Chapter 1: Let's Start A Band!
Summary:
Lancer needs a band for the school's Fall Festival. Danny decides to build one.
Chapter Text
“You want me to what?!”
“Come on, Ember, please?” Danny begged. “You want out of the Ghost Zone, right?”
“Um, not sure if you remember, Babypop, but last time I did a concert in your town, well, I got shoved into that thermos of yours. Why the hell would I want a repeat of that?” Ember asked skeptically.
“Well, if you don’t use your ghost powers, I won’t have to do that,” Danny reasoned. He wasn’t worried about her answer, knowing eventually she’d agree; in the month since the Time Glitch Incident, where things had been reset to just after the Disasteroid problem was solved (in this timeline, without the ghosts, thus Danny was back to his secret identity being unknown), he’d been working on his relationships with ghosts, and there was little antagonism with Ember now. Honestly, even before that their fights and banter had been more playful than anything; Danny deciding to work on connecting more with ghosts, to be the ‘bridge’ that would connect the realms, had simply solidified that relationship.
“Right…” Ember trailed, crossing her arms. “And what makes you think the school would allow it?”
“You’ll be part of a band. School doesn’t need to know,” Danny said. “Honestly, all you need is a change of outfit, and they won’t suspect anything.” After all, Phantom was simply a pallet swap of Fenton yet no one had ever caught on, at least based on looks.
“Yeah, you got me there,” Ember conceded, then frowned as she considered that. “I dunno… I do want to play, but in the background?”
Danny shrugged. “I mean, being the main singer might actually make people notice, since you do still have lots of fans in Amity Park… Although, I guess maybe by the time we’re up there they can’t really stop us… Still, though…”
“Eh, whatever. Background’s better than nothing I guess; I’m pretty bored right now, so I’ll bite.”
Danny grinned. “Awesome!”
“Wait, hold up,” Ember said, seeming to realize something. “Who else is in it? Because if that Tucker kid—”
Danny cut her off. “No, no, Ancients no,” he assured her. “He doesn’t even know about this yet. So far, we have you, Sam, and this emo kid Jazz knows from her school called Lurker—dunno if that’s their real name.” Danny also suspected the college student was some sort of non-ghost cryptid, but if so they were silent on that and Danny wasn’t about to ask them directly—all of Amity Park had quickly learned not to question the human status of people from the town’s newly-erected (well, more specifically, it mysteriously appeared in the middle of a row of townhouses near the center of town, in an alley that shouldn’t have been nearly large enough for an entire building triple the width of Fentonworks; curious townspeople had tried to measure the distances of the street, but for some reason no data could ever be collected as people would forget the numbers almost immediately and trying to write them down first, even digitally, yielded nonsensical symbols) branch of Miskatonic University, collectively deciding that ghosts were the only supernatural thing the town needed and ignoring everything else. Danny continued, “They have a keyboard that also does synth sounds, Sam’s a beast on the electric violin and can do background singing, you could do guitar and background singing, but we still need a drummer and lead singer.”
“Tch. Just a singer? Lame. Guitar and singing is so much cooler. Also, dipstick, there’s different types of guitars—I play a six-string, so you’ll want a bass guitarist, too. Find someone who can do both bass and vocals.”
“Okay, well, do you know of anyone who can do both?” Danny retorted.
Ember grinned. “As a matter of fact, I do—you.”
Danny blinked in surprise. A flat “What?” was all he managed.
“Yeah, you! I’ll teach you some basic guitar skills, and get you into something fashionable!”
“Okay, first, I can’t sing. Second, my fashion is fine. Third, Public Enemy #1, remember?”
Ember rolled her eyes. “Not as Phantom, as Fenton, duh. We’ll discuss the fashion thing more later, but come on, two years of the same look has gotta be boring. And you can definitely sing, nimrod. I’ve heard it.”
“What? When?” Danny asked, confused.
“You sing in the shower.”
Danny paused, processing that for a moment before saying with incredulity, “You’ve watched me shower?!”
“Tch. No, that’d be, like, an invasion of privacy. But you’re loud, and I’ve been through the portal while you were in there. Like, pretty sure every ghost who regularly sneaks through has heard it at least once. Some even stop to listen.”
Danny felt his face redden (he wasn’t quite sure how that worked, given technically he bled green) as he realized that apparently all the regular ghosts had heard his awful shower singing. It hadn’t occurred to him that ghosts’ enhanced hearing would allow for that.
“It’s not awful,” Ember said, predicting his thoughts. “Far from it—like, first of all, all ghosts have perfect pitch, music being the language of emotion and all that, so it’d literally be impossible for you to be horrible unless you tried. But even by ghost standards your voice is, like, super harmonious. You’ll be an awesome lead singer.”
Danny frowned. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, referring to both perfect pitch being a ghost ability and that he could sing well.
“Nope, not at all!” Ember assured him. “Confidence and showmanship could use some tweaking, but we’ll work on that… How much time we got?”
“Huh? Oh, the concert’s on October 7th,” Danny said, realizing he forgot to tell her.
Ember gave Danny an incredulous look. “A month? Seriously? That’s not a lot of time… But, doable,” she decided. “You gotta promise to practice every single day though, seriously!”
Danny nodded. “Of course,” he said, though was still a bit skeptical that he could learn enough to play a concert in that time frame, or even wanted to be in the band, but he felt like he had no choice as to either.
“Then come on, let’s go find that drummer!”
Ember turned and flew off further into the Ghost Zone, and Danny was quick to follow, realizing she probably meant ghost musicians. Having one ghost in the band was risky, but two? Or, two and a half, technically, as Danny sincerely doubted Ember would let him off the hook. She’d likely make it part of the deal. Well, he’d come this far, and he hadn’t seen Ember this excited in… well, since the pirate ship thing. Why not?
To Lancer’s total surprise, Daniel Fenton arrived at school early the next day, so much so that he entered Lancer’s classroom before any other students.
“The Time Machine! Mister Fenton, you’re actually here on time—early even!” Lancer declared.
Daniel ignored the exclamation and happily announced, “I found a band for the school festival!” He grinned, showing off what appeared to be fangs.
Lancer’s jaw dropped at the cataclysmic news. “You did?!” he proclaimed, ignoring the fangs—probably just some new fashion trend. This must be a prank; there was simply no way that Daniel Fenton had found a band in less than a day when Lancer had been searching for weeks. Honestly, when Fenton had said he’d find someone at the end of detention the previous day, after seeing Lancer embarrassingly fretting over his failure, Lancer had thought the boy to have only been strangely attempting to comfort him, not seriously willing to help, even though earlier in the day Lancer had offered extra credit for any student who managed to find one—if anything, he’d expected the money-wasting ‘A-list’ kids to, via bribing.
“Yeah, that’s what I just said,” Daniel replied, a little testily. “I told you I would.”
“Yes, yes, you did,” Lancer said as he gathered his composure, ignoring the attitude. He shouldn’t have assumed the worst; it was something Lancer had vowed to work on for this year’s New Year’s resolution, yet had once again forgotten. “Apologies; it’s just, unexpected, considering every single band I’ve contacted has said no—apparently the school is either too haunted or too cheap for them. What’s the band?”
“Uh. We don’t have a name yet,” Daniel said with realization, as though he’d forgotten one was needed.
“It’s your band?” Lancer asked, now skeptical.
“Well, kinda? I only just got the people together, but they’re all great musicians, I swear!”
“Hmm. I don’t know…” Lancer said, now unsure—true, he couldn’t find anyone else, especially on the meager budget the school offered, but a student band? He wasn’t even aware Daniel played an instrument!
“Would you rather have no band?” Daniel challenged.
“Ah, well…” Lancer debated that. It would look worse to have nothing, that was true. They’d really hyped up the school’s first ever Fall Festival, which was an attempt to help bridge the ever-widening gap between the community and Casper High, which had increased significantly after recently being nicknamed ‘the most haunted school in America’ by Time Magazine. “Well, perhaps if no one else steps up…” he trailed; maybe he could keep trying, though honestly he was running out of time. It was September 8, and the festival was to take place on the first Saturday of October, which was the 7th. Most bands wanted longer than a month’s notice, so even if he did manage to find a band actually willing to play in Amity Park there would be a good chance they’d now say it was too little notice.
“Please? I need the extra credit,” Daniel entreated. “We’ll do it for free!”
Well, that cinched the deal, Lancer decided. Looks like the festival could have that balloon arch after all; it being out of the budget had been a disappointment to many. “Well, I suppose we can’t get better than that,” he said, then something occurred to him. “Just, promise me, Beyond the Wall of Sleep, that Mister Foley isn’t in it? Or at least, won’t have a vocal role?”
“Oh, definitely not,” Daniel said, looking properly horrified at the very idea. “He doesn’t even know yet about the band existing.”
“Good, good,” Lancer said, sighing in relief at the disaster averted. “Oh, I suppose I should ask, though: what kind of music is it?” He couldn’t be picky, he knew, but parents might be angry if it were something more controversial, like death metal or the new ‘gangsta rap’.
“It’s just going to be covers of popular songs, that’s okay, right?” Daniel asked. “Like, probably a mix of rock and pop? It’ll be a mix of decades, too, maybe sixties through now, so the parents will be happy too? I mean, it just formed, so not really time to write anything new…”
Lancer nodded, especially liking the mix of decades, then noticed students were starting to trickle in, the first two being Lester and his twin brother Nathan, as usual, Mikey right behind them. “Understandable, of course,” Lancer told Daniel. “You’ve got the job. Now, get to your seat; looks like your classmates are arriving.”
“You what?” Sam hissed at lunch—she and Danny were sitting at a picnic table outside, eating packed lunches while Tucker braved the cafeteria, not yet back with the questionable food served there.
Danny could practically taste Sam’s anger—or, actually could? Danny was still unclear if he could actually sense emotions like other ghosts could, or if he’d just always been that attuned to emotions. Ever since learning how ghosts were connected to emotions, Danny had been musing over that, as well as sometimes vaguely wondering if he could feed on emotions too before quickly pushing that thought away. He wasn’t that much of a ghost! …Or was he?
“I found more band members,” Danny told Sam as calmly as he could, his tongue fiddling with his tiny fangs (they had grown in the other day, after both his canines had somehow gotten knocked out in a fight, and were still incredibly sore), knowing well what Sam was really questioning.
“Yeah, I heard that—I meant the other part! You’re joking, right? You gotta be joking; Jazz found more of that kid’s friends to do it, or something, right?”
“Ah, no, I’m serious,” Danny said sheepishly, feeling slightly guilty. He hadn’t told her about where he planned to get the other band members. If this was just her reaction to Ember…
“Danny, and I say this with incredulity and affection, what the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Well, quite a bit, actually,” Danny quipped back, trying to ease the tension. “I mean, I’m half-dead, to start with! But, come on, it’s a good idea, right? She’s a great musician.”
“Yeah, as well as a ghost who tried taking over the world!”
“Well, she promised not to do that this time,” Danny pointed out.
“Oh, and you trust her on that? Well, whatever; your funeral if she betrays you. Or if ghost hunters get wind of it, which they will, considering it’s her.”
“Nah, she promised to wear a disguise.”
“Oh, well, that’s totally foolproof,” Same said sarcastically, complete with an eye roll. Then paused. “Actually, no, in this town, maybe it could work. Just, please tell me the other ones you found are more human…”
“Well, er, one of them is?” Danny said. “At least, a little bit…”
“Just one? You said you found four members!” Sam sighed in exasperation. “Okay, fine, who are the others?”
“Kitty, Johnny, and me,” Danny quickly revealed. “First two were excited, third is reluctant but Ember made it part of the deal. Kitty’s doing bass, and Johnny’s doing drums.” Kitty had been there when they asked Johnny, and apparently she had a bass guitar when she was alive and still remembered how to play (Ember tested that, and to the surprise of everyone there Kitty was good).
Sam sighed again, clearly frustrated. “Okay, I guess those two aren’t so bad, as long as they don’t fight on stage, and they can pass as human,” she conceded.
“Great!” Danny said.
“But!” Sam continued, “You can’t be the last one! There’s no way no one will recognize Phantom, even with a disguise. And what are you even playing?”
“Well, yeah, that’s why I’ll be in human form,” Danny said. “It’s not like I want to, but all three of them decided that if I’m not in the band, they’re not. I’ll be doing guitar and vocals.” Since Kitty could do bass, Ember had decided Danny would be using a six-string too, as it would be easier for her to teach him using her preferred style of guitar.
“And you don’t think that’ll get you bullied more? The A-listers won’t let you live that down,” Sam pointed out. “You don’t even know how to play guitar, and when the class did karaoke, well, that didn’t exactly end well.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “That was in, like, seventh grade. Ember says my singing isn’t actually that bad now, given that apparently all ghosts have perfect pitch—yeah, music is a ghost power, who knew? So she’s going to help me fine-tune that. And she’s going to teach me how to play guitar and be more of a stage presence or something. And Kitty says with the right fashion it might actually boost my popularity, at least enough to stop being Dash’s target…” He was skeptical of that, but the small hope had been part of what convinced him to agree. “I mean, it’s worth a shot, right?” Danny asked upon seeing Sam’s look of disbelief.
“Okay, you’ve officially gone off the rails,” Sam concluded. “Seriously? You seriously plan to get singing and guitar lessons from a ghost?!”
“And showmanship and fashion,” Danny reminded her, before realizing that saying that would only add to Sam’s ire. He was excited about that though! Showmanship was important for being a hero, too, so maybe it would help with Phantom’s public image. He was also excited about new clothes—Ember was right, Danny needed an updated look, considering he hadn’t been clothes shopping in two years. Which, come to think of it, at his age was kinda odd… Nope, not the time to think about that possible clusterfuck. He was just a late bloomer, that was all.
“You’re doing what now?” Tucker asked as he sat down beside Danny, lunch tray filled with something that vaguely resembled meatloaf and somehow smelled like pea soup.
“Nothing!” Danny said quickly.
Sam simply glared at Danny.
“I feel like I missed something big,” Tucker said with a frown. He looked at Danny. “I heard you say something about lessons from a ghost? Please tell me you’re joking.”
“He’s not,” Sam said flatly, pulling out her phone. “I’m telling Jazz about this, maybe she can talk some sense into you.”
“No, wait!” Danny said, lunging for the phone, ending up halfway through the table before Tucker pulled him back to his seat. Ugh, he hadn’t had an accident like that in a while; why were his powers acting up so much in human form lately? Was it backlash for almost letting his ghost half fade?
“Okay, spill,” Tucker said firmly.
“There’s nothing to spill,” Danny said, blushing and looking at the table.
“Uh-huh. And I’m a purple-back gorilla,” Tucker said flatly, then sighed. “Look, if Sam’s telling Jazz about whatever this is, maybe it isn’t a good idea?”
“No, it’s fine,” Danny insisted. “They all agreed to behave.”
“Tch. And what about Ember’s boyfriend? Skulker’s going to hunt you even worse when he finds out!” Sam said.
“Oh, no, they broke up,” Danny informed her. “Skulker’s been, well, sulking for the past few days, and Ember says it’ll be at least another week before he recovers mentally, then another week or two to get his suit functional again, since she burned it.”
“Okay, fine, but after that, even if they’re exes, if he catches you with her…”
“Wait, what?” Tucker said, sitting up straighter and looking at Danny with incredulity. “You’re dating Ember?!”
“What? NO!” Danny shouted, drawing some stares. Then he told them more quietly, “Of course not. She’s just going to teach me to sing and play guitar.” Plus Sam would probably kill him fully if he ever dated a ghost. There was also the fact that Ember was a girl, and Danny was starting to suspect that—no, no, he told himself he wouldn’t think about that. That was practically a death sentence, with the amount the bullying would surely increase. Plus he had no clue how his friends or family would react to that.
“Like that’s any better,” Sam hissed.
“Why?” Tucker asked warily. “Like, no offense, but you don’t really have the best voice.”
“Ember disagrees,” Danny said petulantly, offended. “And you’re one to judge!”
“Hey! I’m a rockstar,” Tucker defended. “Besides, who says she’s not messing with you?”
“She’s not—it’s actually a ghost thing. All ghosts have perfect pitch,” Danny explained.
Tucker raised a skeptical eyebrow. “My dude. Are you seriously saying singing is a ghost power?”
Danny shrugged. “Ghosts are emotional beings, and music is often called the language of emotion, so why not?”
“Yo! Fenturd!” came Dash’s voice, and Danny turned to see the bully stalking towards him. The air practically felt charged with Dash’s constant determination to cause Danny misery just for existing.
Danny winced. “Oh, great.” Then, he gasped as his ghost sense went off. “Double great.” He should have expected a ghost that day, honestly; the shields were down for maintenance, and his parents being in the building doing said maintenance would definitely not deter many ghosts.
“I heard you got some newbie band for the festival!” Dash said, grabbing Danny by the collar. “It better be a good one, or you’re in for a beating!” There was what Danny could only describe as a ‘violent charge’ in the air around the bully.
Danny rolled his eyes. “Like I wasn’t already?”
“Yo! Get away from Babypop!” came a shout, followed by a guitar strum and a wave of (fairly weak) energy slamming into Dash.
Dash dropped Danny and stumbled back as the ghost sirens blared. “What the fuck?” he said, swerving around.
Ember floated down to the ground, ignoring the screams (some in fear, some in joy because it was Ember) and Dash, who appeared stunned by being so close to her—whether that was due to her being a ghost or due to her being a popstar was undetermined.
“Ember?! What the hell are you doing here?!” Danny asked incredulously.
Ember shrugged, indifferent to the chaos around them. “Apparently, saving you from a kid who I’m pretty sure is gonna murder someone someday.”
Danny scoffed. “Please, Dash isn’t that bad.”
“Dude, his vibe was, like, definitely a future-serial-killer one.”
Danny rolled his eyes; surely Ember was exaggerating. “Whatever. Why are you really here?”
Ember raised an eyebrow at him. “Seriously? I’m here to pick you up for your music lessons, dipstick.”
“I have school!” Danny protested, as Dash regained his senses and fled.
“So?”
“I can’t just skip school!”
“Tch. It’s for music lessons, just consider it part of your education. We gotta do it now so you’re ready for band practice later, got it?”
“But…” Danny trailed off, biting his lip a little. It did sound much more appealing than school.
“Danny, be responsible,” Sam said.
Ember replied, “Pfft. Come on, you can do school later. It’s music time now!”
Danny considered that. It was awfully tempting. “You know what, sure,” he decided.
“What! No!” Sam protested.
“Yeah, man, haven’t you missed enough school already?” Tucker pointed out.
Danny shrugged and stood up. “Like Ember said, music lessons are technically education, right?”
“You two wanna join?” Ember offered.
“Again, we have school,” Sam said flatly.
“Depends; where are you doing them?” Tucker asked.
Ember looked at him like he had two heads. “Um. My lair, duh.”
Tucker winced. “In that case, hard pass. I hate being in the Zone.”
“Yeah, same,” Sam said.
Ember shrugged. “Your loss. I’ll see you at practice later, I guess; now, let’s go, Babypop.”
“But I didn’t agree yet,” Danny pointed out, still on the fence. It sounded fun, but school existed. Although, technically the lessons were school-related though, as they were to make sure he could play during the school festival…
At that moment, Danny’s parents rushed out of the school building, his dad yelling, “Get your hands off of Danny you rotten ghost!”
Ember just rolled her eyes and grabbed Danny by the hand, pulling him into the sky and off towards the portal, his parents yelling after them in panic as his dad shot weapons their way, stopped quickly by his mom who reminded him that Danny was there (not that it mattered from how wide the shots went). Valerie showed up too, yelling in rage, though seemed to realize they were already too far away to follow as Danny activated his invisibility, which Ember apparently had forgotten to do.
This was going to be a disaster.
Sam stared at the spot where Ember had vanished with Danny, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t feeling jealous. Of what, she wasn’t sure—it wasn’t like Ember was a threat to their friendship… Was she? Not for the first time, Sam wondered if she had interpreted things incorrectly when she and Danny had amicably broken up after only a month of dating—Sam had thought their love was more platonic and family-like rather than romantic, and Danny had easily agreed with what seemed like relief, but then why was she so jealous when she thought of him and Ember hanging out? …Alone, in the ghost’s private lair…
Did Sam still have romantic feelings? She was certain Danny did not. In fact, she was starting to suspect he might not be attracted to girls at all, regardless of past relationships—not that he would have realized it, though, being the oblivious goof that he was. And if he did, well, coming out was a bitch. Maybe if Sam came out to him as bi he’d confide in her? But even if so, she hadn’t come out to anyone yet, and the task was daunting. She could never let her parents find out, that was for sure, not until she was 18 and out of the house—they would immediately send her to one of those camps. She wondered if this was how Danny felt about revealing his secret ghost identity to his parents.
Danny would also probably be hanging out with Kitty and Johnny too, come to think of it… Sam didn’t like that either. She knew Danny didn’t see every ghost as a threat anymore, including ones that were former enemies, even was getting friendly with some of them, but the idea of him actually making friends with ghosts… Especially ones he still regularly fought, however playful those battles seemed to be lately. Or, was it actually play? Hadn’t Danny told her something about ghost culture and friendly fighting? Sam didn’t like the idea of that.
“Dude, I really missed something, didn’t I?” Tucker said, blinking a few times. “Wait, did she say something about a band?”
“Wait a second,” Sam realized, frowning. “I’m in the band too! Are they seriously going to practice without me?!”
Tucker swerved to face her. “Wait, what?”
Sam slammed her hand onto her face. “Dammit, I wasn’t supposed to let you find out about that.”
“Hold up, you’re in a ghost band?!”
Sam winced. “Ah, well…”
Surprisingly, Jack and Maddie saved Sam as they ran over.
“What happened to Danny!?” Maddie demanded. “Why did that ghastly ghost grab him?”
“And why aren’t you more worried?!” Jack fiercely questioned.
“Jack, obviously they’re in shock,” Maddie told him.
“Uh… Yeah, totally,” Tucker muttered. “Definitely in shock…” Maybe he even was, but less from Danny being ‘kidnapped’ and more from the ghost-band bombshell Sam had dropped.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Maddie asked more gently. “Do you know where that ghost took Danny?”
Tucker regained his senses. “Uh. She went—Ow!” he yelled as Sam kicked Tucker in the shin with her combat boot. Catching himself, he then said, “I mean, uh, she went… That way!”, pointing in the opposite direction as they had gone.
Maddie frowned. “But we saw it fly the other direction,” she said.
“Uh, yeah, a misdirection! Didn’t you see her turn around just before going invisible?”
Jack gasped. “Of course! Just the kind of sly trickery one would expect from a ghost! Maddie, to the GAV—if she’s still close, we can track her!” he raced off along with his wife.
