̫̦̮̀̅͋͝ͅr̶̟͈̦̫̆̐́͋̅͗͜o̵̙͑͂͘͝t̶̳̍̈́̚e̵̲̲̩̘̫̟͛͐̋̈́̅c̸̦̣̲̲͖̖̽ţ̵̡͈̺̓̄͂̕ ̷͈̜̙͚͆ͅḣ̸̢̫̯̟̞͚͒͂͝è̶̛̟͚͍ṟ̶̠͂̈́̏̑̓͐.̴̣̹̱̲̬̘̑̀͝ ̶̺̙̭̯̎̇

 

Don’t forget to take care of yourself! her previous advice echoed, pushing past his mental static. If you can’t help yourself first, then you might risk others getting hurt. 

 

Core tearing at the seams, Danny fought against his very nature and ran . He leapt intangibly through the wall, scattering deterring ice spikes in his wake. Feeling hollow, Danny flew away faster than ever before, followed by errant blaster fire and cutting curses on the wind. 

 

Now, Danny rarely cried. Even when he was younger, he remembered his parents—no, the Fentons —remarking on how little he cried as a baby. Most things never seemed to rouse him from sleep, too—a neighbor once even commented how he “slept like the dead.” Danny sourly wondered if he should go track them down and ask if they were psychic or something. But back to the topic at hand: Danny rarely cried, but now as he flew away from the people he thought would always love him unconditionally? Well, now he forced down a sob as he alighted a few streets away from his final destination. 

 

He stumbled to a stop, rubbing furiously at his eyes. Once he’d gathered his wits, he kneeled down heavily at the base of a tree marked with a small carved caricature of a ghost. Turning his hand intangible, he shoved it straight through the earth. Danny rummaged clumsily like one would do with a messy school bag, almost giving up hope until his fingers brushed against the coarse fabric of an eco-friendly reusable shopping bag. With a solid tug, he unearthed his veritable treasure. 

 

It’d been Sam’s idea a while back to intangibly store emergency supplies around town after she caught Danny squirreling snacks away in much the same fashion like, well, a squirrel. Danny definitely classed his situation as an emergency, so he rifled through the bag to double-check everything: an extra Fenton Thermos, beef jerky (Tucker’s suggestion), vegan protein bars (Sam’s counter to the beef jerky), reusable water bottle (because Sam adamantly refused him to stash a sealed plastic one), and a small box of eco-friendly travel toiletries. 

 

He’d just finished tying the bag straps to his utility belt when a wisp of cool blue mist exited his mouth. 

 

Danny growled as he stood, refusing to turn around. He did not have time for this. “Whoever the hell you are, you had better have a good reason for bothering me tonight.”

 

“Uh, hiya, Phantom…n-nice box?”

 

Danny finally turned and tilted his head up with a raised eyebrow. “Boxy?”

 

“Y-yes!” he stuttered before spreading his arms wide, “I am the Box Ghost, master of all things cardboard and square! Fear me!”

 

“You done?” Danny snarked. The Box Ghost nodded. “Great, just tell me what you want and we can deal with this peacefully, or I can take out my misplaced aggression on you. ”

 

Danny’s hands blazed with neon energy. 

 

The Box Ghost gulped. “Your…your woven box was sending off unusual energy across town and I was curious and I just wanted to see what it was and please don’t put me in the thermos! It’s cold and small and cylindrical. ” He shivered at the thought. “Cylinders are so inferior to rectangular prisms and cubes—”

 

“Wait, wait, wait, back up,” Danny interrupted, ‘Woven box?’ I don’t have a woven box.”

 

The Box Ghost tilted his head like a confused dog and pointed, “Then what’s that by your foot?”

 

Danny caught a glance of the black blanket-filled basket that he had most certainly not brought with him. The sudden appearance of that thing startled Danny, sending him at least a foot in the air. 

 

“Sweet Ancients, what is that doing here?!” he panicked, “I thought I left it at Fentonworks!”

 

The Box Ghost just shrugged. 

 

“It’s a weird…box basket thing,” Danny tried. “Do you want it, Boxy?”

 

He vehemently shook his head. “No! No, thank you! The aura coming from that thing feels like death. ”

 

“Boxy, we’re ghosts, ” Danny deadpanned. 

 

“It feels like death in a bad way, ” he clarified. 

 

“So you thought it was a good idea to go looking for it?”

 

“It’s box-like!” the Box Ghost defended, “I needed to check out the new box out on the block. And now that I have, I am going to leave because it feels very bad here. I am off to find some unused cardboard boxes and try not to scare people until I can find a way back to the Ghost Zone. So, uh, Box Ghost, away!” Then as an afterthought, he exclaimed, “ Fear me! ”

 

And the Box Ghost flew off faster than Danny had ever seen him fly. 

 

Shrugging, Danny carefully floated around the boxy basket, trying to get a feel for what the Box Ghost meant by “death in a bad way.” All he sensed was that same unnatural wave of comfort, which admittedly felt a little freaky after being hyped up on adrenaline and teenage angst, but the vibes definitely weren’t as terrifying as Boxy described. 

 

With a frustrated sigh, Danny turned the basket intangible and shoved it in the earth. He would deal with it in the morning after he got a chance to rest. 

 

After a few minutes of shaky flight, he soon found himself floating at eye level with Sam’s window. He debated knocking for longer than strictly necessary before Sam slammed it open herself and pulled him inside with little fanfare. 

 

He stumbled for a moment before righting himself, jumpsuit still in Sam’s steely grip.  “Wha—Sam? How did you know I was here?”

 

She yawned and released her hold on him to rub at her eyes. “You dropped the temperature in my room to, like, below freezing.”

 

Sure enough, a fine layer of frost trailed along behind him, curling across the floor like coiled serpents. And Sam herself was chattering from the cold, still dressed in her wrinkled school clothes. 

 

Danny nervously scratched the back of his neck. “Sorry about that. I’ve been having trouble with my powers recently.”

 

Sam’s eyebrows creased, but she didn’t voice her sympathy. “At least you didn’t wake Tucker up. The guy sleeps like a log, I swear…”

 

“Wait, Tuck’s here? Why?”

 

“We were worried about you, especially since your parents wouldn’t even let us drop off your backpack. So we looked in my parents’ library for anything about myth stuff. The text was really dense, so Tuck and I must’ve conked out at some point.” Sam vaguely gestured over at her desk in the corner where Tucker sat slumped over a large dusty book. 

 

If Danny wasn’t already predisposed to weirdness, seeing Tucker willingly use a book over his PDA would’ve tipped the scale far into that territory. As it stood, he was overall touched by his friends’ kind gesture. 

 

“We could wake him up and I could give him a quick lift home?” Danny suggested as he untied his emergency bag from his utility belt. 

 

Sam opened her mouth to agree, only to click her jaw shut and really study Danny’s face. He nervously smiled as she overstepped his personal bubble. “H-hey, Sam? What’re you doing?”

 

“Your eye is twitching,” she concluded, taking a step back and putting her hands on her hips. “That means you’re stressed about something…”

 

“Ha-ha, nooo…what? I’m not stressed. I am perfectly fine—”

 

“There’s no patrol tonight and you’re supposed to be resting.” Her eyes snapped to full alertness. “Danny…why aren’t you at home?”

 

A pit dropped in Danny’s stomach but before he could respond, Tucker started convulsing and shrieking bloody murder in a language Danny didn’t know. Sam shot him a look that plainly read “We’ll talk about this later.” and they rushed to Tucker’s side. 

 

Before they could even touch him, Tucker shot awake with a gasp and promptly began choking. Panicked, Danny clapped him on the back a few times with a bit more strength than intended.

 

“Tucker!” Danny pleaded, “C’mon, man. Breathe. ”

 

“He’s choking!” Sam exclaimed. “How can he?”

 

Danny’s ghostly aura pulsed wildly, bright and chaotic with light. “I don’t know! I’m kinda freaking out here—”

 

“I am too!”

 

Tucker suddenly spluttered and greedily swallowed for a steady breath. Without warning, he toppled out of Sam’s desk chair and managed to scramble back just out of arms’ reach. 

 

With a determined expression, Sam attempted to extend a hand to help him up, only for Tucker to slap it away. She hissed in pain and clutched it tight to her chest. 

 

He barely registered what he did, eyes glazed over and staring into nothing as he rocked back and forth on the floor. Over and over again, he kept mumbling under his breath, “I know things. I know things.” 

 

If Danny didn’t know any better, he would’ve called it a self-reassuring mantra. He knew from experience; like when he constantly tells himself that he would save everyone during some of the nastier ghost invasions. 

 

But as it stood, Sam was the one who realized, “I think he’s having a panic attack—Danny, quit the glowing! The strobing light is making it worse.”

 

Danny immediately detransformed, earning him a sharp glare from Sam, who hissed something about that also causing bright light. He sighed. He didn’t know how to explain that his powers felt like two extremes right now—either wild and sporadic or nearly dull with power thrumming dangerously just under his skin (which was almost as bad as the first option).

 

So instead, he carefully approached Tucker with exaggerated movements before kneeling down directly in his line of sight. Sam made a light sound of protest behind him, but ultimately let Danny follow through with his shaky plan. 

 

“Hey, Tuck? Can you hear me?”

 

Tucker whimpered, but at least he wasn’t mumbling incomprehensibly anymore. 

 

“Okay, that’s good…I’m here for you, alright?” Danny shuddered out, fumbling for what he did after saving a scared person as Phantom—damage control, as it were. “Can you name three objects for me?”

 

Danny half expected a stressed witty quip in response, but Tucker only tapped the ground, then his yellow sweater, and his glasses. That was worrying in and of itself—the last time Danny had seen Tucker go completely silent like this was when Dash absolutely shattered his PDA back in middle school. Tucker had completely shut down. Only by the grace of some first-year teacher walking by had Dash been chewed out, but not before Danny glared at him in a way that was apparently “unnerving.” The bullying only got worse after that, but everyone quickly learned to not mess with the techno-geek’s PDA. 

 

“That’s…that’s alright, Tuck.” Tucker’s breathing began to even out, if only fractionally. “Now, three sounds…”

 

And Danny led Tucker through naming three sounds, followed by three body parts, the last of which was Danny’s hand. Tucker gripped on like a lifeline, still shaky and wide-eyed. 

 

“Feeling…feeling better?” Sam called gently a few feet away. Danny was grateful for this, considering that the last thing that Tucker needed was more people in his personal space. According to what he’d picked up from Jazz, even Danny himself was pushing it. But given that Tucker willingly had his hand in a vice grip? Danny thought it would be okay, just this once.  

 

Oh, Jazz…

 

“I…I know things.” Tucker shook. He bit his lip and confessed, “I— Gods are real. ”

 

Sam began to do her usual defensive snark-and-deflect coping strategy— wow, Danny had been spending too much time around Jazz —only to trail off, reconsidering her words. “What…what do you mean, Tuck? Not that I don’t believe you, but genuinely—”

 

“He’s right,” Danny whispered. “My…uh, mom even believes it. And it’s not April Fool’s!” he half-heartedly joked. “Everything adds up to being distinctly ‘not ghosts,’ otherwise I would’ve sensed something by now. The vibes are off.”

 

“‘The vibes are—’ Danny, no. This has to be ghosts!” Sam protested. “None of this makes sense. We’ll do some research—even in the Ghost Zone if we have to!”

 

“I think you’re having the ‘my entire worldview is being shattered’ moment,” Danny said lightly. “Been there, done that.”

 

“How can you say that? If ghost hunting has taught me anything, it would be to stay critical of every situation and look for definitive proof to handle each problem. I’ve read about Greek mythology—remember the Pandora’s box situation? Pandora was a ghost! With four arms! Not like in the myths, because they aren’t real—they’re just stories with often grim and dark themes. None of what you guys are saying is wholly concrete! It’s like Wes and his wild accusations—”

 

“When you were ten, you wanted the Pretty Pony Midnight Twinkle Friendship play set,” Tucker said in a daze. 

 

“No, I—” Sam’s cheeks turned bright red. “How did you—?”

 

“You never told anyone because you were embarrassed for wanting a mainstream ‘girl’s toy’ just as you started experimenting with alternative fashion,” Tucker continued, still slightly confused at the words spilling from his mouth. 

 

“Midnight Twinkle was misunderstood and came with a cool midnight sparkle sword to vanquish her enemies and learn about the power of friendship while adventuring with her new friends!” Sam defended. As soon as she realized what she’d said, she clapped her hands over her mouth. “How…how did you know that? Ghosts?”

 

“My Ghost Sense didn’t go off,” Danny shrugged. Then he frowned. “Actually, how did you know that, Tucker?”

 

Tucker readjusted his glasses with a trembling hand he forced still. “In my dream…or, uh, nightmare, maybe? I was getting attacked by a bunch of shadows and then out of nowhere, there was this ibis-headed bird guy, or god, I guess—don’t ask me how I know that—who saved me. He said that he was more impressed by my mind rather than my ancestors, or something? And that he wanted to bless me more than he already had because I had ‘potential.’ The guy told me to ‘find the House of Life’ and that he hoped I wouldn’t burn up with all the knowledge he imparted—crazy right?”

 

Sam turned paler than a ghost, which was impressive given that Danny was in her current company. “Tucker, did the guy tell you his name?”

 

“Uh, Thoth, I think? It’s a little fuzzy…”

 

She stumbled back. 

 

“Sam?” Danny asked nervously. 

 

“This is her ‘aha’ moment,” Tucker noted sagely. “She’ll be fine. I think.” 

 

“You think? ”

 

“Okay, this is… wow, ” Sam began rambling, “There is no way Tucker could know the Pretty Pony thing or have the foresight to learn all this Egyptian stuff in advance—” 

 

“—I resent that!” Tucker protested. 

 

“Oh, God…”

 

“ Gods, you mean,” Danny added admittedly unhelpfully. “Huh. Greek and Egyptian. Wonder if there’s more pantheons in the modern day...”

 

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Tucker shrugged. 

 

“Agh!” Sam cursed, “You two are so not helpful! I’m having a theological crisis over here—I read all these myths because some of them are interesting and dark, not because I believed in them!”

 

“So what’s the problem?” Tucker asked, genuinely curious. “If you like them so much, isn’t it better that they’re real so you can get firsthand experience with the subject?”

 

“I’m Jewish!” Sam exclaimed, exasperated. 

 

“Ah,” Tucker’s eyes widened in realization, “that’d do it.” Then he stage-whispered to Danny, “I have no idea how to help from here, man. Any ideas?”

 

Danny stepped forward. “Sam?”

 

“ What? ”

 

“Who’s to say that all matters of human belief don't exist to some extent? The theological side of all this is really weird to process, I bet.” Danny took a steadying breath. “I’m sorry—I don’t really know what I can say to help.”

 

Sam sighed. “I…it’ll take some time to figure this all out. I’ll…I’ll be okay. To put it lightly, this is just a lot. ”

 

“You could say that again,” Danny laughed without humor, “This…this has been a really rough night for all of us, huh?”

 

“Really, now?” Tucker asked, tone lighter to ease the tension in the room. 

 

“Yeah,” Danny tiredly gestured around the room, “Sam is going through a theological crisis; Tucker, you had an ominous dream; and I learned that I’m apparently the descendant of some Greek god who left me on the Fentons’ doorstep in a basket as a child.”

 

Sam hissed a sympathetic breath. “ Oh, Danny… ”

 

“Oh, so that’s why there’s a basket by Sam’s window!” Tucker exclaimed with a point. 

 

Sure enough, by the window, a seemingly innocent basket sat. It made Danny tremble; with fear, rage, or some other unidentified emotion, he couldn’t tell. 

 

“I thought that the baby blue blankets were weird; they don’t really fit with your aesthetic, Sam. Wait, Danny, what are you—”

 

Danny’s vision narrowed to a tunnel, only focused on the basket. In an instant, he gripped the basket in one hand and slammed open Sam’s window with the other. With an almighty throw, he chucked the basket so far, he couldn’t even see its outline in the street lamps’ flickering light below. 

 

“Whoa, dude! What was that for?” Sam exclaimed behind him, “Did the basket beat you up or something?”

 

“No, my parents did that,” he replied absently, massaging his calloused palms before gently closing the window. When he turned around, Sam and Tucker stared back, shock and horror coloring their faces. “Hey, guys? Why are you looking at me like that?”

 

“Oh, Danny…” Tucker whispered. 

 

“Your parents found out?” Sam continued, just as quiet. 

 

Danny suddenly felt as if he’d forgotten the weight of the world on his shoulders, only for it to all come crashing down at once to rip the air from his very mortal lungs. He stumbled, off balance and directionless, into his friends’ arms. He was grateful for their support after such a great fall (in more than just the literal sense), yet he couldn’t help but feel bad for saddling them with his grief even as they themselves were struggling. 

 

His friends carefully guided him to lie on the floor as they sat by his side. Danny brushed a weak hand through the plush purple carpet lightly impressed by skull and bone patterns. He couldn’t help but feel like this was some sort of poetic image that only someone as well-read as Sam could articulate. 

 

Danny still didn’t cry, even after all that he’d been through. He just lay there, dead to the world and flanked by two pallbearers. 

 

“Can someone grab my phone for me? Please?” Danny asked, hating how small his voice sounded. 

 

Silently, Sam obliged and pressed it into his palm after a few moments of rummaging off to the side. In a haze, he punched in a phone number that he’d committed to memory. He flicked on the speakerphone. 

 

“…call back during operating hours.”

 

BEEP!

 

“Hi,” Danny croaked. “It’s D—Phantom, again. Percy Jackson gave me this number. I—it’s not safe for me in Amity any…anymore. I’m dealing with demigodishness and… other things. I don’t think I can leave on my own. I need… I need help. ”

 

He hung up and briefly caught a glimpse of Sam and Tucker’s distressed expressions. 

 

“That bad?” Sam asked tentatively. “Uh, ‘molecule by molecule?’”

 

Danny bit his lip and nodded. 

 

“We’ll do our best to keep you safe until you can skip town,” Tucker promised, Sam nodding in agreement. 

 

“Get some rest, Danny,” she said. “You need it. We’ll wake you up if something happens.”

 

Despite his better judgment, Danny eventually fell asleep, surrounded by friends who took turns keeping watch for anything that went bump in the night.

Notes:

Content warnings:

-Panic attacks (not super graphic), but stay safe

-Jack and Maddie shooting ecto weapons at Danny, aiming to do much more than hurt

-Discussions of religion (and how other pantheons existing can devalue personal beliefs)

---------------------------------
Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

How are we feeling tonight? (I'm just quoting, idk what time it is rn or when you're reading this.) Things are going So, So Well for our favorite ghost boy. Good thing his friends and sister have his back (don't worry—Jazz is just a little concussed). I also pinkie promise not to kill Jazz, Sam, and Tucker for *Shock-Horror!* value or I otherwise would have tagged the fic with that, lol. I'm glad that we have Boxy for some comic relief, anyway.

Also!! I have some good/bad news, depending on how you spin it. Bad news: I thought I could quickly wrap up the fic before I finished posting the chapters I currently have (only in need of editing overhauls), but I'm steadily realizing that this is not likely the case. Good news: you guys get more stuff to read!

That "Author is Sleep Deprived" tag is definitely there for a reason, oof.

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 6: Danny Has a Freakin’ Weird Dream

Summary:

Danny has a weird dream, like, weirder than usual. And then he wakes up to a worrying situation. This is Fine.

Notes:

The only thing that went through my head while writing the first part of this chapter was Sharkboy's "Dream, dream, dream, dream, dream, dream" song, lol.

Chapter warnings and spoilers in the end notes.

Ever since his battle against Nocturn, Danny always made sure to note whenever he was dreaming. After a few mishaps with sleep paralysis, he became somewhat of a lucid dreamer. Just in case. (He vehemently denied any accusations of paranoia from his friends and sister. He was just being careful, okay?)

 

Anyway, once he completed his usual checklist of “Am I dreaming?” (including but not limited to pinching his arm and looking for clocks and mirrors that didn’t behave as they should), he relaxed in his own dark little void. Soon, he filled it to the brim with twinkling stars to trace constellations from both books and his own mind. 

 

Others may have found his dream boring. Why stargaze—an activity you could easily do while awake—when practically anything was possible in a dream?

 

The answer? Well, Danny was tired. 

 

If he tried to do anything more, he’d get distracted by the constant anxious thoughts that’d send him spiraling down too many “What ifs?” to count. Those anxious thoughts would then lead to less pleasant nighttime excursions— darker ones. When he was truly exhausted (which was most of the time, if he was being honest), shadows seemed to slip through the cracks, reminding him of a future version of himself that he desperately wanted to forget…

 

So, stars. Thousands upon thousands of stars. 

 

He remembered crawling out onto the roof of Fentonworks when he was little to stare out at the stars. The original plan had been to climb up on the Ops Center but that had been a little too much for an eight-year-old Danny to handle. 

 

The void around him started to melt away into that very space; Danny struggled against the image, the sound of unfriendly blaster fire still ringing in his ears. 

 

“No, no, no!” he cried, screwing his eyes shut. Danny tried tugging the dream away from the memory, pleading to go anywhere else.

 

And he did.

 

The sound of blaster fire and monstrous accusations died in his ears, instead replaced by… soft violin music? Danny opened his eyes to be greeted by cozy-looking empty bunkbeds, a crackling fireplace, and strangely enough, a tree branch dripping a pearlescent liquid into a collection of tin bowls.

 

Where am I?

 

“You’re in the Hypnos cabin, dude.”

 

Danny whirled around, only to feel like he was moving through a bog of thick peanut butter. Before him, a sleepy blonde guy rubbed his eyes and yawned, clutching onto a plush pillow.

 

“W-what?”

 

“The Hypnos cabin,” the guy reiterated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You must have a really weird connection to the realm of sleep to have ended up here. Also, I’m really hoping that you’re a good guy since I don’t really feel like putting you into a coma for”—he yawned—“the foreseeable future. Are you a good guy?”

 

Danny stumbled back, caught off guard by such a loaded threat from such a chill-looking guy. “Yes!” he fumbled, “I-I’m a good guy! Please don’t hurt me!”

 

“Okay,” the guy shrugged, heading over to a counter towards the back of the room to start making some…hot chocolate?

 

“Wait, that’s it?”

 

The guy shrugged again. “I don’t sense any ill will from you. But you’re really tense and have an absolutely weird vibe, but you’re overall pretty chill. Hot chocolate?”

 

Danny nodded numbly and the guy was suddenly at his side handing him a mug full of thick hot chocolate. He blinked slowly—it was as if the guy was a mirage, rippling lazily and wherever least expected. Danny studied the mug, emblazoned with the image of a cartoony snoozing copper-scaled dragon curled around a pine tree and cuddling a strawberry. “You…you said we’re in the ‘Hypnos cabin?’”

 

“Yup,” the guy took a slow sip from his own mug, patterned with intertwined poppies. “Cabin 15. And I’m the counselor, Clovis. Are you one of the unclaimed kids? I haven’t seen you around camp before, but you’re a little old to be unclaimed…”

 

“Camp?” Danny asked tentatively.

 

“ Camp Half-Blood? ” Clovis drawled. “You must really be a newbie if you don’t know the name yet—”

 

“Oh, Ancients!” Danny gasped, “Camp. Camp Half-Blood. Do you know Percy Jackson?” 

 

Clovis studied Danny curiously. “Who doesn’t?”

 

Danny’s mind buzzed, thoughts churning and feeling like they were half-turning to mush. “I…I called earlier…and I, uh…um, what was I talking about? ”

 

“Being in here too long when you’re not a child of Hypnos can really mess with your mind. I’m surprised you lasted this long, but you should probably leave before things get worse.” Clovis flicked his hand lazily and the cozy cabin began melting away before Danny’s eyes.

 

“Wait!” Danny cried, his mug falling out of his grip and spilling into nothingness, “Tell Percy that D—Phantom needs help! My parents…it’s bad. Amity Park, Illinois! Please, help—”

 

“Danny! Please, c’mon, wake up! Danny!”

 

Danny woke with a start, Sam’s face uncomfortably close to his as she shook his shoulders violently. Through bleary eyes, Danny caught a glimpse of her palm swinging down to his face; on instinct, he rolled away and popped up in a fighting stance, prepared to transform.

 

Half-awake, Danny asked, “What? What’s wrong? Where’s the ghost—?”

 

“ Oh, thank God, you’re okay,” Sam released a tense breath. 

