Chapter Text
Danny was going to scream. For once, (once!) he'd been minding his own business, just trying to get to school, but of course the ancients-damned universe couldn't just let him get one normal day.
So far in the last hour Danny had gotten sucked through a natural portal, freaking mugged like his life was some b rate gangster movie, been thrown through ANOTHER portal, and, to top it all off, he was stuck in a demon trap in the middle of the woods in who knows where with no one else around.
The ghost boy huffed as he flopped to the ground. Trying to break out of the ring as a human wasn't working. Danny absently tore up some grass as he sulked, ripping the blades into tiny pieces in his hands..
The woods he found himself stuck in felt wrong, like, set off his ghost sense a little bit wrong. Danny couldn't find any actual ghosts, but that certainly didn't put his mind at ease.
It was almost like the forest itself was what was setting off his powers.
Danny lamented forgetting his phone this morning. He hadn't had time to go back to get it without being late once he'd realized the phone wasn't in his pocket. He'd figured he could just borrow one of the twelve phones and PDAs Tucker carried around at all times, but noOooOo, now Danny was stuck out in this creepy ass forest with no way to call for help.
He should have just taken the tardy slip, it's not like he wasn't already swimming in them.
As the time passed and Danny was still stuck in the demon trap, he began to actually panic. The sun was actually fading now, nowhere near where it had been in the middle of the sky hours ago when he'd first been trapped. He estimated that it was at least getting close to six o'clock now.
His stomach grumbled, making Danny sigh.
Nothing the halfa had tried doing to escape had worked. Multiple attempts at using his human form? No. Flying up? That just got him yanked painfully back to the ground by some invisible force. Going intangible under the ground? Same result.
Breaking the seal? Nope.
Ectoblasts at the wall? Nada, only a few new burns when they bounced off.
Nothing .
It was suffice to say that Danny was frustrated, which he felt was, y'know, understandable.
He sat up from his place on the ground, brushing grass and dirt off his back. This was ridiculous. His friends had to be looking for him. Even Danny's parents must have noticed he was missing by now. Realistically, Danny knew he would be found eventually, not trapped in this Ancients forsaken circle forever, but being stuck alone for so long in woods where he hadn't seen anything move for multiple hours was draining on his sanity.
Danny fell back onto the grass pathetically.
The demon trap wasn't anything he'd recognized. Danny had studied different traps with Sam and Frostbite to have an idea of what to look out for. (yes, he knows, "wow Danny, look at you being responsible" well look where that got him)
Not that it was easy to see traps when you were flying at top speeds through a dark, dense forest in a panic and they were covered by leaves.
The nail in the coffin was the fact Danny didn't even recognize the symbols the trap was written with. He prided himself on at least recognizing most occult and occult-related languages, even if he couldn't tell exactly what they were saying. These symbols though, he didn't even have a clue.
Just the cherry on top of the shitshow that was his life.
It was a demon trap, he could tell that, but what it actually did, besides getting him stuck of course, Danny had no idea. The circle was double-ringed, with the two rings split into sections. It was the symbols in those sections that were making his life hell at the moment. Like, a pine tree? What the actual fuck did that have to do with trapping spirits and demons? Danny couldn't do anything with that
Danny rolled onto his side, curling into a ball. He just wanted to go home. The halfa was still in his ghost form from earlier when he'd tried to fight his way out of the circle. The faint light emitting from his form covered the area around him with a soft green glow.
It looked pretty mixed together with the stray afternoon sunbeams that made their way through the thick canopy above him in Danny's opinion. Wouldn't be such a bad thing to look at for the rest of eternity.
He curled up tighter, tucking his head into his knees. Maybe Danny could just sleep for a while...
His friends would find him eventually. They wouldn't leave him here forever...
snap
Danny shot up to his feet, turning invisible on instinct. He could feel his core pulsing rapidly in his chest like a heartbeat.
He hadn't heard a single noise from this forest since he'd gotten here, only the occasional rustling of leaves from the wind. He crouched as far away from the sound as he could before his back hit the invisible barrier off the trap, making him hiss and jerk away.
The halfa quickly muffled his pain as the sound of footsteps reached his ears. Danny could make out two sets of footsteps headed in his general direction.
Yes! He could convince whoever was in the forest with him to break the circle and let him out. Of course, they might not help the weird kid in the middle of the woods claiming he was trapped in a magic circle, but Danny had worked with worse. Whatever lumberjacks or hikers were out here would let him out and he could go home!
