Chapter Text
Danny was exceptionally close to finishing his sophomore year at community college. In just a few weeks, summer break would start and he would have three months to spend with Sam and Tucker. After that, they would all be going off to their respective universities with two years of community college under their belts. Their years of friendship were still going strong and a great support when it came to the early years of being an adult.
Unfortunately, none of them had decided on the same university. For one reason or another, whether it be getting denied admission or some colleges not having strong enough degree programs for what each of them wanted, they would be separated for at least two years. Sam was going to a university four hours away for political science and Tucker would be three hours in the other direction doing computer engineering. Both had been admitted to their preferred schools easily with their high GPA’s and the awards they had collected over the past couple years.
Danny, on the other hand, had received an offer at a school half an hour from Amity Park. He had also applied to the schools Sam and Tucker had gotten into, but was denied by one and waitlisted by the other with no update yet. It wasn’t looking too promising. That meant he and Sam would be dating long distance until they graduated or Danny managed to get accepted to her school by reapplying later after improving his grades. Which was… unlikely to say the least. Life had not been the kindest to him and his duties to the town on top of his part time job left him with little time to study. It wasn’t his fault a ghost fight after hours ruined his multi day bio lab experiment!
A long distance relationship wasn’t the only thing that would be mucking up Danny’s life in the future. His death and its subsequent problems were also a concern. Ever since the ghost portal in his parents basement opened up inside of him, Danny has been tied to Amity Park. It was like a rope was wrapped around his heart and then staked into the ground of the town. The further he got away, the more it tugged and tugged until the feeling became unbearable. Sure, he had tried talking to the Ancients, but Clockwork was little help, Pandora claimed she couldn’t control the will of the Ghost Zone, and Frostbite went on and on about how Danny feels this way because ‘the Ghost Zone itself doesn’t feel secure yet’ or whatever the hell that meant. He was still trying to figure that one out. Once again, though, he didn’t have enough time on his hands to do so.
While Danny may have gained some patience and understanding with age, it felt like his nerves were being fried. Sometimes he just wanted to go somewhere he could scream as loud as he could without worrying his wail would topple nearby forest and wipe out its inhabitants. If he hadn’t died, if that damn portal had never been opened, then what would his life have looked like? Normal? Maybe he would have gotten into the same school as Sam. Maybe he wouldn’t have pain in parts of his body from the constant fights and defending himself. Maybe he would be a lot closer to his parents. What if, for once in his life, he had stopped for a moment and thought about his actions before stepping into a massive device powered by cables thicker than his arms and more dangerous than an atomic bomb?
‘What’s done is done,’ Sam had reassured Danny once. ‘You are who you are despite everything, but also because of it. And that’s okay.’
To be honest, as nice as her words always are, he didn’t feel okay. Danny felt fine-ish, with big emphasis on the ‘-ish’. If he wasn’t dead, if there weren’t duties to attend to- maybe he would have more time for her. It was one of the reasons he was so excited for summer break. The part time job he worked had already approved an entire month off as Danny had already spent the last year working and saving for a car. Except now he didn’t really need to save that money for a car anymore as his own parents and Sam’s parents had come to an agreement to lend Danny an old car that had been collecting dust in the Manson’s garage for him to use to get to and from school next fall. The only stipulation was to keep treating their daughter well and to do his best in his studies. That’s exactly what he planned to do.
The Manson’s hadn’t initially approved of Danny. At least not in the same way as Danny’s own parents when he had told them he was dating Sam. Don’t even get him started on the loud ‘FINALLY’ Jazz had yelled from the other room. But the Manson’s took a little while to get past the sticks in their asses before accepting him. Then things leveled out.
Now, life was sailing by as it had been. In hindsight, that should have been a warning. What relative ‘peace’ he had managed to get was quickly about to end.
*****
Danny was laying in Tucker’s bed, listening to him rant about the cost of electronics and how nothing is optimized these days. He had already finished all his classes for the day and wanted to relax for a bit before he needed to actually work on one of his final projects for the semester.
“Games shouldn’t be 50 plus gigabytes taking up a chunk of your solid state drive,” Tucker complained, wildly gesturing at his computer screen. “And don’t even get me started on the updates. You shouldn’t need a one terabyte SSD just to play the games you enjoy.”
“Is that why I’ve been having stuttering and loading issues in Volcano Clash 2?” Danny said, typing a reply at the same time to Sam, confirming their showtime at the movie theater in a few days.
“No, that’s because you refuse to upgrade to two sticks of RAM instead of just one.” Tucker rolled his eyes and went back to fiddling with his computer.