 

“You’re the only ghost here, dude,” Tucker called from the window, peeking intently through the curtains, “but we couldn’t wake you up, which was very worrying and so not good. ” 

 

Danny snapped to full alertness. “Why?”

 

Tucker hissed a curse. “ We’ve got company. ”

 

Danny scrambled over to the window and peered through a crack in the curtain to see the Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle haphazardly parked in front of the Manson Mansion. And sure enough, his parents (Were they even his parents anymore?) stood armed to the teeth with anti-ghost tech at the Manson’s front door, arguing with Sam’s parents to be let in.

 

Just as Danny was about to tug the curtains closed, one Dr. Madeline Fenton picked that moment to look up. With red goggles pulled taught over her skull and flashing in the morning light, she looked like a demon possessed. 

 

And then she leveled the barrel of her ecto rifle right at the window.

 

“ Get down! ” Danny ordered, pulling Tucker with him to the floor. A distant thud from a few paces away let Danny know that Sam had done the same. 

 

Instead of a whir of blaster fire tearing through Sam’s bedroom walls, Danny instead felt a shockwave ripple across the entirety of the Manson mansion, making him ache and cry out until he could barely even feel his ghostly core. An anti-ghost shield, temporary like an EMP blast, he was sure. That thought sent a thrill of terror down his spine—he didn’t know how long his powers would be affected for. Danny lifted his head, still heaving from the fresh wave of panic. His mind echoed a constant thread of not safe-not safe-not safe as he pulled his friends close—an instinctive urge to protect. 

 

“-ny! Danny!” 

 

He vaguely registered his friends calling his name. He knew that he needed to get away from the threat, but he also needed to keep everyone safe—

 

A splash of icy water crashed over his face, the cold jolting his core to awareness, the rest of him following soon after. Danny shook off the shock and detangled himself from his friends, embarrassed by his relapse into panic and the half-empty eco-friendly water bottle Sam gripped loosely in one hand. 

 

“Sorry…sorry, guys,” Danny fumbled his apology, “I think they just activated some kind of anti-ghost shield. I…panicked.”

 

Sam and Tucker winced at Danny’s soaked appearance while he himself very much felt like a drenched cat; that is to say, pathetic. 

 

“It’s alright,” Sam accepted before giving him a once-over. “Aren’t ya going to go intangible because…” she gestured at his body. 

 

“I’m not too keen on goin’ ghost or anything like that with ghost hunters around,” he waved off, purposely avoiding the fact that he didn’t think he could even transform at the moment. “Anti-ghost shield EMP thingy, and all. I’ll be fine.”

 

“Sorry,” Sam half teased, half apologized, “I…panicked.”

 

Tucker coughed to catch their attention. “While this is all very wholesome, need I remind you two: Danny is a ghost and there are ghost hunters downstairs?!”

 

A loud crash sounded from deep in the house, followed by an explosion of crackling energy and a booming apology from one Dr. Jack Fenton.

 

Sam’s light expression furrowed into a more serious one. “Right. Danny, what’s the plan?”

 

While his usual first response would be a witty quip to ease the tension, this situation was more serious than his usual rogues' gallery—for all intents and purposes, there were two furious overprotective parents downstairs who wholeheartedly believed that they were hunting down their son’s captor, or worse, his killer.   

 

Danny set his jaw. “In their current state, the Fentons are extra ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ since they believe that I—sorry, their son—has been hurt or worse by the same ghost who hurt their daughter, which is not my fault, by the way! They’ll likely assume that the dread Phantom has coerced or possessed you two in some way, so there’s a high chance that they’ll hurt you, accidentally or otherwise. I’ll stall them while you two get out of here.”

 

“That’s insane!” Sam exploded, “There’s no way that we’re gonna let you sacrifice yourself! Besides, who’s to say that they’re going to go after me and Tucker?”

 

“We won’t let you corrupt more innocent kids, Phantom!” Dr. Jack Fenton boomed, startlingly closer than before. “We’re going to save them from your evil influence and then tear you apart, molecule by molecule!”

 

The timing would have been funny in literally any other circumstance. 

 

Danny stared pointedly at his friends and hoisted his bag of supplies from the previous night over his shoulder. “See? You run, I distract. I’ll find somewhere safe and contact you when I can—”

 

“No,” Tucker asserted, surprising everyone with the definitive answer. “You high-tail it out of here. Sam and I will be fine if we lay low and act like scared civilians. We never saw Phantom because we were having a sleepover in another part of the house for studying purposes and only just woke up because of the shouting. But who knows? Maybe we noticed that our good friend Danny has been acting weird for the past few months because some other ghost was trying to possess him, and he kept fighting back. We wanted to study ways to help him fight off the ghost once and for all.”

 

“And we can pin the blame on some other ghost,” Sam realized. “Tucker! When the hell did you get smart?”

 

“First off, rude, and second off, I don’t know? I just got, like, a wisdom boost or something.” 

 

Danny sighed. “Fine, as much as I hate putting you two near two trigger-happy people, we’ll use Tuck’s plan. Hope you two are up to acting like scared civilians—really play it up with hysterical shrieking.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah, man. That explanation can work as a last-resort distraction since they literally saw me transform last night. What you said will probably confuse them just enough if we need it.”

 

Dr. Jack Fenton then roared some very not nice things about ghosts, scarily nearby Sam’s room. At the very least, he had finally made it up to the story Sam’s room was on.

 

At the sudden noise, Sam clenched her fists and marched up right in front of Danny, almost uncomfortably close to his face. She considered him for a second before punching him in the shoulder. 

 

“Ow! What was that for?” 

 

She jabbed a finger at his chest. “If you die, I’m going to kill you.”

 

Danny laughed as he pulled away to prop open the window. He grinned cheekily before straddling the open window frame. “I’m already halfway there.”

 

Sam and Tucker exchanged a nervous look as Sam went to open the door to put on the acting performance of a lifetime. 

 

“Go,” Danny said, falsely confident, “They’ve never caught me before. I’ll be fine.” 

 

They nodded solemnly, still worried, but trying to hide it just as much as Danny was. The door clicked closed behind them and they began shrieking about seeing an oh-so-terrible ghost that wildly differed from Phantom’s description. 

Yeah, Danny thought nervously as he slipped out of Sam’s room and onto her dangerously high windowsill, everything’ll be just fine.

Notes:

Chapter warnings and spoilers:
-Slight derealization in dreams (Danny not feeling he has much control, even when he's asleep)
-Fic-typical threats of Fenton parents chasing after Danny
---------------------------
Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

Poor Danny can never catch a break, lol. I guess that is in some part thanks to writers like me who are fascinated by the psyche of someone like Danny who is so young but has been through so much—We want to see just what makes this boy t̶̯̀i̷̫̔c̶͓̔k̶͉͐.̶́͜

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugW̸̢͊r̵̟͗i̴͍͆t̴͔̔e̴̫̍s̶͖̚Stuff

Chapter 7: That Hellhound Is Big and Kinda Red, but I Don’t Think It’s Clifford...

Summary:

Danny fights a foe—whether it be mortal or mythical, he's not quite sure. Some friends arrive to help.

Notes:

You guys are in for a bit of a doozy.

Warnings and spoilers are in the endnotes.

A crackling green ecto blast exploded next to Danny’s head, making him cling to the side of Sam’s house for dear life.

 

“I’m going to tear you apart molecule by molecule!” Dr. Madeline Fenton screeched below.

 

Correction: everything was decidedly not fine.

 

“Stop trying to kill me!” he screamed. 

 

“You killed my son!” More blaster fire snapped at Danny’s heels as he summoned all his strength to scramble onto the roof. 

 

“I am your son!”

 

“ Lies! ” she hissed right back. Danny could faintly hear the thwip! of a grappling gun fire behind him in her attempt to follow him.

 

Danny tried to transform into his ghostly persona because some flight would really be helpful right now! Only, his core seemed to fizzle as he stumbled across the shingled roof to the far edge. As he stumbled, he could hear Dr. Jack Fenton as he frantically tried to console Sam and Tucker from an open window. Apparently, they were very good at acting scared (then again, maybe it wasn’t all that hard, considering how stressful the situation was). Although, it was almost to the point that Danny wanted to swing in and check on them. He shook his head to refocus—checking in on his friends would defeat the purpose of their haphazard plan. 

 

“Stand still and die, ghost scum!” She had finally caught up to him at the edge of the roof.

 

Danny considered his options (none of which were very good) as he glanced at the foliage below, and ultimately decided on the lesser of several evils. 

 

“No, thank you!” he called over his shoulder, forcing some of that trademarked heroic bravado into his voice. And with that, Danny jumped off the roof and into the dense trees below.

 

Now, Danny had taken many a beating in his short fourteen years of existence, so he knew that he could handle a desperate dive into a tree. 

 

Would it hurt? Yes.  

 

Would he get away from a trigger-happy assailant? Also yes.  

 

Would Danny survive to see the next sunrise? Well, that one was still up in the air, considering how much his body ached from scraping across tree branches in an attempt to grab onto one to swing into a smoother landing. He unfortunately failed and ended up smacking into what felt like every branch all the way down to the ground.

 

Dr. Madeline Fenton screamed in frustration as she attempted to find a less horrifically painful way down. Not wanting to waste his advantage, Danny forced himself up from the ground with a groan, briefly lamenting the loss of his supply bag caught in the branches above. That is until it dropped right at his feet.

 

Frankly, it was a miracle it survived all in one piece after such a wild chase. Given that he now knew gods existed, Danny looked up and mumbled, “Uh, whoever did that, thanks?”

 

He didn’t get a definitive otherworldly response, for which he was grateful. Honestly, Danny didn’t know what he’d do if he met an actual real-life god. Maybe punch them on reflex? Yeah, that sounded about right, considering that’s what the malevolent ghosts around him taught him to do. Fight or die, and all that.    

 

Then he heard rustling and a furious scream above him. His face paled and no matter how much he ached— Did I sprain my ankle? —he absolutely booked it. To where, exactly? Well, he wasn’t quite sure. What he really needed was a distraction…

 

A hair-raising howl shook the street. Windows cracked and parked cars’ alarms cut through the morning air one after another like a swinging guillotine blade drawing ever closer to his neck.

 

“Please be Cujo, please be Cujo,” Danny pleaded as he tore down the road. “Or Wulf? Wulf would be good, too!”

 

Dr. Madeline Fenton loudly cursed behind him. “How in Hades did you summon a hellhound? Curse you, Phantom!”

 

Sure enough, when Danny snuck a glance over his shoulder, a great black mastiff about the size of a school bus started chasing after the both of them. Despite this, Dr. Madeline Fenton still screamed her furious intent after Danny. She managed to shoot another grapple line onto the rooftops in an attempt to pull herself up to relative safety, only to fall short with a pained scream.

 

Danny skidded to a halt and whipped around to see Dr. Madeline Fenton’s leg bleeding sluggishly, pinned underneath a massive paw. She fired blast after ecto blast into the apparent hellhound’s maw with her ecto rifle, which only served to irritate and temporarily fend it off. A particularly wild shot flew up its nose, resulting in a pained howl and instantly cauterizing its nostrils in the process. 

 

Despite what she and her husband had done to him, Danny couldn’t just stand by while someone got hurt—years of care and support from them didn’t go away so easily. He just didn’t want to get torn apart molecule by molecule, so how was it fair to let someone he considered his mother get torn apart in exchange?

 

“Hey, Clifford!” Danny called, pointedly ignoring how the only red thing about the hellhound came from the blood matting its paws.

 

The hellhound whipped its head around to Danny and snarled.  

 

Danny beat his chest once and raised his arms. “Come and get me!”

 

With an almighty howl, the hellhound jumped away from its previous prey, dead set on Danny for some reason. Danny didn’t question it, instead focusing on taunting the monster and drawing it away from civilians and any buildings that could possibly have people in them. His legs burned and his lungs sagged like nothing more than shriveled balloons, but he somehow managed to keep going (he chalked it up to a little ghostly endurance seeping into his human form). Although as the hellhound’s hot breath brushed against his back, he realized that he couldn’t outrun the monster forever.

 

He tried transforming once again, only to be met with a pathetic fizzle of energy. Danny cursed profusely and pushed himself to pour on a little more speed before managing to duck around a street corner and hide behind a car to catch his breath. 

 

The monster roared, displeased that it couldn’t see him anymore. Clapping a hand over his mouth to stifle any instinctive sounds that revealed his utter terror, Danny prayed to whoever was listening, Please don’t let it find me! Please, please, please. 

 

A snuffle of blistering air ripped across his scalp—it was so close. Danny’s body locked up. Why couldn’t he move? He’d faced much more frightening foes at worse odds, so why was he so panicked at the thought of the hellhound? Maybe because he’d never faced a threat so tangible, so undeniably underprepared because it was much too close, and he couldn’t move and—

 

“Hey, ugly!” 

 

That voice sounded strangely familiar. 

 

“Was that really the best you could come up with, Jackson?”

 

“Shush up, Nico. It’s a perfectly respectable insult! You just lack taste.”

 

Danny heard a dull scoff. “If I lack taste, then you must truly suffer from a bland palate.” 

 

“Can we please just focus on defeating the hellhound, you two?”

 

Not twenty paces away, the familiar clattering song and dance of battle soon filled Danny’s eardrums, distracting quips, furious roars, and swishing blades echoing out in equal measure. Danny forced himself to stand—he…he needed to help, even if he still couldn’t go ghost. He didn’t know how to fight hellhounds, but he would go down trying if it meant he could limit casualties or even prevent them altogether. 

 

His foot brushed against something as he surveyed the best entry point to the fight around the car’s bumper. Danny looked down and grimaced. “Why do you keep following me, you stupid basket?” He picked it up and prepared to chuck it aside. “I just want to protect everyone, but you keep getting in my way!”

 

Without warning, the basket melted away in his hands, stretching and flattening until a shield morphed into place, strapped to his left forearm. Danny stared in shock at the dark wood and metal concave disk that extended three feet in diameter. Somehow, it seemed to attract the nearby shadows; or perhaps, it snuffed out the surrounding light. Ignoring how little that made sense, Danny hefted his apparent new shield and jumped into the fray.  

 

Quickly surveying the battlefield, Danny felt a rush of both assurance and nervousness because he was right—the voices were familiar.

 

Percy, who worked on crowd control and distracting the massive hellhound away from stragglers in the street with tendrils of high-pressure water from a sliced fire hydrant. Jason, who flew high above the action and buffered the hellhound’s head away from a sleep-deprived Nico who swayed on his feet and shouted at Jason to give him a clearer shot at the monster’s weak spot. Now that Danny was focusing on fighting the monster itself, rather than running for his life, he noticed a thin sparkly sheen in the hellhound’s dark fur.

 

“Keep it still, Jason! I don’t know how in Hades it got the Nemean lion’s pelt, but I need to stab its mouth!”

 

“I’m trying,” Jason grunted. “Not used to being cramped like this!”

 

The street was narrow, Danny noted. For how long Jason’s javelin was, plus Percy’s tense control of the water, it was clear that the trio was more used to fighting in more open spaces, unlike Illinois suburbia. Luckily, that’s what Danny knew best.

 

In the midst of the arguing, the hellhound managed to sneak a claw free from the confines of wind and water and swipe at Nico, who was more focused on the toothy maw than the rest of his surroundings. 

 

Without a second thought, Danny rushed forward, time seeming to slow to a snail’s pace as pure adrenaline pumped through his veins. Not a second too soon, he brought up his shield and braced it with his free hand, teeth rattling with the sheer force of the strike. The hellhound recoiled and Jason managed to partially pin the offending paw. 

 

Danny heard the blade before he registered it, swinging around to block Nico’s instinctive strike with his shield. “ Who the Hades are you? ”

 

At just that moment, a trail of black and blue mist twisted out from his curled lip just as a puff of blue mist exited Danny’s. “I think you know.”

 

Nico minutely lowered his sword and Danny took a step back, doing the same with his shield. Danny had nothing left to lose, so he let Nico briefly study his face with narrowed eyes and could exactly pinpoint the moment of realization. 

 

“ Phantom? ” Nico asked incredulously. Danny nodded. “Uh…what’s with the palette swap?”

 

“It’s a bit of a long story—”

 

“Hi, Phantom!” Percy called out, voice strained. “It’s great to see that you’re all in one piece, but we might not be if we can’t— ugh —kill this thing soon. I’m losing more than a little bit of steam.”

 

Danny considered for a second. “Nico, how well can you jump?”

 

Nico made a so-so gesture. 

 

“Good enough.” Danny sunk to a low stance and braced his shield above his head. “Take a running start and I’ll boost you up like a trampoline. Then you can get the high ground on the hellhound’s maw.”

 

Nico blinked but surprisingly backed up as told, sword gripped tightly in hand. “You are certifiably insane. How do you know this is going to work?” 

 

“Thanks!” Danny chirped, lining himself up for a better shot. “And I’ve, uh, got a gut feeling? The monster’s time has come…its life will end. I…I don’t know how I know—I just do.”

 

Nico’s eyes widened as if he’d just put together a puzzle that he wasn’t expecting the final picture of. “You See. Just like him…Phantom, I trust you.”

 

“Call me Danny,” he offered, an extension of his own trust. He also wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he grinned and angled his shield closer to the ground. “Now…wait for it…”

 

The hellhound roared as Jason sent a frantic gust of wind into the hellhound’s eyes to prevent it from snapping at Danny.

 

A dark, cold chill rushed down Danny’s spine and he snapped to full alertness. It was time. He sharply barked, “ GO! ” 

 

And Nico ran. His feet landed perfectly on the shield, but Danny barely registered the sudden increase of weight, pivoting and launching Nico into the air. The son of Hades swung his shadowy blade around like an unholy reaper, catching the hellhound mid-roar, and plunged the sword right down its throat. 

 

The hellhound choked (rightfully so) as Nico tucked into a roll before he hit the ground, skidding away to safety. The monster’s blood-red eyes went dim, and Danny could feel its very essence getting sucked into the blade’s sharp point as if the incision cut a path directly to its soul. If Danny’s shield was made in part of the same material, he figured that he should avoid directly touching its dark metal rim. He could sense that the wooden parts would be just fine. Nico’s sword then fell to the street, cutting directly into the asphalt, followed by a gold animal pelt fluttering down to drape across its hilt.

 

Nico stood, clutching his side with a grimace before pushing his shoulders back in a regal posture. With a confident stride, he somehow made it to his sword and tossed the pelt over his shoulder, making it magically flicker into the vague outline of a golden aviator jacket. Much like the great Arthur of legend, Nico pulled his sword from the stone and sheathed it safely at his side. 

 

Danny now knew why this kid was given the nickname “Ghost King.”

Jason and Percy stumbled over to Nico, all clearly exhausted, but still standing. All lined up together, Danny felt like kicking himself for not noticing how powerful they were sooner—their mythic strength practically rolled off in waves . For all they goofed off and cracked jokes, if they had seriously applied themselves that night a week ago, Danny likely wouldn’t be standing here today. He reminded himself that many ghosts had claimed the same of him, but these three teens in front of him had something about them that felt absolutely ancient.

 

“You alright, Phantom?” Jason called. 

 

Danny flicked his hands nervously, momentarily shocking himself when a particularly sharp flick reformed the shield into a woven bracelet on his wrist as opposed to an unwieldy basket. Stuck in a state between curiosity and calming himself before he was hit with another wave of panic, Danny experimentally flicked his wrist again. 

 

Shield.  

 

Flick! 

 

Bracelet.

 

“Well, that’s certainly a thing I can do, now…” Danny mused in a daze. 

 

Behind him, someone tapped his shoulder, making Danny violently flinch away. He only calmed once he realized that it was just Jason. He had serious older sibling vibes, to the point where Danny could pick out the same worried knit brow and kind expression that Jazz often wore. Danny’s breath hitched at the comparison.

 

“You okay, kid?”

 

Danny opened his mouth to respond, only to be cut off by a blast of ecto-energy to the side. He distantly noted three cries of shock as he was sent skidding down the asphalt, wound smoldering. In an instant, Jason literally flew to his side while Percy and Nico began arguing with the Drs. Fenton. 

 

“Phantom!” Jason shook his shoulders, “C’mon, man…” 

 

“‘M name is Danny…” he groaned as Jason took the initiative and slung Danny’s arm (on the non-smoldering side) over his shoulders, pulling him upright and away from the Drs. Fenton. 

 

“Uh, okay…? Sorry, are you two people? Or possessed by, like, an eidolon or something?”

 

Danny hummed as his wound began slowly stitching itself together. His ghost powers weren’t fully recovered, but they were at least steadily regaining strength. “Nah. Same guy. The only difference is a magical girl-style transformation…”

 

“We’ll unpack that later,” Jason decided, finally dragging Danny and sitting them down behind a flipped car. He rummaged in his back pocket and produced a little squished Ziploc baggie of what Danny now recognized as ambrosia. “Here, take a piece of ambrosia—it’ll make you feel better.”

 

Jason pressed a little square into Danny’s hand, who simply popped in the back of his mouth and dry swallowed it like a pill. “Efficiency,” Danny groggily explained when he caught sight of Jason’s horrified expression. He relished in the trail of healing warmth working down his throat.

 

“That’s not how it—you know? I’m not going to argue about this. Gods, you’re almost as finicky as Nico…”

 

“That thing your buddy is hiding is a ghost!” Dr. Jack Fenton exploded. “A monster, even!”

 

Danny recoiled from the harsh tone but ultimately forced himself to peer around the car to watch the scene unfold before him, fueled by morbid curiosity. He couldn’t move much more than that at the moment.

 

“According to my wife, it somehow summoned a hellhound in a place monsters don’t dare to travel, where the veil between worlds is thin! Think of all the Mist manipulation that needs to be done to distract the mortals—”

 

“I’m the son of Hades,” Nico cut in with a sneer. “If there are ghosts here as you claim, it is my job to handle and guide them to a place of rest, not yours. Even if the veil between worlds is thin, spirits are not to be studied and dissected. ” Nico spat the final word. “They are to be redirected away from mortals, and should that fail, only then should spirits be put back where they belong! ”

 

“Phantom deserves to be banished to Tartarus, then!” Dr. Madeline Fenton cursed. “It has been causing nothing but trouble and harm—Phantom hurt my innocent daughter; it killed and possessed my son, my poor little Danny! We didn’t even know until it was too late. We only learned of this deception last night because it was so deep undercover in our own home!”

 

“Phantom didn’t kill your son.” Nico sounded utterly ticked. “That boy you shot isn’t a ghost as you define it, or even possessed—he’s your son!”

 

“You’re…you’re lying!” she protested. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

 

Nico chuckled without humor. “You’re calling the son of Hades, bearer of the epithet ‘Ghost King,’ a liar regarding his birthright? A strong connection to the Underworld could be misconstrued with being related to ghosts, I’ll give you that, but I can literally sense that ‘Phantom’ and ‘Danny’ are one and the same—”

 

Her ecto rifle whirred to life, only to be smashed to the ground by sharp tendrils of water controlled by Percy’s clenched fist. 

 

“Hey!”

 

“Watch it, lady. It’s not cool to shoot your kid, or my friend here. Nico knows more about this kind of stuff than pretty much anyone, so I think it’d be a good idea to quit while you’re behind so you don’t get further behind.”

 

Dr. Jack Fenton’s weapon lit up as well, but Percy was quick to smash that one too. “You can’t do this! This is our life’s work!”

 

“You mentioned the Mist, right?” Percy recalled suddenly, “Are you godly legacies, or something?”

 

“Demigods, actually,” Dr. Jack Fenton replied, jaw tight. 

 

“ Wow, you’re old!” Percy exclaimed, “I didn’t think that was really possible outside of New Rome! Aren’t they old, Nico?”

 

Nico ignored their protests, grinning devilishly. “Absolutely ancient. ”

 

“Since we’ve established that you two are old demigods out here alone, you should know better than most that younger demigods need all the training they can get—like at Camp—to survive out in the world. Also, given how unhealthy you’ve made this environment for your kid,” Percy casually hefted his bronze sword, making sure its sharpened blade glinted dangerously in the morning light, “I think we should take him off your hands for the foreseeable future.” 

 

Nico raised his hand in a clawed gesture as if he were lifting a heavy goblet. Following the steady movement, the very earth trembled, sending violent tremors up into Danny’s skull. In an instant, the Drs. Fenton found themselves stuck between twin cracked fissures, sinking, sinking, sinking—

 

“ STOP! ” Danny cried, scrambling out from behind the car and rushing forward, Jason close behind. “Don’t kill them!” 