His ears perked up as voices floated towards him.
" I'm telling you, Grunkle Ford, one of my traps went off earlier. " The voice paused, then lower, " Do you think it might have actually caught a demon? "
Danny froze. Well shit .
There went his hopes of being saved.
Danny crouched as low as he could as the footsteps got louder and louder, closer and closer.. Whoever was coming definitely wasn't a lumberjack, Danny could say for sure. They sounded more like hunters.
(he shivered at the thought of actually competent hunters. If one of them had set a trap that managed to catch him , ancients knew what else they were capable of)
Another voice reached his ears, this one older and grating. " I'm sure it was just an animal that set it off, Dipper. You know how contaminated the water is here ." The older voice chuckled. " There's nothing to worry about. "
The younger one made a disgruntled sound, mumbling under his breath, something about rabbit bites and…maple? Mabel?
As another twig snapped, only a few dozen feet from the ghost boy, Danny curled his hands into fists. He could totally take these hunters, how dangerous could they be? One of them, Dipper, sounded like a kid. The old man---Grunkle? weird name---would probably be more of a challenge but Danny could take him.
Another branch snapped and leaves crunched under heavy footsteps, getting closer with each second. Danny fought to keep silent. Oh who was he kidding? He was trapped in a freaking magic circle. He was totally screwed.
" If you're sure.. "
Danny held his (unnecessary) breath as the two people finally came into his field of vision. He'd been right about ages at least, one of the hunters was an old, yet surprisingly muscular man and the other looked like a prepubescent boy, although he could have been older than he looked.
Danny had learned not to judge people's ages by their appearances pretty quickly in his line of work.
Now that they were closer, he could make out the details of the pair. His ghostly night vision kicked in in the low light of the forest, letting him see the hunters clearly.
For example, yes, the old man was jacked as hell . Danny could see his muscles even through his kinda really cool trench coat. And he was covered in scars. Actually, the kid was too, which made Danny suspicious.
They were going to be much more of a problem than he'd thought.
The half ghost stayed as still as a corpse, watching silently as the pair approached the circle and as a result, him. He should have started hovering in the air when he heard them approaching, but now the threat of any fallen leaves making noise if he moved was too great. The hunters were too close, they would hear and Danny would give himself away.
(Danny had obviously forgotten about his intangibility powers in his panic, something he would remember and agonize over later)
Dipper (?), the younger one beelined towards Danny, calling over his shoulder, "It's right over here."
The hunters stopped right next to Danny, crouching down in front of him. Oh, Danny could just feel his cold undead heart beating right out of his chest. He willed the buzzing of his core in his chest down, terrified that one of them would somehow hear it.
Grunkle, which Danny still thought was an absolutely wack name, traced the lines of the circle with his fingers. "It looks intact. What did you draw this with, Dipper?" He looked questioningly over to his young companion.
So the kid's name was Dipper. Good to know, that information might come in useful to the ghost boy later.
Actually, Danny wanted to know what this ancients-forsaken trap was made out of anyway.
The kid actually looked sheepish. "Uhh.. I might have mixed some of Mabel's extra strength paint with that glue we got from the spaceship?" He glanced up at the old guy nervously, toeing the dirt with his shoe.
When Danny looked at the Grunkle though, his expression was anything but angry. If anything, the hunter actually looked elated.
"Extraordinary! That's genius, Dipper! A permanent material that's resistant to the elements! This will prevent me from having to check on my own traps so often."
The idea of this elderly beefcake of a man having his own traps did not help Danny with his oncoming panic attack.
As the pair of hunters began discussing uses for the mystery paint that was trapping him, Danny got lost in his thoughts. The guy said this stuff wouldn't get washed away by rain. Did that mean the half ghost would be trapped here forever until someone else came along? What if whoever came next was a hunter too?
How long would Danny be trapped in this damned circle?
The thought of being stuck in the forest forever, of Sam and Tucker and Jazz being unable to find him, or worse, them being attacked by these hunters filled Danny with dread. In a panic, he sucked in a shaky breath, which was a mistake.
The hunters whipped their heads in his direction, falling silent. They crouched still, staring straight through the halfa. It felt like they were looking directly at him, even though he knew that was impossible. Neither of the pair had any sort of EMP or ghost sensing goggles on their person.
The older hunter's hand strayed to his hip, revealing a high-tech looking pistol Danny somehow hadn’t noticed before. How the hell did he miss a whole ass gun?!
He was so dead, again.