As they left, with Maddie scolding Jack about using correct pronouns for ghosts, Jazz joined them. “So, what’s really going on?” she asked casually. She was at the school under the guise of ‘helping’ her parents with the school’s security system upgrades, which in reality meant adding in a few modifications so it wouldn’t trigger a lockdown every time Danny used his powers.
“Ember took Danny to the Ghost Zone for music lessons,” Sam said flatly.
Jazz blinked in surprise. “Should we rescue him…?” she wondered.
Sam sighed. “No need. I gotta get over there too, for band practice, apparently. Or rather, to convince them to hold it in the human realm.”
“Wait, what?” Jazz asked, seeming to need a moment to process that.
“Yup. The rest of the band is ghosts, surprise.”
Jazz sighed. “Of course it is…” she muttered. “I’ll go notify Lurker.”
“Oh, right, they probably don't want to be in the Ghost Zone,” Sam realized. Sam didn’t really want to be either, but she was used to it at least.
Jazz waved a dismissive hand. “No, they’ll be fine with that, they’ve lived in worse dimensions,” she said vaguely, and Sam had a feeling she didn’t want to know. Jazz continued, “But, I can see if I can get a non-Ghost-Zone studio space reserved last minute.”
“Oh, no need,” Sam said. “My house has a music studio already.”
“Is there anything your house doesn’t have?” Tucker asked in awe.
Jazz then frowned. “Wait, the Specter Speeder currently isn’t working; Sam, you can’t get there unless Danny returns for you.”
Sam closed her eyes and sighed. “Of course it is. Well, I guess you and I are hanging out today, Tucker,” she said.
“You don’t think he’ll return for you?” Tucker asked, clearly surprised.
“Nope,” Sam said flatly. “He’s going to lose track of time; it’s all wonky in there and he never remembers to recalibrate his watch.” This would not be the first time this happened.
Tucker winced. “Yeah, I hate how right you are…”
Suddenly, the school bell rang, signalling the end of lunch. Ugh, right; it rang 5 minutes earlier than it used to, a quirk of the post-Time-Glitch world.
“Oh, I forgot about that,” Tucker said, blinking.
“Well, see you later,” Jazz said, heading off.
Sam sighed. “I really don’t feel like going back to class,” she told Tucker.
“Eh, same,” Tucker agreed. “Hey, wanna skip and go to Nasty Burger? I couldn’t take more than two bites of today’s school slop.” He shook the lunch try, and Sam winced as the greyish blob jiggled.
Sam shrugged. “Why not,” she decided, feeling a need to eat her feelings of frustration despite having just eaten lunch. Oddly enough, Nasty Burger had some pretty great ultra-recyclo vegetarian stuff.
As the two began to leave the school campus too, someone grabbed their backpacks, halting them. “Oh no you don’t,” Mister Lancer told them, pulling them around and then leading them back to the building by their backpacks. “You two will be going to class, and after your classes, because you’ve attempted to skip, you will be going to detention where you’ll help grade papers for the freshman english class.”
The first thing Ember did upon bringing Danny to her lair was to push him onto the couch and hand him a guitar. The guitar was a familiar one, a dark lavender base with spiked… wings? and a flame-like shape to the end above the… frets? (Danny wasn’t well versed in what the parts of guitars were). Cyan flame accents decorated the body of the guitar.
“This is now your guitar,” Ember told him. “I recently got a new one, so you can keep it; call it a gift to new friendship.” She hopped next to Danny on the couch and summoned her new guitar, which was similar albeit with a few more spikes to make the body more flame-like and instead of purple and cyan it was bubblegum pink with a more chaotic crimson and black fire design decorating it.
“You sure?” Danny confirmed.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it, dipstick? If you don’t accept it, band ain’t happening.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks, then,” Danny said, knowing she was serious, then realized something. “Wait. Isn’t this the one you used to try to take over the world? Twice?”
“Yup!” Ember told him, seeming rather proud of it. “It can also do some cool stuff like amplify attacks or shoot enchantments!” She told him happily, then noticing his expression quickly amended, “But we’ll just be using it for the sound of course, the attack setting will be off.”
“Right… So, I don’t know much about guitars; this is a six-string you said? Is that typical, or do they usually have less? Is six harder to play?” Danny asked, choosing to ignore the part about it also being weaponized. He recalled Kitty’s only had four strings.
“Nah, six-string is pretty standard,” Ember explained. “It’s a higher pitch so has thinner strings, which actually makes it a little easier in my opinion. Just can take longer to figure out the chords and remember the notes. Bass is lower so has thicker strings; with only four there’s less notes to remember but you really gotta hold down the strings and strum hard. I really think you’d do better with a six-string.”
“Oh, okay,” Danny said. “I’ll trust you on that; you know music best.”
“Damn right I do!” Ember said proudly. “Also, I was thinking, maybe that Lurker kid would be game to play keytar instead? Dunno if he’s used one before but it’s not that different from a keyboard, just more mobile, which would be better for choreography. Think he could?”
“I’m honestly not sure; Jazz found him. Honestly, I haven’t even met him yet!”
Ember laughed. “Wow, you’re really unprepared for this, aren’t you, Babypop? Well, let’s get to it then—first thing, get that guitar attuned to you.”
“Attuned?” Danny asked, confused.
“Yeah, I told you, it’s yours now. I don’t need my old one.”
“Oh. Thank you,” Danny said, surprised. “You sure?”
Ember rolled her eyes. “Again, yes. Stop asking that. I wouldn’t have told you to attune to it if I weren’t, would I?”
Danny scrunched his brow in confusion. “I still don’t know what that means?”
Ember looked at Danny with incredulity. “Seriously? You don’t—oh, I guess you might not know terminology, since you’re so new. I mean, connect it to you, so you can manifest it at will.”
“Manifest it?”
“Uh, yeah? Like this,” Ember said, then summoned her own guitar out of thin air.
Danny took a moment to process that. “I can’t do that,” he said.
“Well, duh, you haven’t attuned to it.”
“No, I mean I can’t summon objects at all.”
“It’s not summoning,” Ember corrected. “It’s manifesting… Oh, are you already at max capacity?”
Danny scrunched his brow in confusion. “No…? I seriously can’t do that.”
Ember gave Danny a skeptical look. “Then how do you think your suit happens?”
“My… suit?”
“Yeah? Your suit is bound to you, that’s why it reforms when damaged, and why you’re not naked when you switch forms… Wait, did you not know that?”
“No, I didn’t,” Danny said.
“No way… Wait, then you didn’t choose that outfit? It’s just what you died in?”
“Yeah…? Wait, ghost outfits can be changed?!” Danny asked, then realized he’d seen Ember herself in different outfits, and Vlad definitely didn’t die in a cape.
“Dude. Do you really think I wore a leather crop top and leggings in the 70s? And, what, did you think I just put the pirate outfit on top of my usual one or something? Yeah they can be changed! It just needs to be ectoplasm-infused. Then you unattune from the current outfit and attune to the new one,” Ember explained.
“But, then why don’t I see ghosts change much?” Danny wondered.
Ember shrugged. “What’s the point? Ecto-based clothes are self-cleaning, and repair themselves, so if you like the style, why waste the cash and bother taking the time to change, unless you’re bored with the style or need a specific costume for something?”
“Oh. I didn’t think of it that way,” Danny realized. He had noticed the self-repair, but hadn’t given much thought before to the fact that his ghost suit never needed cleaning. If it was infused with ectoplasm though, that made sense—the stuff repelled dirt and disease like it had a vengeance against it. Honestly Danny wasn’t sure why his parents hadn’t yet attempted to make any first aid or cleaning products from it.
“Dude. Okay, we need to get you into something better than that suit, then,” she decided.
“Uh, no, it’s okay!” Danny quickly said, then explained, “It’s recognizable. If I want to be the Town Hero, I need people to be able to easily identify me.”
Ember considered that. “Okay, fine. Then attune to a second one, I’ll show you how to switch between them,” she said, her usual outfit suddenly shifting into her pirate one.
“Why?”
“Oh, hey, you already have a ghost attitude towards it, nice!” Ember cheered, and Danny wasn’t sure if he wanted a ‘ghost attitude’ towards anything. “But, it’ll help for stealth to have a second ghost outfit, right? If you need a disguise but don’t want to go human.”
“I guess that’s true,” Danny said, a little uncomfortable with the ‘go human’ line, as it implied his human half wasn’t the default—did the ghosts see Danny as a ghost with human powers or something? He was even in human form at the moment. “I’ll think about it,” he decided.
“Cool. Oh wait, where were we? Right, attuning the guitar.”
Danny frowned. “I still don’t think I can do that? Like, I can with my clothes I guess, but not other objects. I have to carry objects the old-fashioned way.”
Ember then had a look of realization. “Oh! You’re thinking of human objects. This guitar was made in the Ghost Zone, by a ghost instrument maker. Ghost objects like this can be absorbed into a ghost and then manifested at will, just like clothing. You didn’t know that?”
“Uh, no. Still don’t think I can though.”
Ember gave Danny a flat look. “Dude, your core is uber powerful. You can definitely attune to ghost objects.”
“Oh,” Danny said. “I… hadn’t realized that. So how…?”
Ember reached forward and put her hand on Danny’s chest. “I’ll try to guide you. Feel your core in your chest? Focus on—wait, whoa. What the fuck?” She looked worried. “Babypop, what did you do?”
“What do you mean?” Danny asked in confusion.
“Your core. It’s, like, drained.”
“Drained?” Danny focused on his core. “It feels the same as it always does,” he said. “Maybe a little more charged than usual, actually. It does that in the Ghost Zone for some reason.”
Ember gave Danny an incredulous look. “You... Wait. You are aware that ghosts need ectoplasm, right?”
“Well, yeah,” Danny said. “That’s why you guys need to recharge in the Ghost Zone sometimes.”
“Then, why are you intentionally starving yourself?” Ember asked, looking worried and nervous.
“I’m not,” Danny said. “I eat plenty.”
“Clearly not, if your core is like this. I’ve got some food you—”
“No need,” Danny interjected. “Like I said, I eat plenty.”
“Yeah, human food, maybe. But you need ghost food.”
“No, I don’t,” Danny argued. “I’m not a full ghost. I’m part human. So I don’t need ghost food,” he told her, though found himself not fully believing his own words. Still, he insisted, “I’m different.”
Ember shook her head. “Hate to break this to you, but part human or not, you’re still part ghost, too. You gotta feed it, and the ambient ectoplasm in your house sure as hell ain’t enough if your core is like that… it’s gotta be affecting your powers, I bet.”
Danny frowned. “My powers are fine,” he said, really not liking the implication that he needed ectoplasm to survive. He wasn’t that much of a ghost… was he?
Ember didn’t reply. Instead, she de-manifested her guitar and stood up, moving to the fridge, out of which she took what appeared to be a plastic drink bottle that looked a bit like gatorade except for the fact that it was glowing green and the label was in ghost runes. She returned to the couch, took the top off, and handed it to Danny. “Humor me,” she said.
Danny accepted the bottle, but only looked at it. “I can’t drink this,” he told her.
“You can and you will,” Ember said.
“No, I’ll get sick.”
“Do you actually know that?”
“Well, no…”
“Then, try it. Trust me; you just said you feel a slight charge just by being here, right?” Ember reasoned. “I’m telling you, it’s the ectoplasm. Drink it.”
Danny frowned. Ember seemed extremely confident in this, and she did have a point about the Ghost Zone making his core happy. It felt kinda like the peer pressure to do drugs that the DARE program talked about—well, Danny never had been good at listening to authority. He took a deep breath. “Bottoms up, I guess,” he muttered.
Danny took a sip, and his eyes widened. It was good! The drink’s flavor itself was orange, but the ectoplasm infusion added a pleasant zing to it. His core positively purred with just that single sip. He felt like he imagined someone severely dehydrated would feel when encountering water, and before he knew it, Danny had downed the whole bottle. His core vibrated, feeling more charged than it ever had.
Ember laughed. “Wow! Guess you really did need that!”
Danny nodded. “That was… wow.”
Ember put her hand on Danny’s chest again, over his core. “Hmm. Needs more,” she concluded, then hurried to grab another from the fridge.
Danny quickly devoured that one, too. His core positively buzzed, almost in relief.
Ember again put her hand on Danny’s chest, then nodded. “Oh, yeah, that’s fully charged now. You’ve seriously been relying only on the ambient ectoplasm in Amity Park? Like, I know your house has a lot, and I bet your human food is contaminated, but I’m honestly surprised you lasted a whole two years like that! Your powers were probably suffering for it.”
“You think?”
“I know. I’ve had my core that drained before; it sucks. Like, everything feels muted, and your senses go all wonky. I could barely sense peoples’ emotions, and couldn’t really tell the difference between ghost presences, it was so weird! Literally every ghost set off my ghost sense, known friendly or not. And manifesting things was so difficult. Felt super tired, too, and my stamina sucked.”
“Wait, that’s just not my sucky sleep schedule?” Danny said, surprised. He did feel less tired than earlier though, despite having gotten a whopping 3 hours of sleep the previous night. The comment about 'ghost sense’ was interesting too; did all ghosts have a ghost sense, not just halfas?
Ember shrugged. “Dunno, since most ghosts don’t sleep, but I’d say it’s a good bet.”
Danny struggled to process this. Had he effectively been starving his ghost half? Did he really need ectoplasm to survive?
“So, Babypop, now that you’re all charged, I’ll show you how to attune to your new guitar, and we can get to learning!”
“Sounds good,” Danny said, though was still conflicted about the ectoplasm requirement. It charged his ghost half, true, but because of that… somehow, he felt like he was less human, even though it apparently had been something he needed all along.
Danny also belatedly realized that he had never switched into his ghost form the entire time he’d been in Ember’s lair—not even when drinking the ectoplasm, which was in an amount that would kill a human. It reminded him of another existential crisis he’d been having off and on: ever since the Time Glitch incident, at the end of which Danny had accepted that he belonged to both the human and ghost worlds, vowing to be the bridge between the two, Danny had been noticing less and less of a difference between his Fenton and Phantom forms, with the conclusion that at this point it was essentially only his look that changed.
Not for the first time, Danny wondered just how much human was left in him, because he was seriously starting to suspect that he was no longer an even split between human and ghost, if he ever truly had been.
Jack rested his hand on his chin, elbow on the desk, as he rewound the school’s security feed and watched the interaction between Danny and the ghost once again.
After going in the direction Tucker pointed seemed fruitless, Maddie had suggested—well, ‘suggested’ implied Jack had a choice, so it was really more like ‘demanded’—that they split up to search, her continuing in that direction while Jack went to go search in the opposite direction just in case the ghost had doubled back. Jack had suggested checking the security feed to see if there were any other clues that could be found, although Maddie had vetoed that, saying they’d seen the ghost run off with Danny and ghosts could only have ill intentions so there was no information to gain.
Jack decided to check the security feed anyway, and was frankly glad that he had, because the interaction the ghost had with the humans there appeared to be very different than had been assumed. Maddie of course would say she was tricking them, but Jack didn’t see a reason for the ghost to do that when she could have easily swooped in and taken Danny immediately if she wanted to.
Yet she didn’t. The video unfortunately was silent, and from a fair distance, but when zoomed in, although blurry, you could still tell what had happened was vastly different than expected of a ghost, leaving Jack to wonder not for the first time if what he’d believed for so long about ghosts was true, and certain that he had jumped to conclusions earlier; not that he could tell Maddie that, of course, but perhaps he could talk to Danny to get his thoughts on the matter and explain this further.
After all, Danny had very clearly gone with the ghost willingly, after a brief argument that Jack assumed was related to whether to cut class or not, given Danny had glanced at the school a few times while looking contemplative and then appeared to be happily agreeable. Then, she took him by the hand to fly him away—not by the arm, not roughly, by the hand in a fairly loose grip that surely Danny could have easily broken out of if he really wanted to.
Jack rewound the video back to when the ghost first appeared, rewatching the most damning piece of evidence that this was not as it appeared: the ghost had not just defended Danny from a bully, but used a non-damaging attack to do it. Jack had seen footage of that very ghost destroy cars with energy blasts from that guitar, yet she had used just a small one. For some reason, she cared about avoiding damage to humans… And for some reason, she seemed to care particularly for Danny. After all, she had no reason to scare off the bully, other than to make sure Danny was okay—and the angry look that crossed her face before had the same protectiveness Jack had seen in Danny’s other friends and Jazz towards the boy.
Clearly Danny was with the ghost by choice. This ghost clearly cared about Danny, to the point she was willing to protect him, meaning this may have happened before and Danny was likely safe. Perhaps they were even friends. Therefore, there wasn’t a need to look for Danny yet; he’d return on his own, as usual—maybe even before dinner, although Jack doubted that.
Jack was at a loss of what to do now that he was armed with this information. Should he tell Maddie his conclusion? No, Maddie would just yell at Jack again about how he shouldn’t humanize ghosts—she always did that, insisting ghosts were evil, thoughtless, and emotionless, no matter how much evidence there now seemed to be to the contrary. She constantly berated Jazz and Danny for trying to say there were good ghosts, too, insisting they could only be malevolent. But this interaction alone seemed to prove otherwise.
Well, Ember had tried to take over the world before, and later used the adults to power a pirate ship. That was pretty bad. But despite that she never seemed to have truly cruel intentions, from what Jack observed, and maybe was even over her world-domination phase—she popped up sometimes to get into fights with Phantom, which nowadays seemed more playful than anything, but otherwise didn’t bother anyone with more than some property damage. The fact that Phantom seemed to be playing too more or less cemented that fact—the Ghost Boy often got extremely angry at any ghosts with clearly bad intentions.
But, what did this all mean? Was Danny friends with Ember? Was that possible? Should he ask Danny? No, Danny would just immediately deny it whether it were true or not, given Jack’s previous position on ghosts, and it’s not like Jack could really explicitly announce a change of views, not without destroying his relationship given Maddie still was so rigid about her views on ghosts. Perhaps he could shift her perspective?
Jack’s reverie was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. “Speak of the devil,” he muttered upon seeing the caller ID, then he flipped it open and answered.
“What’s up, Mads?” Jack asked.
“Hi sweetie!” Maddie’s voice chimed. “How’s the search going? I’ve had no luck yet.”
“Ah, yeah, same,” Jack lied.
“Well of course you wouldn’t,” Maddie said, “Given you’re at the school for some reason. Didn’t I tell you that would be fruitless?”
Jack winced. “Ah, yeah, you—wait,” Jack cut himself off, narrowing his eyes. “How do you know where I am?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Right,” Jack said, making a note to check for tracking devices again; she’d said she’d stopped that but evidently she hadn’t. Jack didn’t feel like arguing about that at the moment though. “Well, I just wanted to be thorough,” he said.
“There’s thorough, and then there’s foolish,” Maddie snapped. “Do you want to find Danny or not?”
“Of course I do!” Jack said, though actually was unsure if it was a lie or not. If Danny went willingly, wouldn’t violently snatching him back do more harm? Because Maddie would be violent towards the ghost, of that Jack was sure. Given that, it might be better to let Danny return on his own—suggesting that to Maddie though would only end in another fight, and Jack was incredibly tired of fighting.
“As I thought. Now, come outside; we’ll search the other direction together, as you should have been doing in the first place.”
“Sure thing, Mads,” Jack said, trying not to feel too bad about her chastisement. It was easier to just outwardly agree with her, even if internally he felt differently. She always said he was in the wrong, so he was—that’s how it had to appear.
Jack really hoped something would change, that somehow she’d start accepting that ghosts weren’t inherently evil and might even be worth talking to; he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep hiding his evolving beliefs from his wife.
Danny returned home after dinner time, making a show of entering the house from the front door even though he’d actually returned through the portal—unbeknownst to his parents, Tucker had created a lock on the Ghost Zone side, so Danny didn’t need to wait for someone to open it.
Danny then made the embarrassing mistake of walking through the front door without opening it. He winced and glanced towards the living room, where he expected his parents to be waiting for him, desperately hoping they didn’t see. Thankfully, his parents weren’t actually there; instead, Jazz was seated on the couch. As he moved from the entryway into the living room, she finally saw him, crossed her arms, and sighed before telling him flatly, “Mom and Dad saw Ember ‘kidnap’ you.”
Danny winced. He had forgotten they were at the school, and it had not occurred to him that what happened could be interpreted as kidnapping. Or, maybe it was kidnapping, technically? Either way, that wasn’t good; he didn’t need more reasons for his parents to hate ghosts. He was supposed to bridge the gap between worlds, yet everything he did seemed to only enlarge the gap further.
Although, maybe the kidnapping excuse would work in his favor, since he would otherwise be in trouble for coming home past dinner time without calling. Absence of phone notwithstanding, he’d been having so much fun with Ember, then eventually Kitty and Johnny too, learning guitar, and then just hanging out together in general, that he had barely even noticed the time passing—all four of them had so much fun, in fact, that they had forgotten entirely about general band practice. Danny hadn’t realized it could be so much fun hanging out with ghosts! They’d been on friendlier terms for a while, but the concept of actually spending time with them was new. Danny found himself wanting to do so more often; hopefully it continued beyond just the band stuff and festival.
Hopefully Danny’s human friends would be okay with the situation… Oh, crap. Speaking of, Sam was going to be pissed! Danny had assumed that Sam would show up to let them know it was time for the whole-band practice, which is why he hadn’t been monitoring the time too closely, but he had forgotten that the Specter Speeder was down for maintenance.
“Danny? You with me?” Jazz said, now looking worried.
“Huh? Sorry,” Danny said, snapping out of his reverie. “Just realized that my parents aren’t going to be the only ones angry.”
“Actually, I doubt they will be, considering they thought you were kidnapped,” Jazz said as she stood up. “I, however, am.”
“You are?” Danny asked, confused. Her demeanor read angry, but for some reason Danny was catching a vibe of disappointed resignation.
Wait, vibe? Danny thought back to what Ember had said about her being unable to sense emotions as well as usual when her core was weak. Danny assumed that ability was unique to her… But if ghosts were connected to emotions, maybe that was just a normal ghost power. One that Danny had been inadvertently suppressing…? He’d thought he could kinda feel them sometimes, but never so strong as now.
“Of course I am! You invited three ghosts to join your band!”
This confused Danny. “But the other day you were telling me that I should make some actual ghost friends, being the bridge and all,” he pointed out. “And because they could teach me more about ghost culture. Why are you upset that I’m doing that?”