“Dude, didn’t you say 16 gigabytes was fine?”
“It is, but you have 16 gigabytes of RAM in one stick, not two.”
“What’s the difference?”
Tucker paused what he was doing and leaned over the back of his chair. “The difference is two heads are better than one. Give the work to one person; it'll take longer than two people working at once even if both people aren’t as smart as the one person.”
“Maybe I’ll think about it when I get paid next, but I’m trying to save up money for the summer.” Danny tossed his phone to the other side of the bed and stretched out on it further, trying to relieve the pain in his back from an encounter a few days ago with a somewhat nasty beast ghost that had decided the Elementary School’s cafeteria food storage was a five star buffet. Getting slammed into a lunch table while trying to avoid the detection of the school’s hall monitors was not the most ideal situation.
“Speaking of which, they’ve announced the guest speakers for that tech conference taking place in July,” Tucker said, turning back to his computer.
Danny looked up and propped his head on his hands. Tucker had been looking forward to this conference since they had announced the location would be in the midwest this year. The computer screen loaded into the tech conference website and Tucker clicked around until he pulled up a page full of pictures of people Danny had never heard of. “Dr. Suzie Stephenson”, “Carl Esken”, “Jacob Valentine”, and “Dr. Bernard Sanders” were a few names among many with little headshots of themselves all lined up in neat little rows. Danny’s sure if he was as invested as Tucker was in that sort of thing that he would probably know and be excited for these people. Tucker kept scrolling down to the “Industries Expanding” section and paused, turning to look back at Danny to make sure he was paying attention. Right there was a photo of Vlad Masters and his stupid, over-confident, smirking glory.
“You can’t be serious,” Danny deadpanned.
“Yup.”
Danny sighed and sat up in Tucker's bed so he could get a better look at the website. “Do I even want to know?”
“You know all that philanthropy stuff he’s been doing the past few years? Well he’s getting into tech now.” Tucker opened up the scheduling page and clicked around for a bit.
“I guess that makes sense considering all the tech he makes for himself. He did abandon a lot of that years ago, though. Other than like his home defense systems and the reformation machine he made for Dani, he hasn’t really done much.” The last time Danny had visited Vlad, there wasn’t much meddling with anything ghostly. Sure, he made a machine for Dani to reinforce the structure of her existence, but he had mostly moved onto tinkering with atoms and matter- a sort of branch off of what he had been doing for Danny’s ‘cousin’. Then again, who knows what Vlad has been up to since going quiet. “Or at least I think he hasn’t,” Danny added.
“You could always drop in for a visit one of these weekends,” Tuck suggested. “It says on the website he is giving multiple talks. One about his new initiatives to fund renewable energies in smaller scale technology, one that is basically just his spoken memoir, and another about theoretical phasing technology.”
Danny squinted at the descriptions under each talking point. “Phasing? Like going through things?”
“Yeah, maybe he’s been onto something there.”
“Why would he be researching that of all things? He can already do it.” Vlad was still a halfa, he didn’t need technology to phase through things, turn intangible, or really anything else he could do.
Tucker shrugged again. “Maybe he wants regular people to be able to do so? I donno, man. I lost track of his motives a long time ago.”
“I guess I could always stop by for a visit. Worst case scenario we end up in another argument.” Danny was about to say more, but the door to Tuck’s room opened and Sam came walking in.
Sam tossed her book bag to the side and flopped herself down next to Danny on the edge of Tucker’s bed. “Remind me again why I have to take chemistry.” She had clearly come from her last class of the day, her lab goggles still hanging around her neck from where she forgot to remove them. The outlines in her skin from where the uncomfortable plastic dug in around her eyes had yet to fade.
“Probably because it’s a core curriculum class,” Tucker offered.
“Because bio filled up too quickly and you wanted to knock it out before next year,” Danny said, flicking the goggles to remind her they were still there.
Sam made a disgruntled sort of sound and removed them, tossing them on top of her bag. “Those things give me such a headache.”
She still looked gorgeous, though. Danny doesn’t think he will even get tired of looking at her. On lab days she wore leggings under her skirt and less makeup to comply with safety standards. Even so, she was still decked out in her usual getup of black and purple, colors that were becoming near and dear to Danny. Parts of his wardrobe were slowly being replaced by now, with some black cargo pants and purple shirts- dashes of Sam spreading through his life. It felt good. Stable and safe.
“So what did I miss?” Sam asked and leaned in to see what was on Tucker’s computer screen.
“Vlad is gonna be at the tech conference Tuck is going to,” Danny provided, “We were wondering what the creep is up to.”