 

Nico and Percy whipped around. With a scowl, Nico dropped his hand and the tremors stopped. He scoffed, “I wasn’t going to.” Then, noticing Danny’s troubled expression, “Honestly. They were still going to chase after us if we tried to leave, even without their weapons. They’ll be fine—they just need an excavation crew.”  

 

Danny’s shoulders untensed. “That’s…that’s good. I wouldn’t want my, uh, parents to die in a sinkhole, even if our relationship is kinda rocky right now . ”  

 

“Was that a pun?” Percy laughed at the same time Nico groaned.

 

The ghost hunters still struggled against their earthen confines, sharp words cutting worse than any blade that Danny had the displeasure of experiencing.

 

“We are parents to Daniel James Fenton,” the woman sneered, “not the ghost posing as him!”

 

“You killed our son, and we will never forgive you for that,” the man leveled, voice rougher than the upturned asphalt surrounding them. “The baby boy in the basket we brought into our home is gone, thanks to you, you monster. ”

 

Danny stumbled back, but Jason managed to keep him steady before he could fall. He nervously twisted the woven bracelet around his wrist, half hoping it’d spring to life as a shield that could block out the barbed comments falling from his parents’ (or was it just the Fentons’, now?) lips. 

 

A few blocks away, sirens wailed.

 

“We should probably get the Hades outta dodge,” Percy noted, wincing as he broke the thick tension. Danny still appreciated the distraction. “The authorities and demigods don’t mix too well. Anything you need to do before we go?”

 

Danny nodded, casting one last glance at the couple cursing his existence before turning away. “Y-yeah. One last thing.”

Notes:

Content warning for...

-Blood being spilling during a fight (not super graphic; it's like a fight scene in PJO)

-Jack and Maddie shooting ecto weapons at Danny, aiming to do much more than hurt

-Hellhound death by Stygian iron
---------------------------------
Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

I nearly called this chapter "Nico Pops Off" because he really doesn't hold back on his criticism of Jack and Maddie's treatment of Danny or their view on ghostly matters, lol. I didn't want to spoil the reveal of Jason, Nico, and Percy's arrival to help Danny, though. I was very much reminded of that one anecdote from Rick Riordan nearly calling "The Lightning Thief" book "The Son of Poseidon," or something like that, only to be called out by someone for saying that the name spoiled the big reveal of Percy's godly parent. Although, I can't be one to talk, considering that I nearly named this series after a big spoiler of my own, lol.

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 8: Danny Meets a Very Good Dog (For Realsies This Time!)

Summary:

Danny meets a very good dog and has a happy reunion.

Notes:

This chapter is more of the "Comfort" part of "Hurt/Comfort," but Danny still struggles. At least we have humor to cope!

Also!! We have now officially reached ten times the originally planned word count, which was 2,000 words. Over 2,000 of you guys have checked out this fic, too, making this work my second most popular fic ever! That is so unbelievably Wild to me. Thank you all so much!!! I am absolutely grinning ear-to-ear!

Warnings and spoilers are in the endnotes.

 

Danny didn’t trust himself to go to Fentonworks, not so soon.

 

Thankfully, he found everyone who mattered, finishing up a fight with an animalistic mish-mash of a ghost which promptly shrieked in terror at the sight of Nico, practically diving into Sam’s Fenton Thermos. She capped it and dashed over to give a dazed Jazz a hand up from where she was gripping the edge of an ecto-net that had trapped the ghost’s back paw. From a pile of nearby rubble, Tucker emerged, holding onto the other side of the net, eyes and veins lightly glowing in a mirage of blue.

 

Tucker brushed his hands together before letting out a half-crazed whoop. “Man, I am so plagued by the visions! Thank you, ominous wisdom-bomb!” 

 

“Okay, Tuck…” Sam drawled, confused. “Now that we’ve dealt with that cheryllopod ghost—”

 

“The voice in my head said it was a ‘serpopard—’ ”

 

“Yeah, yeah. Now that we’ve dealt with it, we can go find—”

 

“ Danny! ” Jazz cried, tripping over herself to reach him once she noticed his presence. 

 

With a beaming grin, Danny met her halfway, relishing the tight hug she scooped him in. He hugged her back twice as hard. After at least a solid minute, Jazz pulled away just enough to study his bruised and battered face, instinctively pulling her long sleeve over her palm to rub at a smudge of dirt on his cheek. Danny tried ducking away, but Jazz had long since mastered this song and dance.

 

“Little brother, ugh, hold still!” 

 

Not twenty-four hours ago, Danny would have done the exact opposite of what she said, but now her words gave him pause. Little brother?

 

When Danny froze in the middle of his escape attempts, Jazz noticed and dropped her hand. “Danny, what’s—”

 

“I…I’m still your little brother?” he rushed out, voice cracking. “But our— your parents said—”

 

Her gaze softened and she braced his shoulders, eyes shining with tears. “You will always be my little brother, Danny. Even when you’re old and grey, you still will be, no matter what anyone else says.”

 

Danny offered her a lopsided smile. “I guess it really is hard to get rid of me.” A thought suddenly crossed his mind. “Unrelated, but I thought you got knocked out last night? How are you standing? Shouldn’t you be in bed, resting? Oh, Ancients! Jazz, you need—”

 

“I’m fine,” she promised. “Mom and Dad gave me enough ambrosia that I can still feel the burn in my throat—it’s honestly kind of fascinating. I just snuck out in the morning to find you after they left to, uh, go on a manhunt. Then I ran into Sam and Tucker and helped them take down that ghost. When I can, I’ll lie down to rest my head—concussions are no joke, even with apparently magical aid.”

 

“You can say that again,” Jason added absentmindedly.

 

Jazz squeaked and pulled Danny behind her, despite him having proven time and time again that he was more than capable. “Who are you? ” she accused, fist curled, lying in wait to strike.

 

Jason took a step back. “Uh, hi? Aside from being a fellow oft sufferer of concussions”—Percy snorted behind Jason, snickering about bricks, of all things—“my name is Jason Grace. I’m here to help your brother get to Camp Half-Blood.”

 

Jazz relaxed her posture and let Danny move back, but still kept wary, studying Jason’s open stance intently. Percy and Nico flanked him on either side but stayed far enough away so as to not encroach and appear threatening. Sam and Tucker did the same on Jazz’s side. 

 

And in between them all, there stood Danny.

 

“Which one of you gave Danny the phone number?” she finally asked.

 

“That would be me,” Percy stepped forward with a wry grin. “Hi, I’m Percy Jackson.”

 

“Jazz,” she offered shortly before continuing sincerely, “Thank you for that. I can’t imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t done so.”

 

Percy shot her an awkward thumbs up and was about to say something before Nico marched forward, eyeing Jazz critically. 

 

“Can I help you…?” Jazz asked.

 

“I don’t sense any Underworld magic emanating from you. You and Danny are adoptive siblings, then?”

 

“But siblings all the same,” she agreed. “My parents are apparently a son of Hephaestus and a daughter of Athena, so I don’t know what that means for me. And Danny, well—”

 

“Some god or goddess dropped me on the Fentons’ doorstep as a baby and basically went ‘Protect my kid for a few years for me so you guys can be let back into the godly world!’”

 

Danny felt six pairs of eyes on him, shocked at his bluntness.

 

“I mean, I’m not wrong, am I?”

 

Jazz pinched her nose with a sigh. “Danny…”

 

Percy suddenly grimaced and shook his head. “Oh, that’s weird. ” 

 

“What’s weird?” Jazz asked, furrowing her brow.

 

“Sorry—random thought. Just, like, family tree stuff. My girlfriend is also a daughter of Athena, which makes you her niece.”

 

Jazz blinked in surprise, clearly not expecting that answer. From behind her, Sam huffed a short laugh. “That’s mythological family trees for you. How are you three related? You can call me Sam, by the way.”

 

“I’m Tucker,” Tucker offered, sounding a little distracted. 

 

“Well, Nico, Jason, and I”—he gestured at each of them in turn—“are technically cousins, on the godly side, of course. I say ‘technically,’ because godly genetics are weird, and thinking about it just makes my brain hurt.”

 

Sam studied them for a moment before pointing at each of them in turn. “Let me guess: sons of Hades, Zeus, and Poseidon?”

 

“Jupiter—his Roman form—for me, but close enough,” Jason said, surprised. “How did you guess?”

 

Sam shrugged. “Eh, vibes. I also read a lot of the darker myths a while back. I am well informed.”

 

“Okay, then?” Jason puzzled. “By the way, do you know why Tucker is rambling to himself and has glowing symbols falling from his mouth? Like, is that a thing he does, or…?”

 

Tucker snapped to attention at the sound of his name. “Someone here knows what the House of Life is. Don’t ask me how I know of that place, but the little voice in my head told me that one of you guys would know what that is. He won’t tell me himself because ‘glory in the pursuit of knowledge,’ or whatever.”

 

Percy sighed. “That would be me because of course it is. I’m not the best person to explain, but Egyptian magicians exist? That’s what Carter is, anyway—a magician in the House of Life. We fought against some Greco-Egyptian dude with his sister and my girlfriend.”

 

“Okay…?” Tucker noted faintly. 

 

“I guess I should probably go Iris Message Carter later, then,” Percy mused. He then turned to Sam. “You got any mythological going on? Because if you do, I might scream. I so do not want to deal with the possibility of another pantheon getting thrown in this mess and getting dragged into a triple doomsday from pantheons colliding.”

 

Sam shrugged, half-joking, “I mean, my dad has blond hair and blue eyes—he might have said something about being Norwegian on his side of the family. I’ll keep ya updated.”

 

Percy’s eye twitched and threw his hands in the air. “Okay, guys! Time to leave. Jazz, Tucker, Sam, it was nice meeting you, but I have been dragged into one too many prophecies to count and I really don’t want to tempt the Fates by staying here any longer.”   

 

Everyone laughed at his comment, despite his protests that he was being completely serious. Percy groaned, annoyed, and eventually pierced the air with an admittedly rather impressive New York taxi whistle. 

 

He then shouted, “Mrs. O’Leary, come!” 

 

For a moment, nothing happened. Danny didn’t know what he was expecting with a name like “Mrs. O’Leary,” but it was certainly not a second hellhound materializing out of the shadows next to Percy. 

 

“She’s friendly!” Percy tried to explain over everyone’s well-warranted shrieking. Nico and Jason were the only ones who seemed unbothered, Jason going as far as to facepalm while Nico distractedly petted her dark shaggy fur. “Just don’t mess with her, and you’ll be fine! Mrs. O’Leary, sit! ” 

 

Mrs. O’Leary sat down with enough force to shake the ground.

 

“Lie down!”

 

Mrs. O’Leary lay down with a soft boof, wagging her tail happily. Percy then ruffled her massive ears, grinning. “She’s a good girl, see?”

 

Jazz, Sam, Tucker, and Danny’s shrieks eventually died out, giving way to wary silence. Mrs. O’Leary then stood up and carefully padded over right in front of Danny, tilting her head curiously. Danny froze as she sniffed him up and down, worried that like most animals, she would ultimately find him repulsive, if not downright terrifying. Instead of snapping him up like a dog treat like he feared, Mrs. O’Leary pressed her wet nose against Danny’s chest and began snuffling her snout across his shirt, eventually down to his arm.

 

“What…what should I do?” Danny asked, somewhere between confusion and awe.

 

Percy stifled a laugh with his hand. “Pet her, duh. ”  

 

Danny nervously did as told, raising his hand up and scritching just under her chin, just like he often did with Cujo. Clearly, oversized puppies thought alike, since Mrs. O’Leary leaned into the touch and licked a giant stripe full of slobber up Danny’s front, boofing happily.

 

“Looks like Cujo has some competition,” Sam laughed.

 

“Cujo?” Percy asked.

 

“My unofficial-official pet dog,” Danny explained, now using both hands to pet Mrs. O’Leary, a genuine smile stretching across his face. “He comes and goes as he pleases, but sometimes he chases after me for the explicit purpose of knocking me over. With love, of course.”

 

“What type of dog is he?” Percy laughed. “Must be pretty big to knock a person over.”

 

“Oh, he’s a mix.”

 

“Of what?”

 

Danny thought for a moment as he continued petting Mrs. O’Leary. “Uh, we think he’s part rottweiler, mastiff—definitely something fluffy. Oh, and ghost!”

 

“Ghost?” Nico puzzled off to the side.

 

“Yeah, and he’s sometimes about the size of Mrs. O’Leary!” 

 

“‘Sometimes?’” Jason asked faintly. “What do you mean, ‘sometimes?’ ”

 

“It depends on his mood! He’s overall a very good boy, much like Mrs. O’Leary, who is a very good girl, yes you are!” Danny gave her a short hug as she snuffled against him again. 

 

Percy gave a short whistle and Mrs. O’Leary begrudgingly pulled away and padded back over, lying down at his side with an audible thump! However, she kept eyeing Danny as if waiting for the right moment to jump up and beg for more scritchies. 

 

“We should probably head out now,” Percy explained, hopping up on Mrs. O’Leary’s back. “If we wait any longer, we’re likely to get stopped by either mortals or magic-related. Knowing our luck, it’d be both.”

 

Jason and Nico hopped up on Mrs. O’Leary’s back behind Percy in that order. Nico then drawled, “I think you mean your luck, Percy, there is no ‘ours,’ here. I swear, Tyche hates your guts.”

 

Percy gestured at Jason and Nico in short order. “Repeated head trauma, assorted trauma. We’re all in this together, guys.”

 

“Jackson, I swear if you start singing that insipid Disney song—”

 

And the sons of some of the most powerful deities in Greek mythology began bickering like schoolchildren. Jason tried his best to mediate, only to get swept up in the playful argument, slowly accepting his fate. 

 

“I think I should probably go now,” Danny sighed, turning to his friends and sister. “Surprisingly, I’ve still got my supply bag, even after this wild morning!” He patted its secure location slung over his shoulder and hanging at his hip. “And, uh, I promise to try and not die more than I already have and somehow find a way for you guys to call me if there’s a ghost problem in Amity. Wait, maybe I should just go find a place to lay low here and just pop right out when a big bad comes a-knockin' and—”

 

“We’ll be fine, Danny,” Jazz promised. “Go to Camp.” 

 

“You’re the descendant of two Greek gods—couldn’t you just come with me? They’d have to let you in! Twice over, even!”

 

She smiled sadly. “Given all the stuff we learned about Mom and Dad’s past, I don’t really want to risk that quite yet. Maybe one day I can visit, but it’s not fair to risk your safety for my ease of mind.”

 

Danny bit his lip. “Sam, Tucker?”

 

“We’re not that hopeless,” Sam assured, “not even Bad Luck Tuck, here!”

 

“Hey!”

 

“We have ghost-busting training and also Fenton Thermoses,” she continued, nonplussed, “and if we really need help, we can contact the Far Frozen, or Princess Dorathea, or some other ally who owes you one—maybe Valerie. We’ll be fine. And besides, if becoming some kind of Egyptian magician comes along with Tucker’s new knowledge powers, we just might have a new ace up our sleeves.”

 

“And as a benefit of knowledge powers, I bet I’d have the foresight to call you if needed!” Tucker chimed in. “Oh, imagine how overpowered that’s going to be when playing Doomed… ”

 

“I’d still find a way to beat you into next week!” Sam shot back before sobering, “But seriously, Danny, we and Amity will be fine without you for a while. We’d just miss—ugh, this is getting too sappy for me. I can literally feel my goth soul shriveling up and being replaced by”—Sam gagged—“ sunshine. ”  

 

“You should probably get that checked out,” Danny joked lightly.

 

“See if I ever bear my heart to you guys again…”

 

“I’m kidding.”

 

“ Sigh, betrayed by a friend!” Sam gasped dramatically, “Never to recover and left to wallow in my sorrows—”

 

“—and write moody poetry while eating vegan ice cream?” Tucker jumped in.

 

Danny groaned playfully. “C’mon guys, I get it.”

 

“Yes, Tucker! For shame—”

 

Mrs. O’Leary howled, deep and low.

 

“Danny!” Jason called, “You coming?”

 

“Just a second!” Danny scooped Jazz, Sam, and Tucker in a big hug, his core already protesting the thought of being so far away from his haunt and the people he cared the most about. He chided it to settle down and released his dazed friends. If they were okay, then Danny would be okay. 

 

Danny then pulled away because he knew that the longer he stayed, the harder it would be to leave. Despite his ghost powers still being mostly out of commission, Danny managed a hop, skip, and a jump that felt lighter than what was likely possible for a regular human, eventually scrambling to the open spot on Mrs. O’Leary’s back between Nico and Jason.

 

“You’re new to shadow traveling,” Nico explained shortly, tying his new golden aviator jacket around his waist. He winced as he tied it too tight, making the pommel of his sword dig into his ribs before readjusting it. “It’s better for new travelers to be squished between two more experienced ones unless you’d rather fall off and be lost in the void.”

 

“I’m good,” Danny said faintly, jolting as Mrs. O’Leary stood up.

 

“Even those who are borne from shadow should be careful not to succumb to it.”

 

“Spooky…and, uh, very much noted.” 

 

“Hey, Jason!” Jazz suddenly called up.

 

Sounding wary, Jason responded, “Yeah?”

 

“Make sure my little brother doesn’t do anything stupid, will you?”

 

Jason laughed so hard, that he nearly fell off Mrs. O’Leary, clearly not expecting that response. “I make no promises, but I’ll try.”

 

Jazz nodded, satisfied. She then turned to look up at Danny. “I love you, little brother! Make good choices!”

 

Danny’s face burned. “ Jazz! You’re embarrassing me!”

 

“It’s a big sister’s job to lovingly tease her little brother!”

 

Danny buried his face in his hands, mumbling something back.

 

“What was that, little brother?”

 

He groaned and spoke up, “Love you too, Jazz. Can we please go now, guys? This is getting a bit too mushy, even for me.”

 

Everyone laughed as Percy guided Mrs. O’Leary in a turn to face the relatively open street, pawing the ground and preparing to run. Jason directed Danny to wrap his arms around his torso like one would do for horseback riding, which Danny was a little unsure about until Nico shortly reminded him of what would happen if he fell off. In lieu of a verbal response, Danny nearly crushed Jason in a bear hug, only to significantly loosen his grip when Jason wheezed. Behind Danny, Nico wrapped his arms around his torso, mumbling to himself about how best to stabilize Mrs. O’Leary’s journey through the shadows.

 

And then Mrs. O’Leary ran. 

 

Shadows melted around her with each step, forming an all-encompassing void of a tunnel. Danny felt as though his face was melting off from the swirling shadows ripping past at sonic speeds, tugging at his clothing and weaving through his hair. The void felt as frigid as when Danny used his ice powers, which were absolutely freezing —it made him shudder at the thought of how everyone else was fairing since his body was actually built for the deathly cold. 

 

After what felt like an eternity, yet somehow not at all, Mrs. O’Leary burst through the shadows’ icy grip with a tired boof, skidding to a halt at the base of a heavily forested hill. 

 

“Good girl, Mrs. O’Leary!” Percy praised. Danny could feel her tail wagging, but it seemed slower than before. Mrs. O’Leary then carefully loafed on the pine-needle-laden ground and Percy shouted, “Alright, everyone off! Mrs. O’Leary needs a break—two shadow travels in a day is a lot, even for her.”

 

Shadow travel really takes a lot of energy, then, Danny mused. Definitely a “last resort” kinda of thing like my Ghostly Wail…

  

“Danny, you getting off?” Jason asked, now apparently on the ground. Danny’s eyes widened and he scrambled off, nearly faceplanting in his hurry. “Whoa, there’s no need to rush! You alright?”

 

He gave a weak thumbs up, not trusting himself to speak. The last thing Danny wanted to do was annoy the people who helped him get out of a dangerous situation; it was one thing to riff and banter in the (relative) safety of his hometown, but out in the middle of nowhere? Yeah, no thanks.

 

“Let’s go,” Percy called. “Chiron’s already gonna be ticked that we took an unsanctioned trip out of camp, even if we were rescuing a prospective camper. The sooner we get back to Camp, the less dishwashing duty we should get. Hopefully.” He shivered at the thought.

 

Danny wondered why the son of Poseidon was so adverse to dishwashing duty, since wasn’t it a water thing? Poseidon was literally all about water things. Maybe the dishes were sentient and you had to fight them off, kind of like the possessed meals at the Fenton household?

 

Once Mrs. O’Leary was up to it, the four of them started the long trek up the hill—Half-Blood Hill, Percy noted at some point in his rambles about the basics of Camp Half-Blood. Danny appreciated the constant chatter since it helped him drown out the worried thoughts that plagued his mind. Namely, the idea of fitting in dozens of new kids his age—children of all-powerful deities—who would take one look at his bedraggled appearance and turn their noses up at the new kid. In his mind, he was already sorting the cabins Percy mentioned into the tiers they had back at Casper High.

 

Aphrodite and Apollo kids seemed to be generally popular or well-liked, so Danny put them towards the top of the list—A-listers, then. And as a general rule of thumb, if you’d gone on a quest (maybe like a heroic mission of sorts?) and succeeded, then you were regarded as a hero, and thus pretty much an A-lister in the godly world, Danny decided. 

 

With the Hermes cabin, it was less clear. If Danny didn’t get claimed as soon as he crossed the camp’s border (as per some kind of age thirteen claiming rule?), he’d be put in with the Hermes kids and other unclaimed kids. Danny promptly sorted the Hermes cabin as pretty chill, but regarded as bottom of the social ladder like Danny and his friends were at school. 

 

But even if Danny was claimed quickly (and wasn’t that a weird way to say that your godly parent knew of your existence) because he was already fourteen, there was no telling how his theoretical half-siblings would treat him after they learned about his ghostly abilities. That was, even if the magical border let him cross because he was so unbelievably messed up genetically speaking. Human, god, and ghost (that Nico claimed was just a strong connection to the Underworld, but Danny was still a little unsure about that one) . Even in the godly world, full of monsters and unfamiliar magic, Danny knew that anything associated with death was generally treated very not well.  

 

“...so I can practically hear you thinking from here, Danny.”

 

Danny blinked and fumbled, “Sorry, what was that, Jason? I kinda zoned out for, uh, a bit. ”

 

“It’s no issue,” Jason assured, pushing his foggy glasses further up his nose. “I actually wanted to ask about that—I noticed that you have a few hyperactive, but mostly inattentive tendencies. Have you been tested for ADHD at all?”

 

Danny narrowed his eyes. “Uh, not as far as I’m aware? I think Jazz might’ve mentioned getting both of us tested to our…um, parents, once or twice but they kinda shot the idea down. Jazz was and is really focused on school, so they didn’t see a point. And I just didn’t like school and was labeled as ‘not so bright,’ so they basically chalked it up to laziness. It’s whatever.” Danny shrugged and pointedly looked anywhere but directly at Jason, fiddling with his woven bracelet.

 

“They’re demigods themselves, so they should have—actually, I’ll deal with that later. ” Jason gritted his teeth and cursed under his breath before calming himself with a deep breath. “ADHD helps demigods take in multiple stimuli at once during battle, so it makes it harder to get one-shot by a random monster.” Danny huffed a laugh at Jason’s description. “If you have ADHD, the activities offered at Camp will help you better utilize the abilities you naturally have, and I’m not talking about the magical kind. It’s just…it’s good to be around people whose brains work similarly to your own, you know?”

 

Danny pursed his lips. “I…wouldn’t really know.”

 

Jason hummed in thought before lighting up with an idea. Quite literally, since Danny noticed a few sparks curl off from the tips of his ears. Jason fell back a few steps next to Nico and stage whispered dramatically, “You know, I went to the doctor’s the other day and they told me I had HDs.”

 

Nico rolled his eyes and added, “I don’t know what those are, but…”

 

“...they said I have eighty of them!” Percy finished, clearly trying to stifle a snicker. However, he quickly broke down into bubbly laughter, sweeping everyone—including the often stoic Nico—in a wave of infectious joy. Even Mrs. O’Leary boofed happily, whether she understood the joke or not. 

 

Danny laughed at the absurdity of it all. Eighty HDs. ADHD.

 

Jason jumped back in step with Danny and lightly bumped his shoulder, “It feels good, huh?”

 

“Don’t encourage the dad jokes, Danny,” Nico warned, though his eyes glinted with mirth, “it only makes him grow stronger.”

 

Jason gasped dramatically as he passed Danny, “How could you say that! I simply remembered that Danny liked jokes, so I let him in on only our most sacred one! The Hermes kids work really hard to keep their internet reference logs up to date—it’d be a shame if we let their hard work go to waste.”