Jazz sighed in frustration, actual anger now charging the air. “Look, I am glad that you’re making ghost friends, don’t get me wrong. But you’re going to be playing at a school festival in a human town full of ghost hunters! It’s a total recipe for disaster. Sure, plenty of people here are supportive of Phantom, and there’s still plenty of Ember fans too, and Miskatonic University’s positive stance on ghosts has helped, but even regardless of peoples’ perceptions on ghosts both you and her are on the top ten most wanted ghost list! In fact, you’re number one! That needs to be solved first before you start making public appearances in a band.”
“Oh, you think I’m going to be Phantom for the band stuff,” Danny realized. “No, I’m going to be in my human form. And the other three ghosts will be in disguises, with pseudonyms. No one will know!”
Jazz frowned. “Danny…”
“Seriously, Jazz, no one’s noticed me for years, as long as they’re in disguises it’ll be fine, promise.”
“For some reason, that doesn’t console me…”
“Yes it does,” Danny said without thinking.
Jazz frowned and crossed her arms. “Do I look consoled?”
Danny considered that. “No? But it feels like you are?”
Curiosity wafted around Jazz before she asked, “Danny, are you… sensing emotions?”
Danny blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Um. Yes?”
“How long could you do that?”
Danny shrugged. “Honestly? Not sure. I’ve been thinking about it since we learned ghosts feed on emotion; I wasn’t sure at first that it was any different from what humans sense, since it’s usually not this strong...”
“Do you think your ghost powers are growing again?”
Danny shook his head. “They’re not growing, just… more charged than usual,” he told her, then sighed and explained, “I had an ectoplasm-infused sports drink at Ember’s. I’ve never had one of those before. It felt good, like how you might feel after eating a good meal when you’re really hungry, and my ghost core felt… happy, I guess you could say? Like it had been wanting that for a while.”
Jazz took a moment to consider those words, then asked slowly, “Danny, do ghosts happen to regularly consume ectoplasm?”
“Uh, yeah. Ember said they need to either absorb it from the atmosphere, which really only has enough in the Ghost Zone, or eat it, not as frequently as humans eat but she had foods made with it.” When Johnny and Kitty got there she’d taken out chips, dip, and pretzels made with ectoplasm. The human food components of those wouldn’t charge the core, but the ghosts could still eat them, somehow, just not get energy.
“So, they feed on both ectoplasm and emotions?”
“Kinda. I also asked Ember about that, and she said technically they don’t need to feed on human emotions, plenty of ghosts live in the Ghost Zone without ever having them, but it can make them stronger and apparently feels really good, like caffeine to humans or something like that. Not needed but gives an additional charge.”
“Interesting,” Jazz said, seeming thoughtful. “Back to the ectoplasm… You said it made you feel full, like eating food would?”
“Yeah, it was weird. Like I was hungry for it, and it satisfied a part of me. It was different from human food, pretty sure I’m still hungry for that, but it still felt filling, just for my core instead of stomach…”
Jazz considered Danny’s words for a moment, then concluded, “Danny. I think maybe you’ve been starving your ghost half.”
Danny winced. “Yeah, Ember kinda said that too,” he revealed. “And since I felt better after the drink, I guess that’s true.”
Jazz nodded. “So, you’ve been starving your ghost half, or at least underfeeding it considering you do get some in your diet from the contaminated foods in this house—don’t think I haven’t noticed you willingly eating those now.”
“Well they taste really good,” Danny muttered, slightly embarrassed that Jazz had noticed that, then realized that maybe that was because his ghost part wanted it given that ectoplasm definitely had not tasted good prior to the accident.
Jazz continued, “So I’m thinking that maybe that diminished some of your ghost abilities. Now that you’ve had some ectoplasm to feed your ghost half, they’re strong again, including abilities like sensing emotion.”
Danny considered that. Ember had said it too, and it made a lot of sense, but he had really been hoping that wasn’t true. “Well, shit,” he concluded. If Jazz thought so too, it must be the case, he couldn’t deny it.
Jazz seemed to sense that Danny needed more time to think about this new revelation, so didn’t pursue it more and instead said, “Anyway, I bet you’re hungry for human food too, right? I made pasta, figured we can eat when mom and dad get home, I’ll call them…”
“No need; I hear the GAV pulling in,” Danny told her, easily recognizing the telltale rumble outside. “I’m fine, though; I had that ecto-drink while at Ember’s lair, and then ecto-chips, ecto-dip, and ecto-pretzels!”
“Ecto… you know what, don’t need to know the details, all I need to know is that it made you feel better,” Jazz decided. “But, you still probably need human food, too,” she pointed out, as keys jiggled in the lock. “Real food, not snack foods.”
Danny’s parents entered the house, both freezing as they saw Danny.
Jack broke the silence. “Danny-boy, you’re back!” he declared loudly.
“Did that mean ghost do something to you?” Maddie asked, rushing over to Danny, fretting as she looked him over. Her worry was definitely palpable; yup, he could undoubtedly sense emotions, Danny concluded. Just like full ghosts could.
Danny rolled his eyes. “I’m fine, Mom. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“You can’t be serious, Danny!” Jack said, though something felt off. Despite his words, he wasn’t angry? But why would he be faking that? “Of course it’s a big deal when a ghost kidnaps you; come on, let’s go to the lab so we can scan you for ecto-contamination.” It felt almost like the man didn’t actually believe Danny was kidnapped, but was okay with whatever he thought it was instead. So why was he pretending? Was it related to his mom having a clearly different opinion?
“Yeah, no thank you,” Danny said, trying not to shiver at the idea of tests being done on him in their lab, even though he knew it would just be a few scans with machinery that Tucker had already reprogrammed to avoid exposing Danny’s ghostly aspects. He stepped away from his mom, who was poking him in various places.
“But Danny, we need to be sure you’re okay,” Maddie said.
“Then, just take my word for it: I’m perfectly fine,” Danny told her.
“Can you at least let us check you over for injuries? You must have sustained some when you escaped!” She insisted, worry now quickly shifting to frustration, even though she hid that. That had been happening a concerning amount lately, although he hadn’t been certain before—now he could sense the emotions clearly enough to be certain. His mom had a temper she hid; it came out when ghosts were involved of course, but Danny never expected it to be directed at him too—and Jack. Danny had noticed tension between them lately, that both tried to hide around their kids. He knew they argued when they thought he and Jazz couldn’t hear them, at a frequency higher than before the portal had been opened and only increasing more since the Time Glitch Incident.
“I’m not injured,” Danny said tersely. “Ember was just playing; she let me go.”
Maddie scoffed, now letting her frustration show. “Danny, for the hundredth time, ghosts don’t have emotions like that. They don’t ‘play’. If it let you go, there must have been some ulterior motive; did it follow you home?”
Jack chimed in, “If she did, the ghost security system would go off!” he said confidently. Danny tried not to smile; that security system had actually been down for a while.
“She didn’t follow me home, Mom,” Danny said, rolling his eyes. “Like I said, she wasn’t being malicious.”
“It is a ghost. How many times do I have to tell you BOTH not to humanize ghosts?” Maddie asked, frustration evident. “Now, Danny—”
“Look, can you just drop it?” Danny interrupted, his own anger flaring now. “I’m fine, I really am. So get off my back!”
“You will NOT speak to me that way, young man!” Maddie shouted, taking a step towards Danny, who got a sudden feeling that she wanted to hit him, which freaked him out a little—how often did that happen? It was fleeting, but clearly there. Had he noticed any before? Had it previously been too weak and fast to sense with his power diminished, or was this brand new?
“I’m going to my room,” Danny stated, then turned and hurried up the nearby stairs before his parents could reply—and before it developed into yet another shouting match, or, apparently, physical fight. Maybe he’d read the emotion wrong?
“Danny, wait!” he heard his dad shout just before he slammed the door to his bedroom.
Why were his parents still so hateful towards ghosts? He’d thought they’d been improving on that front before the Time Glitch Incident. Not for the first time, Danny wondered if the Disasteroid event had been the only thing changed in this timeline. Clockwork had said he’d done his best to otherwise arrange it exactly as it had been, but “as close as possible” didn’t mean it was perfect. There might be very slight differences in how previous events had played out, even though they technically all still happened, differences that changed how other people perceived them, differences that caused his parents’ hate for ghosts to grow instead of shrink…
At least, Danny hoped that was the case; there was always the possibility that they’d always felt this way, but Danny hadn’t been aware.
Well, maybe that was a little unfair. His mom was mostly the one acting so hateful. His dad actually did seem to be coming around; at least he was actually calling Ember ‘she’ instead of ‘it’. So maybe there was some hope, at least on his dad’s front—which, come to think of it, was possibly one of the things causing some of the tension between his parents, given that his mom had chided his dad too when he did that, her frustration directed at both of them.
Danny also was somewhat disturbed that his mom, apparently, had an urge to hit him—unless he misread it, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t. He’d definitely felt flares of anger before, but a desire like that? How often had she felt that way? Was it only in this new timeline, or had the one from the original timeline felt that way too? How was ‘desire to hit someone’ even a distinct emotion? Humans needed better words for emotions, because evidently there were more than they had singular words for—that, or Danny had to pay more attention to those vocabulary lists in English class.
Danny debated calling Sam or Tucker, then thought better of it. He could talk to them at school. He probably should do homework, come to think of it… But Danny was feeling too restless for that. Normally he’d go flying to calm down, but he felt that escaping was likely a bad idea at the moment.
Danny clutched at his hair and growled, frustrated at the world.
Chapter 2: Is Danny Fenton Okay?
Summary:
The weeks before the Fall Festival. Danny struggles with keeping Phantom and Fenton separate as he becomes more comfortable with his ghostliness. People worry about him for various reasons, most of which are unfounded.
Notes:
Small warning for the first two scenes discussing 9/11. Not sure how many of my readers remember that or were close enough to any of the sites be affected, but I grew up in NJ and was in 4th grade at the time so it was more than just some distant event for me, so I get that some people might still be a little triggered from reminders of it despite it being 24 years ago. In this fic, the Box Ghost and Valerie's mom were both victims of the attack.
The abuse tag comes into play in the 3rd scene.
Chapter Text
When Lancer took attendance Monday morning, he was pleased to discover that everyone was present, including Daniel Fenton. Again he hoped that meant the boy was making an effort to not be late so frequently… Although the abrupt fashion shift from his usual lighter-color NASA and space-themed clothes to a black t-shirt with a mildly disturbing album cover printed on it and dark grey skinny jeans with holes in the knees and chains was rather concerning.
Outside the window, the flag was at half-mast, as all schools and government buildings had been instructed to do on that day.
The loudspeaker beeped, and Principal Ishiyama’s voice came over it. “Good morning, students. As you know, today is September 11, which marks the day…”
“Tch. Come on, this again? It’s been five years!” Dash complained as the speech continued.
“Hey, some of us had relatives working there that day,” Mikey said quietly.
“Sucks for you, then, but for us it’s—”
“Quiet,” Lancer hissed, then glared at Dash and said, “Detention.” He knew the boy could be a bit of a brute, but to complain about a memorial speech for such a tragic recent event, and then insult someone after they mentioned a relative being there?
Many of the students looked surprised at the star quarterback receiving detention, but before they could whisper anything Ishiyama announced that a minute of silence for the victims would be held. Thankfully, the students knew to respect this.
About twenty seconds in, Daniel gasped and what looked like a puff of icy air came out of his mouth before he began to look around nervously. Puzzling, Lancer thought, although thankfully it didn’t result in him rushing out the door as he often did after similar gasps.
“BEWARE!” came a shout a few seconds later as, of all things, the Box Ghost entered through the window.
To the students’ credit, they didn’t react much, remaining silent. It was just the Box Ghost, after all. Some did glare at the ghost, though.
The Box Ghost looked around, clearly confused. “Why do you all remain quiet? I am the Box Ghost! You should fear me!”
Ishiyama’s voice came over the loudspeaker again, ending the moment of silence and finishing up the speech.
To Lancer’s surprise, Daniel, of all students, fiercely glared at the ghost and scolded him. “Do you have any tact?!” he hissed. “You do know what day it is, right?”
The Box Ghost looked to the date written on the top of the white board, then froze as he floated in place, apparently stunned. Impossibly, he seemed to pale even more. “Oh. It’s that day,” he said. “Huh. I remember that day.”
“You do?” Nathan asked, sounding surprised.
“Of course!” The Box Ghost said, looking almost offended. “It is the one day ghosts can never forget.”
“Huh? Ghosts can’t forget 9/11?” Star asked. Lancer was confused too.
Daniel, looking sad now rather than angry, answered that in a near-whisper. “No; ghosts can’t ever forget their death day.” Lancer wondered how Daniel knew that; according to his parents, ghosts didn’t have concrete memories at all, although Lancer, like many others in town, no longer believed such. For some reason, the boy looked haunted when he said that—er, not literally, metaphorically; despite it being two years, Lancer still hadn’t adjusted to the clarification being needed in this town.
“I was there,” the Box Ghost said quietly, staring at the wall, apparently lost in the memory. “I was down the street, moving packages from the mailroom to my truck. There was a deafening noise, and then I heard screaming. I looked up… There was so much dust and fire, but I saw a plane hit the tower. Rubble was falling everywhere. We tried to get inside, but then a huge plume of fire came down the street… I dodged behind the truck, but then all the smoke and dust… I couldn’t breathe, and my inhaler wasn’t with me…” he trailed off, apparently having nothing more to say on the matter; Lancer assumed that meant he had died there, presumably due to an asthma attack induced by the toxic air given the mention of an inhaler. The Box Ghost then said, “I had no idea they did a memorial day for that…”
“Every year,” Lancer told him gently. “All school and government flags go half-mast to acknowledge all the people who died at the three locations. The acts of terrorism led to a war.” He wasn’t sure how much the ghost knew.
“Oh,” the Box Ghost said, then realized what Lancer had said. “Wait. You mean it wasn’t just the Twin Towers…? And… wasn’t an accident?”
“Sadly, no,” Lancer said; the ghost must have not done research into the day of his death. “It was a planned attack by anti-US insurgents from Afghanistan. The Pentagon was also hit. The third location targeted remains a mystery; the passengers of that plane were able to fight the hijackers, and the plane went down in a field in Pennsylvania. Shortly after, the US declared a War on Terrorism in the Middle East, which continues to this day.”
The Box Ghost quieted for a moment. “I did not know that,” he said. “I… need to be alone…” he decided, then turned and floated out the window.
Lancer wasn’t sure how to follow that up, and the students were quiet too, looking somber. Valerie looked particularly conflicted, and Lancer believed he understood her concerns; it was one thing to learn about the event, another thing to hear people talk about friends and family being there, yet another to hear stories from survivors, but this… None of that compared to hearing from someone who actually died during the event.
Lancer hoped the local ghost hunters didn’t go after the Box Ghost that day, even if he ended up causing some chaos; surely a ghost deserved some compassion on his deathday.
The bell rang, signalling the end of homeroom, and for once the students left without racing to the door.
“Daniel, one moment,” Lancer then said, realizing something that needed addressing.
“Yeah?” Daniel said, heading over to the desk.
“Your… sudden change in attire is a little concerning,” Lancer began, unsure how to approach this. Was it a cry for help? “Is everything okay?”
Daniel laughed. “Sorry, sorry, don’t mean to laugh,” he said. “Yeah, everything’s fine. Some friends of mine took me shopping, said I needed some trendier clothes. Cool, huh?”
“Uh. Sure, yes, ‘cool’,” Lancer told him, still unsure if the bold change was truly just a style choice rather than a subconscious cry for help. “However, I’m afraid I will have to confiscate those chains attached to your belt loops.”
Danny scrunched his nose in an annoyed scowl, slightly showing those darn fangs. “Why?” he asked.
“School policy,” Lancer said, ignoring the fangs. “The one around your neck is fine, but chains of a certain length are not permitted due to the ability to use them as weapons—don’t look at me like that, I didn’t write the policy—and the ones on your pants certainly are well past that length. Unless you want detention for violating dress code policy?”
Danny sighed, but complied. “Anything else?” he asked sullenly, handing the chains to Lancer.
“Actually, yes,” Lancer said, noticing Daniel’s wrist. “That spiked bracelet—”
“Let me guess, it’s sharp enough to be a weapon too,” Daniel interrupted, then rolled his eyes and pulled it off, handing it to Lancer too. One of the spikes prickled Lancer’s hand; yes, definitely sharp enough to be a weapon. “Now, is that all?” Daniel practically growled, showing fangs again.
Lancer pursed his lips, wondering if he should give detention for the attitude, or inquire about those fangs, but decided against both; technically the dress code didn’t say anything about fangs, fake or not (Lancer was not sure why the thought occurred to him that they might be real). “That is all,” he said, and watched Daniel practically storm off.
Lancer decided to keep a closer eye on Daniel Fenton.
Valerie took a deep breath as they exited the history classroom, calming herself. She couldn’t cry, not in public. The class had discussed 9/11, as expected; Valerie had almost stayed home, like she had in past years, but it had been 5 years after all; she had to start moving on eventually.
Her dad already had, Valerie recalled bitterly, recently finding a new woman to date. Logically she knew 5 years was more than plenty of time to grieve a lost wife and begin to move on, and knew it was healthy for him to start dating again, but another part of Valerie couldn’t help but feel like he was betraying her mom, no matter how long it had been. Most days she was fine with it, but today of all days…
Well, it made sense that her emotions around that would be heighted on the anniversary of her mom’s death, she supposed. Her mom had been working on the 96th floor of the first tower hit, her desk on the very same side of the impact, and the only relief was that she likely had died instantly, completely unaware of what had hit her. It was a small mercy; so many peoples’ deaths had been worse that day, including, apparently, the Box Ghost’s.
Speaking of that ghost… Well, Valerie wasn’t sure what to think. Ghosts could recall the days of their deaths? She thought they had no memories from before they died, but she supposed a death memory would make sense. But the way he looked so emotional during it, and then flew off all dejected, simply didn’t make sense to her. It must be a trick, but why? To make the human ghost hunters gain sympathy and attack less? That must be it.
Valerie needed a distraction, and as she walked outside to find a place to eat her lunch she noticed a group of 3 people at one of the further off tables. Usually she ate alone, but today she needed friends, or sorta-friends; sure, Sam still didn’t seem to like her much, but Tucker and Danny, though her exes, were both still very friendly with her. Plus, she wanted to ask Danny about his outfit; it was so different from his usual, and such a drastic change was a little concerning.
“Hey,” Valerie said as she approached the table, the three looking at her. Danny had a guitar that he seemed to be showing off to the two, a very familiar one. So Valerie asked, “Why do you have a replica of Ember’s guitar?”
Danny blinked at her, then looked back at the guitar. “Replica? Right. Yes, it’s a replica. Uh, I saw the music store had this replica, so figured it’d be cool to play the same guitar as her.”
Valerie frowned as she sat down next to him; Sam and Tucker were on the opposite side. She hadn’t known Danny played guitar, but more importantly, “You’re a fan of Ember? I thought you were terrified of ghosts!”
“Uh, well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate them from a distance, right?” Danny defended. “She’s cool.”
Valerie blinked, baffled by that. “Isn’t she the one who kidnapped you Friday?” Valerie hated herself for missing that; she had been across town dealing with Johnny and Kitty, who were taking a joyride. For some reason Phantom had stopped fighting those two lately.
Danny winced. “She… didn’t exactly kidnap me? Um… She learned I was a fan and got a little over-excited about that? Yeah, since I used to not like her much, so she was happy about that. But it was fine; when I asked to return she took me back home!”
“She still kidnapped you!” Valerie pointed out. Was this some strange kind of rapid-onset Stockholm syndrome?
Danny shrugged. “It’s not like I haven’t been ki—er, interacted with friendly ghosts before. Some are a little aggressive in their friendliness, but not all ghosts are bad.”
“Oh, don’t you start on this too,” Valerie grumbled. “Aren’t you afraid of them anymore? Did something happen over the summer?”
“Uh, no—well, kinda, I guess, but I’ve thought that for a while. I’m still afraid of the bad ones.”
“All ghosts are bad!” Valerie insisted, worried for the boy that she still kinda-maybe liked. Was he going to tell her that Phantom was a hero or something next? “Ugh, whatever,” she said, pulling her bagged lunch out of her bag, seeing Danny’s sour expression. She wasn’t going to convince him like this.
“Really? Are you really gonna sit here?” Sam asked with a scowl.
Valerie shrugged. “Sure. We’re friends, right?” She took a bite of her peanut butter sandwich.
“Yes, we are,” Danny said, leveling a soft warning glare at Sam, who grumbled something under her breath.
“We definitely are,” Tucker agreed, though the look he was giving her indicated that maybe he wanted to date her again; Valerie resisted rolling her eyes at that.
The group worked on eating their lunch in somewhat amicable silence. Danny’s lunch was accompanied by a can of soda that was marked with strange looking letters that looked vaguely familiar, the drink which seemed to be tinged bright green; it must be something from a foreign country, and Valerie didn’t care enough about it to ask.
No, Valerie was more curious about something else. “So, what’s with the dramatic clothing change?” she asked Danny.
“Why does everyone keep asking me about that?” Danny groaned.
“Well, it is pretty abrupt,” Tucker chimed in. “Come on, you typically wear light-colored shirts and blue jeans, now you’re sporting a heavy punk-emo look, complete with accessories and a shirt that is borderline school-inappropriate? People are going to notice.”
Danny looked down at his shirt and frowned. “It’s just an MCR album cover?”
“Featuring two bloody people.”
“Well, I guess, yeah, maybe it is a bit disturbing,” Danny admitted. “But, Lancer didn’t say it was against dress code when he took away some of my accessories earlier, so I’m sure it’s fine.”
“He took away your accessories?” Valerie asked, mildly confused.
Danny shrugged. “My jeans had chains on them. Apparently they were long enough for the school to count them as weapons. Same for a spiked leather bracelet that was apparently a bit too pointy. Which is kinda silly, considering they’re teaching us how to use guns in class and letting us carry them around.”
Valerie scoffed at that. “The anti-ghost guns don’t hurt humans.”
“Neither do accessories!”
Sam was the one who then scoffed. “Danny, I have seen people get stabbed with those bracelets at goth events; that school rule is why I stick with studded ones,” she said, raising her wrist to show off one, black faux leather with silver studs. She had one on each wrist and a matching collar.
“Yeah, guess I’ll have to get some of those,” Danny said. “But the chains—”
“Can strangle people,” Sam said a little too calmly.
“So can this one!” Danny said, grabbing the one around his neck and shaking it a little. “So can literally any necklace or belt!”
“Eh, school rules can be bullshit,” Valerie said with a shrug. “At least you don’t have to measure your skirt and short length, especially whenever miniskirts and short-shorts are back in fashion.”
“I thought you didn’t care about fashion anymore?” Sam asked curiously.