“He’s going to the tech conference? Really?” Sam made a sound of disgust. Danny loved the way her nose would wrinkle up whenever she was displeased. “What sort of scheme is he going for this time?”
“I donno, man-” Tucker leaned out of the way for Sam to read the screen and get caught up. “-Seems like he is getting into phasing technology.”
“He can already do that.”
“That’s what I said!” Danny threw up his hands, but was grinning. He liked it when they were on the same page. “Anyways, I was thinking about paying him a visit.”
“Huh.” Sam read through the webpage in a flash. “While I am not opposed to the renewable energy thing,” Sam muttered, “I am curious if this has anything to do with the government building they’ve put up just outside of town.”
Danny vaguely remembers the place she’s talking about. When you head east out of town, there is a road that turns off into what used to be an empty field. About six months ago there was a lot of construction in the area and suddenly a building was there. “You mean that big white building with the barbed wire fence and watch towers?”
“That’s the one. Freaking ecological disaster if you ask me. That field housed tons of native plants and pollinators. One of the few places left since it didn’t get mowed.” Sam crossed her arms and Danny could tell she was holding back a rant. He filed that away so later he could give her the space to do so.
“Place gives me the creeps.” Tucker gave an exaggerated shudder. “There’s no signs or anything either. Maybe a couple windows? But that’s it.” Then, Tuck snapped his head to Danny “Wait- how did you know it’s a government building?”
Curiosity about the place had itched at the back of Danny’s mind for a while now. In truth, he had snuck onto the construction site after coming back late from touring the university he had gotten into. “I may or may not have peeked at some papers on a clipboard left at the construction site.”
“What did they say?” Tucker asked.
“You didn’t tell me that,” Sam said.
“I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, to be honest-” Danny gave Sam an apologetic look. “-and the paperwork was just a timeline for how fast they wanted it built. It was specifically about the fence and watch towers, nothing real juicy.”
The building was one of the few things that was new or exciting about Amity Park. Not much had changed in the past couple of years since they had graduated high school. The Nasty Burger hadn’t blown up again, the high school was still standing, and the people were just as used to the whole ‘ghost town’ thing as before. Well, the ones that had stayed were used to it. Ever since the ghost portal had been opened six years ago, many people had left the town. It was understandable, of course, who wants to live in a town where your car can get hijacked by a rogue lunch lady? There were some ghost investigators and believers who had set up shop, filling strip mall stores with their headquarters or ‘spiritual’ stores, but they were outliers for the most part.
The hunters were the biggest problem. There weren’t many, but from amateur groups to seasoned pros like the Master’s Blasters, it was enough to put Danny on edge. It was understood that ghosts would avoid them and there wouldn’t be many issues. That was the idea at least. In practice it didn’t really work like that. Unfortunately.
Tucker opened a new tab. “Damn. Lemme search the internet for any leaks of information. There’s gotta be something, right?”
Danny reached over and grabbed Sam’s hand while listening to the rapid clicking of Tuck’s keyboard. Using her other hand, she brushed back his bangs from his face.
“It's getting long.”
“Yeah,” Danny agreed. It had been a while since she had cut it for him. Too much to do and too little time. “I’ll make some time this weekend to come over.”
Sam seemed to like that. To be fair, Danny had been flaky the past couple of weeks and that wasn’t right to do to her, no matter how understanding Sam tended to be. There had been a few bouts of bickering over missing dinner with her family one night, but it wasn’t like he chose when he was needed for his duties- it just sort of happened. Rogue ghost here, hunter there… While Danny would prefer a good meal in Sam’s all-too-nice home, people getting hurt superseded anything else he wanted to do. They always made up in the end, Sam could only blame him but so much and he could only stay annoyed for so long. It was easy in the end to dust themselves off and keep going.
“Found something.”
Sam and Danny immediately turned to Tucker who was rapidly skimming some forum he had found.
“Looks like there’s a possibility that it’s a testing zone or research area of some sort. Several tech and paranormal researchers have been hired.” Tucker opened a new tab and continued on a different search. “Lots of large, unmarked vehicles have been showing up to that lot lately. Intense security. Looks like we aren’t the only ones curious.”
“Paranormal researchers? Not this crap again,” Danny groaned and rolled his eyes. “You’d think they’d get the hint and leave Amity Park alone.”
Sam nodded and then shrugged. “I mean, I don’t think any of us expected them to stop.”
Danny rubbed his eyes with one hand, feeling irritated once more. Of course the GIW was back in town and doing more shady shit. Not that they had confirmed it was the GIW, but it had to be. “Yeah, but this just reeks of a problem that will get in the way of school again.”