 

Nico groaned, but it wasn’t out of annoyance as Danny might have once believed, but rather played up for the bit. Danny could appreciate “yes, and-ing” for the sake of a joke.

 

“Why do you guys have an ‘internet reference log?’” Danny asked. “Can’t you just, I dunno, google stuff?”

 

“Technology and demigods don’t really mix,” Percy called over his shoulder, “since it kinda attracts monsters, sorta like putting up a neon sign that says, ‘Hey, look! Tasty demigod over here! We smell like Mickey D’s!’”

 

Danny frowned. “I don’t get how I was able to grow up surrounded by and using technology, then. Fentonworks even has its own lab full of original tech! I have a phone, or at least I had one before getting chased out of Sam’s house—I play Doomed all the time on the computer!”

 

“I dunno, man. I’m not really the person to ask, but I’d bet that the Hecate, Athena, or Hephaestus kids would know more about the finer details concerning technology and demigodishness. I mean, my girlfriend, Annabeth, once had a laptop from Daedalus”—Mrs. O’Leary perked up at the name—“that worked just fine for demigods and didn’t attract monsters, but I think that was kind of an exception to the rule.”

 

“Amity Park is an exception to a lot of rules,” Danny reasoned, “like gravity sometimes, palette-swapped weather when ghosts get worked up, extra-dimensional portals…lots of things. Maybe technology around demigods is one of them?”

 

Percy shook his head. “Your hometown is weird, man.”

 

“Thanks!” Danny chirped. “I think?”

 

“What it is,” Nico groaned, “is a lot of paperwork for the Underworld. My father already has enough to deal with as is—I really don’t want to be the one to break the news about Amity Park to him about all these wild ghostly shenanigans.”

 

“Why would you have to tell him?” Danny asked. “The ghosts stick to Amity. Most of the time. They just need to be guided back to the Ghost Zone so they don’t bother any humans.”

 

Nico matched pace with Danny. “Uh, I’m literally the prince of the Underworld? I’m legally obligated to inform my father, the king. ”

 

“I can go with you,” Danny offered. “Amity’s my haunt and I’ve had to deal with ghostly politics before—there was this whole thing with a guy called Pariah Dark—it was a real doozy, let me tell ya!”

 

Nico shook his head with a huff of laughter. “Only someone who has a death wish would casually volunteer to venture to Hades. You’re nuts, Danny.” 

 

“So I’ve been told,” Danny shrugged. “I just don’t want the ghosts of Amity to be punished unfairly—some of them genuinely don’t know what they’re doing is hurting others, even though some ghosts go too far on purpose.”

 

“Death isn’t fair, ” Nico cemented. “ I know that all too well… ”

 

“So do I,” Danny agreed solemnly, “A life is a life, is a life. Knowing this comes with the territory of being a hero, especially one like me. Life is precious, even if a ghost isn’t ‘alive’ in the traditional sense—most I meet still think and feel; and have ambitions and goals. Ghosts should be treated with respect—even when they forget themselves—and be guided to where they need to be, wherever that is.”

 

Nico was quiet for a moment. “You make some valid points, Danny. You’re…not as dense as I once thought.”

 

Danny rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks. Since I’m halfway between life and death, I just sorta figured that I should learn about the latter.”

 

“You two playing nice back there?” Percy teased. “No death threats?”

 

“That’d only half-work on me!” Danny shot back as Nico groaned, mumbling something about insufferable puns. 

“Good,” Percy said, slowing to a stop and turning around to face them, “because we’re finally here.” He threw out his arm and gestured wide. “Danny Fenton, welcome to Camp Half-Blood. ”

Notes:

Content warning for...

-Danny-typical self-deprecation
-------------------------------
Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

So...there might be a *slight* issue: my hamartia is apparently hubris. I thought I could finish writing the end of the fic before I finished posting what chapters I had completed, but as it turns out, that was *not* the case. I also spent the past three hours doing yard work in the hot sun which is totally oh-so-very Fine and Dandy (I need to drink some water, oof). (That's a lie. I feel exhausted. I need to drink more water than just "some.")

You all can rest assured that I am working very hard to finish writing the ending (idk, maybe 2-4 more chapters left?). I'm pretty sure we're in the final stretch, but one can never be completely certain when one's plot structure is vague and also in one's head. I refuse to leave this work unfinished just because I can't think of the right way to word the ending.

TL;DR I may not be posting tomorrow or a few days after that due to my hubris.

Thank you all so much for reading! Your lovely comments honestly make my day and inspire me to keep writing!

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 9: Danny Doesn’t Want to Do the Hokey-Pokey (Camp Half-Blood Edition)

Summary:

Danny stresses about being accepted into Camp, among other things.

Notes:

Ooh!! This is a Fun one! (There are a few fun tangents and lore things that were fun to write.)

Warnings and spoilers are in the endnotes.

If you asked Danny to describe the entrance to a camp built for the descendants of Greek gods, he’d probably spitball something about cheesy handpainted signs with caricatures of said gods. But cut him some slack—the last time he’d been to a camp somewhat similar to this was Camp Skull and Crossbones, which was more than a little eerie and more than a little “campy.” So when he saw the massive copper dragon guarding a fluffy gold thing hanging on a tree branch at the camp’s entrance, Danny was more than a little freaked out.

 

That was until Percy turned to call out, “Hi, Peleus! Just passing through with a new camper.”

 

Peleus hissed and curled closer around a giant pine tree, flaring great golden wings. 

 

“C’mon, man,” Percy protested, “I know we snuck out, but you know us! Plus, Danny’s a friendly! He’s a good kid—” he paused as if finally realizing that arguing with a dragon didn’t make sense. “Actually, you know what? I’ll sneak you some brisket from the dining pavilion.”

 

Peleus perked up but still huffed a puff of smoke.

 

“ The good kind, ” Percy promised. Peleus grumbled but now didn’t appear so openly hostile, leaving them a clearer path into Camp. Mrs. O’Leary also prodded Percy from the back with a whine, making him absentmindedly pet her snout. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you some, too. You’ve earned it, girl.”

 

Mrs. O’Leary licked her slobbery tongue over Percy’s unruly head of hair, resulting in a look that was at least twice as unruly as before and significantly more drooly. As he groaned, Mrs. O’Leary chuffed happily and everyone snickered at the sight. With a wrinkled nose, Percy flicked his hand to summon the liquid away from his body, letting it drop it on the forest floor with a wet splat! 

 

Danny winced in sympathy. He knew from being buddies with Cujo that the effects of giant dog slobber didn’t go away so easily—even if you went intangible or water-bended the slobber away like Percy did, that bonafide dog-breath stink still remained. Honestly, your only options really were to accept your fate or find a shower and clean clothes pronto. Given that Danny didn’t see a shower miraculously pop up in the middle of nowhere, he figured that Percy was resigned to the first option (and also Danny himself was, considering that Mrs. O’Leary loved to share her love). 

 

Danny then frowned, a weird thought crossing his mind. “Hey, Percy? Why do you control spit?”

 

Percy blinked. “Excuse me?”

 

Danny put his hands up defensively. “Sorry—just scientific and semantic things. Your dad is the god of the sea, right?”

 

“Right…?”

 

“So shouldn’t you just be able to control sea—or I guess, salt—water? It’s, like, thirty-something grams of salt per liter and I know the regular human body is 60% water and has at least some salt in it, so it’s probably similar in dogs, but I don’t think saliva has that much salt in it. Like, saliva is just filtered blood—”

 

“ What? ” Percy looked alarmed.

 

“—So I was just wondering about the extent of your powers,” Danny continued to ramble. “Are they super picky about the amount of salinity in a liquid or does liquid just need to have a little bit of sodium in it or—”

 

“Whoa, man! Back up just a sec,” Percy exclaimed. “ Saliva is filtered blood? ”

 

“I mean, yeah. But if you want to get more technical—”

 

“No, thanks. But to answer your question, I can just control all liquids, I guess? I just don’t do liquids inside someone’s body. It’s…not pretty.” Percy frowned as if lost in a memory. Then he looked curiously at Danny. “How did you know all that?”

 

“Studying my own weird biology,” Danny shrugged. “My friends and I thought it’d be a good idea to figure out how fast my electrolytes depleted when I exert a lot of energy as Phantom. I did a lot of research about salt and replenishing electrolytes in the human body and basically crossed my fingers that too much salt wouldn’t dehydrate my ghost form via some weird osmosis because of my theories about ectoplasm is slimy, like slugs, and also the whole ‘stopping spirits with salt circles’ thing. Turns out that the same amount of salt consumption that would hurt a human just kinda makes my Phantom side lethargic, although that could just be regular-old dehydration…”

 

“You…experimented on yourself?” Nico puzzled. 

 

Danny made a so-so gesture. “Nah, not really. Just…trying out different amounts of Gatorade and ecto-popsicles after long stretches of ghosting around. Seeing what works and everything.”

 

“And yet the Fentons still had the nerve to call you ‘not-so-bright?’” Jason mumbled under his breath, “They should’ve known better…”

 

Danny got the sense that he wasn’t supposed to hear that comment, but he still replied all the same, “I mean, yeah? My grades are kinda abysmal, dude.”

 

Jason pursed his lips. “Demigods often need extra help and resources to learn in a school environment—our brains aren’t wired for a sedentary lifestyle like that. Sometimes kids with ADHD or dyslexia don’t look smart on paper, yet are brilliant in a more stimulating environment, often of their own design. You are smart, Danny.”

 

Danny looked away, not really sure how to respond.

 

“C’mon, kid,” Jason then said gently, “let’s get you into Camp. You can get cleaned up and you can get a nap in before lunchtime—you look like you need it.”

 

Danny nodded, lips pressed thin. 

 

Percy and Mrs. O’Leary crossed the border first, making it ripple like a faintly mirrored film. They were shortly followed by Nico who turned to give Danny an inquisitive glance, simply studying him. Jason lightly pressed his palm to Danny’s shoulder, guiding him forward with the grounding gesture. Danny still dug his heels into the earth anyway. 

 

“Why are you nervous?” Jason asked.

 

Danny bit his lip, catching Peleus’ sleepy yet watchful eye. He’d been worried about this part of their journey since he’d heard of it. “Um, when Percy was rambling about Camp stuff on the way up here, he mentioned that only people with godly blood could pass through the border. Anyone else has to be explicitly invited in, like, um, a m… ” Danny mumbled the last part, quiet enough that hopefully Jason wouldn’t question it.

 

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that last bit. Can you please repeat it?”

 

Danny stared at a far-off point in the distance. If he focused, he could catch a whiff of strawberries on the warm summer breeze, maybe the faint peal of laughter and weapons clashing from happy campers. 

 

The baby boy in the basket we brought into our home is gone, thanks to you, you—

 

“ ...monster. ” 

 

“You’re not a monster, Danny,” Jason said firmly.

 

“But my par— the Fentons said—”

 

“Given all that I’ve heard and seen of them,” Jason cut in, “I don’t think it’d be wise to take their word on this, or much of anything, for that matter. You’ll pass through the border. And even if you can’t, we’ll invite you in—you’re a good kid if nothing else. A good kid who needs somewhere safe to stay.” He stepped over the border, the same faint mirror-like sheen from before rippling behind him. 

 

And then…Jason extended his hand for Danny to take.

 

Danny glanced over his shoulder to the sparse trees that they’d passed up the hill. It would be so easy to just run and never look back, maybe even all the way back to Amity or to a random naturally spawned portal to the Ghost Zone. If neither of those, he could make a new life for himself in some random city on the East Coast. Maybe Boston? Although being homeless in a dense city like Boston would kinda suck…

 

But Danny was a hero. He knew how to be brave for the sake of others, even when all hope seemed lost. Now, it was time to be brave for himself.

 

Danny clasped Jason’s hand, half expecting to hit a wall akin to a ghost shield, only to be mildly surprised when he felt a burst of reinvigorating energy tickle his face as he was pulled through. If he had to describe it, he would say that it felt like light sudsy bubbles gently popping across his skin. And deep in his core, Danny knew that if he were to transform, the sensation wouldn’t feel much different. 

 

Danny was accepted as he was, and that was enough. 

 

Danny was enough.

 

“You are a good kid, Danny,” Jason said as Danny took in the sight below of fields upon fields of strawberries and campers going about their day. “And you wouldn’t have been able to cross the border if you didn’t have at least a little godly blood in you. You are not a monster.”

 

Danny bit his tongue. He felt like now wouldn’t be a good time to bring up what he knew about the Pegasus constellation and the myth that went with it—he had paid a lot of attention in Mr. Lancer’s classical literature class when constellations came up. Danny couldn’t be more grateful for that, given how Greek myth was very much prevalent in his current life. Anyways, Pegasus was the child of Medusa and Poseidon, a god. 

 

Wait, did that mean Percy’s half-brother was a winged horse? Never mind, moving on. 

 

What many people forgot is that for all the good Pegasus did, he had a twin brother named Chrysaor, a monstrous winged pig hellbent on destroying everything in his path. 

 

Monsters could still come from godly blood.

 

As Danny was led deeper into camp, he could only hope that he was more like Pegasus, not Chrysaor. 

 

“—So we need to get you a copy of the Camp Half-Blood Confidential, Danny,” Percy noted suddenly, shaking Danny out of his swirling thoughts.

 

“Uh, okay?”

 

“No!” Nico protested, “If I had to suffer through the orientation film with Apollo’s questionable video design, then he has to, too.”

 

“You just want Danny to watch this supposed Hokey-Pokey parody about the purpose of Camp’s border,” Percy teased. “I still don’t think it’s real—”  

 

Nico dragged his hands down his face. “It is, too! I sang it in front of my boyfriend, ” he stressed. “It was mortifying. ”

 

“Will will still love you no matter what you do, man,” Percy patted Nico’s back placatingly, making him try to bite the offending hand. Percy pulled away just in time. “Geez! I was just gonna say that good partners don’t leave just because of bad singing. I mean, Annabeth just rolled her eyes when I sang Part of Your World as off-key as possible.”

 

Nico grumbled, crossing his arms. 

 

All while they bickered—Danny couldn’t help but draw connections between their relationship to his and Jazz’s—he couldn’t help but notice the strange looks everyone was giving them as they passed by the strawberry fields. Danny got the sense that it wasn’t because of Mrs. O’Leary since no one looked particularly scared. In awe, maybe, but definitely not scared. 

 

Danny lightly tapped Jason’s shoulder to get his attention. “Why’s everyone staring at us?” he hissed. 

 

“Well,” Jason hummed thoughtfully, “no one’s really supposed to leave Camp without permission, and we did that twice in about a week without getting ripped apart by the cleaning harpies. It’s going to be a real mark on our records…”

 

Danny paled, swearing lowly. “Then you shouldn’t have gone to get me! I would’ve been fine. You guys are gonna get in trouble and—”

 

“We will be fine , Danny,” Jason asserted. “Getting you out of Amity Park was the most important thing. If Chiron had a problem with saving a potential camper out of a bad situation—which I’m sure he doesn’t—Percy, Nico, and I have done more than enough in the past to make up for leaving Camp with little warning.”

 

Danny worried his lip between his teeth. Yeah, sure, that was great for them, but what about Danny? He was likely going to be ostracized as the new kid from the get-go and taint whatever good reputation these guys had before meeting Danny. And Percy had mentioned cabins where all the kids of each respective deity lived, too! Danny was going to make their half-siblings, their close family, despise them by association. 

 

“You know,” Danny started, trying to psych himself up, “you can just direct me to where I need to sign in, or whatever. The less time you guys are seen around me, the better. I don’t want to make your guys’ cabin mates treat you bad for helping out the weirdo new kid—”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

Danny stared at Jason blankly. “You’re kidding me, right? Everyone who’s anyone knows that associating with the new kid is a social no-no. Back at Casper High, the new guy is always fresh meat, bonus points if they’re coming in with the built-in ‘weird kid’ label or immediately drawing attention to themselves. I’m doing both of those things.”

 

Jason looked at him with an expression teetering between sadness and understanding. “Well, you don’t need to worry about our cabin mates treating us poorly since mine and Nico’s sisters aren’t here half the time. Thalia, my sister, leads the Hunters of Artemis, and Hazel, Nico’s sister, is off helping to rebuild Camp Half-Blood’s sister camp, Camp Jupiter. And even if they were here all the time, there’s not much you could do to make them hate you. But if I’m being completely honest, if you had a bad vibe, they’d just kick your butt.”

 

Danny huffed a laugh at that. “Same with mine.”

 

“And if it helps, I know what it’s like to feel like an outcast. I went into the literal outcast cohort of the Twelfth Legion back at Camp Jupiter—everyone hated the Fifth, but we all worked together to build ourselves up and support each other. No one was left behind. You won’t be left behind either, I assure you.”

 

“Thanks, man,” Danny said sincerely. “But I am a little curious. If there are two whole camps of gods’ descendants, why do you three have so few siblings?”

 

“Oh, we weren’t meant to be born.”

 

Danny didn’t get a chance to voice his confusion as a horse-man-hybrid guy—a centaur, Danny distantly noted—galloped up to their little quartet. An expression equal parts fury and worry marred his kind yet wrinkled face. 

 

“And just where have you three been?” His tone made Danny gulp. It was that kind of level-toned irritation that meant you had messed up, bad. “First, two distress messages from a potential camper that somehow didn’t go through until this morning, sending the satyrs into a tizzy. Then I find chicken-scratch on a blue post-it note”—Percy laughed nervously—“that said you three were ‘out.’ Do you have any idea how much stress and worry you have caused?”

 

Percy patted Mrs. O’Leary’s side and pointed to some training arena off in the distance near the woods with a short whistle. She woofed sadly but followed his command and started bounding away, scattering campers in her wake. 

 

“Sorry, Chiron,” Percy offered sheepishly, “but at least you can call off the search, now?”

 

“And why is that, my boy?” Chiron sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

 

Percy and Nico stepped aside as Jason guided Danny forward. “From Amity Park, Illinois, meet Danny Fenton.”

 

Danny hiked up his shoulders and gave a nervous wave.

 

“Wait, do you still want to use that last name? I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking…”

 

Danny shrugged, throat too dry to respond verbally. He was also more concerned with Chiron’s reaction, given that pure unadulterated shock colored his face.

 

“ ‘Fenton?’ ” Chiron replied hoarsely. In any other instance, describing a centaur’s voice as “hoarse” would have made Danny at least snicker, but as it stood, he feared getting trampled.

 

Danny forced himself to ignore his apprehensions. “That’s…that’s me?” 

 

Chiron studied him curiously as the nearby campers tried and failed to act disinterested, whispering not-so-discreetly at their mentor’s actions. “Any relation to a Jack Fenton? Son of Hephaestus?”

 

Danny waited for the campers’ flurry of surprised whispers to die down before responding. “He’s, uh, my…well. He and his wife, Maddie, or Madeline, I guess? She’s a daughter of Athena, anyway. They, um, effectively disowned me. Turns out I’m adopted, with no relation to either of them, too. I got the ‘You’re a demigod! Yay…’ spiel already.”

 

Chiron looked pained. “I…see.”

 

“You knew them, then?”

 

The old centaur seemed to age several years before him, lost in memory. “I thought I did—I trained them, once upon a time. I’m so sorry, my boy.” 

 

His apologetic tone wedged a dagger deep in Danny’s heart. He found it hard to breathe but managed to say, “I have a sister, too. Jazz. She’s their biological daughter.”

 

Chiron nodded solemnly and lowered his tone so the nearby campers wouldn’t hear. “I never knew of you nor your sister’s existence; simply that the Fentons were banished from the godly world and given a punishment for the misdeeds they committed. Perhaps young Jazz shall find a place here of her own, yet.”

 

Danny offered a genuine smile to the wise old centaur. “I’d like that very much.” 

 

Chiron inclined his head before turning to Jason, Percy, and Nico who all very much looked like they would rather not be at the center of Chiron’s direct attention. “Don’t think I haven’t forgotten about you three.”

 

Percy began to protest, only to click his jaw shut when Chiron stamped a powerful hoof down. 

 

“While I appreciate the swift rescue of young Danny, here, I do not appreciate your sneaking out. The rules are in place to keep you safe. And while I am fully well aware of your accomplishments during quests and wartime”—Danny balked at the mention—“that still does not excuse your blatant disregard for the rules. Be glad that Mr. D was called to Olympus a few days ago for a meeting, as I am more than sure that his punishment would not be as nearly lenient as mine.”

 

Once he was done speaking, Jason, Percy, and Nico chorused, “ Yes, Chiron .”

 

Chiron nodded, satisfied. “That was the first part of your punishment—an example to campers that not even great heroes are exempt from being ‘called out’ by their mentor.” He raised his voice for the last half of that sentence, making sure that any eavesdropping campers were well aware of his words. 

 

“And the second part?” Jason prompted, blue eyes turned steely. 

 

Everyone held their breath. 

 

“And the second part,” Chiron continued, “is showing Danny where he’ll be staying for the foreseeable future.”

 

Everyone let out an exhale of relief. 

 

“And you will also have dishwashing duty after breakfast for the next month.”

 

Percy, Jason, and Nico let out groans of various degrees of disgust. 

 

Danny wondered what specifically about breakfast was so bad until he heard Nico grumbling and cursing about ungodly amounts of sticky syrup on plates along with the horrible texture of warm yogurt needing to be scraped into the trash. 

 

Danny winced in sympathy before shaking his head and setting his jaw. He would be forever grateful for these guys’ help—it wouldn’t be completely fair for them to get the short end of the stick for rescuing him. 

 

“What if I were to help?” Danny suggested. “I know they broke the rules, but without them, I’d likely be bleeding out on the asphalt from my parents’ weapons or in the process of being digested by a hellhound that had somehow managed to kill and dress itself in the Nemean Lion’s pelt.”

 

Chiron’s eyes widened at Danny’s story and he turned to Percy, Jason, and Nico. “Is this true?”

 

Jason stepped forward and said, “Yes, Chiron. But Danny, you don’t—”

 

“Need to help you guys with the punishment? Yeah, right, like I’m going to leave you guys high and dry!” Danny cut in. “Enforcing the rules is important for ensuring the wellbeing of other campers, I agree, but so is rescuing potential ones, like me. Even if I can’t decrease the length of the punishment, can I at least suggest a slight change?”

 

“What were you thinking of?” Chiron considered. 

 

Danny quickly turned to the trio. “What’s the easiest meal to clean up after?”

 

“Lunch,” Percy said without thinking, “hands down. It’s not usually super messy, but Danny, you don’t have to—”

 

Danny ignored him. “If I help them, can you change the time to dishwashing duty after lunch, please?” Danny thought for a moment before tacking on a “sir,” just to sound more official. 

 

“My campers need not call me ‘sir,’” Chiron replied gently. “You are very selfless, Danny. Not many would willingly take on punishment for the sake of others.”

 

Danny’s face burned at the compliment, nodding his thanks. “I’m just doing what’s right.”

 

“My point still stands. You’d make a fine hero, indeed.”

 

“Do we have a deal?” Danny pressed, pushing his luck with a gulp. 

 

Chiron nodded with a smile. “Your terms sound fair—I do admit that the addition of the punishment being imposed after breakfast time was a bit excessive. The younger campers most certainly love their Log Cabin syrup…”

 

A young camper in the distance let out an indignant cry about being lied to about having real maple syrup. 

 

Chiron leaned down and whispered conspiratorially, “If we didn’t use Log Cabin, then we’d be out several thousand dollars for the sake of maple syrup due to younger campers and Percy’s”—Percy huffed—“love for the condiment.” Chiron then stretched back up to his full height and noted, “Now if you’ll excuse me, I do believe I must console some young campers about their favorite breakfast topping.”

 

Once Chiron trotted away, the nearby campers resumed their activities, albeit with a few more whispers than what was probably usual. 

 

Percy suddenly clapped Danny on the back, grinning ear to ear. “Dude, that was amazing! Like, we still have dish duty, which kinda sucks, but you got Chiron to change his mind even though he was doing his whole ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ mentor thing!”

 

“What I’m sure Percy meant to say was ‘thank you,’” Jason surmised. “We appreciate it, but you really didn’t need to do that.”

 

“Yeah! Thanks, man. Seriously. Breakfast clean-up sucks worse than Charybdis, yuck. ”

 

Danny didn’t know who or what a “Charybdis” was but offered an awkward thumbs up anyway. 

 

Nico even mumbled his thanks. “You know you don’t need to ‘pay us back’ for saving your hide, or whatever, right?”