“Well, I prefer more comfortable clothes, but I still care about how I look,” Valerie said defensively. Some of the more restrictive fashions she didn’t bother with, as she needed to be able to move to ghost hunt, but by habit she still measured her skirts and shorts when she put them on before school, even though she knew they all complied to the dress code.
“Still can’t believe Lancer didn’t confiscate that shirt, too,” Tucker mused.
“Well, the only other one I have is my gym shirt, and pretty sure being shirtless is completely against school rules, so I’m glad he didn’t,” Danny said flatly.
“Huh. Well, even if it’s a bit rebellious, I guess it’s a good thing you’ve started branching out your fashion some,” Valerie said, drawing the discussion away from images of Danny without a shirt. “I mean you’ve been wearing the same five or so shirts since eighth grade! Was starting to think you just bought like a bunch of different sizes of them, since there’s no way the same designs stay on sale for that many years.”
Danny winced, then mumbled, “Actually, I just haven’t had a growth spurt yet…” Then he said louder, “Yeah, that’s what some new friends of mine said, they kinda forced me into finding a ‘more trendy’ style,” using finger quotes, then added with a chuckle, “I have so many band shirts now it’s ridiculous.”
“New friends?” Valerie asked curiously. She hadn’t seen him hanging around with anyone new.
Danny waved a hand. “Ah, yeah, just some people I met, they don’t go to this school.”
“Really?” Valerie asked, surprised. She wondered where he would have met them; maybe they were in college? His sister could have introduced them.
“Yeah, Jazz thinks I should expand my social circle, and obviously I’m not gonna find anyone at this school,” Danny explained, cementing Valerie’s conclusion that his sister must have introduced them. That school she went to did seem to have an abnormally high amount of alt-style people, whether goth, punk, emo, or otherwise.
As Danny took another sip of that brightly colored drink, nearly ectoplasm-colored, Valerie decided to ask, “What are you drinking, anyway?”
Danny looked slightly nervous for some reason. “Oh, um… It’s a drink from… Thailand! Yeah, my cousin’s there right now, and sent some snacks and drinks over. It’s like, a… mint soda.”
Valerie scrunched her nose at that. “Ugh, mint? Seriously? In soda?”
Danny shrugged. “I like it,” he said, taking another sip. Valerie couldn’t shake the feeling Danny was lying about the drink’s origins, though; she didn’t think the lettering looked Thai, but maybe it was just a weird font? And the color… Valerie briefly had the thought it was actually ectoplasm in there, but no, that was impossible; ectoplasm made humans sick. It must just use an obnoxious amount of dye. Regardless, Valerie had no intent to try it.
“You like pickles and anchovies on pizza,” Valerie pointed out.
“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til ya try it!” Danny defended.
“Nah, she’s got a point,” Tucker said. “Your food tastes are, like, a pregnant woman’s, seriously.”
“Oh, eww, gross comparison, Tuck,” Danny said, scrunching his nose.
Sam rolled her eyes. “Like you have any right to talk about food tastes, Mr. ‘All-meat diet’.”
“Oh like your grass-on-bread diet is any better,” Tucker quipped back.
“It’s not grass on bread!” Sam protested, holding up her sandwich.
“Peppers and onions on top of a giant mushroom isn’t much better.”
“There’s hummus and spicy sauce too!”
“Guys, can you please not fight about this again?” Danny said with a tired sigh.
Valerie couldn’t help but smile at the typical banter between the two. It was refreshing, to have something so normal, to just sit with friends eating lunch and talking and joking around. Much better than wallowing in lonely grief sitting on her own.
Valerie couldn’t help but hope that this shaky friendship with the group continued to grow; they had plenty of secrets they kept from Valerie still, that was obvious, but perhaps someday they’d trust her enough to share in those, the revelations of such which would mark the day that Valerie would finally be a definite part of their friend group.
Thursday night, Jack sat in the living room with Maddie, once again waiting for their son to come home; his curfew was ten, but it was already nearly eleven. Maddie was reading a science journal while Jack was knitting. Their daughter, Jazz, wasn’t home either, but she had called to say she was spending the night at a classmate’s house to work on a school project.
The front door slowly creaked open, revealing a black-haired teenager. The scene was very familiar to Jack; it could have been the same as any of the countless times in the past two years that Danny had tried to sneak in without being noticed. He even looked the same, except for that punk outfit—Jack wondered if he should be concerned about the fact that Danny hadn’t seemed to grow at all in the past two years. Come to think of it, had he even needed a hair cut? Should he take Danny to a doctor, see if maybe he wasn’t getting proper nutrition? And, although the outfit was pretty cool and apparently trendy, should Jack be concerned about the drastic change of fashion, from light colors to dark colors with so many chains and spiked accessories? He’d read that drastic fashion changes like that could be a cry for help, but then again, Sam had done similar with her goth fashion at the start of their freshmen year, and seemed relatively fine.
Maddie was already off the couch and practically stomping to the door, hands on her hips. “And just where have you been, Mister?” she demanded as Danny closed the door.
Danny winced. “I, er, didn’t notice the time?” he tried, as Jack joined them.
“You didn’t notice that it was an hour past curfew?” Maddie said, voice full of anger. “Don’t lie to me, Daniel James Fenton. Where. Were. You?”
Danny crossed his arms and said defiantly. “I don’t want to tell you.”
Jack then noticed a bruise on Danny’s arm—he was wearing short sleeves, even though it was a bit chilly to go without a jacket or sweatshirt. Poor planning, Jack supposed; it had been warm enough earlier in the day, but this time of year the temperature tended to be high during the day and then drop low in the evenings. Oh wait, the bruise. “How’d you get hurt?” Jack asked, gesturing to it with concern.
Danny shifted his arms so the other now covered it. “It’s nothing.”
Maddie, to Jack’s surprise, grabbed Danny’s arm, pulling it to show the bruise. Danny gave a shout of surprise. “What the fuck, mom?!”
“Language!” Maddie chided. “Where did you get this?”
“I told you, it’s nothing,” Danny insisted as he pulled his arm away. “Lay off.”
Maddie’s lips thinned and her eyes narrowed, a tell that she was much angrier than she was outwardly showing. Holding back. During Jack’s arguments with her, it usually followed with something being thrown or threats of violence, with an occasional slap or punch, but Maddie never did that with the kids.
Danny’s eyes widened and he took a step back. “Mom?”
Warning bells sounded in Jack’s mind. Danny was afraid of Maddie? Had Jack been wrong about her holding back with the kids? Had she only been holding back when Jack was there to see?
“Maddie,” Jack said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe it’d be best to let this go.”
Maddie refocused her glare onto Jack, shook him off, and crossed her arms. “Let this go? Are you serious right now?” she asked, voice cold and dangerous.
“Just, take a breath and calm down, okay?”
“I am calm,” Maddie said tersely, then noticed Danny trying to slip away. “Oh no, Danny. You are staying right here,” she said, voice hard.
Danny winced. “I—sorry, it’s late, can we just do this tomorrow?” he pleaded.
“No. You WILL tell us where you got that bruise,” Maddie demanded.
“Look, Maddie, if he doesn’t want to say—” Jack began.
Maddie cut him off. “No, Jack. I’m sick of all the excuses!”
“Look, I fell, okay?” Danny said in a rush. “I fell. That’s all. I didn’t say because I was embarrassed.”
“Uh-huh,” Maddie said. “You ‘fell’.” She clearly didn’t believe him.
“Yeah!”
“Tell the truth, Danny,” Maddie ordered again, a dangerous edge to her voice.
“I-I am,” Danny stuttered with wide eyes as he took another step back, and Maddie took a step forward… Jack prepared himself to intervene; she really did look like she was about to hit Danny!
“I have half a mind to give you a matching bruise for being so defiant,” Maddie hissed.
“Maddie, no!” Jack said. “We agreed on no corporal punishment!”
Maddie again turned her glare to Jack. “Don’t tell him that! Now he knows it’s an empty threat!”
“You shouldn’t be threatening that at all!” Jack said, anger flaring. “Look at him—he’s scared of you!”
“Good!” Maddie said. “Maybe fear will work better than grounding!”
“No, it won’t,” Jack insisted. He knew it wouldn’t; he and Maddie had both read plenty of articles about parenting when Maddie first found out she was pregnant, and none claimed that fear of bodily harm was a good discipline strategy.
Maddie raised a fist at Jack, and he couldn’t help but flinch too. “Maddie, come on, be reasonable,” he said, taking a step back too. He didn’t think she'd hit him, not in front of Danny, but to his horror Jack realized he wasn’t actually sure of it this time.
“Danny, go to your room,” Jack told his son; Danny hesitated, clearly looking worried about Jack now, so Jack added sharply, “Now!”
Danny hurried off, barely making a sound as he fled up the stairs to his room.
“You had no right to send him away,” Maddie hissed. “Honestly, Jack, do you want him becoming a delinquent!”
“Maddie, we’ve ruled out gangs, drugs, underground fighting, and criminal activity. He’s not a delinquent, and won’t become one—honestly I’m starting to think Jazz is right, and he needs to see—”
“Don’t you dare suggest he see a shrink,” Maddie hissed. “He’s a Fenton. Fentons don’t have problems like that.”
“I’m just saying, could an evaluation really hurt?” Jack asked. “It started after his accident just before high school, and PTSD really seems to fit, from the literature Jazz—”
“Oh, that’s BS and you know it,” Maddie said. “He said he only got a small shock from that thing. And he’s in the lab all the time. No, there’s clearly something else going on… Ghosts, maybe? If he’s been getting kidnapped like that frequently…”
“No, I doubt it’s ghosts,” Jack said, knowing that agreeing would not end well for his gradually diminishing hope that eventually Maddie could come around on her views of ghosts. Honestly, the only thing he could think of at this point in regards to Danny’s behavior was that Jazz’s suggestion of therapy might be warranted after all; Danny really did fit the profile of a teenager with an undiagnosed mental illness, if not PTSD then maybe depression. Jack didn’t like the idea of one of his kids having such, but if he did, wasn’t it their responsibility as parents to get him help, especially as bad enough depression could lead to self-harm or worse? Jack didn’t want to end up being one of those parents crying at their kid’s funeral about how they missed the signs. There was also the nagging feeling that maybe it was an issue with them, so he suggested, “Maybe it’s the way we’ve been dealing with things that’s driving him further away, making him not trust us?”
Maddie’s voice turned cold and hard again as she demanded, “And just what do you mean by that?”
“Well, he was clearly scared of you before,” Jack pointed out, trying to remain calm; anger would only enrage Maddie further. “Wouldn’t it be difficult to talk to someone you’re afraid of?”
Maddie scoffed. “Children should respect their parents. There would be no reason for him to be afraid if he just told us the truth!”
“Yeah, but—”
“Jack, stop being so soft,” Maddie ordered.
Jack couldn’t help but angrily shout, “I’m not being soft! I’m trying to be a good parent!”
“Oh, so you’re saying I’m a bad parent?” Maddie raised her fist, and Jack subconsciously stepped back again.
“I’m saying that maybe you shouldn’t threaten our son with bodily harm just for breaking curfew! Or, for any reason! If you’re planning on doing that, then, yes—that’ll make you a bad parent, because good parents don’t hurt their kids!”
“You’re really asking for it now,” Maddie growled.
“Yeah? Fine, then, hit me!” Jack replied. “Better me than Danny!”
Maddie’s fist flew forward, then stopped. She looked surprised.
A familiar ghost appeared in-between Maddie and Jack, holding her fist.
“Phantom!” Maddie hissed with venomousity. “What are you doing here, you ectoplasmic scum?” She tried pulling her fist away, but the ghost held fast.
Danny Phantom looked angrier than Jack had ever seen him, at least up close—maybe he’d been this angry at some of the stronger evil ghosts like the Ghost King thing, but never directed at a human, not even hunters. It almost felt like his anger created a pressure—or maybe that was just the way the temperature dropped ten degrees; he had ice powers, right? So unintentionally causing temperature changes when angry wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities. “I was flying by and I heard shouting, so decided to investigate,” Phantom said through clenched teeth.
Jack’s question was more along the lines of why the house’s security system hadn’t activated, but he was immensely relieved that it hadn’t—Maddie’s punch wouldn’t have done much more than bruise, given Jack’s size, but it still would hurt. However, Jack felt saying ‘thank you’ to the ghost right now would only make things worse.
“Jack, do something!” Maddie hissed, finally pulling away from the young ghost, who looked like he was holding back on attacking her.
Jack stood there frozen as Maddie grabbed an ecto-gun from a nearby drawer and shot at Phantom, who simply put a shield up. He then flew towards Jack, grabbing him from under the arms and flew upwards, phasing through the ceiling and other obstacles in the way until ending up in the ops center.
Phantom set Jack down and then floated in front of him, now looking a little nervous. “Sorry about that,” he said. “I hope I didn’t make things worse—I just couldn’t ignore someone in need of help.”
“No, it’s fine,” Jack said, slightly stunned as he collected his bearings (flying and phasing was so strange!). “It, er, did help. She’ll calm down; this, er, isn’t exactly new,” he muttered, slightly embarrassed to admit that aloud.
Phantom’s eyes widened in surprise. “She often hits you?” he asked in a near-whisper.
Jack shrugged. “Well, she, er, doesn’t usually actually throw the punch,” he said. Usually it was just throwing things, which typically missed, and sometimes slaps. “And it’s not like I can’t take it if she does…”
“Still, a wife shouldn’t hit her husband, or vice-versa,” Phantom firmly told him. “And a mother shouldn’t hit her children—I heard what she wanted to do to her son.”
Jack wilted slightly. “I know,” he said miserably. “Better me than him… I’ve been trying to turn her around, but it just keeps getting worse. Breaking curfew isn’t even that bad, yet she…” Jack sighed. “I’m sorry, you probably don’t want to hear me ranting about this.”
Phantom shook his head. “No, it’s fine,” he said. “I—” he gasped, and a puff of icy air escaped his lips. He glanced towards the window, where Jack saw an abnormally large ectopus fly by. Was the air some sort of ghost sense? “Dammit. I, er, gotta go now,” Phantom said, looking anxious, probably getting an urge to catch it. But instead of heading off right away, curiously Phantom took the time to ask, “Will you be okay if I leave?”
Jack nodded. “Don’t worry, like I said, this isn’t new! I’ll be fine. You go catch that ghost now.”
Phantom grinned. “You got it!” he said, then zoomed right through the window and into the night, though Jack couldn’t help but think that the ghost boy looked a mix of worried and angry behind the smile.
Danny flew after the large ectopus, mind spinning at what just happened. His mom had tried to hit his dad—would have, if he hadn’t stepped in. Her vibes indicated that she wanted to hit someone almost the whole time—first towards Danny, then towards them both.
And his dad was definitely not telling the whole truth about the frequency of it. There was a sense of embarrassment and denial, so he likely didn’t believe it was that bad, but… Well, it was. Like Danny had told his dad, spouses shouldn’t hit each other or their kids. How long had this been going on?
A fear grew in Danny’s gut: was it only a matter of time before his mom actually struck him too? She definitely had the vibes of intent, and that wasn’t the first time Danny had felt that. Should he be careful to not be alone with her?
Danny slowed, for the first time not feeling up to fighting the ghost. He knew he shouldn’t just let it roam free, especially due to the size, but he just lacked the motivation. It wasn’t even a physical tiredness, more like a mental one. He kinda wished a portal would open up right there and yeet him into the edges of the Ghost Zone where he could hide from his problems forever.
Not for the first time, Danny wondered if Jazz was right in that Danny should see a professional, but what would he even say? ‘Hi, I’m half dead thanks to an accident with a portal in my parents’ dangerous lab! Only three humans know though, six if you count my half-ghost arch enemy, clone, and future self from an alternate timeline. Now I fight the ghosts that come out of it because I feel like it’s my responsibility. Sometimes the stress of it makes me wish I never walked out of that portal, or makes me just want to run away forever, but I keep going because if I don’t protect Amity Park who will?’
Yeah, that would definitely go over well; either the GIW would be called, or Danny would be shoved into an institution.
Danny paused in mid-air, wrapping his arms around his chest as he willed himself not to cry. He couldn’t cry here, in the middle of the city; he was the Town Hero. He had an image to maintain. And knowing his luck, crying in Phantom form would produce a Wail or something.
“Yo, Ghost Boy!” came a shout, and Danny winced. Great, it was the Red Huntress, aka his ex-girlfriend Valerie. Well, human-form’s ex-girlfriend, as she still didn’t know he was also Phantom.
“Perfect timing, as always,” Danny muttered. Maybe he should just let her shoot him, or capture him, or whatever she wanted to do today. Although, knowing his luck he’d just become a full ghost if he died a second time, if he wasn’t already—if it weren’t for the slow heartbeat, he might be convinced that he was.
However, a small shot from Valerie’s wrist ray hitting his shoulder was enough to get Danny to instinctually start flying away as fast as he could, Valerie immediately following.
“Can’t you just leave me alone for once?” Danny shouted.
“Like I could ever just leave an evil ghost alone!” Valerie shouted back.
“But I’m not evil! Seriously!”
“Sure you aren’t, ghost!”
Danny winced as a more powerful ecto-blast grazed his upper arm. Great, she’d brought out the big weapons.
Danny turned a corner and immediately swerved to phased into a random window; Valerie zoomed by, screaming something.
Danny sighed and floated to sit cross-legged on the floor, collecting his wits. “Can’t I just have one day where I don’t have to fight anyone?” he grumbled to himself, hands on his forehead as he looked at the ground.
“Phantom?” someone asked incredulously.
Danny snapped his head up to look at the person who spoke while noting his surroundings. Apparently, he’d phased into one of his classmate’s rooms; Mikey was sitting on a twin bed with a game controller, and the twins Lester and Nathan were seated in beanbags, also with controllers; a glance at the TV showed they were playing Super Smash Brothers Melee, though the game was paused.
“Shit, sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” Danny hurriedly said.
“Aren’t you supposed to be a family-friendly hero?” Lester asked, seeming confused.
Danny scoffed. “I’m a teenager. No clue why people seem to think that means ‘family-friendly’.” He did try to watch his language around actual kids though, so maybe that was why. He moved to stand. “I’ll get out of your hair now, sorry for crashing in.”
“No!” Mikey said, lunging forward and pushing Danny back down as Nathan somehow got a beanbag under him.
“What the fuck,” Danny muttered, unsure how else to react.
“We have an extra controller, and you look like you need to relax,” Mikey said matter-of-factly.
“You want me to… play Smash with you?” Danny asked.
“You play?” Nathan asked, eyes lighting up as he heard Danny use the nickname for the game.
“What’s your main?” Lester demanded.
“Uh. Mewtwo I guess? But, it’s 11:30 on a school night…?” Danny questioned as a purple GameCube controller was shoved into his hands.
“Eh, let us worry about that,” Mikey said with a wave of his hand. “So, you any good?”
Danny shrugged, deciding fuck it, sure, he needed a distraction anyway. “It’s been a few years since I played, so I might be a little rusty.”
“Seriously? Why’d you stop playing?” Nathan wondered.
Danny gave the boy a deadpan look. “I died,” he said flatly. Which technically was the reason—after the accident there was much less time for games thanks to all the ghost fighting, so he, Sam, and Tucker had to be a little more selective of which games they played together. Doomed had earned the role of their favorite game, and thus pretty much the only one they found time to play, and Smash Bros had fallen to the wayside.
All three full-humans in the room winced.
“Sorry!” Nathan quickly said. “I didn’t mean to be offensive or anything!”
Danny chuckled. “Nah, it’s cool. I meant that more jokingly than anything—gotta work on my delivery I guess. But, uh, yeah, just haven’t really found much time for games since that—and no, I’m not giving you any more details about my death,” Danny said preemptively, well aware that all three were members of the Phantom Phan Club, albeit less active ones, and the club had been trying on-and-off to uncover his ‘origin story’.
“Well, then, let’s see if you’re still any good at Smash!” Mikey said excitedly, exiting the current 3-player match (to Lester’s protests—he’d been about to win) and starting a new 4-player one. Nathan threw a snack-sized bag of chips at Danny, from a bucket of them.
Danny found himself having a surprising amount of fun, snacking and playing video games with the three geeks (after Smash Bros they did a few rounds of Mario Kart Double Dash). His core vibrated with happiness, picking up the happy emotions from the three humans who he barely knew, but you didn’t really need to know someone well to play video games with them. Danny wondered if Sam and Tucker would be up to playing more chaotic games like those sometimes instead of only Doomed; Doomed was fun, but there was just something unique about the chaos of fighting or driving with unpredictable items flying around.
Danny didn’t return home until nearly 3am—which meant he fell asleep in class the next morning and received detention, but, hey, it was worth it.
It was also amusing to hear how much Mikey, Lester, and Nathan’s story of how they played video games with Phantom became increasingly exaggerated as word of mouth passed it on; by the time the school day was over and Danny was heading towards detention, Phantom had apparently crashed through the window of Mikey’s room (or rather, the twin’s family’s spare room; he was apparently staying there while his own parents were out of the country—which confused Danny, as Mikey was 16, and Danny’s parents had regularly left him and Jazz home along for weeks at a time since Jazz began middle school; perhaps Mikey just had overprotective parents), then fallen momentarily unconscious before waking up, seeing the game on the TV, and demanding to play with them.
He’d also allegedly agreed to pop in on the gaming club’s meeting next week, which, no he absolutely did not, but it didn’t sound like a bad idea—he needed to work on getting rid of his ‘public enemy’ reputation, after all, and casually hanging out with humans and showing them he could relate to them was definitely one way to help with that.
“Danny, careful!” Sam hissed, pulling Danny away before he walked though the classroom door. Literally through; it was closed, and Sam had felt the slight chill of when Danny activated his abilities; it was very subtle, but after two years Sam could easily tell.
“What?” Danny asked, looking confused.
“Humans can’t just walk through closed doors,” Sam said incredulously.
“Oops. Sorry, I forgot,” was all Danny said, looking slightly nervous as he fiddled a little with his checkered wristband (faded green and black, matching the black t-shirt featuring a Green Day logo; Kitty and Ember had decided Danny needed a ‘more distinct style’, and upon determining punk-emo fit best introduced him to skinny jeans, black band t-shirts, punk-emo accessories (now including ear piercings, which he was rapidly stretching thanks to his enhanced healing), and skate shoes, and Danny seemed to really be embracing the style—this past weekend, he had gone to the mall again to add more items from Hot Topic and Spencer’s to his wardrobe) then opened the door like a proper human.
Sam just shook her head in mild exasperation; leave it to Danny to nearly accidentally reveal his secret just because he somehow forgot doors needed to be opened.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only majorly close call that day.