 

Danny nodded. He had to admit the thought had crossed his mind, but he was genuinely doing this because he thought it’d be an unjust punishment otherwise. 

 

“Good,” Nico said as his eyes flicked to where Percy was bantering with Jason. “I learned the hard way not to dwell on things better left to the past.”

 

“Definitely noted,” Danny laughed. 

 

Slowly, he found himself not caring so much about what others might be saying about him. If he had—dare he say it— friends like Percy, Jason, and Nico in his corner, maybe surviving Camp Half-Blood wouldn’t be so bad. They were nice. And that was…nice.  

 

Then a pained howl pierced the air, halting all camp activities in its wake. The world turned deathly quiet, fueled by all-encompassing fear. 

 

Another howl erupted into existence, and Percy’s eyes widened. “ Mrs. O’Leary, ” he realized with a shaky whisper. He tore off running before anyone could stop him.

 

“He’s heading towards the woods,” Jason cursed. “We need to—whoa, Nico! Danny! Are you alright?”

 

Nico stumbled, barely catching himself and muttering about being suddenly dizzy. Danny fully doubled over, vision going hazy as a harsh chill ran up his spine, ending in a heavy plume of blue mist exiting from his mouth that frosted the nearby strawberry plants. While Nico easily recovered with a few heavy breaths laced with twisting black and blue smoke, Danny still trembled, overwhelmed by the powerful presence in the distance where Percy ran off to.

 

Danny forced himself to stand, accidentally phasing through Jason’s outstretched hand meant to help him stand. Gritting his teeth, Danny ignored Jason and Nico’s concerned shouts as he slipped away with swift strides—like a ghost on the wind—despite his human form. His very mortal heart protested as he detected the disturbance in the air, honing in on the staggering sensation. 

 

Danny could sense the oncoming storm—he only knew he had to find its origin before it was too late. 

 

Death was imminent.

Notes:

Content warning for...

-Danny-typical self-deprecation

-Mentions of Jack and Maddie not being as good of parents as they could have been

-Referencing a hurt dog at the end of the chapter
------------------------------
Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

This chapter was...certainly a chapter! As I said in the Q&A companion fic to this series, I feel like my brain is doing the equivalent of Kermit the Frog shaking his limbs wildly and screeching. I had most of chapter nine ready to go, but it was just the ending that gave me Many Issues.

As of posting chapter nine, I have two sentences and a dream for chapter ten. This Is Fine. (The next few chapters will take longer to write than this one, as I have absolutely None Ideas for how to convey the things I want to convey.)

I am also going to be updating some of the tags soon to help with AO3 filtering, which unfortunately means that we're going to lose some of the silly ones. (In case anyone is worried, THERE WILL BE NO MAIN CHARACTER DEATH IN THIS FIC. THERE WILL BE NO OLD YELLER.)

Slight tangent to distract from the chaos of this chapter: I am in my every-once-in-a-while Pokémon phase. A friend asked me what Pokémon would be Nico's favorite/on his team, and I feel like Phantump or Mimikyu would be on his team/his favorites. I told my friend about the lore for each of them and was told that both choices were Very Very Sad (but fitting) for Nico. (Poor kid has been through So Much.) I can't think of any Pokémon for him that aren't ghost or dark type, though.

I hope that you enjoyed the chapter!

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 10: Danny Does Some Soul-Searching

Summary:

Danny finds something unexpected in the woods (fortunately, it is *not* a reenactment of "Old Yeller").

Notes:

I've never written a "song-fic" before, but Danny does heavily quote stuff from "Warrior of the Mind" from EPIC: The Musical, lol. I just got really inspired by this musical (which I definitely recommend checking out YouTube!) in the middle of some HEAVY writer's block. I really enjoy classical-literature-inspired things if you couldn't tell!

Warnings and spoilers are in the endnotes.

The world seemed to blur with each step Danny took, skating the edge between soaring and sprinting. Every breath seemed inconsequential yet so desperately needed, a paradox by design, much like Danny himself. 

 

All around him, shouts of surprise morphed into murmuring whispers caught in the dark branches of the trees. Because that’s where Danny apparently was, now. A forest that felt much too alive for comfort pressed in from all sides as he slowed to a stop. Shivering at that uncomfortable sensation, Danny tried to gather his thoughts. The powerful presence that tugged on his very being like a dinghy pulled down by anchor meant for a warship was terrifying, sure, but strangely comforting. Honestly, it gave off the same vibes as his basket-turned turned shield-bracelet thing. 

 

Like a homing beacon, Danny tried to focus on that feeling. That turned out to be unnecessary, given the next pained howl that filled the air, kicking Danny into full awareness. 

 

Please don’t let me be too late, Danny prayed. 

 

As he ran towards the increasingly more desperate cries, the trickling ripples of a nearby creek flooded Danny’s eardrums with their deceiving calm. On the banks of said creek, swirls of golden dust painted the slick rocks and the edge of a leaf-shaped sword threatening to teeter into the swishing water. That same gold dust floated gently through beams of soft afternoon light, permeating the air with the thick scent of death. Some monsters had perished recently. 

 

And there in the middle of the clearing, lay a wounded Mrs. O’Leary with glittery gold-splattered paws and a gashed side being held together by a gentle stream of water controlled by none other than Percy Jackson. 

 

As Percy sobbed and cursed, Mrs. O’Leary gently leaned her head against his, weakly nuzzling him. She was trying to stay strong for Percy’s sake, but she was fading. Fast. 

 

Danny could feel the looming threat ripple through his very being, no intangibility required. 

 

He set his jaw and flew to Mrs. O'Leary's side, startling Percy so bad, that Danny was nearly swept off his feet with a reflexive snake of water. Danny stumbled but quickly regained his balance. 

 

“Her back paw is stuck in that godsdamned trap,” Percy managed, once he realized it was just Danny. “I…I couldn’t pry it open with my sword—it just kept clamping down tighter when I tried to wiggle it free! I'm just trying to stabilize her and clean her wounds now…”

 

Sure enough, when Danny peered around Mrs. O’Leary’s motionless tail, her back paw twisted at a weird angle in a bronze and steel toothy clamp vaguely reminiscent of a bear trap. A shimmering bronze chain anchored it to seemingly nothing, yet the chain only appeared to flicker and pull more taut each time Mrs. O’Leary minutely moved. 

 

Danny rushed over to the trap in an instant, first trying to turn it intangible, only to be met with a burning resistance. The sensation reminded him of trying to touch a mug that’d just come out of the microwave after several minutes—doable, but very painful. He didn’t want to risk turning her leg intangible either, given how easily she melted into the shadows when she shadow traveled earlier. Who knew what would happen if Danny forced something similar in her weakened state? He couldn’t risk it. 

 

That’s why he focused his attention on the trap. Danny was decently familiar with a lot of technology—he had to be as a half-ghost surrounded by anti-ghost tech. He innately knew the construction of Fenton Thermoses. He figured out how to declaw the toaster when it became semi-sentient. And he especially knew how to take apart said tech to remove the more dangerous parts.  

 

He could do this. 

 

Forcing himself to keep calm, Danny instructed Percy to pry open the trap with his sword to give Danny more leverage while unscrewing the surprisingly non-magical metal screws. 

 

“If I stop holding her side closed, she’s gonna bleed out and die—”

 

“Not on my watch,” Danny promised as a frigid gust whipped through his hair, “Mrs. O’Leary is…under my protection.”

 

Percy nodded solemnly and let the stream of water fall. Mrs. O’Leary whimpered in pain but was quick to nose him toward the trap once he’d grabbed his sword. He quickly rubbed his eyes and hefted his gleaming blade. “Where should I wedge it?”

 

Danny swiftly studied the trap and guided the blade into a looser part of the clamp. “When I tell you to, press down on your sword hilt with everything you got.”

 

“What are you going to do?”

 

Danny half-grinned. “Probably something stupid.”

 

Before Percy could respond, Danny wrapped his hands around the base of the trap and forced the steel screws to go intangible. If he couldn’t make the main bronze part intangible, the smaller steel pieces would have to do. 

 

“ Now! ” 

 

Danny’s hands burned as he forced his intangibility to focus on the few key screws while Percy forced the trap open with a sickening creaking squelch. Through blurred vision, Danny tackled Mrs. O’Leary’s paw out of the trap, rewarded by her booming howl. In that moment, it was the best sound Danny had ever heard because it meant that Mrs. O’Leary, the goodest dog ever (second only to Cujo), was free. She would be okay with a little TLC, Danny was sure. 

 

Percy’s sword slipped out from the trap’s teeth with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, shortly followed by the dramatic snap of the trap closing around nothing. 

 

Percy shuddered out a sigh and skidded to Danny’s side. “ Danny! Danny, are you okay—”

 

Danny brushed away Percy’s helping hand, sitting up with a pained wince. “I’m…I’ll be fine. Do whatever you were doing before to stabilize Mrs. O’Leary.”

 

“But—”

 

“Nico and Jason, or at the very least Nico, will be here soon. Call it a hunch, but I think Nico can sense what I can.”

 

“Danny,” Percy started, trying to keep his voice level despite the panic that threatened to leak through, “what in Hades are you talking about?”

 

“I don’t think you’re all that far off!” Danny laughed more to himself than anything, bitter and colder than the dark rippling shadow lying in wait at the edge of the clearing. 

 

Mrs. O’Leary whimpered and like before, Percy immediately started soothing her wounds with magically clean water from the creek. Danny staggered to his feet without assistance, clutching his side. Apparently, it hadn’t fully healed from the fight back in Amity. Maybe the injury had been aggravated in the chaos of the past few minutes (like tackling a massive hellhound out of a suped-up bear trap or something like that).

 

A wisp of blue mist escaped from Danny’s mouth, slithering its way to freedom like a dying man attempting an escape from a steadily filling grave. Danny tilted his head up and scanned the semi-open clearing, trying and failing to pinpoint the shifting shadow that always seemed to just be in the corner of his eye. 

 

“I can see you!” Danny declared to the clearing, holding his breath. “ Show yourself. ”

 

Percy hummed nervously, “Danny, what are—”

 

A cacophony of whispers nearly knocked Danny off his feet, layered and twisting like the lamenting dead. Based on how his friends had described the aftermath of his Ghostly Wail in the past, this felt like an even more powerful version, overlapping with questions of how he could see through the spell. 

 

“I was lying!” Danny laughed, whipping the shadows into a more solid shape with his goading. “You fell for my bluff.”

 

The shadows snapped into a gnashing frenzy, congregating in a dark vaguely humanoid shape. 

 

“Danny, who are you talking to?” A wary edge had wormed into Percy’s voice. “There’s nothing there!”

 

Before Danny could explain, the shadowy mass floated closer to Mrs. O’Leary, extending a snaky tendril of a hand. Danny moved on pure instinct alone, and in an instant, he stood between Mrs. O’Leary and the shadows with his arms raised. 

 

Surprisingly, the shadowed figure recoiled as if caught off guard. 

 

Danny tried to focus on where he assumed the figure’s face was. “I don’t know if you can understand me, but let me make one thing clear: In the past twenty-four hours, my life has been completely turned upside down. The people who I believed to be my loving parents gave up on me once they saw that I was different. Mrs. O’Leary helped me get away from that hurt, along with Percy, Jason, and Nico. And at this point? I don’t really care what happens to me next, but I will most certainly raise hell if you lay a hand on these two. So, what’ll it be, bucko?”

 

“ The hellhound is meant to follow Death, ” a deep whispering tone calmly explained.

 

“You’re…you’re wrong!” Danny flicked his wrist, summoning his shield into existence, hoping to deter whatever he was talking to. “She still has some fight left, and so do I. You can sense it too, right?”

 

“ How do you have that shield, boy? ” came the resounding hiss, full of fury. Twin appendages flared out behind the figure like feathered wings dipped in shadow.

 

Now it was Danny’s turn to be taken aback. “It’s…um, the basket I was found in as a baby? It turned into a shield during a fight after following me around a whole bunch, and then into a bracelet. Uh, my adoptive parents hid it from me in the downstairs shoe closet until yesterday? I don’t know what else to tell you, man.” His shield still hummed with power from the sudden summoning, making Danny’s teeth rattle in his skull. 

 

The oppressive pressure constricting his chest gave way to a wave of cooling calm. The strange part was that Danny didn’t fully register the pressure until it was gone.

 

The voice sounded calmer, now. It also seemed somewhat pained. “ This is the way of all things, child. Everything makes their way to me, in the end. ”

 

Danny could have sworn he saw the outline of a pitying, perhaps saddened expression in the shadows, becoming clearer with each swirling second. The clearing shifted slightly, colors inverting to a darker yet more saturated palette, similar to the effect that happened when Danny faced tougher ghosts. This man— How did he know that the figure was a man? —radiated the kind of vibes Danny associated with the ancient depths of the Ghost Zone. And in a world where gods existed…Danny’s very mortal heart thumped away in his chest as he put the puzzle pieces together.

 

With alarmed awe-filled eyes, Danny Phantom—Schrodinger’s boy, as it were—half human, half ghost, all fear, met the gaze of none other than…

 

“ Death. ”

 

The accusation sat heavily in the space between them, so specific, yet all-encompassing. 

 

And then Death laughed. How weird is it to claim that you made the literal personification of death laugh? “ I am known by many names: Death, Reaper of Souls, Lieutenant of Hades…but I prefer Thanatos. ”

 

The admission sent a chill down Danny’s spine and his throat went dry. Somehow he managed to assert, “I still won’t let you take her. She’s going to make it—I can feel it.”

 

Thanatos’ form seemed more solid now; Danny could trace the wispy edges of a swirling black chiton and imposing wings flared like a bird of prey, or maybe more accurately, a carrion bird. At this point, Danny honestly felt kind of surprised that Percy hadn’t jumped into the conversation. But when he glanced back, Danny only saw a petrified Mrs. O’Leary and Percy, like they were frozen in time.

 

“I assume that you’ve heard of the phrase ‘life flashing before your eyes?’” Thanatos asked. “It happens to mortals in near-death circumstances, often making it seem like one moment stretches on indefinitely. Given my close proximity to your compatriots…”

 

“They won’t be hurt on my watch,” Danny gritted out. “I won’t let you!”

 

That response made Thanatos give pause.

 

“You remind me so much of”—his voice crackled and cut out like visual snow interrupting the news on an old TV—“painfully human and so very, very stubborn. Always rushing into danger for the sake of others, always desperate to protect those who cannot protect themselves.”

 

“Stop…stop getting in my head!” Danny exploded before taking a deep breath to ramble, “Look, man, I dunno what your deal with me is. Is it ’cause I’m half-ghost? I joke about being half-dead a lot, but it’s honestly more of a spooky afterlife energy in my bones! I bet if you cracked them, they’d glow like ectoplasmic green glow sticks—” 

 

“It is impossible to be ‘half-ghost,’ as you say,” Thanatos cut in swiftly. “You are merely blessed by the forces of the afterlife, albeit more than the usual children of the Underworld.” 

 

“What are you even talking about?” Danny pleaded, more than beyond confused.

 

Thanatos offered a ghost of a smile. “You will find out soon enough, little one. As for right now, this aspect of myself is unused to holding this much of my godly presence at once, so I must regretfully depart from the mortal plane. The hellhound shall be spared, but do not forget the value of life—even I recognize its worth despite being the god of death.”

 

Danny nodded numbly, faintly registering the sleek black iPad Thanatos typed away at before tucking it into seemingly nowhere off to the side.

 

“I look forward to learning more about you, Daniel. I also recommend shielding your eyes, lest you wish for your retinas to be burned—an unpleasant method of meeting me properly, or so I’ve heard.”

 

Danny only barely managed to raise his shield to cover his, Percy’s, and Mrs. O’Leary’s eyes before Thanatos disappeared in a flash of godly light, a stark contrast to the clinging shadows he originally summoned. Even still, Danny found his vision speckled with the blobs of color like the after-effects of a camera’s flash. Just as his vision cleared and the world stopped swaying so much beneath his feet, Nico and Jason burst into the clearing with worried shouting. 

 

What happened next was more or less a blur to Danny. He remembered Jason propping him up when his knees buckled, asking what happened. Nico did some funky shadowy magic thing to Mrs. O’Leary that brightened her complexion while draining his (which Jason definitely scolded him for). At least Mrs. O’Leary could walk back to the main part of Camp now. Percy put on a brave face, explaining everything and hopping from detail to detail like a skittish animal. Then he turned to Danny, who might as well have been a glassy-eyed ragdoll.

 

Jason was the one who suggested they head back to Camp for medical attention—apparently being in the monster-infested woods for long periods of time was not a good thing. He also helped Danny shamble along as he mulled over his cluttered thoughts. 

 

For starters, how had Thanatos known his name? He hadn’t introduced himself as Danny, much less Daniel. He shivered at his less-than-pleasant memories of when his full name was used. Being called “Daniel” by Thanatos uncomfortably reminded him of a certain fruitloop and Danny desperately hoped that Thanatos wouldn’t follow Vlad’s example. But then again, maybe Thanatos wanted Danny as some kind of manipulated protege like how Vlad wished to claim Danny as his son, and that was why Thanatos kept trying to get in Danny’s head. (Deep down, some part of Danny asserted that wasn’t the case, but irrational fears are called “irrational” for a reason.)

 

Jazz often liked to call Danny a chronic overthinker, but he personally thought that’d be the pot calling the kettle black. Except, the difference between him and his sister is that she was more likely to voice her overthinking while Danny spiraled internally. Jazz also said that this was not a good coping mechanism, but what did she know? It’s not like she wanted to become a psychologist when she was older or anything!

 

Danny mentally backtracked. Yeah…he was just going to accept defeat on that one. Sometimes, it honestly felt like his own sister knew him better than he knew himself so it was frustrating to not be able to just knock on her door and ask to ramble about his worries. And currently, the worries at the top of that list were figuring out what Thanatos wanted with him and what his deal was. Oh, and also the swarm of campers bustling near the forest’s treeline, headed by none other than Chiron himself.  

 

Danny groaned as they trudged closer to the edge of the trees. The camp director would no doubt hate his guts for leading three of his campers astray for a third time in less than a week—just what he needed, honestly. Not to mention, Chiron was also flanked by dozens of hyper-critical teenagers ready to pick Danny apart and hate him before he even got to properly meet them. Because, well, who wouldn’t hate the new kid limping out of the monster-infested woods followed by a hurt dog who wasn’t like that when she went in? The only thing worse than that was if Mrs. O’Leary were a puppy and one of his new friends (were they friends?) claimed that they saw Danny kicking her. And Danny was no puppy-kicker!

 

Wait. What was he talking about again?

 

Danny didn’t have the time to think before they crossed the treeline, fully revealing themselves to the clamoring campers. Chiron quickly silenced them with three resounding hoof stomps in the dirt.

 

Chiron then pinched the bridge of his nose. “And why exactly were you four in the monster-infested woods?” Mrs. O’Leary barked lowly. “You five, ” Chiron amended. Danny swore he could see the new grey hairs grow from the old centaur’s scalp with each passing second he studied them.

 

Percy was the first to speak. “It’s my fault, Chiron. I sent Mrs. O’Leary off to rest in the arena, but somehow she made her way into the woods and some monsters attacked her. She also got stuck in some kind of trap before I showed up.” A few burly kids wearing work aprons and smeared in machine grease shuffled sheepishly. “Danny helped me free her and Jason and Nico guided us out of the woods.”

 

“ Perseus Jackson… ”

 

Percy winced. “Ah, bringing the full name out? That bad?”

 

“I would say that I fear Poseidon’s wrath more, should anything happen to you on my watch, but that would be a lie. In my many centuries of instructing young heroes, I have learned not to incur a mother’s protective fury. You promised your mother no ‘extra dangerous shenaniganry’ after the last war, did you not?”

 

Percy suddenly became very interested in his sneakers. “Yes, Chiron.” Then he frowned and looked up at his mentor. “But I have to ask, did you order any invisible shadow monsters for the woods? Danny somehow managed to make them disappear, but I have no idea what they were—they just…they made me feel like I’d never be warm again. It was weird. ” 

 

“ ‘Invisible shadow monsters?’ ” Chiron parroted cautiously. “I’m unfortunately unfamiliar. We’ll need to close off the woods for safety purposes until we know what they are—” 

 

“I know,” Danny volunteered, almost immediately cursing the way everyone’s eyes suddenly whipped towards him. 

 

Once upon a time, back before the portal incident, Danny would’ve relished in attention of any kind from captivated peers. It was only later that he recognized the advantage of blending in and not standing out for all the wrong reasons because he had a secret identity to protect.

 

“What, pray tell, did you face in the woods?” Chiron asked curiously.

 

Danny gulped. “It’s not so much a ‘what,’ but rather…” he forced himself to stand freely from Jason’s hold, only to stumble and get propped up again. He whispered his thanks to Jason and continued, “...but rather, a ‘who.’ Mrs. O’Leary was dying, so it made sense that someone like—” Danny coughed out a plume of black and blue smoke.

 

A few nervous gasps escaped from the crowd as Danny cleared his throat and tried to say the death god’s name again. More smoke followed, like a twisted form of his Ghost Sense. But given that Nico didn’t seem to have the same reaction, Danny knew that there wasn’t a wandering spirit nearby. 

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Danny caught Nico frowning, deep in thought. 

 

“Why can’t I say the name?” Danny muttered, voice edging on panic. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

 

“It was likely just some kind of shade,” Nico cut in, nodding almost imperceptibly to Danny. 

 

He’s lying, Danny realized, noticing the tightness in Nico’s jaw and the nervous way his fingers twitched. Nico is covering for me, but why?

 

“I’ll investigate later, as is my duty to my father, Hades.”

 

A ripple of nervous chatter swelled in the crowd at the mention of Hades, which Danny didn’t really understand. Was he really that terrible? The dude was just the god of the dead, right? Maybe Danny was a little bit biased considering his own whole sorta ghosty background. 

 

Chiron nodded his assent to Nico. “You know more about the dead than I do. But please take caution, regardless.”

 

“Of course, Chiron,” Nico agreed solemnly, “I wouldn’t dream of doing anything less.”

 

Chiron soon broke up the crowd; Danny figured they just wanted a show based on their annoyed groans. Before Chiron trotted off with the rest of them, he made Danny and Nico promise to get checked out at the infirmary, given their rough state compared to Jason and Percy. 

 

Percy then teased Nico playfully about Nico getting “checked out” in more ways than one at the infirmary. Nico’s face went beet red at the comment and began cursing Percy out behind his hands that failed to cover his flushed face.

 

“Ugh, and Will’s going to kill me for using too much Underworld magic, and you are not making me feel better about it!”

 

Percy laughed out an apology, only for Jason to tap his shoulder with his free hand. “Don’t look now, but I think someone else’s partner is coming over to kill him.”

 

Storming towards them like a general on their way to punish their unruly troops with a steely glare that could cut diamonds, a curly-haired blonde girl exclaimed, “ Seaweed Brain! ”

 

Percy smiled nervously, “H-hi, Wise Girl! The most intelligent and beautiful girlfriend in the world! Long time no see…” 

 

The girl got right up in Percy’s face and roughly poked his chest. “Don’t ‘Hi, Wise Girl!’ me. Whatever happened to Iris Messaging me before getting wrapped up in a quest?”

 

“It was just a small one?” Percy tried to lighten the mood. “We were rescuing Danny, here—he was in a rough situation with his family.”

 

The girl briefly studied Danny’s sorry state before pursing her lips and focusing on Percy with her scarily intelligent eyes. She held his hands tightly and whispered, “ I was worried about you. ”

 

Percy snaked a hand free and cupped the girl’s face. He tenderly pressed a kiss to her cheek and once he pulled away, he said, “I’m sorry that I worried you so badly. I care about you a lot and I’m sorry if what I did made you doubt that, Annabeth.”

 

They warmly embraced and Danny couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy as they parted and looked at each other with all the love in the world. Like, Way to make the rest of us feel single, dude! How did Percy make having a relationship look so easy?

 

Danny dismissed the notion in favor of a more pertinent thought that crossed his mind. “You and my mom are siblings!” He immediately clapped his hand over his mouth at the outburst. Why couldn’t his thoughts just stay inside his head?

 

Annabeth blinked in shock and stared at Danny. “Pardon?”

 

“Sorry, but you’re Annabeth, right?” She nodded carefully and Danny continued rambling, “Percy mentioned you earlier. You and my mom are daughters of Athena and just…sorry, I’m new to the whole ‘Greek myths being real’ thing. I’m trying to learn everything I can so I can preferably not die!”

 

As Annabeth regarded Danny curiously, he couldn’t help but think that people like Annabeth were among the people he’d have to watch out for “preferably not dying.” She was seriously intimidating. Like, even more intimidating than Sam at her most vocal protest rallies while wearing her tallest platform combat boots. While Sam might at first take offense to being compared to a stereotypical California-type girl like Annabeth, once Sam took one look at her piercing eyes and toned muscles, she’d think again. Danny ultimately decided that Annabeth was definitely the type of person that Sam would get along with terrifyingly well or immediately butt heads—no in between. 

 

“I’d assume that you were a legacy of Athena, but that’d make an a—”

 

“Little ears, Annabeth,” Jason chided jokingly, gesturing at Nico and Danny.

 

“ Hey! ” they both complained.

 

Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Excuse me for trying to use a colloquial expression, Jason. But I digress. Danny, you don’t particularly strike me as a direct descendant of Athena.”

 

Danny snorted and said sarcastically, “Ha-ha. Clever way to diss someone.” Annabeth surprisingly didn’t flinch at his comment, so he continued, “But you’re right. I learned that I was adopted by Jack and Maddie Fenton less than twenty-four hours ago and that beings from Greek mythology are real and not just limited to some random Greek-themed ghosts I fought. And before you ask, I also have no idea who my godly parent is.”

 

Danny would’ve expected Annabeth’s face to be colored by a fine sheen of shock or regret for bringing up a touchy subject, but clearly, Annabeth was just full of surprises. She simply considered Danny with a critical eye. “I’ve heard about those two from the older campers in cabin six when I was little—a cautionary tale of sorts passed on from generation to generation. We only knew that they got in trouble for crossing the gods, but not the exact why or how of their punishment.” She then mused, “I’d be interested in piecing together this missing part of Camp Half-Blood’s history…”

 

Danny appreciated Annabeth’s brazenness, even as everyone else winced at her blunt observations. It was honestly refreshing to be talked to directly instead of desperately trying to ignore the nervous whispers of the other campers. So, he responded, “Well, I’d be willing to help you fill in the missing parts of that story when I don’t feel like I have one foot in the grave.” Danny snorted at his own joke before adding, feeling horribly faint, “Now, didn’t someone say something about an infirmary?”

 

Notes:

Content warning for...

-Danny-typical self-deprecation

-Hurt dog with her foot stuck in a trap (but she'll be okay and stay alive, don't worry)

-Death imagery and discussion (a literal Underworld deity shows up, but it's just the general conversations about death that you can expect in an average Rick Riordan book)
-------------------------------
Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

Let me tell you, writer's block sucks. It can go jump off a microwave for all I care. NO ME GUSTA NADA PORQUE "writer's block" ES MUY TERRIBLE. (Lo siento—I have Spanish class this fall and I need to practice, lol. Me encanta aprender mucho sobre muchos idiomas.)

Anyways! I have the first little bit of chapter 11 written, so hopefully I can wrap up this main story soon (if I can manage to consistently kick writer's block in the butt). I stopped chapter 10 where it's at because I thought it'd be too rambly and long otherwise (I also felt like you guys have waited long enough).

Thank you all (over 3,500 of you, wow!) so much for checking out this story! I am extremely grateful for all of your support and lovely comments.

I hope you like where this story is headed!

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 11: When Danny Said That He’d Punch a God if He Ever Met One, He Was Telling the Truth

Summary:

Danny faints and discovers something interesting about himself.

Notes:

Muhaha. Y'all are in for A Treat. (The chapter title refers to a line in chapter 7. Haha, I'm so clever and funny...)

Warnings and spoilers are in the endnotes.

Danny’s knees buckled and he never felt more glad for Jason’s assistance in propping him up. He frowned. It felt weird, like he had temporarily lost control of his intangibility power in his legs, quickly flitting in and out of focus. 

 

Jason startled to alertness and offered a short farewell to Annabeth and Percy before quickly ushering Nico and Danny to a place he called “The Big House.” Trying to ease the tension, Jason claimed that Nico wouldn’t go unless directly guided there because he was much too stubborn to accept help. Nico vehemently denied these accusations, but Danny could tell by how quick he was to defend himself that Nico was lying. Even still, Danny didn’t call him out—no one except fruitloops like Vlad deserved that.

 

As it turned out, “The Big House” was certainly an apt name for the building. With white trim wrapping around several stories of baby blue paneling stretching up to the equally blue sky, it was definitely big. 

 

Jason helped Danny up the stairs of the wrap-around porch only to be startled by an equally stressed and infuriated blond boy who slammed the door shut behind him, mumbling about finding more bandages. The new boy caught a glimpse of their little group and zeroed in on Nico. He literally began glowing with joy, only for a frown to mar his otherwise happy expression. 

 

“Nico!” the boy exclaimed, rushing up to meet them all. 

 

Nico immediately flushed at the sight of him and muttered a meek “Hi, Will.”

 

Danny remembered Nico mentioning a boyfriend, but he never thought that the oh-so-scary son of Hades would be this down bad for such a sunshiny guy . 

 

“ Hiya, Angel. Do you mind sharing why I had to learn third-hand, not even second-hand, that you overexerted your Underworld magic again?” Will said with a bright smile that did anything but match his very non-sunshiny question. 

 

A random thought crossed Danny’s mind—were all the blond kids at Camp permanently exasperated at their partners? Danny looked up at Jason and took note of his blond hair, briefly wondering if he also had a partner ready to crawl out of the woodwork for Jason to fret over.

 

Nico flushed even harder at the nickname Will called him. Once he gathered his wits, he offered a grin that was much more of a grimace than anything. “Uh…my bad?” 

 

Danny desperately wished to facepalm from the secondhand embarrassment, but his limbs felt more leaden the longer he remained upright in Jason’s hold. At least Jason was able to pinch his brow in exasperation, sating Danny’s expressive needs.

 

Will sighed fondly, “What am I going to do with you?” He then faked being deep in thought before snapping his fingers. “Oh, I know! Bedrest in the infirmary for at least three days.”

 

“You know that’s not really a punishment with you around, right?”

 

Will laughed, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Don’t tempt me, Angel,” he teased, leaning in close to Nico. 

 

Nico stood as stiff as a board, unsure what to do with his hands and looking more awkward than a fawn on ice. He quickly glanced back at Jason and Danny and announced, “Oh, look! A new camper needs medical attention! Will, meet Danny!”

 

Will’s eyes flicked to Danny and Jason as if just then becoming aware of their presence. He relaxed his posture and smiled warmly—not quite customer service-worthy, but close with an added hint of curiosity. “Apologies for ignoring y’all back there. I’m Will Solace, son of Apollo and head healer here at Camp. And who might you be, new kid?” he stared pointedly at Danny. 

 

“Uh, Danny? Son of…I don’t know.” 

 

“Unclaimed, then,” Will hummed to himself, pulling a small notepad and pen out of nowhere and jotting something down. “No last name, Danny?”

 

Danny’s breath hitched.  

 

Jason gave Danny’s shoulders a reassuring squeeze and spoke for Danny, “It’s a sensitive subject, Will.” 

 

Danny greatly appreciated Jason’s gesture—he didn’t know what would happen if he tried to articulate that thought out loud. 

 

Will looked up from his notepad with a concerned expression. “Sorry, Danny—forget I said that, then. I’m just quickly writing up some basic identifying information for you before I can get a look at your medical records. I can clearly see that you’re in need of some medical attention, so we’ll figure out exactly what you need once you’re lying down, alright? Jason, would you please help Danny inside?”

 

Danny’s brain buffered at the idea of Will somehow being able to access his medical records apparently very easily. He just sighed and blamed confusing godly magic stuff while Jason nodded and readjusted Danny’s weight with a huff. 

 

“Thank you kindly, Jason.”

 

“Sure thing.”

 

No sooner had Jason said that, than Danny’s legs finally fully gave out from underneath him, nearly bringing Jason down as well from the sudden dead weight. But apparently, Jason had lightning-fast reflexes, quickly catching them both on a gust of wind. Jason guided Danny to slump against him as he righted himself. 

 

“Whoa, Danny! You good?” he asked, tone laced with heavy concern. 

 

“Y-yeah. Just… exhausted. Feels like someone sucked the life outta me.” Danny’s tongue felt leaden in his mouth as he gauged the reactions of the present company. Under different circumstances, he might have made a “haha I’m half-dead!” joke, but the genuine concern marring everyone’s faces made him seriously reconsider the morbid humor. 

 

Will contemplated Danny like he was a frog slated to be dissected and studied under a microscope. That mental comparison sent a shiver down Danny’s spine. 

 

Will finally turned to Nico and asked faintly, “Another one?”

 

Nico shrugged and made a so-so gesture. “Close, but not quite. I have a hunch, though.”

 

Will pressed his face into his palms and groaned as Nico awkwardly patted his shoulder in a comforting gesture. “Time to set up another semi-permanent space in the infirmary…” 

 

“What on Earth are you guys talking about?” Danny grunted out. 

 

At the sound of Danny’s voice, Will snapped to attention, startling Nico in the process. He blushed and offered a swift apology before his expression hardened and he began rattling off orders—doctor’s orders, he claimed (though Danny highly doubted that someone who looked like he should be more worried about studying for the SAT was actually an officially licensed doctor). As per Will’s instruction, Jason easily hoisted Danny into his arms like a helpless baby which did nothing but make Danny feel every bit the weak little nerd the bullies back at Casper High loved to jeer at. 

 

Will quickly led everyone into the Big House, the cozy decor blending into an unfocused mess as Jason deftly carried him through the halls like a superhero on a mission. Danny could see Jason as someone like Captain America; he fit the all-American blond-haired blue-eyed Boy Scout aesthetic well, at least. And come to think of it, one of Zeus’s, or rather, Jupiter’s symbols was an eagle, right? Danny would have to check on that one. But Jason was totally Eagle Scout material, though…

 

“ Lay him on the bed! ” Will ordered, though to Danny, his voice sounded fuzzy and somewhat distant. 

 

A bare-bones sheeted mattress greeted Danny’s weary body, shortly followed by a shimmering canteen glinting in the corner of his eye. 

 

“—has he had any godly food recently, Jason?” 

 

“I gave Danny a small square of ambrosia a few hours ago.”

 

Will cursed, unscrewing the shimmering canteen. “As much as I hate to say it, we’ll have to risk it—shadow sickness is not something to be taken lightly.”

 

“‘Shadow sickness?’” Danny parroted weakly before Will carefully tilted his head back and trickled what tasted like a surprisingly cohesive mixture of liquid ecto-pops and fudge down his throat. He fought the urge to sob at being treated so nicely by a complete stranger—why couldn’t his parents extend at least a fraction of that kindness? 

 

“Underworld thing,” Nico explained shortly. “Using powers related to it can quickly sap your strength if you don’t have a constant supply of energy as a buffer. Godly food can only do so much to stave the inevitable.”

 

“Mmm…” Danny mused, flitting in and out of consciousness, “Y’all should try ecto Pedialyte popsicles…they’re good f’r n’ energy boost…”

 

“He’s getting worse…anyone who’s not a healer, leave! ” Will ordered. “Danny needs some space!”

 

“I like space…” Danny muttered, dazed. 

 

Distant protests from Nico and Jason ripped through his eardrums like garbled distress calls from desperate astronauts thousands upon thousands of miles away from Earth. Danny wanted to reach out and say “It’s alright! I’m here! I’m here! Don’t go!” but they were already gone, their blurry forms lost in the space between two deathly slow blinks. Instead, they were replaced by a vaguely familiar figure clutching a pillow under one arm being frantically directed by Will to Danny’s bedside.

 

“Ah”—the figure yawned in Danny’s direction—“it’s nice to see you in the waking world, newbie. ‘S good you made it here all in one piece—not many do.”

 

Danny’s heart rate immediately spiked and he tried scrambling away. That sounded like a threat. He needed to leave. He needed to fight. He needed to leave-fight-leave—

 

“What you need is to chill, man,” the equally chill guy murmured. “It’s just me, Clovis, remember? From the dream world? C’mon, it’ll do ya some good to relax…” 

 

Relaxing was the least of Danny’s worries—he did not want to chill. He had things to do, people to escape; coming here was a terrible idea and everyone was against him and he didn’t want to be in this lumpy hospital bed and—

 

A warm palm pressed against Danny’s forehead and he was immediately hit with an overwhelming wave of pure exhaustion, making him crave a deep, deep nap. But Danny wasn’t allowed to nap! What if a ghost escaped? Everyone needed him to be strong and brave and be Phantom! He couldn’t be Danny, not right now. Not when there could be danger and ghosts right around the corner…

 

“Sleep,” Clovis yawned, “it’s okay. The ghosts of your past won’t haunt you here. You are free to be Danny, not just some Phantom. Close your eyes, and I’ll help with the rest, kid. We’ll count down from three, alright?”

 

I’m scared, Danny wanted to protest.

 

“Don’t be,” Clovis hummed as if reading his mind. For all Danny knew, Clovis actually could with all this mind and sleep control stuff. “Now, three… ”

 

Danny swayed. “Two?”

 

Clovis nodded and gently guided Danny’s head to the plush pillow below. “ One. ”

 

The last thing Danny heard before he drifted to sleep pooled in his ears like golden honey, undeniably beautiful and saccharine sweet. “Get some rest, kid. Once you’re healed up enough, we’ll get you some real hot chocolate in the waking world, alright?” Clovis yawned, deep and low like a massive bear. Or maybe a teddy bear would be more accurate with how soft he was with Danny. “Hold me to that if I forget… cousin. ”

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

“Hello?” Danny called into the dark void, feeling pitifully small. “Where…where am I?”

 

A cold shiver ran up Danny’s spine and frigid mist curled over his chapped lips. 

 

“Greetings, little one. You are— ack!”

 

Danny whipped around on instinct, socking the shadowed figure in the gut with a solid thunk. Danny stumbled in his attempt to run away and started to scream, building up to a ghostly wail before an all-encompassing presence wrapped around him like a weighted blanket. 

 

“Calm yourself. You cannot run from Death!”

 

The wispy shadows weighing heavily around Danny solidified into strong arms and soft wings that held him in place. 

 

“If you want me to”—Danny grunted in his struggle—“ calm down, then maybe don’t say something so damn ominous!” Once Danny wriggled his neck out just enough, he reared back his head and bit down on his assailant’s forearm with deadly sharp ghostly canines.  

 

Now, Danny was expecting a cry of pain, maybe even just a sudden flinch away. As a result, Danny felt more than a little miffed that the only response he received was a disinterested “Ow.”

 

“Are you kidding me?!” Danny exploded as he continued struggling and kicking in the figure’s hold. “What do you mean, ‘ow?’ I flippin’ bit you! A big ol’ chomp! You crumpled when I punched you and then was just so lame and rude with the bite. What kind of regular person—”

 

“I am Thanatos, ” he intoned, “ the embodiment of death itself. I am no ‘regular person.’ ”

 

Danny immediately stiffened in Thanatos’ hold, suddenly very uncomfortably aware of his surroundings and the gravity of the situation at hand. 

 

“Please, simply…allow me to explain.”

 

If Danny was unnerved by the literal god of death grabbing him, then Death pleading with Danny freaked him out even more. Confused but still alert, Danny nodded his assent to Thanatos who set him down in the dark void with a surprising degree of care. 

 

Danny clenched his fists and willed a ghostly ring to form around his core to split in two, bathing him in the bright light of his transformation into Phantom. It felt good to be Phantom again, even in a dream—he missed the safety and freedom that this form provided.

 

Thanatos’ own form drifted into better clarity, now appearing much more solid; much more real. More powerful. 

 

“You are more than welcome to stay in that form if it brings you comfort,” Thanatos offered. “Just know that it does not grant you the same boons as it does on the mortal plane.”

 

Danny’s form flickered when he looked down, fluorescent white and black briefly giving way to blue jeans and beat-up sneakers. He gritted his teeth. “Are you doing this?”

 

“If by ‘this,’ you are referring to summoning you to this place while you dream, then yes, in part. But I would be a fool to take all the credit—my dear brother Hypnos, the god of sleep, does deserve some praise. We gods are often at odds with our own family, but he owed me a favor. Hypnos also always did have a soft spot for children who especially struggled with nightmares…”

 

Danny huffed and rolled his eyes, summoning green energy to his palms. “Okay, cool motive, but this is still a kidnapping. Dream-napping?” Danny waved his glowing hands around as he considered, “I mean, I am technically napping and also dreaming, so I don’t know if that’s the right term—”

 

“Careful”—Thanatos snapped his fingers, extinguishing Danny’s flaming green energy—“you’ll hurt yourself.”

 

“You…you put out my ecto-blasts!” Danny exclaimed, affronted. “And what do you care if I hurt myself? Shouldn’t the god of death want more ghostly goons on his side or something? Though to be honest, even though I’m all ghostly, the times that I’ve been mind-controlled into a goon are not fun, let me tell you!”

 

Thanatos shook out his wings and sighed, but it wasn’t the long-suffering kind that Danny had come to expect from ancient and powerful beings (and also high school teachers) he annoyed on the regular. Instead, this sigh sounded fondly exasperated, if anything.

 

“You remind me of her so much,” Thanatos finally said, an undercurrent of static lacing his words. It was like the kind of cut-off fuzz that followed a parent’s frantic flicking through TV channels when their child pointed out something inappropriate or taboo on screen. Or, Danny assumed that at least. The Fentons were usually too busy tinkering down in their lab to monitor what he was watching when he was little—thank the Ancients that Jazz was there to pick up the slack in that regard, along with many others…

 

Danny frowned. “Who’s ‘her?’” 

 

Thanatos winced as if the answer pained him. “Another time, little one. Another time, I promise.”

 

“You’re a god,” Danny accused. “I’ve heard the stories—promises coming from you guys are emptier than my school’s cafeteria when nachos are on the menu. Like, seriously. The ‘cheese’ comes in these little plastic tubs and jiggles like Jell-O. That stuff ain’t natural and neither are promises from a god.” 

  

Thanatos huffed a breath in a way that could be mistaken for a laugh if you were delusional enough. “If I were any other god, you’d be turned into ash for your impertinence.”

 

“Then what makes me the oh-so-special exception?” Danny challenged, tapping his fingers anxiously against his leg, “Is it because you’re Death and I’m half-dead? ‘Cause newsflash, buddy: I’m not gonna bow down to you. ”

 

“You are so, so unbelievably human, ” Thanatos sighed. Danny blinked, wondering if he should consider what Thanatos said as an insult or as a reassurance of Danny’s desperation to be recognized for his humanity, for all the Fentons said. “It hurts to think about your inevitable trip to Hades at the end of your mortal life. I’ve purposely avoided looking at the updates the Fates add to my ledger. It…worries me.” 

 

Thanatos suddenly summoned a sleek black iPad before dismissing it just as quickly. His ledger, then? That casual display of power made Danny gulp and briefly reconsider his snarky comments. Briefly.  

 

“Why does it worry you? Like, I know I’ve got my fair share of extreme teenage angst, but is my very existence seriously that troubling for a flipping god to look at?”

 

Thanatos leveled a concerned look at Danny, eyes brimming with tears before minutely tilting his head back to will them away, sort of like how Danny sometimes did. 

 

“I…I worry about you because you’re my son. ”

Notes:

Content warning for...

-Danny-typical self-deprecation

-Description of injuries (pretty mild, but be aware, folks)

-Death imagery and discussion (a literal Underworld deity shows up, but it's just the general conversations about death that you can expect in an average Rick Riordan book)
-------------------------------
Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

So...how many of you guys guessed who Danny's godly parent was? The riddle from chapter 4 was meant to clue you guys into the Death stuff, plus a bunch of other little dominoes lined up across the past chapters!! I'd love to talk about that sort of stuff in the comments, but please don't spoil chapter 11 in the comments of previous chapters for future readers.

Nico and Will are here!! (I'm only 72 pages into The Sun and the Star, oof. I tried my best with their characterization.) I have not seen season two of Good Omens yet, but I think I definitely drew inspiration from Arizraphale and Crowley's interactions for Nico and Will, lol. The "Angel" nickname is what really tipped me off while writing, lol.

Also!! I wanted to have this chapter out a few weeks ago (and finish this story before summer ended, oof), but lots of life stuff and anxiety got in the way. (Yay, anxiety!! Not.) I've started writing the next chapter, but I make no promises for when it'll be out—the joys of not writing everything ahead of time, hooray!

Thank you all for being so patient with the slower updates. I want to complete this story in a satisfying way and I can only do that if I give myself the time to do so. Your comments really do motivate me to keep writing, so please! Comment away!

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 12: Danny Has a Yet Another Freakin’ Weird Dream (But This One Is to *Die* For)

Summary:

Danny has a bit of a mental breakdown. He's fine. Mostly.

Notes:

Ahhh!!! Oh my goodness! Thank you for all the support last chapter! Like, this story was at 4445 hits (I made a note) at the time of posting on 9/26/23, and now on 9/29/23, it's over 5300 hits! There are so many of you, wow! For those of you who recently clicked on this fic, hello! Welcome! Thank you for letting me take you on this wild ride of a fic!

Readers, your overwhelming excitement in the comments from the last chapter really spurred me on to write this chapter ASAP! I usually write about half a page of the next chapter after posting the previous one so I can get the ball rolling when I next sit down to write and then wait a few days to let my brain settle and come up with more ideas. But then I went to sleep after posting chapter 11 and woke up to So Many of you having found the fic for the first time! So, I ended up writing for about six hours straight last night, lol. When the brainrot hits, it certainly hits!

I hope you guys like what I've written! There are only a few more chapters left in this fic before I move on to writing companion one-shots and smaller fics for this universe, so keep your eyes peeled! (I think I'm going to take a nice break after finishing "Half-Blood? No, I'm a Halfa." though. My brain needs to rest, lol.)

Warnings and spoilers are in the endnotes.

Danny stumbled back, staring at his trembling hands that tried in vain to summon ghostly flame, a pit of swirling chaos and confusion churning in his gut. “What? No, no, no! I…I can’t! I’m just some halfa ghost kid from Amity Park—that’s why I’m like this! Not because of—”

 

When Danny looked up, he caught sight of Thanatos’ pained expression. It was the same expression, Danny realized, that faced him in the mirror after each nightmare he had about a dark timeline he hoped would never come to fruition. 

 

Thanatos’ wings twitched anxiously. Danny hated that those dark wings looked so inviting all of a sudden—a source of all-encompassing comfort from a parent that he never thought he’d be privy to again. He also hated that he was likely one of the few people who’d willingly walk into Death’s chilling embrace, knowing that he’d likely make it out alive, or as close to it as Danny usually was. 

 

“I am truly sorry for all that you have suffered in your short life, my child. I was foolish to think that letting you be raised far away in a location that I wasn’t even sure of would keep you safe from all those who wish to upset the balance of Life and Death. It is difficult for a god to admit his faults, especially to a mortal! But you…you are an exception; you always have been as far as I can glean from what little time I’ve known you. You, my son, are exceptional. ” 

 

Danny choked up. “ Please, I— ”

 

“You are so special and good at naturally being the brave young man that you have grown to become. You…you are a true balance of light of Life and dark of Death! A hero who chose to be a hero, not by some great prophecy, but out of the goodness of your heart. You—”

 

“ Stop! ” Danny cried, tears finally streaming down his face for the first time in recent memory. He slammed his hands over his ears, as if that would do anything to stifle the words of an almighty god. “ Stop, stop, stop! ”

 

Thanatos recoiled as if he’d been slapped.

 

“I’m not exceptional!” Danny screamed, “I’m not brave! I’m not good! I’m just some kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got zapped by thousands of volts of electricity! I died and hundreds of ghosts escaped from the Ghost Zone because of my mistake, so it was my duty to put those spirits back where they belonged so they wouldn’t hurt anyone!”

 

“Little one—” 

 

“People hate me because I’m a freak, because that’s just what I am! I saw a future where I became the ultimate enemy to my friends, family, and the entire world! How can I possibly be good if I turned into someone like that?” Danny heaved, vision so blurred by tears that the already dark landscape muddled into even more incoherent shapes.

 

And then a solid pressure wrapped around his torso, bordering on the edge of too tight with darkened feathers. Danny squeaked and gasped for breath before Thanatos loosened his embrace by a manageable fraction. “A being such as myself is not used comforting others, unless it is at a funeral. I am somewhat able to alleviate the pain of mourners by influencing them to remember the fond memories they had with the deceased.”