“Danny, come on,” Sam sighed, as he walked through a tree branch blocking the path on their way to one of the furthest-away outdoor picnic tables for lunch, she and Tucker ducking under the branch. “At least try to control your powers!”
“I am?” Danny said, looking confused. “What did I do?”
“You walked through a tree branch,” Tucker told him. “Are you losing control of your powers again or something?”
“Uh, no? I don’t think so?” Danny said, brow scrunched.
“Then why did you just walk through a tree branch? We’re lucky no one saw!”
Danny blinked. “Oh. I, er forgot humans don’t do that?” He told them, tone sounding like a question.
“You… Forgot… that humans don’t phase through stuff,” Tucker said with incredulity. “Dude, how do you forget something like that?!”
Danny shrugged. “I dunno. It just happened, like instinct or whatever.”
Sam frowned, a worrying thought then occurring to her. “Instinct? Don’t you have to consciously activate your powers when not in ghost form?”
“Oh. Um. Yeah, it’s kinda weird, but not anymore? Or, not all of them. Maybe I just got more used to using them over time?” Danny hypothesized, seeming unsure himself.
Sam considered that. Was Danny becoming more ghostly, or just more comfortable with his abilities? “Well, you have been hanging out around ghosts nearly every day for the past, what, two weeks? When you’re with them you don’t have to worry as much about hiding your powers, even in human form, so maybe that’s why?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good theory,” he concluded, though seemed a bit disturbed.
“Well, in that case, you gotta be more careful, dude,” Tucker warned.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Danny said, waving it off.
Sam frowned. “What’s wrong?” she asked. She could tell he was hiding something.
“Nothing,” Danny quickly said.
Sam crossed her arms. “Danny, I know you. Spill.”
Danny shifted nervously, then sighed and admitted, “I dunno. It’s… I guess I’m having a little trouble with identity? Like, when I first got the powers, it seemed so distinct. There was my human half, and my ghost half. But over time it’s blended much more, and that… I just don’t know how to feel about that. I… I kind of like that it’s easier to use my powers in human form, but… It scares me, too.”
“You think you’re becoming more ghost?” Sam asked worriedly.
Danny shook his head. “No, I’m pretty sure that isn’t the case. It just… feels that way because it’s blending. I’ll get used to it, don’t worry.”
“In the meantime then, we’ll keep you in check,” Sam decided.
“Yeah! Just like when you first got your powers,” Tucker said confidently.
“Thanks, guys,” Danny said with a soft smile… as he leaned back and began floating slightly with knees bent, a casual pose common for Phantom—and another power that used to not even be usable in human form, as whether or not gravity mattered had been a distinct divide.
Sam sighed and pulled Danny back down to the ground. Well, at least they no longer had to be worried about Danny falling if he accidentally changed back in the air.
The next incident was in that afternoon’s mandatory anti-ghost training, which took place once a week instead of gym class—Well, less of an incident and more of an intentional mishap.
The first two weeks had been lecture-style, which had Danny grumbling about all the errors, though thankfully nothing bad occurred because of it. However, this week was their first practical class; Sam had been dreading this, just knowing something would go wrong. She thought it would be related to Danny getting hit with something, but the incident turned out to be not something Sam expected.
Danny’s newfound appreciation of ghosts seemed to extend to more than just the members of their band and other friendly humanoid ghosts. No, it had to extend to the small blob ghosts that had been brought in to be used as practice for using the Fenton Thermoses that would be in the ‘Ghost Protection Kits’ that had been installed next to the fire extinguishers. Whereas Sam was all for the protection of all creatures, including the harmless little blob ghosts, she also knew that one had to think strategically. The thermoses were harmless, so it would be best to wait until after the class and rescue the ghosts in secret.
Danny, apparently, disagreed. His eyes flashed green in anger upon seeing the cage with the colorful little balls of ectoplasm floating around in it. They were making cute little chirps, whistles, chitters, and whines, which to Sam seemed nonsensical, but Danny seemed to be able to understand them to some extent as the more he listened to them the madder he got.
“We need to save them,” Danny told Sam and Tucker, after they’d managed to calm him down enough to get his eyes back to blue. “They’re torturing them!”
“Okay, as much as I love saving every creature and enjoy that you’re actually caring about animal cruelty,” Sam said, “Is this really the time? We’re practicing with thermoses, not wrist rays. We can save them later.”
“No, it needs to be now,” Danny said. “They’re terrified!”
“Dude, I’m not sure if they even know what’s going on; they’re blobs,” Tucker pointed out.
“Seriously, Tucker? Of course they know what’s going on!” Danny told him. “They’re pleading to be let go! They think we’re going to kill them! Can’t you hear them!?”
“Uh, no? All I hear is chirps and stuff. Why, can you?”
“Of course! It’s obnoxiously high pitched but when they’re not chirping they’re definitely talking,” Danny said.
“High pitched…” Sam mused, then remembered something. “Hey, weren’t you able to hear that dog whistle your neighbor’s kid had one day?” she recalled.
“Yeah, why?”
“Oh! I get it!” Tucker said. “They must be talking above the human hearing range… Wait, those little things are conscious enough to talk!?”
Danny nodded. ”It’s simple, like a toddler might talk, but they’re definitely saying words. Mostly pleading to be let go.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “We’ll let them go after class, okay?”
Danny glared at Sam with glowing eyes and the temperature in the room noticeably dropped. This… definitely wasn’t good.
“Hey, who turned the air up?” Dash wondered.
“The gym doesn’t have air conditioning,” Ms. Tetslaff said. “Now, everyone, go grab a thermos!”
“Hey, the gym has a basement, right?” Danny whispered to Sam and Tucker.
Sam was about to say no, aware that the school did have a basement used for storage and mechanical things, but it didn’t extend as far as the gym, but Tucker apparently knew otherwise. “Yeah, it’s separate from the other one but it’s where they store all the sports equipment.”
“Huh, Junior year yet I still learn something new about the school every week,” Sam commented.
“To be fair, I’m not sure it existed before,” Tucker whispered, meaning it was another potential timeline difference.
“Kay, I’m doing it,” Danny muttered, and after making sure everyone had turned their back on the cage of ghosts to grab thermoses, he tapped his foot on the ground and part of the floor became intangible, dropping the table to the basement below.
The cage atop it simply loudly crashed to the ground, and Sam could have facepalmed; right, intangibility-proof cage, as it held ghosts.
Everyone spun around to see what had happened. “Hey, where’d the table go?” Kwan asked, voicing what everyone was likely thinking.
Ms. Tetslaff looked at Danny, Sam, and Tucker. “You three! Did you see what happened to the table?”
“Why would we have seen that?” Danny asked sharply.
“Because your group was the only one to not be at the thermos table! Now go grab one!”
“We have our own,” Danny said, pulling his out, as did Sam and Tucker. “Parents make me carry it as a precaution, and thought my friends should have them too.”
“I see. Well, let’s get to the exercise, then,” the teacher said, moving to the cage and turning to the class, apparently opting to ignore the vanishing table. “First, let’s turn the gym’s new ghost shield on,” she said, pulling out a square device with some buttons. She pressed one, and the shield covered the gym walls and ceiling; presumably it was under the floor as well. From the slightly more bluish tint to the shield, it was presumably the Fenton’s ‘new and improved’ model they’d recently installed.
Sam quickly grabbed Danny’s hand, already sensing him getting nervous even though he technically could get through it, plus he was clearly distressed about not being able to save the ghosts.
“Now, using the thermoses are easy; just point at the ghost, press the top button, and if the ghost is in the beam of light that comes out, they’ll be trapped. The button below it is the release button; do not press that. The beams are completely harmless to humans, so we’re going to make a game out of this,” Ms. Tetslaff told them. “We’ve got forty of these ghosts, and there’s 18 of you. Your grade will be based on how many you catch, and the effort you put into catching them.”
“Oh no,” Danny muttered, and Sam definitely understood why; for some reason, the thermoses worked on him even in human form, and now he’d have to be dodging 15 beams. “Cover me; I’m gonna go invisible and sneak out, maybe destroy this shield so they can escape.”
As the ghosts were released and chaos began, Sam and Tucker stepped in front of Danny so he could turn invisible without anyone noticing.
Moments later, there was a soft thud, and Sam and Tucker turned to see Danny on the ground.
No one else had seemed to notice, and the two hurried over.
Ms Tetslaff saw them moving and Danny getting up from the floor, so ran over too. “What happened?” she asked.
“Just tripped!” Danny assured her, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment, though looked really frazzled. “You know how clumsy I am,” he added with a strained chuckle.
Ms. Tetslaff laughed. “Oh, yeah, sure do!” she said, then said more seriously, “Did you get hurt? Do you need to see the nurse?”
“Nope! All good!” Danny said hurriedly, looking slightly panicked; he sighed in relief when Ms. Tetslaff nodded in acknowledgement and walked away.
“So, what really happened?” Tucker asked, crossing his arms.
Danny winced. “Ghost shield happened.” He reached towards it and there was a little zap of static electricity, upon which he pulled his hand back. “I’m apparently not immune to the newest model, even in human form.”
“Well, shit,” Sam said. That was going to complicate things. She didn’t think Danny could avoid the wild thermos beams of their classmates for so long, though, even if she and Tucker stood in front to block him, even though they did mostly cover him considering they were both taller than Danny now (Sam pointedly ignored the fact that Danny hadn’t seemed to grow at all since his accident).
“Thermos me,” Danny suddenly said.
“What?” Sam asked, wondering if she misheard.
“Thermos me. Then, bring me outside the shield and release me.”
“Danny, I’m not—”
“No, Sam, he’s right,” Tucker cut her off. “It should work, and it’s the best option right now.”
Sam sighed in slight frustration. “Fine,” she said, realizing the two boys would just do it anyway regardless, as she moved to block Danny and Tucker did the same. “But you’re doing it, Tucker.” When it appeared no one was looking, Sam gave a signal, and there was a soft whooshing sound; when Sam turned back, Danny was gone.
“Cool, it did work,” Tucker said. “We’ll be back shortly.” He rushed through the shield with the captured Danny.
Sam wanted to follow, but knew someone had to be there to explain if Ms. Tetslaff noticed the disappearance. So she readied her own thermos and jumped into the fray, although instead of capturing the ghosts she ‘carelessly’ bumped into people to shift their aim, trying to save as many blob ghosts as possible.
It didn’t take long for the ghost shield to fizzle out, after which the remaining blob ghosts high-tailed it out of there; shortly after, Sam felt a slight coldness in the air, and Danny and Tucker quietly appeared behind her while everyone else watched the ghosts escaping, some trying to catch them in thermoses first—and failing, given those little ghosts were actually pretty fast when they wanted to be. More than half of the ghosts the class had started with had escaped.
Tucker shivered. “Dude, so do not want to be invisible for that long ever again. How do you manage it?”
Danny scrunched his brow in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I dunno, it just feels so unnatural. Cold and creepy,” Tucker explained.
“Oh. It feels natural to me…” Danny trailed, looking a little worried.
“Doesn’t mean you’re more ghost,” Sam assured him, recalling their conversation from earlier. “You just do it a lot more than us.”
“Right,” Danny said. “Right. I’m still human, too,” he said, sounding like he was actually uncertain and trying to reassure himself. “I’m still human, too.”
“Got that right!” Tucker said, giving Danny a friendly slap on the back.
Sam took Danny’s wrist in her hand. “You have a pulse,” she told him, putting her fingers on the pulse point. “I can feel it. That’s a sure sign you’re still human.”
“Is it, though?” Danny asked quietly, the air chilling slightly.
“Of course,” Tucker said. “It’s pumping blood through your veins, isn’t it?”
Danny took a moment to respond. “Blood isn’t green,” he eventually said quietly, then turned invisible and presumably walked away, giving that the chill in the air vanished too.
Sam sighed and stared at where Danny had stood. How were they supposed to handle this? She suspected the new ghost shield had been what affected Danny’s mood the most that day; previously, ghost shields hadn’t worked in human form.
“We are not equipped to handle ghost-related angst,” Tucker concluded.
“Maybe it’s just something he needs to work out on his own, or talk to another ghost with,” Sam suggested, though internally winced that she’d used the word ‘another’, which implied full ghost, whereas Danny was only half. Or, at least part of him was still human; Sam honestly wasn’t sure how much human was left either, but she had to assure Danny that he was still substantially human, for the sake of his mental health, she decided.
“Yeah, I vote let it sit a week or two and see what happens,” Tucker said.
“Agreed,” Sam said, though secretly vowed to keep an even closer eye on Danny.
The days passed, and Danny spent more and more time in the Ghost Zone, each day after school learning guitar and singing with Ember and then the two returning to Amity Park with Johnny and Kitty for band practice at Sam’s place.
There had also been a few times where Danny stopped by the gaming club as Phantom, confirming Mikey, Lester, and Nathan’s story about him playing with them and their assertion that he ‘wasn’t bad, but definitely not pro level’ at Smash. Unfortunately that had to stop after Danny’s parents and the Red Huntress got wind of it and decided to skate out the club in hopes of catching him.
Sam, despite some initial anger at the fact that Danny had forgotten she needed a ride to the first practice, seemed very enthusiastic about the band. Her happiness was so palpable that it was contagious—or maybe Danny was feeding on it, he didn’t really know anymore. Now that he could sense emotions, he’d been trying to figure out if any made him feel ‘charged’, as Ember described it. Sam got along great with Kitty in particular, to Danny’s surprise, and together they designed a cohesive punk-goth fashion scheme for the concert.
Tucker had clearly felt left out at first, but the band quickly realized that they would need someone to manage the tech portions of the show, which Tucker jumped at the chance to do, with the clause that he was not to attempt to sing. He seemed satisfied with that, even after realizing that half of it would be for show as the ghosts’ instruments were all self-powered, not even a need for amps (although some would be on stage as to not seem suspicious).
Lurker would always already be there when they got to practice, and Danny had a sneaking suspicion that they and Sam were getting along much better than anyone imagined the two would—Danny wasn’t quite sure yet if there was romance involved or not, and wasn’t sure if he wanted there to be or not. On one hand, he wanted Sam to be happy, which she clearly was around Lurker, and it would help her finally fully get over Danny, but on the other hand, he was pretty sure Lurker was some sort of cryptid from another dimension; they were definitely not a ghost, yet Danny couldn’t sense their emotions, and out of the corner of his eye sometimes he could have sworn Lurker had tentacles. They did seem like a pretty cool person(?) otherwise though, and if Danny was fine being friends with ghosts then Sam probably would be fine being friends with some otherworldly enigma.
Johnny and Kitty seemed to be enjoying being in a band too, and having something to do kept them in line as well. Ember of course loved it, even despite not being the lead singer. All three had been really growing on Danny, to the point that he felt he could probably consider them friends now.
Danny himself was absolutely loving things too. He hadn’t realized how much fun being in a band and playing music could be! And, although he loved Sam and Tucker, it was nice having friends who actually understood his ghostlier aspects. His wardrobe had also gotten revamped, now consisting of mostly ripped skinny jeans with chains, black band t-shirts, skate shoes, and punk accessories—including plugs and tunnels for his now-stretched lobes. He felt… cool. Not like an A-list-cool-kids type of cool, but an I’m-comfortable-with-myself-and-fuck-off-if-you-don’t-like-it type of cool. Empowered, perhaps the word was. Like he’d found where he belonged, and unbelievably that place was a ghost band—the him from just a year ago would have definitely called anyone who claimed that that would be his future a massive fruitloop, but here he was.
Playing the guitar was actually easier than Danny had expected, in part because ghost instruments apparently also reacted to feeling. ‘Attuning’ to a ghost instrument caused the musician to become more in sync with it, allowing the ability to feel what the right notes were for songs he wanted to play, even if he’d only played them a few times, as though the guitar itself had muscle memory that it could share with him—Danny still had to initially learn the songs but once he did he could play the song just by remembering the feeling of it, imagining the notes, the guitar guiding him. Unfortunately this didn’t apply outside of using that specific ghost guitar, but he’d take what he could get.
A few days before the concert, Danny and Ember were working on some final tweaks of the choreography for the show, just the two of them since everyone else was currently busy, when Ember came up with a suggestion that made Danny freeze.
“We should kiss,” the rockstar ghost said casually.
“What?” Danny, again in his human form despite being in Ember’s Ghost Zone lair, managed to eke out when Ember looked at him expectantly.
“Yeah, for the show,” Ember clarified. “Like, one of those dramatic ones where the other person is dipped down. How epic would that be?”
“Er…” Danny trailed, unsure. From a showmanship perspective, yeah, ending the finale with a kiss like that would be good, but…
Ember frowned. “What’s wrong, Babypop? You’ve kissed girls before, right?”
“Well, yeah, of course I have,” Danny quickly said.
“Hmm… It’s the ghost thing throwing you off, isn’t it?” she guessed. “You’ve only kissed humans before?”
Danny shook his head. “No, it’s not—well, I guess it’s true I’ve only kissed humans, but that’s not it.”
“Then, what is it? Do you just not like me?” She asked with a disappointed frown. Danny wasn’t sure if it was actual disappointment or if she was being dramatic—unlike with humans, Danny couldn’t taste ghost emotions. Er, sense, not taste; Danny didn’t like using the word taste even though some of the other ghosts did.
“No, that’s not it either,” Danny assured her, just in case. “I like you plenty! I mean, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t stand for all that playful banter…” he felt himself blush.
Ember narrowed her eyes as though trying to read Danny’s mind. “Hmm…”
“Look, I really don’t know why,” Danny said anxiously. “It was like that with Paulina, Valerie, and Sam too—those are the girls I dated,” he clarified. “Like, flirting and stuff is fun, cheek kisses are fine, hell even cuddling is nice as long as clothes stay on, but when it comes to anything more intimate, my brain just checks out, wants nothing to do with it… I feel super uneasy, and it’s not just from nerves…”
“Ah, got it. Well, that’s perfectly fine!” Ember told him. “Not everyone likes intimacy like that.”
Danny frowned. “It didn’t seem okay with them.”
Ember shrugged. “Well, that’s their loss. Is that why you broke up?”
Danny shook his head. “No. Well, not really, maybe it was part of it for Sam. For her we just both realized we work best as friends—I do love her, but it’s platonic, no different than how I feel about Tucker or my sister. I only thought it was more because people kept telling me it was. But the others weren’t like that. Paulina was actually overshadowed by Kitty the entire time and it ended once I realized… Which I guess means Kitty was technically my girlfriend, come to think of it? Does it count if I didn’t know it was her?”
Ember considered that for a moment. “Hmm. Maybe ask Kitty that one,” she decided.
“Thanks, I won’t,” Danny said with a small laugh. “Johnny would murder me!” Even though the ghost knew that his girlfriend had only done it to make him jealous, Danny had a feeling that bringing it up again wasn’t a good idea.
“Good point,” Ember said with a smile. “So, what about this Valerie chick?”
Danny laughed. “Oh, man, you’ll love this. So, Valerie is actually the Red Huntress. At the time, I knew this, but she didn’t, and still doesn’t, know I know. She claimed her life was just too busy to date someone, but I’m pretty sure she actually broke it off because she didn’t want to put me in danger.”
Ember laughed heartily. “Oh, that’s rich! Didn’t want to put you in danger? Wow. I’m guessing she doesn’t know about your alter-ego, huh?”
“Nope, and I’m not going to tell her if I don’t have to,” Danny said. “She’s a shoot first, ask-questions-never type of girl, and absolutely hates Phantom.”
“Ooh, yeah, I can see that ending badly,” Ember said. “Why’d you date her, though? Just curious.”
Danny shrugged. “I thought I liked her. Still do, maybe? We’d definitely make great friends I think, if she ever gets over the hatred for Phantom. But I also don’t think I’d want to be intimate… I dunno, it’s a bit confusing.” He did like flirting, but his body didn’t even react when he thought of kissing girls or going further—he hadn’t even realized there should be a reaction until recently, when he overheard some of the jocks discussing strategies to get rid of unexpected hard-ons around pretty girls.
“Well, that’s perfectly okay,” Ember said. “Intimacy isn’t for everyone—and back to the earlier subject, if you don’t want to kiss for the show, I won’t force you to.”
Danny shifted, considering that. “Maybe for the show it’ll be okay,” he said with a blush. “I dunno though… Like, what if it’s obvious I’m not into it?”
“Well, we can practice if you want,” Ember suggested.
Danny considered that. “Maybe. I’ll think about it. Let’s take a break and do something else for now.”
“Sure thing!” Ember agreed. “I’ve got a bunch of VHS tapes, we can watch one of those?”
“Sounds good to me,” Danny said.
The two sorted through an unorganized pile of tapes under the TV, and eventually decided upon a 1987 film called ‘The Princess Bride’; Danny had never seen it, and the title didn’t sound like the kind of films he usually watched, but Ember insisted that it was actually a comedy and was sure Danny would love it. It didn’t take long for Danny to realize that Ember had been correct; the movie was hilarious!
Partway through, Ember sighed, cuddling into Danny’s side more; Danny wasn’t sure when they’d ended up tangled together on the couch, but it was nice. Then she dramatically lamented, “Man, why’s the heroine have to be so hot?”
“What?” Danny asked in confusion.
“Oh come on. Look at her! Totally smoking, right?”
Danny looked at the heroine. “I dunno. She’s pretty I guess,” he concluded.
“You guess? Wow… Oh! Well, what about the hero, then?” she asked with a sly grin, pausing the screen when it showed him. “I mean, I know I’d totally bang him!”
Danny looked at the actor on screen, blushing as he did so. “Y-yeah, I guess he’s pretty hot,” Danny stammered, unsure why his hormones seemed to be reacting to the actor rather than the actress. Maybe he was just reacting to how Ember mentioned she’d ‘bang him’? Danny wasn’t used to talking about sex much.
Ember sat up, looking at Danny with a widening grin. “Babypop, I think I know what your issue with women is,” she told him.
Danny blinked. “What?”
“You just don’t like them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you just don’t like the entire female gender. You like dudes.”
Danny froze. That… wasn’t possible, was it? It wasn’t like the thought had never occurred to him in passing, but he always swiftly shoved that away; it was just an intrusive thought… right?
“Okay, clearly you’re in denial,” Ember concluded. “Here, I have an idea to test it.”
Danny looked at Ember with trepidation. “What idea?”
Ember said with a grin, “Kiss me.”
“What?” Danny was plain confused now. Didn’t she just claim that he didn’t like women?
“Come on, just trust me,” Ember insisted. “Kiss me, and see if you react or not.”
Danny considered that for a moment, then said, “Fine.”
Ember pulled Danny to her and locked her lips to Danny’s; Danny leaned into it, tried to relax and feel something from it, that magic all the other boys referenced when kissing a girl, but there was nothing. He just didn’t feel anything from it.