 

A tangled knot of wild emotion loosened in Danny’s chest. “Then how are you making me feel better?” he managed to choke out.

 

“Isn’t it obvious?” Thanatos cupped Danny’s cheek. He still hated the instinctive comfort the action brought him. “Child, you are mourning. ”

 

“ Why? ” Danny sobbed. 

 

Thanatos gathered Danny into an embrace once more, shrouding his trembling form with dark feathers. “You are mourning for a life that you feel cheated of. You are mourning for a past that you once felt comfortable and safe in.”

 

“I…I’m mourning for a time when everything made sense?”

 

“ Exactly, ” Thanatos rumbled, sounding vaguely reminiscent of a large stone rolling away from a mausoleum to let the dead bask in the light once more. “Grief is natural, especially for the children of the Underworld. For that, I must take some blame.”

 

Thanatos pulled Danny tighter in his embrace before letting go, the sudden lack of kind touch sending arcs of greedy pain down Danny’s spine. He cupped Danny’s cheek and Danny subconsciously leaned into it, ravenous for such profound care. 

 

“Why didn’t you ever check up on me as a kid?” Danny asked, voice raw from screaming. “I know I had the Fentons to take care of me, but—”

 

Thanatos hissed in displeasure. “As my child, there are certain dangers. Death in one way or another, is inevitable at the end of everything, yet there are those who exist who believe they are exempt from this fact. Any mortal attachment I have could theoretically be leveraged against me; kidnapped and tortured until I gave my enemies what they desired. This was not a problem when I was a virgin god, but—”

 

“I get the picture!” Danny rushed out, not especially keen on learning about Death’s… private life. 

 

Thanatos huffed, which Danny now realized was Death’s form of a casual laugh. His amusement quickly turned sour, however. “Until I can convince the Olympians to come to a consensus ensuring your safety”—Danny bit his tongue in an attempt to not spill the beans about how he already did plenty of dangerous things as Phantom—“no one can know of your godly parentage.”

 

Danny knit his eyebrows in confusion. “ Okay… can I get some clarification, though?”

 

Thanatos’ expression turned grim and dark misty shadows curled around his feet. “Do you know the story of Sisyphus, child?”

 

“My friend, Sam, once told me that he was, like, ‘the poster child for hubris’ or whatever because he cheated… oh. ”

 

“He cheated me, ” Thanatos agreed. “Your friend is wise to keep the story ‘alive,’ so to speak. It’s one of the few tales of my exploits that have made it to the modern day, yet it is one of the most important, dare I say. Sisyphus was a human who wanted to avoid me— Death —at all costs. I still remember the twisted distress marring his face even as he chained me down, hands trembling as he clasped the last link. He boasted about his apparent accomplishment, but I still remember the desperation lacing his speech.”

 

“Yeah?” Danny croaked, once again horribly reminded of just how ancient Thanatos was.

 

“The point is,” Thanatos continued, “mortals are afraid of me. They will do anything in their power, despite the known dangers, to stay alive. While their tenacity is admirable, it is ultimately futile. And given my recent kidnapping by Gaea in addition to the Doors of Me opening and thankfully closing, the freed spirits from that time are more likely than ever to want to stay alive. There are certain failsafes in place in case of my reimprisonment, as I am viewed as an important god. You, however, are seen as expendable.”

 

“Gee, thanks,” Danny said faintly, trying to figure out how to disarm that massive information bomb. “Funny how you say that after trying to cheer me up and everything.”

 

“I was not finished,” Thanatos hummed. “You are not, however, expendable to me. I care for you and your safety very much; perhaps too much—I would raise Hades if I felt you were in danger.”

 

“Then why didn’t you ever come to Amity?” Danny snapped, taking some sick pride in the way Thanatos flinched at the sharp question. But even then as Danny stared down his apparent father, he couldn’t decide what danger he himself was referring to: Casper High bullies, the ghostly baddie of the week, the GIW, Plasmius, Dark Dan? The Fentons? (But not Jazz, not ever Jazz. She would never hurt him intentionally.)

 

“I was…scared,” Thanatos admitted as if that last word felt foreign on his tongue. “I had never had a child before, much less a mortal one. All I knew was that I wanted to keep my child safe. And then in my time of desperation, I was offered a solution by a timeless deity who would take you to a place that nothing from our Pantheon would touch, including me. I didn’t even know where you were, should I accidentally reveal your hiding place. I could only bless the basket you laid in with all the protection runes I could remember, so it could be your shield as an infant; then more literally as you matured. Had I known what pains you would suffer, I never would have sent you with that timeless deity.” 

 

The repeated mention of a “timeless deity” sent alarm bells ringing in Danny’s head. “Out of curiosity, how did you know this ‘oh-so-mysterious’ timeless deity?”

 

Thanatos pursed his lips. “Every god knows of him but has rarely met him. He only shows himself when ‘the time is right,’ at one’s darkest hour—we can only theorize that he’s what’s left of the ‘good’ aspects of Father Time, better known as Kronos—”

 

“You gave baby me to Kronos?! ” Danny exclaimed, “The dude ate, like, six babies in the myths!”  

 

“Five, actually. The sixth was a rock disguised as Lord Zeus as an infant.”

 

“That doesn’t make me feel any better! I could’ve been eaten!”

 

Thanatos winced. “It is only a theory. Besides, this deity seemed to only exhibit traits of a more agrarian aspect of the lord of time, back when he was a kinder and gentler deity who played the occasional harmless joke with time, a ghost of his former more violent self.”

 

“Still!” Danny protested. Then a terrible thought crossed his mind at the mention of the word “ghost.” If Danny had learned anything over the past few months as Phantom, it was to question everything. So Danny paused, closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, and asked, “I’m hoping that the answer is no, but did this ‘timeless deity’ guy have a purple cloak and a clock in his chest, by chance?”

 

“He wore a purple chiton, actually. Little one, do you have prophetic abilities? How did you—”

 

Danny buried his face in his hands and screamed the foulest, dirtiest string of Latin curses he knew. 

 

“Little one?”

 

Danny continued cursing.

 

“Oh, that what was a clever one. I’ll be sure to review it for a possible sentence in the Fields of Punishment.”

 

Danny’s screams finally tapered off, ending with one final curse he learned from Wulf. The wolfman ghost had some of the best Esperanto curse combinations, even though Danny was probably never meant to hear the words sworn under his breath. Wulf would never forgive himself for corrupting such a “pure and innocent little ghost kid…”

 

“Interesting, I’m not familiar with that last one,” Thanatos mused. “What language was that?”

 

Danny ran his hands through his hair with an annoyed groan, mumbling to himself about the best way to punt Clockwork into next week. He’d probably need to steal a time medallion and ol’ Clocky’s staff…

 

“Son?”

 

That slapped Danny out of his ramblings. “‘S Esperanto? It’s a dead language like Latin, so I’m surprised that the god of death doesn’t know—”

 

“Esperanto is not a dead language,” Thanatos asserted, “Where did you learn such a thing?”

 

“Uh, a ghost taught me Esperanto and I picked up on it quickly? I kinda assumed it was just a ghost thing. And then I did a Google search and some Wiki skimming that said it was a dead language and—”

 

“Absolutely not,” Thanatos cut in swiftly. He then pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, “Once this ‘wiki’ and the Google are dead and defunct technology, I will understand them, much like I do telegram lines.” 

 

Danny blinked, hundreds of new questions cropping up at the tip of his tongue from just that one comment alone. “What do you—?” 

 

Thanatos suddenly began flickering from view. “Oh, that’s…unfortunate.” He leveled Danny with a surprisingly gentle expression. “While I wish I could continue making up for lost time, my duties are calling me. And as for you, your friends await in the waking world.” 

 

He began to turn away, only for Danny to rush forward and grab his fading hand. “I just met you and have no idea who you are! I have so many questions, still—”

 

Thanatos awkwardly patted Danny’s head, clearly unused to such casual touch. Danny figured that Thanatos was very much all or nothing when it came to affection, kind of like how Thanatos distinguished between the absolutes of “dead” or “alive.” Danny guessed that you could apparently only be “mostly dead” or “slightly alive” if you were talking about The Princess Bride, or maybe Danny himself. He was honestly still pretty confused about the whole “Am I half-dead or just the son of a death god?” situation. But one thing that Danny wasn’t confused about was the caring way Thanatos swept him into a hug with his great black wings, nearly squeezing the life out of him. 

 

“You are cherished and loved, my son. You are worthy of being protected and cared for,” Thanatos promised, the brush of his soft feathers sending a sudden spark across Danny’s back. “Do well to remember that. But now, it is time for you to wake up.”

 

And with that, Danny was pushed back into the dark void, and his vision filled with galaxies upon galaxies worth of stars, all twinkling with promises of safety and love.

 

When he opened his eyes in the real world, Danny was greeted with the dimmed lights of the Big House infirmary and one Nico di Angelo perched on a chair at the end of Danny’s hospital bed, shuffling a deck of some sort of detailed playing cards. Some of them were laid out in patterned lines on the ruffled blankets like he was playing a horribly complex version of solitaire. 

 

Nico briefly looked up when Danny groaned and faintly registered the vaguely gold IV tube dripping down to his wrist. “Will,” Nico called softly, “Danny’s awake! I told you that he wasn’t dead.”    

 

Before Danny could parse out what Nico meant by that, Will came sliding into the room with all the decorum of an over-caffeinated nursing student hyped up before an exam. “Danny! I’m so glad that you’re awake! I’m so sorry I didn’t get you in here sooner.”

 

Danny shrugged the best he could, wincing in pain. “‘S not your fault,” he reassured, ‘V just gotten real good at hiding my injuries ‘s all.” 

 

That comment only served to make Will’s eyebrows knit even closer together. “Danny…that’s not a good thing. You know that, right?”

 

Danny half-shrugged once more. 

 

“Can you tell me what hurts?” Will asked with a pinched expression. “I was able to treat your visible injuries, but there could’ve been something I missed.”

 

“Everythin’,” Danny replied shortly. “Aches. Ouchie.”

 

 Will hummed worriedly. “Alright…” 

 

Danny grinned to hide the grimace he made as he sat up to better face Will and Nico, part of the usual song and dance he had with Jazz when she fretted over his injuries. “And I mean, I feel like death right now, but not much more than usual.”

 

Nico choked on a laugh off to the side, failing to cover the sound with a cough. Will shot him a look and Nico cleared his throat and offered a short apology. Will soon began rambling off a bunch of medical jargon to himself; Danny understood about less than half of it. He caught the tail end of it though, which basically summed up to “try not to irritate the bandages by moving a lot and please-please-please stay at least overnight in the infirmary, preferably longer.” Danny laughed to himself—like that was gonna happen. No, as soon as Danny was given the option to leave, he was getting out of the infirmary faster than he could say, “I’m goin’ ghost!”

 

“...so I’ll go find someone to grab the three of us something from the dining hall for dinner,” Will explained. 

 

Danny sighed as Will left the room, frowning at himself for zoning out. 

 

“We’re both infirmary bound for the foreseeable future,” Nico mused, stacking a holographic card sideways on top of another. “And after that, I can show you around the Hades cabin.”

 

Danny blinked, completely caught off guard. “What?”

 

“My father gave you the go-ahead to stay there for the time being.” Nico shuffled his handheld deck, pulled out a card, and grimaced. He then tucked it in at the bottom of the deck, mumbling something about having to rework the defense stat bonuses setup later. Danny caught a glimpse of the swirling font on the back of the card that proudly proclaimed “Mythomagic: the Trading Card Game.” 

 

“Why?” Danny asked tentatively, wincing as he accidentally tugged his bandages against his midsection. “He doesn’t even know who I am. And based on what myths I’ve heard, it’s probably good for it to stay that way.”

 

“I know about you.” Nico randomly pulled a card out from the middle of his deck, setting it at the end of the row closest to Danny, easy enough for him to read. In the center of a swirling indigo card with little skulls, a dark-robed figure stretched nightmarish wings to the edges of the card, extending a clawed hand to the viewer. At the top, there scrawled “ Thanatos: Angel of Death. ” 

 

Danny’s eyes widened. “How did you—?”

 

“I had a hunch,” Nico shrugged. “And you basically just confirmed it, not that I didn’t already know. My father’s skeleton messengers are kinda hard to miss—I don’t know why he doesn’t just use Iris Messaging to give me these kinds of updates. Sending skeletons with handwritten and wax-sealed letters addressed to ‘Prince Niccolò di Angelo’ is so excessive. Also, given how you basically revealed yourself to me, you’ll have to be extra careful about what you say until the Council”—Nico said the word in a way that implied a capital letter—“convenes on Olympus and comes to a final consensus about you. Even though no one can outwardly say the truth, implicating words and references can definitely slip through the cracks.”

 

“Sure…” Danny agreed faintly. Then he shook his head. “Wait, you’re a prince?”   

 

Nico shrugged and made a so-so gesture. “Technically. Hades is the king of the Underworld, and I’m his son, so yeah. I mean, I did also claim the ‘Ghost King’ epithet, so there’s that too.”

 

Danny tensed. “Okay, then…just making sure since my mythology’s a little shaky, uh, Thanatos isn’t royalty, is he?”

 

“He’s not.”

 

“ Oh, thank the Ancients… ” 

 

“No need to sound so disappointed,” Nico drawled sarcastically. 

 

Danny smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, it’s just…I don’t think I can deal with that kind of responsibility right now, maybe even ever. A lot of things have changed for me in the past few months, not even mentioning the last 24 hours.” Nico huffed a laugh at that and Danny rolled his eyes before continuing dryly, “If one more overpowered thing fell into my lap, I think I’d just scream. Maybe throw in a Ghostly Wail or two to really ham it up.”

 

“Careful,” Nico teased, “you’re tempting the Fates with words like that. Next thing you know, the Olympians will be hounding you to try and get you to Ascend to godhood like they tried with Percy.”

 

Danny let out a surprised snort. “Really? What on Earth did Percy do to catch the gods’ attention?”

 

Nico laughed, “A better question to ask is what didn’t Percy do? Two-time savior of Olympus, blah, blah, blah.”

 

“You can’t just say ‘blah, blah, blah’ and expect me to be satisfied with that answer!”

 

At just that moment, Will reentered the infirmary room, followed by a teenage girl with ginger hair dyed with a shock of bright green. They each carried two forks and two plates piled high with steaming food that smelled absolutely fantastic to Danny. His stomach rumbled at the thought of warm food that didn’t want to come alive and eat him.    

 

“Hi, guys!” Will chirped. “I ran into Kayla just outside the Big House and she offered to help me carry the plates. Oh, and don’t worry, Danny. I made sure there was no kiwi in the fruit salad.” Will handed Nico one plate and used his free hand to slide a lap table from the side of the infirmary bed out for Danny to use, all in one practiced motion. Will set the plate down in front of Danny, who eyed it curiously. He looked down at his plate, then at Will, and then back again.

 

“How did you know I was allergic?” Danny marveled as he studied the fruit salad that was carefully arranged next to a hefty mound of mashed potatoes dripping with butter, honey-roasted carrots, and some kind of tender grilled fish. 

 

“It’s an Apollo kid thing,” the new girl stepped in. “Hi, Kayla Knowles, daughter of Apollo.”

 

Now that she said that, Danny could see the similarities in the shape of hers and Will’s blue eyes; the stubborn cowlick that shifted every time they moved. 

 

“Uh, ‘m Danny. And…I’m Undetermined?” he looked towards Nico, who shot him a halfhearted thumbs up. Danny mentally pumped his fist—he was so good at social interaction! He should get an A+ on picking up social cues because that was a realistic and easy thing to achieve! 

 

“Nice to meet you! Well, it would've been nicer to meet you in not the infirmary ‘cause that means you’re hurt, and…yeah. Um, anyways, Apollo’s the god of medicine and healing, so there’s some things that children of Apollo just know, ” Kayla explained as she handed a plate off to Will and sat with her legs crisscrossed on an empty visitor’s chair. “We’ve got a second sense for patients’ allergies; if Tylenol or Advil works better for someone, that sorta thing.” 

 

“Good to know?” Danny decided. “But I would’ve been fine if there’d been kiwi in the fruit salad. I only have—”

 

“A mild allergic reaction to it? Slight throat irritation?” Will guessed as he leaned against the wall with his own plate. Danny nodded dumbly at his quick response. “Yeah, well, we’re not gonna let any patient get more hurt during their stay in the infirmary if it at all possible. It’d be bad bedside manner, you know?”

 

Danny snorted. “Yeah, okay.”

 

Will stabbed a carrot chunk with his fork. “And make sure you eat what you can, alright? And that goes for you too, Angel. I made sure to grab y’all the softest foods they had tonight so they’d be easy on your throats after your long day of fighting and screaming and whatnot.”

 

Nico grumbled playfully, pushing the fruit salad around on his plate with the back of his fork, vaguely reminding Danny of a mini construction site with an even smaller backhoe loader. 

 

To avoid any potential lingering awkwardness, Danny piped up, “So, Nico! You were telling me about why the gods wanted Percy to get godhood, or whatever?”

 

Off to the side, Kayla laughed. “Oh, man! Nico, you’re telling that story? Danny, you are in for a treat. A really long treat, but still a treat.”

 

“Well, the two of us are gonna be stuck in here for a while, since the whole ‘doctor’s orders’ thing and all,” Nico agreed, nodding toward Will who grinned and blew an over-exaggerated kiss back. Nico just blushed and rolled his eyes.

 

“Oh!” Danny suddenly realized. A chorus of “what's” echoed around the room and he flushed in embarrassment. “This is like, like, this one thing my friend back home once told me about! Uh, what’d she call it?” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, yeah! Greek oral tradition!”

 

“Exactly,” Nico agreed. “Except we haven’t memorized every stanza of something like the Odyssey verbatim like they did in ancient times.”  

 

“Speak for yourself!” Kayla cut in, “I know, like, the first 30 lines exactly. Some of the more epics and poetry-inclined Apollo kids know more than that, not to mention that one Athena kid who made it their mission that one summer to have the whole thing memorized by the last campfire—”

 

“That might’ve been Annabeth…” Will mused, “Age nine, maybe?”

 

“ Really? ” Danny asked in disbelief. He thought back to how intimidating Annabeth had been when he briefly met her. Imagining her doing something so comparatively tame was hard for him to picture—the mental image of such a scary person being a little kid trying her hardest to recite an entire epic around lisped syllables felt foreign to him.

 

Kayla grinned. “Oh, yeah! And then I heard she—”

 

“ Hey! ” Nico cut in. Everyone settled down—Danny could definitely hear the royal commanding quality to his voice, now. “Alright, we’ll start from the beginning. Like, the very beginning. So, Percy Jackson never wanted to be a half-blood—he never asked to be a hero seeking praise. But one fateful day, Percy was accused of stealing Zeus’ Master Bolt and was soon labeled ‘The Lightning Thief…’ ”

Notes:

Content warning for...

-Danny-typical self-deprecation

-Mentions of Jack and Maddie not being as good of parents as they could have been

–Discussions of Death (with Death)
------------------------------
Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

We are in the endgame, now! Only 1-2 chapters left (fingers crossed) in this fic before starting the next in the series! Also, someone call me [insert non-controversial speedrunner here], because I absolutely Speedran writing this, lol. Over 4000 words in about 3 days is freaking Wild to me!! But as I said before, when the brainrot hits, it certainly does hit!

Thank you all so much for reading! Your lovely comments honestly make my day and inspire me to keep writing! (Now I just need to figure out how to end this story in a satisfying way, lol.)

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 13: Danny Gets Peer-Reviewed for ADHD

Summary:

Danny finally escapes the infirmary, only to be faced with another more pressing problem: How on earth is he going to hide his identity as the son of Thanatos for the time being?

Notes:

Before anything else, THIS IS NOT THE END OF DANNY'S STORY. THERE WILL BE FUTURE FICS AND ONESHOTS IN THIS SERIES. I recommend subscribing to this series or my account so you can see any future updates!

I just need a little hiatus-break-thing before I write more because I have real-life stuff to attend to; fanfic writing is a hobby, after all! I have my own original book series to write, plus various other assignments, lol.

Edit 10/7/23: "Danny Gets Peer-Reviewed for ADHD" refers to a trend I've noticed in neurodivergent friend groups where someone has been diagnosed with ADHD, autism, etc. and notices similar traits in one of their friends.

Warnings and spoilers are in the endnotes.

“You know that no one’s ever managed to escape the infirmary, right?” 

 

Danny’s fingers rustled past the curtains, trying to find the window’s latch with as little noise as possible. “Shush, Nico! You’re gonna get me caught!”

 

Nico huffed. “I’m serious. The infirmary is the Apollo kids’ domain—they just know when a patient is trying to leave before they’re supposed to. They also know when people are lying since their dad is also the god of truth—they’ll clock any lie you tell about ‘not escaping’ in an instant. ” 

 

A few thumping footsteps pounded just outside the door, making Danny pause. Once they thankfully passed, he let his shoulders relax, but he still felt tense. 

 

“Are you really in a rush to be rid of me so soon?” Nico asked, feigning hurt. Somehow, Danny sensed a kernel of upset in his tone.

 

“It’s…it’s not like that,” Danny reassured, turning back to face Nico who had finally looked up from his spread of Mythomagic cards. “I’m just used to a bit more freedom, I guess? Being all cooped up in here for the past three days hasn’t helped that feeling much. Not to mention my powers…I still can’t ‘go ghost’ for some reason, much less intangibly go through the window.”

 

“And I still can’t believe that you unironically say that. ‘Go ghost.’ But it is strange…maybe you have some kind of mental block?” Nico frowned in sympathy before patting the bed he’d laid his Mythomagic cards across. “I’d be called a hypocrite for saying this, but you should try to relax. Will said that your ribs got really bruised and you reeked of power over usage, not to mention all your other injuries. C’mon, sit over here and I’ll teach you some more Mythomagic stuff.”

 

“But the latch—”

 

“Is nonexistent. The window just has a sliding part with a screen.”

“And you just watched me struggle for the past ten minutes?!”

 

Nico only grinned. “You know, the Charybdis pit trap card is especially useful for deceiving your opponent—”

 

Danny’s lip curled into an expression that vaguely matched Nico’s troublemaking one. He began to advance and exclaimed, “You little—” 

 

Before Danny could launch himself at Nico, Will pushed open the door and stared at them with wide eyes that flicked between the two. “What…what did I just walk into?”

 

“Nothing!” Danny blurted at the same time Nico said, “Danny failing to escape the infirmary.”

 

Danny gasped overdramatically. “ How could you? ”

 

Nico only shrugged, but if Danny focused, he could see the faint outline of a self-satisfied smile like the cat who caught the canary. Danny groaned, pushing his face into his hands, dragging them down in resigned irritation.

 

Will furrowed his brow and brought one hand up to his chin and the other down to his hip, studying Nico and Danny with surprising intensity. Then he snapped his fingers and his expression brightened. “That’s what you remind me of—I’ve got it!”

 

“What do you have, exactly?” Nico asked.

 

Will literally glowed as he revealed his discovery. “You two bicker like siblings!” 

 

Danny and Nico froze and discreetly made eye contact—even though Thanatos and Hades weren’t brothers, per se, any close ties drawn between Danny and Nico would decidedly not be good if Danny’s parentage needed to be hidden. Which also made Danny wonder why on earth he was getting put in the flipping Hades cabin…

 

Danny forced a smile and joked, “Ha, more like unfortunate neighbors!” Nico blinked and nodded along until Danny added, “Or maybe like those kids of family friends you only see a few times a year.”

 

At that last line, Nico shot Danny a look. Yeah, sure, it was uncomfortably close to the truth, but it’d keep Will off the scent for a bit. Half-truths and all that. 

 

“O…kay, then?” Will puzzled. Danny mentally pumped his fist—confusion was definitely better than being called out for his escape attempt. “Anyways…do you mind telling me why you were trying to knock down the window, Danny?”

 

Danny’s smile wavered and he wilted when Nico stifled a snort. “Uh…I wanted to get some fresh air?”

 

Will’s brow knit in concern. “Danny, if you wanted to go outside for a bit, you do know that you could’ve just asked, right?”

 

Danny eyed the window for a moment too long before focusing back on Will. “Yeah, it’s just”—Danny sighed—“it’s not the same?” His next words caught in his throat. How in the world could he say I want freedom, but only when I can reach for it myself? I don’t want to owe anyone anything for something as grand as that. So instead, Danny said, “I snuck out a lot like this back home—I’m used to stuff like this.”