Ember withdrew, then told Danny, “Now close your eyes, relax, and imagine I’m that actor from the movie.”
“Wait, wha—” Danny began to say, but was cut off by Ember’s lips on his again. Unsure what else to do, Danny took Ember’s suggestion. He closed his eyes and relaxed, thinking of the hot actor, imagining he was kissing him…
For some reason, the kiss was more pleasant this time. Ember even began to deepen it, and Danny found that he actually was into it quite a bit… Then, there was a jolt in his lower regions.
Danny pulled away with a gasp, eyes opening wide and a deep blush definitely forming.
Ember grinned. “I take it that worked?” she said knowingly, glancing down.
Danny nodded, speechless, as he grabbed a pillow to cover himself. That had never happened when he kissed a girl, yet now, with him imagining a hot man… Danny couldn’t deny that the evidence was clear: Danny didn’t like girls sexually. Past attempts at dating them had merely been attempts to fit in, thinking that’s what he should do and mistaking more platonic or aesthetic attraction (even if he didn’t want to bang women, he could still tell who was pretty to look at!) for sexual attraction, not actual feelings of sexual attraction.
This was definitely not something Danny wanted to realize on top of the cascade of other things he was learning about himself lately. He’d seen how people treated gay people, but it wasn’t like it was something he could change! Well, he supposed he was already hiding the fact that he was half-ghost; what was one more thing to hide?
Danny’s mood significantly dropped, and tears began to form in his eyes.
“Oh, whoa, no need to cry!” Ember said with worry. “It’s not that embarrassing, is it? I mean, I guess I don’t know human social stuff much anymore, but come on, body reactions like that are perfectly normal, you shouldn’t be—”
“The physical reaction isn’t this issue,” Danny cut her off, managing to hold back the tears. “It’s that it happened at all… I can’t be… I just, on top of everything else, now this? I already have enough to hide!”
Ember frowned. “Why would you need to hide it?”
Danny looked at Ember incredulously. “Are you kidding? I’m dead—well, deader—if Dash or any of his crew finds out. I’d be a social pariah! I don’t even know how my parents would react, but the stats are not good. Sam and Tucker I’m pretty sure would be fine with it, maybe? Or maybe not… I dunno. Sam might be okay with it, but I have no clue about Tucker, even though he’s my best friend.”
“Well, shit,” Ember said, looking surprised. “Didn’t think it would still be so bad… isn’t it, like, somewhere in the 2000s out there? Well, if it’s any comfort, if the humans reject you, you could always just come back to the Ghost Zone, because ghosts don’t give a shit about things like sexuality.”
“Really?” Danny asked skeptically.
“Well, mostly,” Ember amended. “Any that have issues with it keep it to themselves, since there’s a pretty high percentage of LGBT human-based ghosts—if you know the stats, and know how human-based ghosts form, it’s easy to see why. And most of the zone-born ghosts have zero interest in human affairs so you won’t find any homophobes there.”
“Huh,” Danny said, taking a moment to think about that. “Well, hopefully it won’t come to that, but I guess it’s good to know I have a safe place to go,” he concluded.
“‘Slammin,” Ember said. “Now, let’s get back to that movie, okay?”
“Sounds good to me,” Danny agreed, definitely needing a distraction after that discussion.
Chapter 3: The Fall Festival
Summary:
The band plays at the Casper High Fall Festival! The ghost hunters and Lancer are quite baffled at what they're seeing.
Notes:
This is one of my favorite chapters in this fic, and one of the most fun to write; hope you enjoy it too! Can you name all the songs referenced?
(cw: final scene has depiction of abuse)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Everything ready?” Danny asked Tucker as the two stood behind the stage, which was set up in front of the school’s baseball field, providing them with some necessary privacy between the stage, which had a large backdrop hanging in back blocking the view behind it, and the solid wall of the dugout. Danny was clutching a thermos tightly in his hand.
“I think so,” Tucker said, checking a final box on the checklist on his PDA. He radiated a mix of excitement and nervousness.
They had just finished setting up the stage for the band; earlier that day, it had been used for various club acts, and now it was time for them to shine.
“Mics are good to go,” Sam said as she returned with Lurker. She was much calmer than Tucker, more confident, though still excited; Danny couldn’t get a read on Lurker, as always.
Behind the stage, they were almost completely hidden, thanks to the setup. The plan was to use ghost abilities for the majority of the special effects, but unfortunately without actual effects equipment that would be too suspicious, so instead it was surrounded on three sides by large white projector screens, which Tucker would use to project various effects and backgrounds to go along with the alleged ‘experimental holographic projectors’.
The stage itself was three tiers, each about two feet higher than the other with a step halfway up. The third tier in back was the entire length, in the middle of which was the drum setup, which Johnny would be at, and to the sides were large speakers. The middle tier would have Lurker on keytar and Sam on electric violin. On the frontmost and lowest tier, in the center would be Danny on guitar and to each of his sides would be Ember and Kitty on guitar and bass. This way, each band member could be seen by the audience; with the exception of Johnny, during the show they would occasionally be swapping positions to add some movement to the show and occasionally swap out the lead singer (most the time it would be Danny, but Sam and Ember would be singing a few). Tucker would be in a small booth at the bottom side of the stage controlling the effects and sound.
Danny glanced around just to be sure, then pressed the release button on the thermos, out of which emerged Ember, Johnny, and Kitty—that had been the best way to transport them there without the ghost hunters running into them before the show. Danny’s ghost sense didn’t go off, as his core now recognized their cores as ghosts friendly to him, verus unknown or malicious—apparently, that was a thing when Danny’s core wasn’t starving.
“Oof! That was so cramped in there!” Ember said, stretching her back. “You’re lucky we love you!”
“Hey, you agreed to it!” Danny quipped back, though smiled. He was a mix of nerves, this being his first ever show, but took comfort in that he was not doing this alone.
“You got my drums set up?” Johnny confirmed.
Danny nodded. “Yup. They transported just fine in the other thermos.” It had been a neat discovery that Ghost Zone objects were compatible with thermoses.
“Still don’t see why you couldn’t just attune to it, Johnny,” Kitty grumbled.
Johnny glared at her. “Hey! You know my bike takes like 90% of my capacity! I can’t attune to a whole ass drum set on top of it!”
“Well, it wouldn’t kill you to leave the bike in the lair sometimes,” Kitty pointed out.
“No way would I ever do that!”
“Hey, dipsticks!” Ember shouted. “No fighting! We’ve got a show to do!”
“Sorry,” Kitty and Johnny said simultaneously, both looking apologetic.
“Okay, one final check,” Tucker said. “Everyone’s got the power for their instruments, and got them synced to the speakers if needed?” Everyone nodded; the ghosts’ instruments were powered by their own energy, and would project the sound on their own too, whereas Sam’s violin and Lurker’s keytar had ecto-batteries to power them and were wirelessly connected to the speaker system using some sort of new transmission device called Bluetooth, which Tucker had rigged up for them. Each spot also had a mic stand, as sometimes everyone (except Tucker of course) would need to do some singing; Danny was the lead while Kitty and Ember were the main background singers, but some songs required the entire band to pitch in. A lot more went into setting up and planning such an event than Danny had realized!
“Perfect,” Tucker said. “Microphone check went well?”
“Yup!” Sam said.
“Instruments ready?”
Sam and Lurker held theirs up, and the ghosts all simply nodded.
“Invisibility ready?”
All the ghosts immediately shifted, whereas Sam and Lurker tapped the bracelets that Lurker had snuck from one of the MU labs, then the similar devices on their instruments. Then they switched back; they still had to wait for their introduction, after all.
“Okay, then let’s go!” Tucker said. “I’ll let Ishiyama know we’re ready.”
Tucker hurried to his tech booth on the side of the stage and signaled to the principal, now waiting on stage, that they were ready. The band members waited for Principal Ishiyama to finish up announcing the band.
“Once again, thank you for coming to Casper High’s first ever Fall Festival on this fine first weekend of October!” Ishiyama said. “We’re excited to have you all here at this family-friendly community event! As a reminder, please keep any food from the food trucks to the parking lot and picnic table areas. This afternoon the football field will be having various games and competitions, most notably an egg toss and three-legged race; a full schedule and sign ups is posted on the large board nearby it. If you haven’t signed up for something yet, consider doing so, as winners will be awarded gift cards to the various Amity Park locales that helped sponsor this event! Also, please be sure to stop by the club and community booths if you haven’t already, as you’ll find they have plenty of free merchandise for you. The paid carnival rides and games are run by an outside company, but they will be donating a portion of their profits today to our fine high school, so don’t hesitate to have fun there too!
“Now that the club events are over, I introduce you to the musical entertainment for the rest of the day, the premier performance of a band founded right here in Amity Park! They’ll be doing covers of all your favorite songs from the past few decades! Now, without hesitation, here’s…” she hesitated at the name on her note card, and Danny tried not to snicker. Ishiyama sighed and said, “Please excuse their name,” before continuing, “Now, without hesitation, here’s ‘The Amity Park Ghosts’! On drums, we have Jason; on keytar, Lurker; on electric violin, Sam; on bass and background vocals, Kat; on guitar and background vocals, Amber; on guitar and lead vocals, Danny; and for tech and special effects, Tucker.
“With that, let the festival continue!”
The stage lights went out as Ishiyama left the stage, and the crowd buzzed with chatter as the band invisibly filed onto the stage via the back corner, which had some steps and a break in the projector curtain, and got into their positions, still remaining invisible.
Danny shouted, “HELLOOOOOO AMITY PARK!” into the microphone, drawing the crowd's attention, who seemed confused upon seeing no one.
Tucker activated a strobe light effect, during which there was a puff of smoke while everyone removed the invisibility, revealing the band minus instruments (or in Johnny’s case, minus drumsticks); as the lights returned to normal; the crowd cheered at the effect, assuming it was just a magic trick.
“Are you ready to ROCK?” Danny shouted, and the lights flickered again, during which the members’ instruments appeared, whether via removing a cloaking device or manifesting; as he pulled out his guitar, Danny loudly strummed it.
The crowd cheered again, and Danny grinned, sensing the buzz of emotion in the air. This was going to be good!
🎵Death comes sweeping through the hallway, like a lady's dress / Death comes driving down the highway, in its Sunday best🎵
“The Music of Erich Zann,” Lancer muttered from his position guarding the balloon arch, which some hooligans already tried to pop, as he stared at the band on stage, unsure what to think. The song was a classic, Fire of Unknown Origin by Blue Oyster Cult, but this was the fifth song in a row related to death! The band name may be related to ghosts, but did they really have to stick with such a morbid theme?
Speaking of ghosts, though: Clearly that was Ember McLain on stage, singing backup while Daniel Fenton was singing lead, yet no one seemed to be registering that fact. Had a mere pseudonym, slightly less prominent role, and costume change been enough to blind them? Or were they well aware yet playing along? She even had the fire hair! And, seriously, the name Amber? It was just one letter different!
Those outfits were concerning, too. Even Daniel was in a punk-goth look, including black jeans with chains, black combat boots with spikes on them, a spiked leather collar and bracelets, a black t-shirt (although Lancer did appreciate the Pink Floyd prism on it), and black eyeliner. He even was still wearing those fake fangs! At least, Lancer hoped they were fake; technically at 16 one could get implants with parental permission, but he doubted the boy’s parents would sign off on it. The multiple earrings likely were real though, as at 16 parental permission was not required for that… although the two large ones looked like they were large tunnels one could see through; a trick of the light? The other band members were all dressed similarly.
Lancer really hoped the PTO and school board didn’t get angry at him for this.
Lancer had to admit that the sound was quite good, though. The addition of an electric violin and keytar added a refreshing sound to the otherwise typical rock band arrangement of drums and guitars. Plus, he hadn’t realized Daniel had such a talent for singing! Perhaps Lancer could convince him to join the school musical. That boy did need some extracurriculars, after all, if he wanted to get into a good college, providing he could bring up his grades, which Lancer was sure were possible if he put the effort in, which he seemed to be this semester.
The song selection wasn’t that bad, either. True, there were some modern songs that were rather grating, and everything they sung seemed to be related to death in some way, but there were also some songs Lancer remembered from his own teenage years, such as “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and, the one they just switched to by CCR, “Bad Moon Rising”...
🎵Don’t go round tonight; it’s sure to take your life; there’s a bad moon on the rise!🎵
Lancer did a double take. Had the lyrics always been that dark? Perhaps so. Lancer hadn’t paid that much attention to it before; the song had been on the radio quite a bit, but Lancer hadn’t been enough of a fan to purchase the album.
“Whoa, Danny-boy sure has quite the voice!” someone said, and Lancer jumped slightly in surprise as he turned to see Jack Fenton standing next to him. “When he told us he was singing for the festival, we hadn’t thought he was serious!”
“Those outfits, though…” Maddie, on Jack’s other side so Lancer hadn’t seen her at first, said with slight disapproval, stepping forwards so she was actually in Lancer’s vision slightly. “I don’t know how I feel about Danny wearing something so dark looking…”
“Ah, Mads, that’s just the look!” Jack declared. “It’s all for the show. It’s cool!”
“Yes, I believe ‘edgy’ is the term the youth use for it,” Lancer said, happy to have recalled that bit of slang.
“Hold up, is that a ghost?!” Maddie suddenly said, narrowing her eyes. Oh, good; someone else had finally noticed Ember was a part of the band.
“Ghost?! Where?!” Jack asked, looking frantically around.
Maddie had an electronic device out, though Lancer had no idea where she grabbed it from. She pointed it at the stage and it showed a series of dots. “This shows there’s five ghosts in the band! Wait, no, three—the one on keytar is that strange MU friend of Jazz’s, I swear nearly every other student from there registers on this, and the last one’s just Danny.”
“It’s still reading him as a ghost? Darn it, I thought we fixed that!” Jack whined, ignoring the MU kid, which Lancer felt was understandable considering he was pretty sure the kid had tentacles for arms, even though for some reason his eyes could never focus on them. Not that Lancer wanted to; ghosts were more than enough of the supernatural for Amity Park.
“Well, this scanner’s new, Jack; we gave the old one to the Red Huntress, since she thought the Wisconsin Ghost might have tampered with hers, remember?”
“Oh, right,” Jack said. “Well, I’m sure it’s fine. Like the others it’ll probably stop showing him as one after a while for no discernable reason.”
🎵I’m not growing up, I’m just burning out / and I’ve stepped in line to walk amongst the dead!🎵
Lancer frowned, and not just at the lyrics that once again mentioned death; no, his new concern was that the Fentons’ devices were apparently targeting Daniel. Surely that couldn’t be safe. If this scanner read him as a ghost, did the ghost-targeting weapons do so as well? Not for the first time Lancer worried about Daniel’s home life.
Jack then realized, “Wait. Are you saying Danno’s band has THREE ghosts in it!?”
“Surely if so, he is not aware of such,” Lancer said, although he had his doubts—after all, Daniel must know about Ember at the very least; plus, it explained the band’s name. “Maybe they’re overshadowed?”
Maddie shook her head. “No, that would look different on this,” she said. “They’re definitely full ghosts…”
“Wait one second,” Jack said, squinting at the stage. “Isn’t that the punk that dated Jazz?!”
“The one that Danny decked?” Maddie said in surprise. “Why would Danny be in a band with him?”
“I don’t know, but this needs to stop!” Jack declared, taking a step forward.
“Jack, wait,” Maddie said, putting a hand on his arm to stop him. “Let’s not cause a scene in the middle of the festival if we don’t have to.”
“But—”
“I must agree,” Lancer chimed in. “That would only cause unnecessary panic. Besides, even if the band members truly are ghosts, they do seem to be serious about playing music.” Lancer, like many people in Amity Park, now believed that not all ghosts bore ill will, but he wasn’t going to say that much in front of two ghost hunters.
“Now that you mention it, it does seem so,” Jack mused, calming so quickly that Lancer bizarrely wondered if he’d been acting.
“Jack, honey, it’s just a trick, as usual,” Maddie told her husband with a terse sigh.
“Oh, right,” Jack said. “Then, we need to go get those ghosts before they hurt Danny!”
“We still need to be careful about causing a panic,” Maddie reminded him. “We can confront Danny after the show, while they clean up.”
“And grab the ghosts?” Jack asked hopefully, though again Lancer couldn’t shake the feeling that Jack was acting.
“And grab the ghosts,” Maddie agreed.
🎵Well, I think I'm gonna burn in Hell / Everybody burn the house right down!🎵
WHOOSH! With that line, green fire lined the stage, though in what seemed like a controlled manner.
“Ghost fire!!” Jack declared, waving around an ecto-gun, though it looked like he was more excited than anything, almost childlike in his demeanor.
Maddie gently laid a hand on Jack’s arms. “It’s just pyrotechnics, Jack,” she said, then frowned and added, “Probably.”
“The band did get approval for such,” Lancer informed them. “From both the school and the town.”
“You sure?” asked Jack, though there was an unexpected flash of what seemed to be disappointment. Had he wanted there to be a reason to fight? Or, maybe not fight… Hmm. Something was off about this.
“Yes, I filed the paperwork myself,” Lancer said. “It was quite tedious.”
Maddie sighed. “Yes, paperwork always is…”
It took a couple minutes to calm Jack down about the fire, but eventually he (pretended that he?) conceded that even if it were ghostly fire, it was still best to wait until later to address it.
🎵 Saaaaaay goodniiiiight to the hearts you break and all the cyanide you drank! 🎵
“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward!” Lancer swore. “Okay, that’s it; I’m telling them to sing about something else,” he decided, noting the lyrics—it seemed the topic of songs had shifted from death in general, with the occasional supernatural element, to straight up murder. The PTO was going to have a field day with this if he didn’t stop them. “Watch the balloon arch for me.”
“Ooh, tell them to sing about love!” Jack said excitedly.
“Oh, yes, I’d love to hear our boy sing a love song,” Maddie agreed.
Lancer made his way to the edge of the stage, catching Daniel’s attention, then waited until the disturbing song about the serial killer was finished.
Thankfully Daniel acknowledged Lancer’s presence. “Looks like we have a brief interruption!” He announced into the microphone, which he then disconnected from the stand. Both he and Amber (who was allegedly not Ember yet definitely was) moved over to him and bent down.
“So, what’s the issue, pops?” Ember said with a mischievous grin; Lancer had a sudden feeling she knew why he was there as Daniel held the microphone up to him with an identical grin that revealed his fangs. An oddly familiar grin, especially when combined with the black attire…
Lancer shook the uncanny feeling away, cleared his throat, and said nervously, “Well, I was wondering if perhaps you could sing about something other than death?”
Daniel laughed. “We were wondering when you’d notice! That was what, eight songs in a row about it?”
“Nine,” Ember corrected, clearly amused by their apparent prank, which seemed to have specifically been directed at Lancer. “So, you want us to sing about something else?”
“Please,” Lancer said calmly; he was too used to teenage antics to visibly react.
“And what’ll you do if we don’t? Give us detention?” Daniel said cheekily, and Lancer could have sworn his eyes flashed radioactive green for a moment as he again flashed his fangs.
Lancer considered that as he tried not to show that he was mildly unnerved. “You know what, why not. If you do not change topics, I will give you all detention, whether you’re students or not.” He wasn’t serious, and by the looks of it the two teens knew it.
“Okay, then—in that case, got any requests for the next topic?” Ember asked Lancer as she clearly held back laughter.
“Well, perhaps… love?” Lancer suggested, recalling what Jack and Maddie had asked.
“Love?” Daniel repeated with a sly grin. “Sure, we can sing about love! Right, Amber?”
“Hell yeah we can!” Ember cheered as the band started up, apparently needing no other cues to decide the song. Clearly this was planned, perhaps a few choices based on whatever was suggested. The two bounced back to center stage, their grins more mischievous than comforting.
Well, regardless of the outcome, his job was done, so Lancer made his way back to the adult Fentons.
🎵But, girl, you make it hard to be faithful / With the lips of an angel…🎵
Lancer put his hand on his forehead as he rejoined the two by the arch. “Scarlet Letter! Well, I tried,” he said in resignation. He should have expected that instead of a proper love song they’d sing about something technically related, like adultery… Well, at least it wasn’t about death.
Lancer looked back at the boy singing on stage, looking more relaxed and happier than Lancer had seen him in a long time… Yet, the expression seemed familiar, too. A smirk that was commonly found on a certain town hero, one that was conveniently never in the same place as the boy on stage… One that also had recently displayed new fangs and new piercings… Daniel’s eyes briefly flashed green again, and something clicked in Lancer’s mind.
“The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde,” Lancer swore under his breath. Could it be? Was Daniel Fenton… Danny Phantom?
No, no, impossible, Lancer concluded. It was all a coincidence, that’s all. If that were the case, that meant young Daniel had… No, that was too heartbreaking. Besides, if that were the case, Daniel surely wouldn’t still be living with Jack and Maddie, right? Not when they attacked Phantom so ferociously. Surely his parents would notice their own son had died; and surely Lancer would have noticed if his student was a ghost. No, it was all just a coincidence; Lancer was being silly for even entertaining the thought.
‘Amber’, who again was most definitely Ember, along with Sam, had now both taken center stage to sing together, and to Lancer’s relief were singing something a little more… not quite upbeat per se, but less harsh in regards to its overall sound compared to many of the other songs they’d played; it was a little more operatic, though still somewhat dark, and Lancer found himself… what was the term kids these days used? ‘Vibing’? Yes, he was ‘vibing’ to it. With any luck, the lyrics of this one would be—
🎵Death before my eyes / Lying next to me, I fear / She beckons me, shall I give in?🎵
Nevermind, it was about death again. Lancer closed his eyes, trying not to react... Oh, yes, the PTO was definitely going to have a field day with this. Lancer was extremely glad that he had tenure—although even if he didn’t, Lancer frankly wouldn’t be worried, as the haunted school was so short-staffed and had such a struggle finding teachers that pretty much the only way someone would possibly be fired was if they committed a felony, and even then exceptions might be made.
“Lancer,” came a terse, carefully controlled voice beside him.
Lancer turned to see the school principal standing next to him. “Hello, Ishiyama,” he greeted warily. That tone was never a good sign.
She didn’t bother with any small talk. “Did you, by any chance, review and approve the set list before the concert?”
“Unfortunately, it failed to occur to me that that was needed,” Lancer reluctantly admitted.
“I see. And were you aware that half the band members would be ghosts?”
Lancer sighed. “I mistakenly assumed that, being human,”—or at least, Lancer desperately hoped Daniel was still human, as the alternative was too tragic—“and the child of ghost hunters, that the rest of Daniel’s band would be human, too.”