 

“Can I ask why? You weren’t doing some kind of vigilante justice, were you?” Will laughed lightly, an attempt to lift away the heavier tone the conversation had taken.

 

Danny scratched the back of his neck nervously and tried to casually lean against the wall (he was sure that it looked more awkward than anything). “Uh, about that…what would you say if I did?”

 

He didn’t know why he braced for a long-suffering rant like “How could you be so stupid, Danny? Why didn’t you think of the consequences? How could you-Why didn’t you-How could you” swirling around his skull like a hurricane before flooding out his ears and leaving him completely numb. 

 

So, it surprised Danny when Will replied with a sad smile, “Well, I’d say that you’re in the same boat as a lot of us demigods.”

 

Danny’s heart clenched and his voice came out like an alley cat’s strangled yowl. “Okay, cool-cool-cool. Um, wow… ”

 

“So, Will,” Nico cut in, giving Danny a moment to compose himself, “Did you come in here to join our Mythomagic game? I’m teaching Danny about how to build and play with a defense-strat deck.”

 

Will blinked, caught off guard. “If you want me to, sure! But I actually wanted to swing by to let y’all know that you’ve been cleared to leave the infirmary.”  

 

Danny’s jaw dropped and his whole body buzzed with excitement, making him want to bounce off the walls like a rubber ball, burning with unrestrained joy. He distantly noted Will saying something about taking it easy still, but he didn’t really pay attention. How could he? Danny was free, free, free—

 

“You look happier than a pegasus flyin’ above the clouds,” Will observed, smiling. 

 

Danny grinned—Will had no idea just how close to the truth he was. He briefly thought back to all the quiet (well, quiet-er) times after his late-night ghostly patrols where he pushed himself up and up and up into the thickest cloud layers to survey all of Amity at once like a dragon watching over their hoard. 

 

Nico playfully rolled his eyes. “You and your Greco-southernisms, Will. You should write a book.”

 

“Ha!” Will laughed, “Maybe I will. Also, um, Danny? You… good? ” 

 

Danny’s hands tingled with bright, happy energy—he felt like he needed to move-move-move to redirect it. 

 

And so he did. 

 

Followed by surprised shouts from Nico and Will, Danny finally, finally, flickered into a brief semblance of intangibility and tumbled straight back through the wall, barely catching himself on a sliver of weightless flight. His powers stuttered and he dropped a few inches down into the patchy grass and bushes below the window he’d tried so hard to get past the “normal way.” 

 

As he basked in the slant of sunlight that cut through the Big House’s cool shade he lay in, he took a moment to just breathe. This was not at all what he planned, but hey! It worked! He was out of the infirmary. Finally. At last.

 

“ Danny! ” Will and Nico shouted, running around the corner.

 

“Hey, guys,” Danny hummed, pushing himself up from the soil. “So… that was interesting.”

 

“ What was that? ” Will exclaimed, rushing forward to help Danny stand upright, “Are you okay? Does anything hurt? Oh, gods…”

 

“Oh, that’s just a thing I do sometimes,” Danny shrugged, nonplussed. He brushed away the errant dirt and Will’s hovering hands. “Though I admit losing control like that hasn’t happened to me in a while…”

 

Will’s expression slid somewhere between exhaustion and horror. “Nico…you said that there wasn’t another one!”

 

Nico just patted Will’s shoulder and recalled, “I'm sorry to say that I said ‘close, but not quite,’ Will. Big difference.”

 

“Okay, what does that mean?” Will and Nico whipped around to face Danny. “You guys keep saying that and it doesn’t make any sense!”

 

Will and Nico shared a silent conversation of head tilts and micro-expressions before Nico nodded to his boyfriend and stepped forward. “Will thought you’d be a son of Hades—which would result in a whole other host of problems considering the Big Three’s agreement to not sire any more children after World War II—”

 

A pathetic and confused sound of protest escaped from Danny’s throat. 

 

“—but Will was mistaken and...am I missing anything?”

 

“Yes,” Will cut in, “Who is Danny’s godly parent, if not your own father, Nico?”

 

Danny froze like a deer in headlights. While he and Nico had become somewhat friends during their stint in the infirmary, that barely held a candle to Nico’s significantly closer relationship with Will. It’d be so easy for Nico to just say the truth right then and there—Danny could only think that he himself would be the only one to lose in the current situation. Unless Hades and Nico’s familial bond wasn’t as alright as Danny thought it was. But then again, it wouldn’t be the first time Danny had been sold out…

 

“Sorry, Will. I’m only allowed to say that Danny’s godly parent has some connection to the Underworld.”

 

Nico didn’t sell Danny out. Nico didn’t sell Danny out. 

 

Why?

 

“Oh, alright, then. Just curious since I’d better know how to treat Danny’s bouts of shadow sickness if y’all were brothers! Apologies if I was irritating you, Danny, Nico. The pursuit of medical knowledge and all can get the better of me sometimes, I suppose.” He chuckled lightly at the end as if he hadn’t just rattled Danny’s entire perception of him. 

 

Danny just shot Will an awkward double thumbs-up, followed by a weak grin. He honestly didn’t trust himself to respond in any verbally cohesive way. 

 

“Let’s go get you situated in the Hades cabin,” Nico cut in, suddenly reappearing at Danny’s side like a ghost. If Danny were any other person, he would have probably jumped a foot in the air, but given that he lived in a haunted town and moonlighted as Phantom on the daily, it honestly felt like a regular Tuesday back in Amity.

 

“I need to stay and help out in the infirmary, but you two have fun!” 

 

Danny nodded mutely and turned to follow Nico to the cabin area, only to pause in his tracks at the sound of Will’s sudden laugh. 

 

“What’re you laughing at?” Danny whipped around to ask as Nico continued on, seemingly unaware of his boyfriend’s antics. 

 

Will’s chuckles tapered off and he settled into his usual smile. “Sorry, it’s just that… wow. There are very few people who don’t automatically freak out when Nico does that—they usually find him scary. Caught me off guard that a newbie like yourself is so chill around him, is all.”

 

“I’ve made friends with beings that’d make most quake in their boots—Nico’s not that much different,” Danny shrugged.

 

“If you say so…” Will conceded. Then his eyes darkened, yet his bright smile remained. “But know this: if you hurt my boyfriend with any kind of false friendship, you’ll need more than the infirmary to tend to your injuries.” 

 

“When I make friends, I do so with the intention of keeping them,” Danny carefully replied.

 

One second passed sluggishly, followed by another.

 

Will offered a singular nod before his disposition turned sunshiney once more. “Alright, then! You’d better go catch up to Nico—have fun exploring Camp!”

 

No sooner than he said that, Danny backed up one step, then two. Then he absolutely tore off to find Nico, Will having sufficiently instilled the fear of the gods into him. 

 

Some part of Danny wondered what had happened in the what, 14? 15? years Nico had been alive for Will to essentially give Danny a friendship shovel talk. Danny wouldn’t pry—he’d had experiences with ghosts new in the Zone who couldn’t or didn’t want to talk about their past, it was so painful. If Nico wanted to tell Danny anything about his past, that was for Nico to decide, not Danny. But that was future stuff. For now, Danny just needed to find Nico…

 

No sooner had Danny thought that, a puff of blue mist trickled out of his mouth, right in the middle of the strawberry fields. Focusing intently, he spun around slowly to figure out where the mist felt the strongest, and there! Danny took note of the familiar head of black hair and golden Nemean Lion pelt aviator jacket Nico had taken to tying around his waist facing towards a series of expertly themed cabins away from Danny. 

 

With silent steps and a grin that he’d learned would apparently make Hermes kids shudder, Danny stealthily crept closer to Nico. As he was just about to get Nico back for startling him earlier, Danny heard someone shout, “ HI, DANNY! ” at the top of their lungs. The sudden sound jolted Danny to awareness and he whipped around to see Percy charging in from out of nowhere, followed by Jason, whose attempts to slow Percy down seemed to be in vain. 

 

Nico reappeared at Danny’s side once again as Percy and Jason slowed to a heaving halt right in front of them. Danny didn’t jump at Nico’s presence, but he did frown on not being able to get the drop on him. Call him a stereotypical ghost, but he wanted to shout “ BOO, ” dangit! He also couldn’t help but wonder if Nico felt any satisfaction from sneaking up behind Danny as well…

 

“Nico, Danny! You’re out of the infirmary! How’re you two feeling?” Percy asked in a rush, looking over the two of them as if searching for any lingering injuries. “We tried visiting, but Jason and I kept getting pulled away for teaching camp activities and Jason had to help oversee the construction plans for the new minor gods’ cabins and—”

 

Jason put a hand on Percy’s shoulder—a silent “Calm down, man. Breathe. ” Danny could tell since he did that for Tucker a lot as well; Sam to a lesser extent when they both started rant spirals with no end in sight. (Danny purposely didn’t think of all the times he had to be on the receiving end of something similar.) 

 

“It’s good to see you two in one piece,” Jason cut in gently. 

 

“Thanks,” Danny replied shortly, voice thick with emotion. He didn’t trust himself to say more than that. 

 

Suddenly he was very glad that it was late afternoon and most campers were off doing camp activities as opposed to milling around the cabin area. Danny wasn’t sure what he’d do if he had to worry about dozens of unfamiliar teenagers judging him for melting at just a few words of caring assurance from someone older than him like he’d often get from Jazz. He didn’t want anyone to replace Jazz’s role in his life, but she did always say that Danny’s heart was more than big enough to care about more than his closest inner circle. It was part of the reason why he wanted to protect people so badly, Jazz had once mentioned. Care just seemed to ooze out of him! Danny’s response to that was to ask, “ Like ectoplasm? ” And then they laughed—one of those good hearty laughs that sometimes feels like it lasts just a little too long, but never does.

 

“...so that’s why I was just about to show Danny around the Hades cabin,” Nico finished explaining something. 

 

Danny blinked, realizing that he’d missed more of the conversation than he’d thought. But good thing his improv “yes and-ing” skills were top-notch, so he could intelligently add to the discussion!

 

“Oh,” Percy replied, to Nico thinking deeply. Then he slung an arm over Danny’s shoulders, thankfully careful not to jostle his aching ribs too much. “Then we’ll just have to work together to figure out who your godly parent is!”

 

“ What? ” Nico and Danny exclaimed with exact same inflection. Right, so that was definitely a point against “adding intelligently adding to the discussion.”

 

Jason nodded sagely. “Normally I’d say that we should let something like godly claiming naturally run its course, but since we’re currently trying to figure out which cabin we should start designing and constructing next over the next few days, it makes sense to figure out who Danny’s godly parent is, sooner rather than later. That way, we can situate him in the rightful cabin as soon as possible. We’ll start going through the list of Underworld-related deities tomorrow morning, since you need some time to recuperate, Danny.”

 

Danny found himself nodding along to Jason’s direct and well-formulated plan until he realized that revealing his godly parentage before the Olympians decided his fate could cause a whole host of problems. But could you blame Danny? Jason had such a charismatic leader-voice! The dude could easily inspire and direct whole armies, Danny was sure. But his previous point still stood! (Also, how did Jason get “we need to build a cabin for Danny’s unknown godly parent” from Nico’s explanation???)

 

“Are you sure about that?” Danny asked nervously. “I wouldn’t want to be a bother. You can just pick one of the other minor gods that still needs a cabin—honestly, I don’t mind! They deserve it much more!”     

 

If Danny concentrated, he could feel the very earth suddenly lightly trembling beneath his feet. It was as if Thanatos himself were pounding his fists underneath the earth’s crust all the way from down in the Underworld to protest Danny’s self-deprecating words. Danny hissed an apology under his breath and the light trembles stopped. Nico shot Danny a wide-eyed glance, to which Danny returned a barely noticeable helpless shrug. 

 

“You deserve to have nice things, Danny,” Jason explained kindly. “It’s okay—we’re eventually going to build cabins for every minor god one day; we’re just trying to figure out which one is going to be built next.”

 

Danny nodded weakly, too stunned to “yes-and” a response or quip like he was usually able to come up with on the fly. He mentally kicked himself—after he left Amity, did that snarky ghost-boy part of him just up and leave, too? He was so much better than this! Jazz would probably chalk it up to experiencing a heavily traumatic event like being disowned and injured by people he trusted, but still!    

  

Nico also tried and failed to come up with a response, only to clam up as well. Maybe it was just Jason’s powerful older brother vibes, then. Or a commanding presence he inherited from his father, Jupiter, king of the gods.

 

Whatever the case was, Danny and Nico found themselves unable to say no to Jason and Percy’s infectious enthusiasm for their “genius” idea. 

 

And so began Danny’s several hours of stress extravaganza or e- stress -vaganza, as he liked to call it, much to Nico’s chagrin. Even after showing Danny the dark and edgy Hades cabin (sans Percy and Jason because Hades would throw a fit if they walked in, according to Nico), there wasn’t much Nico could do to appear equally as macabre, given how much he groaned and face-palmed each time Danny said “e- stress -vaganza” or made pun after terrible pun about the decor.

 

“...I’d say that the skull and bones motif over the door is bone-chilling, ” Danny noted as he lay on a top bunk, staring at the empty Fenton thermos that’d been stashed in the bag he’d arrived with. Miraculously, the entire reusable shopping bag had been untouched and placed carefully on a clean coffin-like top bunk ready for him to grab as if by magic. Actually, Danny wouldn’t rule magic out of the question, given his track record. “And that shrine of jewels over there absolutely—”

 

“Will you quit it with the puns?” Nico finally snapped. “For five seconds?”

 

Danny clicked his jaw shut.

 

“ Thank you. ”

 

A stilted pause choked the air for five beats. 

 

“ ...rocks? ”  

 

Nico shot up from his bottom bunk on the opposite side of the room and whipped his head around to glare at Danny. He jumped out from his bed with a solid thunk, rattling the dark wood floor with the weight of his heavy combat boots. Danny startled and scrambled to tuck himself in the farthest corner of the coffin-bed away from the ladder just as Nico’s furious face popped up over the top rung. 

 

“ What is wrong with you? We’re supposed to be coming up with ways to get out of going around Camp with Grace and Jackson tomorrow to figure out your supposedly undetermined godly parentage, not loafing about and punning like some dip!” 

 

That last bit smacked Danny over the head from pure confusion. “ What? ”

 

“‘Dip,’ you know, like an idiot?” 

 

“ No?! ”

 

“ Ugh, kids nowadays… ” Nico grumbled to himself.

 

Danny forced down his rising irritated confusion and took a deep breath. Jazz would be so proud of him for taking the moral high road and not rising to the bait. “Look, man. I pun and joke to relieve stress—it helps me think, even! If I’m not moving in some way—including talking—I am not helpful for coming up with plans, straight up. I’m trying my best, but all I’ve got is ‘distract-redirect-distract’ which isn’t a good long-term plan, and because I can’t flipping think right now!”

 

Nico studied Danny for a moment, likely taking in the crease in his brow that he copied from Jazz, the reddened cheeks from Sam, and the wrinkled nose from Tucker. Danny curled in on himself more, wishing he had some kind of blanket to hide away from the world in—maybe he inherited that quirk from his bio mom. Maybe Thanatos? But certainly not the Fentons. At this point, in the tapestry that made up Danny, he now struggled to find the threads they’d woven in once upon a time, now unraveled. 

 

Yeah, that was a good word for it. Unraveled. 

 

“Do you want a fidget toy?” Nico finally asked.

 

Danny blinked. “What?”

 

“A fidget toy,” Nico repeated. “I have a bunch from Will, among other places. They help people with ADHD focus. Do you want one?”

 

“ Sure? ”

 

Nico jumped down from the ladder with little regard for his safety (Danny mentally filed that tidbit away for blackmail purposes if he ever needed to tell on Nico to Will), shuffled around under his bunk, and retrieved a sunshine yellow sand pail full of brightly colored pieces of plastic, metal, and wood. Now, Jazz had offhandedly mentioned getting Danny some fidget toys in passing, but he hadn’t really paid attention. And on later reflection, maybe that was because he had never had something to properly fidget with.    

 

“So, I normally just fidget with my ring”—Danny took note of the ornate skull ring on Nico’s hand as he popped up back up over the bed’s ladder—“but sometimes it’s good to have options. And not everyone likes the same thing—I know that Will likes fidget cubes, but Percy is more inclined to uncap and recap his pen-sword, Riptide.”

 

“Isn’t…isn’t that dangerous?”

 

Nico snorted. “Annabeth’s been trying to get him to stop by introducing him to other methods of fidgeting, but nothing’s worked so far. I’ve even heard that she’s working with the Hephaestus cabin to make some personalized fidget toys for him. But we’re getting off track.” Nico shook the bucket expectantly, making the contents rattle like a maraca.

 

Not wanting to test Nico’s patience further, Danny blindly reached into the bucket and picked something out at random. 

 

“Ah, a fidget spinner. Classic.”

 

Danny frowned and looked at the black three-pronged lump of plastic and metal in his hand, experimentally pinching the middle between his thumb and first two fingers. With his other hand, he flicked the outside, making the fidget spinner whirr in lazy circles that somehow helped soothe the itch in his brain.  

“Looks like we have a winner,” Nico observed, amused.

 

Danny hummed, staring at and flicking the fidget spinner once more. “Couldn’t Annabeth just get Percy a non-stabby pen? Or maybe design a fidget toy that feels like capping a pen?”

 

Nico huffed in consideration, the barest hint of a smile crawling across his face. “I’ll definitely let her know. Now, can you think of any bright ideas for tomorrow?”

 

Danny pursed his lips and inhaled deeply, letting his previous vague fragments of various plans click together like the segmented block fidget toy Nico had grabbed for himself, clacking together idly to reveal a new picture with each flip. That cube was unassuming on the outside, yet could quickly flip to reveal something new and distracting before you could fully process the last part. 

 

Danny let a wry grin stretch ear to ear, definitely revealing too many pointed teeth to be considered natural. “Nico, I think I got it.”

 

Nico matched his expression. “Oh? Let’s hear it then.”

 

“Okay, so it sounds a little crazy but it just might work. So, right after breakfast tomorrow…”

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

With a decent plan in his head and an idle fidget spinner in hand, Danny eventually lay down to sleep, thankful that Percy convinced some of his friends in the Hermes cabin to “borrow on long-term” some basic pajamas and a few changes of standard Camp clothes for Danny. The few times Danny had slept in jeans after some particularly draining ghostly patrols made him keen to not repeat that mistake in the future. So, he was grateful for the soft sleep shirt and pajamas, even though they were covered in an atrocious pink and red “Delphi Strawberry Service” and cartoony strawberry pattern. 

 

For now, Danny could relax. He was safe and more than a few people had his back. He just needed to figure out how to call Jazz, Sam, and Tucker soon without attracting monsters, but that was Tomorrow Danny’s problem, as well as figuring out what was up with his powers. Today Danny just needed to figure out how to sleep in the Hades’ cabin coffin-beds without irritating the annoying crick in his back—he honestly should have listened to Jazz’s spiels about proper posture more. 

 

But everything was okay. And everything was going to stay okay, even if Danny had to fight tooth and nail to get there. Danny would not be some phantom in his own story, waiting invisibly on the outskirts and watching the world pass by. 

 

Danny sighed and stared up at the ceiling above him, wishing that it was covered in glow-in-the-dark stars like when he was a kid. Maybe later, Danny promised himself. Maybe when I’m not in danger of the Olympians deciding to kill me all the way, if I’m even actually half-dead.

 

“ Go to sleep, ” Nico complained, voice muffled by his pillow. “Y’r eyes are glowin’ an’ I can practically hear you monologuin’ in y’r head.”

 

Danny huffed a soft laugh, followed by a short apology. He turned to face his apparently glowing eyes towards the wall so he wouldn’t bother Nico as much.

 

“Good night,” Danny whispered. Nico shushed him, but it wasn’t nearly as aggressive as it could have been. 

 

Danny’s eyes eventually slipped closed. Everything would be fine tomorrow—like, come on! 

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

 

Notes:

Content warning for...

-Danny-typical self-deprecation

-Mentions of Jack and Maddie not being as good of parents as they could have been
-------------------------------
Hello, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

Thank you all so much for joining me on this wild ride of a story! And at the time of posting this, over 6,500 of you have clicked on "Half-Blood? No, I'm a Halfa." which is so unbelievably wild to me! Thank you all so, so very much. I sometimes struggle with remembering "Hey, [my IRL name]! You *are* a good writer and people do like reading your stories!" but all of you lovely readers never fail to remind me, so thank you again!

I have many notes for future fics in this series, but I don't have much time to write them at the moment. We will just have to see how wily my undefined updating schedule is in the future! Again, I recommend subscribing to this series or my account so you can see any future updates! Maybe I'll post a temporary chapter 14 on this fic so you guys can see when the next fic is up (hopefully not in over a year like last time, lol. Knock on wood, though! *knock-knock-knock*).

In the meantime, I have a few other fics on my account if any of you are Star Wars fans like Will Solace, lol. I might also go through my old fic documents to see if there's anything fun to edit and post, who knows?

My Q&A fic is still open for you guys to ask questions, but please don't ask questions like when the next update is or how chapter one of the next fic will start. Lore questions only, please! (I also don't know how often I'll answer questions because I am rather busy, lol.)

It has been an absolute pleasure to share my writing with all of you. And jade? I am so sorry for making you wait this long for the fic. But hey! Over 41,000 words of specific crossover fanfic between two of your favorite fandoms is a lot better than 2,000 words, right? Right?!

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Chapter 14: THIS AUTHOR’S NOTE WILL BE DELETED SOON—AUTHOR'S NOTE

Summary:

A sneak peek. :)

Notes:

THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE NEXT WORK IN THIS SERIES CALLED "Who's your DEAD-y?" IS NOW LIVE. THIS UPDATE CHAPTER ON "Half-Blood? No, I'm a Halfa." WILL BE DELETED SOON.

When Danny first woke up, he instantly wished that he hadn’t. Between the stress that he knew he’d face in the morning plus his cryptic dreams that kept rousing him from sleep in the middle of the night, it was easy enough to say that Danny was not a happy camper. He meant this literally and figuratively, given that he lay staring at the ceiling of the Hades cabin in the heart of Camp Half-Blood. 

 

“Nico,” Danny hissed, “you awake?”

 

A groan pierced the frigid cabin air, followed by an irritated grumble. “ I am dead to the world. ”

 

He snorted because, well, that’s a mood. Danny was half-dead, after all. 

 

 

Notes:

Go to the next work in this series to read more and comment. The wait is finally over. >:)

Notes:

Hello again, guys, gals, and non-binary pals!

So...it's been a hot minute since I wrote the first installment of this series.

The reason for such a long wait is that I was nervous to put more thought into what I thought would be a one-off little crack-ish crossover universe. In the comment section of the previous fic in this series, I got so, so many comments expressing their enthusiasm for a continuation!

Side note: I have a plan for the whole Esperanto discussion that happened in the comments because of the last fic—just wait for the future chapter where Danny mentions that he genuinely thought it was a dead language because Wulf, a ghost, spoke it. I apologize for misconstruing a fanon idea with actual real-life facts.

Anyways, the comments—your enthusiastic comments that made me beam ear-to-ear because you liked my story so much! As much as I loved reading the possible ideas for a continuation, they made me worry about how I could live up to someone's idea of an ideal crossover. I didn't want to disappoint anyone with how I chose to handle certain story elements, like Danny's potential godly parentage, since that's often a topic of hot debate in the PJO & DP crossover fic sphere.

So, I didn't write.

Cut to late July. One of my friends, jadegreengemini, messaged me about not wanting to go grocery shopping, despite needing to. When words of encouragement didn't work, I said that I wouldn't start writing a short PJO & DP fic. jade soon got the grocery shopping done once I sent that message, lol. So, I started writing a short crossover fic as I promised, which didn't end up being the 2,000 words that I was aiming for (try more like 20,000+ words in need of heavy editing at this current moment in time).

In short, the reason this fic exists is my friend. I thank jade very much for that.

Furthermore, I will be posting this fic in short installments so as to limit the stress of trying to post a "perfect" crossover all in one go. (I know you guys know how to wait if the cliffhanger between Mark of Athena and House of Hades is anything to go by. I suffered with you.) I don't want to disappoint anyone with a hastily slapped-together story that is almost done, but not quite ready for viewing.

Please be kind in the comments. I have worked hard on this story and I am not obligated to complete this work, should I see fit.

Yours in demigodishness,

DoodlebugWritesStuff

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Paying Charon's Fare Halfway