After a moment, Ishiyama said, “I suppose that would be a logical assumption. However, did the band’s name not raise suspicion?”
Lancer winced. “I was not made aware of the name until the beginning of the concert.”
“Hm. So let me get this straight. You hired a student’s band, got all the paperwork together for the stage construction and setup, acquired a pyrotechnics license for the show, and did all the scheduling and other planning, yet failed to ask the name of the band, the members of the band, or the songs the band planned to play?”
“Ah, well, when you put it that way…”
Ishiyama gave him a withering stare. “You are so lucky you have tenure,” she said before she walked off, not even waiting for Lancer’s response.
Yes, Lancer had to agree: he was certainly lucky he had tenure.
🎵Hey, dad, look at me / Think back and talk to me / Did I grow up according to plan?🎵
Jack’s ears perked up hearing his son sing the word ‘dad’. He knew it was just a popular song, and Danny wasn’t actually singing to him, of course. And yet. The way Danny was singing, it was just so heartfelt…
🎵I’m never gonna be good enough for you / Can't pretend that I'm alright / And you can't change me…🎵
Jack’s heart sank. Danny didn’t really believe that, right? No, of course not, it was just the song… Still… Danny wasn’t alright, was he? Even Jack, who knew he tended to be oblivious to too many things, could see that. Whatever he was going through, Jack decided that he would have to make sure Danny knew that he was perfectly good enough for him!
🎵I try not to think / About the pain I feel inside / Did you know you used to be my hero?🎵
Used to be. Danny would call him his hero when he was a child, his ghost-hunting hero. But he hadn’t in a long time. This reminder made Jack’s heart wrench; it was just the song, just the song, not Danny’s true emotions…
But the way Danny was singing sure felt like his heart was in it; were those tears glistening in his eyes? Which flashed green; Danny’s eyes did that when he was emotional, though he thought Jack didn’t notice. Maddie thought it was just tricks of the light, but Jack suspected maybe it was because Danny never wore his hazmat suit in the lab; there had to eventually be some side-effects of all that ectoplasm exposure, after all.
🎵I can’t stand another fight / And nothing’s all right🎵
Danny—er, the song—was right. Jack, too, was sick of fighting. Things were not all right. Something had to change, or Jack would lose Danny forever, if he hadn’t already.
🎵Nothing's gonna change the things that you said / And nothing's gonna make this right again / Please don't turn your back / I can't believe it's hard just to talk to you / But you don't understand🎵
He wanted to understand. Jack desperately wished Danny would talk to him. Jack didn’t know what things he said, but whatever they were, he’d apologize. Even if nothing could make whatever rift had come between them right again, Jack would try. He just wanted his little boy back again.
🎵Now it's just too late / And we can't go back / I'm sorry / I can't be perfect🎵
“But you are perfect, Danny,” Jack whispered.
“What’d you say, dear?” Maddie asked from next to him.
Jack shook his head slowly. “It’s nothing, Mads. Just talking to myself.”
Maddie gave Jack a curious look. “You’re crying,” she commented.
Jack quickly wiped his eyes with his gloved hands, unaware that he’d started silently crying.
Maddie, not unexpectedly, misinterpreted it. She put a hand on his arm and said, “Don’t worry, dear. We’ll get those ghosts away from Danny as soon as the show is over.”
“...Right,” Jack said. “Yeah, totally. That’s exactly what I’m upset about; what’s Danny thinking, being in a ghost band?”
But Danny being with ghosts was not the thing at the forefront of Jack’s mind. The rift that kept growing between him and Danny was. The rift that had opened around the same time the darn portal had… No, before that. Jack knew that he often spent more time on his research than paying attention to the kids. Always had. Jazz told him as much quite frequently. Maybe that was the biggest cause of the rift? Maybe they could fix things with a family trip?
Somehow Jack knew that that wasn’t the biggest reason for the rift, but he honestly had absolutely no idea what else it could be.
Jack’s eyes flicked back to the stage as he gasped. What looked like ice crystals were now floating in the air around the stage, reflecting light like glitter! “These special effects are absolutely amazing!” he declared. Although, there were three ghosts there, so it could just be ghost powers at work… But, none of them had ice powers that Jack was aware of. The only ghosts Jack even knew of that had ice powers were Klemper and Phantom, neither of who was on stage with them. Plus, Danny seemed to be signaling to get them to move; maybe Tucker had some sort of hologram generator that could read his movements, which Jack didn’t realize was possible, but technology moved so fast and special effects wasn’t Jack’s area of expertise. He wondered if that was also the cause of Danny’s eyes glimmering the same vibrant blue as the crystals.
🎵You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill / I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose Freewill🎵
Jack smiled at hearing the song from his college days. It was so considerate that they were playing music from so many decades! He vaguely wondered if those were the eras the ghosts came from; the one on the bass definitely did usually seem to dress in a style he’d seen people wear in the 80s, so maybe the song was from her youth, too… Wait, no, he was humanizing the ghosts again, Maddie always told him not to do that. Then again, why would a ghost go this far to fake humanness?
Jack looked at Danny again. He seemed so happy up there on stage! Jack wondered if he should have enrolled Danny in music lessons when he was a kid. When did Danny even take an interest in music? When did he learn guitar? Jack hadn’t even known Danny was in a band or planned to play here until he yelled such as he headed out the door that morning, and Jack had thought it was an odd joke until he and Maddie arrived to find him on stage. How was there so much Jack didn’t know about his son?
Jack decided that this was something he needed to fix. As soon as he and Maddie rescued Danny from those ghostly influences, he would reconnect with his son and repair their fraying relationship.
Although… did he have to rescue Danny from them after all? Seeing them here like this, they didn’t seem so bad. They were clearly having fun; Maddie always said ghosts mimicked people to trick them, but would they really go this far to do so? The band didn’t get together just that day, evidenced by how they were so in-sync; they’d have to have been practicing almost daily for weeks to get to that point. If these ghosts really were after Danny, wouldn’t they have attacked long before now?
🎵Live right now / Yeah, just be yourself / It doesn't matter if it's good enough / For someone else…🎵
Plus, Danny was just so happy up there on stage. In fact, he’d been noticeably happier the past month, presumably since he started practicing with the band. If that were because of these ghosts, wouldn’t it be more detrimental to take them away, even if they were ghosts? Jack never would have thought ghosts could have such a large positive influence on someone, but wasn’t the evidence right in front of him proving otherwise?
“Hey, Maddie,” Jack said, and when she hummed in acknowledgement he suggested, “Maybe we can hold off on attacking the ghosts today.”
Maddie tensed, then slowly turned to look at Jack with narrowed eyes. “And just why would we do that?” she asked tersely. She glanced at the ghost tracker, likely to make sure Jack wasn’t overshadowed.
“Because Danny seems happy,” Jack said simply, which was reason enough for him: if the ghosts were making Danny happy, they weren’t a threat, so there was no need to fight.
“Danny cannot be happy if he’s with ghosts,” Maddie said, firmly.
Jack frowned. “But… just look at him.” Danny was practically glowing. Actually glowing? Nah, that was probably from the stage lighting. He was clearly happy, though.
“He may appear to be happy, but that’s only because they’re tricking him. You know how ghosts like to trick people,” Maddie said, in a tone one might use with a child. She spoke to Jack like that a lot, and frankly it came off as very condescending, but as usual Jack didn’t say anything, not wanting to get into a public fight.
🎵Just do your best / Do everything you can / And don't you worry what their bitter hearts / Are gonna say🎵
“Yeah, you’re right, Maddie,” Jack said, although his heart definitely wasn’t in it, not for the first time doubting Maddie’s words. Danny and Jazz were always so insistent that ghosts had thoughts and feelings, just like humans; Maddie always shut that down, but what if the kids were onto something? Looking at them now, it seemed obvious that they did. The air practically felt charged with emotional energy coming from the band.
Jack felt conflicted. He wasn’t so sure if he should join Maddie in the hunt later that day, but if he didn’t, Maddie would get angry, and she could be scary when she was angry. Maybe he could fudge it? Yes, he could pretend to fight, but not actually hit the ghosts, as he typically did with Phantom (and, frankly, all child ghosts, ever since he started doubting what Maddie claimed about them); Maddie would probably kill him if he ever told her, but Jack had secretly started to see Phantom as a bit of a Hero, like many in town did. He had a better track record of catching ghosts than any hunter in town, after all!
Jack wondered if he should tell the kids that he secretly supported Phantom, as he knew they were huge fans of the ghost, or keep hiding it, for fear of Maddie finding out. Right now Jack was leaning towards telling his kids, as that might help patch up the growing divide in his relationship with them.
“Hey, Mads?” Jack asked after a while.
“What now?” she snapped, and Jack winced. She was mad, then.
Jack decided to just talk regardless of her being on edge. “I just… can’t help but wonder where we went wrong,” he said to Maddie. “Danny’s drifted so far away… How do we fix it?”
“Well, the first step would be getting him away from those ghosts,” Maddie said, and Jack resisted sighing in frustration.
“Back to that, huh?” Jack muttered. He glanced at his watch. There was plenty of time until the end; he could let Maddie watch alone for a while, to cool down. “I’m gonna go get a drink,” he told her, then turned and walked away without waiting for a response.
🎵We never wanted to be abused / We'll never give up, it's no use / If we're fucked up, you're to blame🎵
🎵Information age of hysteria / the subliminal mindfuck America!🎵
As the sun began to set, Valerie shook her head fondly, slightly amused as she heard the band singing the brand new hit song that definitely would get the PTO to riot just by itself, even if they’d been playing a censored radio version, which they definitely weren’t. She had a feeling that the band’s setlist had not been approved by the school at all, and if any actually had been, the band was surely not adhering to it.
To be fair, though, they weren’t exclusively selecting songs that warranted an ‘explicit’ warning on their album covers; they simply were choosing to use the uncensored versions of popular songs. Otherwise there was a good mix of music popular with all different ages, after that little prank played with the death songs.
Valerie, in her full Red Huntress regalia, hid on the rooftop of Caper High, cautiously watching the festival’s concert. When she arrived that afternoon she had planned to actually participate in the festival, as there were many community booths, club booths, games, food trucks, and even some carnival rides, but then she noticed that Danny’s band, for some inexplicable reason, contained ghosts. She had no choice but to monitor the situation, so she could keep Danny (and the town) safe from those awful ghosts.
If there weren’t so many people there, Valerie would be barging in and shooting those ghosts—hell, she’d probably have done that a year ago—but she had slowly learned the value of maintaining public order and biding time and waiting for an opening. Attacking now would simply cause chaos, which would increase the chance of the ghosts escaping; undoubtedly the Fentons knew as well while they watched from the ground. They would have much better luck catching the ghosts once the concert ended and the ghosts tried to escape.
Although, one ‘ghost hunter’ (if one used a very loose definition of the term) known to attack without considering such things was Phantom, who was conspicuously absent. Was he not planning to attack, instead hiding somewhere and watching the concert? He did seem to be friendlier towards these particular ghosts nowadays. Valerie had caught him casually flying around with Ember, and even hitching a ride on Johnny’s motorcycle’s handlebars one day. She wondered if she should start going after him more seriously again; despite still being angry at him, she’d laid off a little, only attacking if she found him alone and focusing on other ghosts if he wasn’t, recognizing that he usually helped catch the other ghosts, but if he were getting friendly with destructive ghosts, no longer stopping them…
Something that also puzzled her was Danny and Sam. They were on stage, happily playing their instruments and singing with the ghosts! Were they overshadowed? She’d sworn Danny’s eyes had glowed a radioactive green a couple times. Her ghost scanner, however, claimed neither were; perhaps Danny’s ecto-contamination had just gotten worse, which was a distinct possibility because of where he lived.
Maybe the ghosts had tricked them. Ghosts often did that. They were always trying to get you to let your guard down. But, Danny was the son of ghost hunters; he ought to know that! Which made it even stranger for him to be in a band with ghosts, honestly; he was well-known to be terrified of them.
🎵Drop a heart / And break a name / We're always sleeping in, and sleeping / For the wrong team…🎵
Danny’s voice, Valerie had to admit, was amazing, almost echoey and surreal in the microphone, giving it a ghostly feel; Valerie assumed that was simply due to the audio equipment. She hadn’t known that he could sing, nor that he could play the guitar! Well, at least he could play simple chords; ‘Amber’ (who were they trying to fool with that pseudonym?) was definitely on a much higher level, playing complex progressions at a rapid pace. Sam was similarly a beast on her electric violin, which added a surprisingly refreshing sound to all the songs, which had been slightly rearranged to accommodate the non-traditional rock band instrument. She reluctantly had to admit that ‘Kat’ and ‘Jason’, a.k.a. Kitty and Johnny, were pretty great at playing the drums and bass respectively. Valerie didn’t know who that last member was, but she had a sneaking feeling he was one of those strange cryptids that she’d seen hanging around MU, and Valerie was smart enough to leave anything related to that place alone; regardless, he seemed to know what he was doing on that keytar, too, even though Valerie could have sworn he had tentacles instead of arms at one point, which she decided not to think about.
The music selection itself, with the exception of that prank on Lancer, was very tastefully selected; there was a good mix of various decades, and so far every song had a good portion of the crowd excited about it, including the prank ones. Valerie assumed Danny and Sam selected them, because no way the ghosts would know so well what humans liked. They even, surprisingly, did a number of requests—including a few Disney songs at the request of a group of young children (Valerie was nervous about such small kids getting so close to ghosts). For some of those song requests, Danny only sang, or on some occasions played simple chords while other members sang, revealing how new he was to this, but Valerie was impressed at the large amount he did know given that as far as Valerie knew he showed no interest in music until a month ago, when he suddenly got that guitar that he’d sometimes practice during lunch, if no ghost fights occurred (if they did, he’d run and hide like usual).
Valerie glanced at her watch; 5:24PM. The festival technically was open until 6, but the music would be ending around 5:30 to give the band time to break things down. Valerie tensed herself in preparation to race down there and take out the ghosts as soon as they were distracted by doing such. She glanced into the crowd, noticing the Fentons preparing to do the same, slowly sneaking closer. Valerie couldn’t get closer, not unless she wanted to reveal herself, but her hoverboard was fast enough that it didn’t matter.
🎵Oh, kiss me, beneath the milky twilight / Lead me out on the moonlit floor / Lift your open hand / Strike up the band and make the fireflies dance🎵
Ghostly balls of light shimmered on stage and danced around like the fireflies mentioned in the song, which Ember and Danny were singing as a duet. Valerie honestly couldn’t help but be amazed, even knowing the true nature of the ‘special effects’ and composition of the band. If Valerie didn’t know Ember were a ghost, she’d even say there was some chemistry there between her and Danny as they sang! The two simply worked well together, impossibly so. Perhaps there was some sort of ghostly magic at play? She was certain Danny wasn’t possessed, but maybe Ember had some sort of influence that made her band members more in-sync with her. Yeah, that must be it.
🎵So kiss me / So kiss me / So kiss me…🎵
The crowd cheered as fireworks burst from the stage, and Valerie watched in surprise as Ember grabbed Danny and dipped him as she pulled him into a deep kiss. Danny didn’t seem surprised and didn’t protest at all, instead smiling into it, meaning it was likely rehearsed, but still. Valerie subconsciously recoiled at the fact that Danny was kissing a ghost—yeah, she knew she had been the one to break up with him, and despite the lingering feelings Valerie had she wasn’t about to risk Danny’s safety by rekindling their relationship, but a ghost? Seriously? Besides, it wasn’t as if ghosts had feelings—if they were impossibly actually a couple, clearly Ember was tricking him.
Valerie suddenly realized she had been lost in thought and missed what had immediately followed; Danny was now waving to the crowd after finishing up a few closing remarks about how they enjoyed playing for them and appreciated the audience while the others began to pack up as the audience started to disperse.
When enough of the audience was gone, most of them now swarming the food truck area, Valerie sprung into action, as did the Fentons below her.
“Surprise!” Valerie called as she zoomed in. “You ghosts won’t get away!”
Ember had the gall to grin at her. “You really think we didn’t expect this, Red?”
Valerie’s hoverboard wavered as a blast of something hit it from the side, at an angle that didn’t make sense since the three ghosts were directly in front of her.
Valerie swerved, expecting more ghosts to have joined as reinforcements, but instead only saw Danny there, holding in one hand an ecto-weapon, currently shooting at his parents with surprising accuracy despite staring at her in determination, and in the other hand, pointed at her, some sort of launcher. For a moment, Valerie could have sworn his eyes flashed green.
Before Valerie could properly react, too thrown off by the twist, a net was launched at her, knocking her to the ground; thankfully she was high enough up that the fall didn’t bruise too much. Valerie squirmed, caught in the net; she noticed that not far away from her was Jack Fenton in a similar predicament, though he seemed strangely subdued compared to his usual spunkiness towards ghost hunting. He wasn’t even struggling to break free. Perhaps he was in shock over his son shooting at him?
The ghosts were now flying away while Lurker, Sam, Tucker, and oddly enough Jazz too, continued working on dismantling the equipment with no regard to the fact that Danny was shooting at his mother. The ecto-weapon, to a human, would be no more damaging than a paintball, and maybe give a very minor burn if shot at close enough range, but the thought that Danny would fire not just at her but also at his parents was a little more than Valerie could process at the moment. What had gotten into him?! Being in a band with ghosts was bad enough, but now he was helping them escape?
As Maddie managed to capture her son in a net shot from what seemed to be the same model of weapon Danny was using, Valerie finally managed to untangle herself and took off after the ghosts. Unfortunately, the three vanished, and Valerie was still too far away to think there’d be any luck if she fired ecto-blasts blindly into the sky.
The ghosts had gotten away, and impossibly it was all Danny Fenton’s fault.
As they drove home in silence in the GAV, with him on the floor still in the net, Danny knew he was in trouble. Big trouble. He had not only been in a band with ghosts, but he had helped them escape his parents when the show ended, via shooting at his parents with their own ecto-weapons.
Tucker was in the GAV with him, warily looking at Danny on occasion but he didn’t dare take the net off for fear of Maddie Fenton’s seething rage, strong enough that you didn’t need to be a ghost to feel it. Unfortunately Sam had been dragged home by her own parents, who were also not happy with her (particularly because when her mom came up and requested they sing a song about God, they played ‘God Must Hate Me’ by Simple Plan, and when she protested Sam pointed out that technically it was still about God and Danny then winked and told her, “You should know to be careful what you ask for in Amity Park”; Sam’s parents would surely hate Danny once again after that). The final band member, Lurker, had simply vanished, as he tended to do. Jazz was driving back separately, her car housing the equipment.
Danny knew he would be in particularly huge trouble for the finale of the duet at the end, where Ember had pulled Danny down into a kiss—it had been planned, all part of the show (otherwise Sam would have killed Ember; just because they were exes now didn’t mean she wasn’t still going to be overprotective of Danny in a best-friend type of way), but Ember had definitely dragged it out longer than it needed to be; Danny had a feeling the ghost had been enjoying it a whole lot more than he had—although to his confusion, he had actually enjoyed it some too. Not enough to trigger an urge for anything further, but it was fun. Were friendship kisses a thing? Thankfully she knew to not take it too far at the concert, keeping it fairly chaste despite the length, in consideration that it was supposed to be a family-friendly event (honestly though it was a miracle the show hadn’t been cut short with the songs they were singing).
From Ember’s playful wink at the end as she flew off, Danny had a feeling that things were going to be very different between them henceforth, and he was not sure how he felt about that. Or, maybe not so different; at first it had been about just working together for the band, but it had very quickly become more, possibly closer than even regular friends now, especially after that heart-to-heart where Ember helped him sort out those feelings that he had been having, which still felt strange to admit. Part of the reason for that kiss at the end, in addition to the audience always going wild for such, was actually to give Danny a way to keep his sexuality hidden; Danny would not survive high school if his bullies found out he was… yeah. Danny shoved thoughts about that out of the way for now; he had enough to deal with at the moment…
…Like the scolding he was about to get from his parents.
Danny gave a shout of protest as his mom grabbed him, still in the net, and dragged him through the door to the house before unceremoniously tossing him onto the floor of the living room. Danny, heart racing at the unusual roughness his mother was exhibiting, winced as his mom locked the door behind her once Jack and Tucker entered. Danny had a lot of explaining to do, he knew it.
Jazz, who had already arrived home and was waiting in the living room, could hopefully mitigate things a little, although at the moment she seemed to be in some sort of shock after seeing Danny being thrown around in a net by their mother.
Danny’s parents stood in front of him. “Care to explain?” his mom, arms crossed, asked coldly. Her quiet rage left an actual bitter taste in Danny’s mouth. Jack seemed more worried than angry, glancing at his wife with something akin to slight fear, and stepped forwards, looking like he planned to remove the net, but Maddie put a hand on his arm to stop him, and he froze.
“Explain what?” Danny asked sheepishly.
“You know what.”
“No, I really don’t…” Danny squirmed slightly, the closed net causing some discomfort due to the ecto-proof coating, which stung slightly, and cramped size. “Can you please get me out of this?” he begged, really disliking the trapped feeling. His core vibrated with anxiety; he took some unneeded deep breaths to calm down, as the last thing he needed to do was panic and release a blast of ice or something.
Jazz snapped out of her stunned state and hurried to help, sending a glare at her mom, who had stopped Jack again as he tried to help. Danny felt Jazz’s own cold rage, directed at their mother; never had he imagined his sister could feel that way towards either of their parents.
Finally, Danny was able to stand up; he stood facing his parents, Jazz and Tucker on either side of him.
“Okay, now you can explain,” Maddie said curtly, rage still flaring beneath her outwardly calm demeanor.
“Um. Again, explain what?” Danny asked, cockiness flaring to hide his true feelings or fear, worry, and mild panic. This felt different than usual—or, maybe it was just the new attunement to emotion making it feel different. His mom was clearly pretending that she was calmer than she actually was—how often had she done that?
“You’re in a band with ghosts!” Jack declared, throwing his hands up. “Ghosts! And you even kissed one of them!” Unlike Danny’s mom, the man did not seem to actually be angry, despite his outward appearance; it was more of a mix of… Confusion? Concern? …Confliction? And was that curiosity and excitement mixed in? Danny’s father confused him; surprisingly the man usually had a strong mix of emotions, often at odds with each other and rarely having a single one surface at a time, unlike with most humans, and Danny had trouble sorting them. The show of anger was a mask, probably to avoid him becoming the target of Maddie’s rage next, which Danny had started to notice often happened when he questioned her.
Tucker answered that. “To be fair, it was Ember McLain, pretty sure any teen would kiss her if given the opportunity.”
“Tucker, not helping,” Danny muttered, seeing his mom’s eyes only narrow more, although his dad seemed to actually consider those words. Then Danny more loudly insisted, “Look, it’s not as bad as it seems, I swear! The kiss was just for the show. It didn’t mean anything.”
His mom frowned, though apparently accepting the fact that it had been for the show, moving onto the next topic. “Danny, can you remove those vampire fangs? They’re a little unnerving.”
“Uh… They’re glued on prosthetics?” Danny tried, even though they were actually a permanent part of him. How his parents apparently hadn’t noticed them until today was a mystery, as he’d had them for weeks at this point. “They, er, will fall off on their own in a few days?” Hopefully he figured out how to explain their permanence by then, or maybe his parents would simply forget.
“I think they’re cool!” Jack said, and Danny couldn’t help but smile slightly despite the situation, his dad giving off a clear vibe that he honestly did think so. His dad thought his fangs were cool!
Maddie sent Jack a glare before turning back to Danny and saying, disapproval evident in the air, “And what about all those earrings? Those bottom ones look like your ears have large holes in them!”
“Ah. Yeah, that’s because they do,” Danny said with a wince. In addition to a row of five small rings spread along the outer ridge of each ear, applied earlier that day, he was wearing light blue anodized titanium tunnels, so at the right angle you could see right through. “I’m, er, surprised you didn’t notice by now? Like, it’s taken months to get the holes stretched to this point,” he lied. In actuality, his ghost healing abilities had allowed, over the past few weeks, for him to not only get them pierced but also to stretch them at a much more rapid pace than usual—what might usually take a human more than a year had taken just weeks. He’d stopped at a half inch, even though Sam had really encouraged him to go further. Danny liked it where it was though. He retained them in his ghost form, inverted color of course, giving them an aged rusty color; he wondered if switching the jewelry would do the same or if, like his hazmat suit, it’d alway be those by default.
“What! They’re cool too but there’s no way we wouldn’t notice that,” Jack said, a mix of confusion, appreciation, and perhaps disappointment towards himself.
“Tch. Seriously? You wouldn’t notice a ghost living in your own home,” Danny said bitterly, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes. He was not in the mood for this!
“Danny,” Jazz warned quietly, the nervous feeling around her belying her calm demeanor, and Danny took a deep breath, realizing the temperature in the room had already dropped a few degrees thanks to him; if this continued, his eyes would start glowing too, and the last thing he needed was to have his anger cause an impulsive identity reveal.
“Danny!” his mom declared, anger flaring once again. “How dare you!”
“Yeah! “ Jack added. “Maybe we didn’t notice the ears, but we’d definitely notice something like a ghost living here!” His emotions were confusing again; there was a little anger, but also hurt, and maybe a little worry, perhaps second-guessing himself, wondering if that were true. Jack seemed to have a surprising amount of self-doubt, for all the confidence he usually projected.
Danny grabbed his hair in frustration, pulling at it slightly. “Oh, Ancients, this is all such bullshit!”
There was a brief moment of silence.
“Was that ghost slang?” Jack asked quietly, both expression and vibe reflecting concern now. Danny felt a little guilty; clearly he was hurting his father.
His mother, however, was again just full of that cold rage, though seemed too stunned to immediately answer.
Jazz stepped over and gently removed Danny’s hands from his hair. “I’m sure Danny was simply trying to get under your skin,” she said calmly, though internally she was panicking. “Right?” she asked Danny, a Look in her eyes.
“Right,” Danny grumbled in agreement. He’d have to be more careful about that; to ghosts, the ‘Ancients’ were god-like ghosts that had been around since near the beginning of time, such as Clockwork, and ghosts used the term to swear as humans would use the term ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’. Danny hadn’t realized he’d picked up doing it too.
Danny’s mom sighed in frustration. “Danny, please. What’s going on with you lately? We understand that teenagers go through rebellious stages, but this is ridiculous!”
“It is a little extreme,” Jazz pointed out, her vibe now including some frustration.
Danny pulled away from his sister and glared at her. “Oh, thanks, Jazz. Great support you’re being!”
“You dug yourself into this hole,” Jazz said simply. “I could’ve easily found you some human band members, but you just had to go for the ghosts.” She radiated disappointment.
“Well, sorry I’d prefer to have friends in the band rather than strangers!” Danny retorted, ignoring the fact that the one member Jazz did find was definitely not a human, then winced as he realized what he said; though, he also realized that he did mean it—all three of those ghosts had actually become his friends, somehow.
His parents both gasped. “You’re friends with ghosts!?” they both said simultaneously with clear disbelief, in his mom’s case mixed with more anger and horror and in his dad’s case mixed with… was that excitement? What? Danny found himself wondering if his dad’s views on ghosts had somehow shifted; but if they had, why was he hiding that, pretending to still dislike them?
“Since when are they your friends?!” Tucker, previously having only been watching the argument awkwardly, said, sounding appalled. A bitter-tasting emotion Danny hadn’t felt yet wafted from the boy, though Danny was pretty sure it was jealousy, which Tucker had major issues with. Danny resisted rolling his eyes at that; as if Tucker hadn’t been hanging out with the group too. He even played Doom with Kitty now.
Danny sensed the flare of emotion, the one he’d been calling ‘desire to hit’, but didn’t register it until Maddie’s hand already made contact with his face.
Danny immediately put a hand over his cheek. “What the fuck, Mom?!” he declared, struggling to process the fact that his mother would actually hit him—the emotion had been popping up with surprising frequency lately, but never had she actually acted on it! At least, not towards him… It didn’t really hurt, given it was only a slap and Danny was accustomed to worse from all his battles, but the fact that it was his mother who had hit him, in human form, was painful in a different way. He wondered if this is how his dad felt that time when she’d tried to punch him.
Everyone else there seemed stunned at the development as well.
“Who are you and what have you done with my son?” Maddie coldly demanded.
Danny frowned, feeling stung by those words. It was a phrase he dreaded hearing, imagining it said to him as he revealed his true identity. It wasn’t the same situation of course, but if his mom was reacting this poorly just to him being friends with ghosts, how would she react to learning that he was half one? Once again Danny wondered just how close to his original timeline this cobbled-together one actually was.
“This is Danny!” Jazz hissed at their mother, breaking out of her shock and outraged on Danny’s behalf; good to know she was on his side for this at least. Not that it helped much.
“Well then he should act like it!” his mom vehemently spat at his sister.
“He is, though!”
“Fentons don’t fraternize with ghosts!”
“You know what, I’m done,” Danny impulsively decided, stomping away. He couldn’t stand being in the room anymore—no, couldn’t stand being in this entire house.
“We’re not done talking, young man!” his mom said sternly, trying to grab his arm but Danny managed to dodge away.
Danny easily dodged around Jack, who for some reason was still standing there frozen, possibly in shock from his vibe, but Danny wasn’t going to stay to analyze it; he wasn’t going to be the one to look the gift horse in the mouth.
Danny burst into a run, remembering to actually open the front door before running through it, his mom’s footsteps following. Danny was faster than her though, and had a head start; he leapt over the steps onto the sidewalk, then quickly darted into the nearby alley, turning invisible as he did so, just barely a second before his mom turned the corner too, looking confused upon not seeing him.
Danny briefly debated if he should go to Sam’s or Tucker’s, then decided against it. He was annoyed at Tucker, and Sam’s parents were probably on her case so much he’d have to stay invisible the whole night. He could always hide out in an alley or abandoned building… No, wait, there was somewhere else he could go, others who would welcome him! He grinned, then dove towards the house using his intangibility, entering the lab below and racing to the portal, which he quickly hit the button for and then propelled himself into.
Notes:
Ooh, looks like Lancer's starting to figure things out! Poor Jack is mostly just confused, but he's determined to reconnect with his son.
Coming next weekend (May 31 / June 1):
Danny's run away into the Ghost Zone! Johnny and Kitty discuss some hard truths with Danny. He then confronts Clockwork about some things. The humans all scramble to figure out where Danny is after 4 days missing. Lancer asks Jazz about her brother.
Chapter 4: What do you mean, it's not half-and-half?!
Summary:
Danny hides out at Kitty and Johnny's, and learns some things about himself. He learns even more when he visits Clockwork to confirm some suspicions.
Meanwhile, Valerie is puzzled at why Phantom hasn't been around lately, and then learns that Danny's missing too. Jack spends some time reflecting on things.
Notes:
I reduced the number of tags, as I realized I had likely overtagged. In that vein I also moved two of the romantic relationships to the additional tags as they’re minor and I didn’t want people to think they were a focus, whereas the (deterioration of the) Jack/Maddie one is a big focus, as well as removed some friend/family relationship tags, again trying to only focus on those most plot-significant.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Ugh, they’re so frustrating!” Danny whined, flopping back onto Johnny’s couch; the ghost had let Danny know that he and Kitty would be going right back to their lair after the concert, possibly anticipating something like this.
If someone had told Danny just a year prior that he’d be taking refuge at the ghost’s lair and complaining to him about angsty teen issues, Danny would have thought them insane, but here he was—in human form, no less, not feeling like changing. Not like it mattered anyway; he seemed to have all his ghost powers at full strength in either form now, to the point that even in human form he couldn’t phase through the ecto-objects in the Ghost Zone, though Danny didn’t want to dwell on what that meant, especially since he also couldn’t go through ghost shields in human form now—at first he’d assumed it was just that new model, but now he was starting to wonder if it was all of them.
Danny noted that he was much calmer now, being in a place where he wasn’t feeling supercharged less-than-happy emotions from four different people. He suspected doing the concert had fed his ghost part some, with all the excitement buzzing in the air, which made him more sensitive to the negative ones afterwards. The Ghost Zone feeling comforting with all the ambient ectoplasm helped too—yet another ghost-exclusive trait Danny had that he was pretty sure Vlad didn’t, given that the other halfa was adamant about only going in there in Plasmius form and had mentioned before that the place was unsettling, something Danny had never felt. Danny shoved that realization out of his mind too.
“Fight with your folks, huh?” Johnny inferred with a chuckle as he entered the room from the kitchen. He carried some cans of ecto-cola, handing one each to Danny and Kitty before cracking open his own.
Kitty, who had answered the door when Danny arrived, sat next to him. “Typical argument, or did they find out?” she asked, the emphasis indicating she meant about him being Phantom.
Danny sighed. “Typical argument, no, but they didn’t find out, thank the Ancients,” he muttered. If they had… yeah, that wouldn’t have ended well. Danny was aware that in previous timelines his parents had taken it fairly well, but those had been in vastly different circumstances, with him being seen as a world-saving hero rather than once again ‘Public Enemy #1’, and where they had started to learn that not all ghosts were bad, or at least had seemed to.
In this timeline, if anything, his parents’, or at least his mom’s, hate for Danny Phantom had only grown lately, as well as that for ghosts in general after learning about Vlad during the Disasteroid event (because when Clockwork had said Danny’s participation in that would be forgotten, what he really had meant was that Miskatonic University had managed to come up with something that worked, after Vlad failed at his plan and before Danny proposed his own plan, thus neither Danny nor the other ghosts had any involvement whatsoever—and since Vlad, a ‘ghost’ (funnily enough, people didn’t realize he was actually a halfa, rather assumed he was a full ghost, as he’d never explicitly explained that), had held the world hostage… well, it was no wonder all ghosts were blamed).
So in this timeline, Danny wasn’t a hero. Danny Phantom was still just another ‘no-good ectoplasmic manifestation of post-human consciousness’ that had to be ‘ripped apart molecule by molecule’, and Danny Fenton was just their angsty teenage son who had gotten mixed up in the wrong crowd, that crowd being ghosts.
“Then, what was it about?” Kitty prodded.
Danny explained, “They’re upset about the band having three ghosts. During the argument I called you my friends, which made it worse, especially because Tucker was there and he got angry at that too—pretty sure he’s jealous, which is a whole ‘nother can of worms.
“Jazz was angry too, in her mind this all wouldn’t have happened if I’d let her help find humans for the band; she does want me to befriend ghosts, but as Phantom, not Fenton. She’s terrified that Fenton being the one seen with ghosts might lead to people figuring out I’m Phantom.
“Anyway, Jazz and Tucker aren’t really the issue, it’s my parents. Or, my mom, it’s pretty much all my mom I guess. In addition to being angry that I’m friends with ghosts, she was also on my case about the stretched ears, and the fangs, which my parents think are those temporary caps but still were mad about. My mom even had the gall to ask who I was and what I’d done with her son! I’ve literally had nightmares about that, although usually it follows the identity reveal.”
He decided not to mention the fact that his mom had hit him; he barely wanted to believe it himself, and felt like voicing it would make it more real.
Johnny whistled. “Oof. I see why you ran.”
“Wait, you called us friends?” Kitty caught.
Danny winced. “Sorry, it kinda slipped out, if you don’t—”
“Oh, no worries,” Johnny said with a grin. “We don’t mind.”
“Yeah, we were actually waiting for you to finally say that! Besides, it’s about time you made some ghost friends, seeing as you’re a ghost,” Kitty said.
“Half-ghost,” Danny automatically corrected, before taking a sip of the soda that was radioactive enough to kill a normal human—Danny had already investigated the effects of radiation on his cells, while he, Sam, and Tucker were testing the extent of immunity to human poisons, so knew it was safe for him. The radiation gave it a pleasant zing similar to carbonation, but stronger.
“Pfft. Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” Kitty said with a chuckle.
Danny frowned. “Well, it’s true,” he claimed, despite the fact that he’d started to heavily question that. “Halfa. Half human, half ghost.”
“Dude. The term may be ‘halfa’, but that doesn’t necessarily mean half-and-half,” Johnny said, to Danny’s surprise. “Yeah, your DNA is mixed, but with you it for sure isn’t half. Even in that human form of yours, you can do ghostly things. And don’t get me started on your vitals! Honestly not sure how none of the humans have noticed your heartbeat is hella slow and you’re ice cold.”
“Not to mention not needing to breathe,” Kitty pointed out. “Pretty sure Plasmius still needs to when in human form.”
Danny winced, and drew in a breath as he suddenly realized he hadn’t done so in a while; it felt like nothing. With a slight dawning horror he realized that not-breathing had somehow become his default, and it took actually concentration to keep it up.
If Danny ever went to a hospital, he’d likely be diagnosed as hypothermic, followed by being called a miracle for being functional with all his atypical vitals—and then when they drew blood… well, the ectoplasm didn’t lie. At this point he no longer even bled red anymore; honestly he suspected that the initial large amount of red blood he had when he had the accident was just leftovers, slowly replenished with ectoplasm whenever he lost any. He periodically analysed it and after a gradual decrease the most recent results said he now had, in both human and ghost form, only about 10% human blood—it had stayed steadily around that for a few months now, so hopefully it didn’t decrease anymore, but still, that was very different from the initial 100% of either blood or ectoplasm that shifted depending on form.
Yes, Danny honestly couldn’t deny the evidence; everything pointed to him being maybe three-quarters ghost, at the very least, if not closer to 90% if the blood were any indication. And given it was mixed in both… was there any actual difference between his forms now other than appearance? He wasn’t a human with ghost powers, he wasn’t half of each, no, he was a ghost with human powers. Didn’t mean he had to accept that. He was pretty sure Vlad didn’t have anywhere near the same issues; maybe it was because Danny’s accident had been so much worse, objectively? Vlad still bled red when in human form, more than twenty years later.
“And someday they’re going to notice you haven’t aged,” Kitty added.
Danny froze, feeling his eyes widen. Kitty had given voice to the one thing he didn’t want to admit most of all, something he’d recently noticed when he pinned a photo of him, Sam, and Tucker on his bulletin board. It had been placed next to one from two years prior, and showed the two humans obviously older whereas he was static. He’d gained some muscle, albeit not a dramatic amount, but that was it.
Was Vlad in the same boat? If so, he had been older when the accident happened, the portal being made during graduate school, so he could hide his lack of aging, for the most part; plenty of obscenely rich people managed to look like they were still in their twenties for decades longer than regular people… but Danny was going to have much more difficulty hiding that. But, wait, that couldn’t be the case—Danny had been in the past, seen Vlad’s younger self. He had definitely aged, albeit more slowly than expected, although he was also obscenely rich so that wasn’t much proof. For all he knew Vlad had gotten plastic surgery to make himself look a little older.
Johnny looked sympathetic, correctly reading Danny’s expression. “Yeah, it’s not a pretty thing to realize, and I’d imagine you have it even worse since you still live among humans.”
“Hey, don’t worry,” Kitty chimed in. “We’ll still be around for you, when they eventually leave.”
Danny glared at her, suddenly angry. “They won’t leave!” he forcefully claimed. Sam and Tucker wouldn’t do that, nor would Jazz. His parents might though.
“Uh, newsflash: they’re human,” Johnny said flatly, unphased by the anger directed at his girlfriend. “All humans leave eventually, whether you want them to or not. Whether they want to or not.”
“No; they wouldn’t…” Danny trailed, voice quieting as he realized what Johnny was actually implying.
Danny was a ghost, or at least enough of one that he wasn’t aging. So like all ghosts, he’d potentially be around for centuries, millennia even; as long as no one killed him, he’d remain. Regular humans though? The average human age was less than a single century.
“You mean, they’ll die,” Danny whispered to confirm.
“Yup; that’s why most of us don’t make human friends,” Kitty said somberly. “We’re not saying ditch your humans; just, don’t rely on them exclusively, because that’ll only be a recipe for a mental health disaster.”
Danny was well aware of that, thanks to his future self, who had gone full evil villain after losing everyone—the Observants still impossibly thought it was solely cheating on a test that would cause it, but Danny (and Clockwork, Sam, Tucker, Jazz, Vlad, and future-Phantom) knew that it was actually the pain of losing everyone he loved, perceived failure to protect them, and the subsequent mental breakdown that followed which led to it; true, his ghost part merging with Vlad’s played a part in the eventual outcome of that timeline’s breakdown, but the breakdown happened first. Who’s to say another breakdown wouldn’t lead to something else that was equally as horrible? Yeah, for the sake of the world itself, Danny probably should have some ghostly connections as well as human ones, to avoid losing every single person he could rely on to keep him sane.
Danny groaned and put his face in his hands. “This is a disaster,” he whined. “How do I even begin to explain this to them?” Suddenly, revealing his ghostly identity to his parents became the least of his worries—he’d revealed himself as Phantom in other timelines, so knew there was at least a chance of acceptance for that (even though he was skeptical that the current timeline would yield the same result), but immortality was a whole different ballpark. How would they react to learning their son would eternally be a teenager smack in the middle of puberty?
“Don’t?” Johnny suggested. “I mean, they’ll figure it out eventually, right?”
Danny removed his hands and looked at Johnny with incredulity. “You want me to hide it? Seriously?”
“Sure. When they notice and say something, just pretend you didn’t realize either.”
Danny scoffed at that. “Dude, I can’t act for shit.”
Johnny gave Danny a flat look. “Seriously? You’ve hidden that you’re a ghost for what, nearly three years now, yet you somehow think you’re bad at acting? Get real.”
“Only two, and a few months,” Danny corrected. His accident had been the summer before his freshmen year, and now it was October of his junior year.
“Still, pretty impressive.”
“Nah, people in Amity Park are just oblivious.”
“You could also just not go back, and stay with us instead,” Kitty offered suddenly. “Like, we wouldn’t mind.”
“Hey, don’t offer my lair up without asking me first!” Johnny bristled.
“Tch. It’s our lair, dummy,” Kitty said with an eye roll.
“I can’t just stay in the Ghost Zone forever,” Danny said. “I gotta protect Amity Park.”
“Oh, right, that hero complex thing,” Kitty said dryly.
“It’s not a hero complex!” Danny protested. “I just, well, I’m the one who opened the portal, so I’m responsible for anyone who comes through.”
“Uh, no, you are not responsible,” Johnny told him. “It was an accident. If you’re responsible for that, we’re responsible for our deaths, too—after all, the patch of ice in the road could have been avoided.”
“What? That’s not the same at all!” Danny protested.
“Isn’t it? You tripped, and there was a switch where it shouldn’t have been. Hell, if anything, it’s your folks who are responsible for designing things that way and not unplugging it.”
“Don’t blame them for my mistake,” Danny bristled. He decided not to mention that the switch had only been one part of the equation; it activated the portal, true, but the portal staying open for more than a second was because of something Danny really didn’t want to think about, which he’d learned later on and hadn’t even told Sam and Tucker about.
“Hey, just saying, no need to get prissy.”
“Look, Danny,” Kitty interjected. “I’m not saying you have to stay forever, but you really need to de-stress, seriously; just, chill here for a few days, okay?”
“But—” Danny began to protest, but Kitty cut him off, predicting his argument.
“The town will be fine, there’s other hunters.”
“Yeah, I know, but what if there’s something big they can’t handle? I left my phone at home; not that it matters since there’s no signal here.”
“We’ve got a TV, you know,” Johnny pointed out. “It’ll connect to your local news. You can watch the evening one to check things out, okay? Does that work?”
Danny sighed. “I guess, sure. But just for the night—I have school on Monday.”
“No, you have a vacation on Monday,” Johnny corrected.
"A mental health day, so to say,” Kitty added.
“Those don’t exist,” Danny argued.
“They do now.”
Danny considered that. It would be nice to have a vacation, even though he really should go to school if he didn’t want to fail. Then again, if he was going to be a teenager forever… well, what was one more missed day of school going to hurt? Or even two or three? “Okay, sure, what the hell, why not,” Danny decided.
“Cool!” Kitty said, then summoned her bass. “Come on, let’s start with a jam session, that always makes you feel better!”
Danny smiled, summoning his six-string. “Got that right,” he told her, instinctually playing a chord to start them off, already feeling a little better.
“Got you, ectoplasmic scum!” Valerie shouted as she shot down some new ghost that seemed obsessed with flowers, which had destroyed a local flower shop to make bouquets of them fly around town, causing as much chaos as flowers could do. Still, a ghost was a ghost, whether the weapons were dangerous or not. Valerie quickly used her thermos to contain the ghost.
Valerie looked at the sky; the sun was low, meaning she had to be home for dinner soon. No other ghosts seemed to be around, so Valerie flew off, heading to the Fentons’ place. Since Vlad was now out of the picture, having betrayed everyone, Valerie now got her equipment maintained by them, as well as emptied any thermoused ghosts into their portal. They’d even registered her DNA into their lock system, so she could enter the house and use the portal even if they weren’t there.
As Valerie made her way to the eccentric house (or whatever it could be called), she reflected on something she’d noticed: Phantom hadn’t shown up. In fact, he hadn’t been around all weekend! Valerie couldn’t figure out why that was; it wasn’t like ghosts went on weekend getaways or anything like that. Had he finally been caught by the Fentons or GIW? No, surely the message boards would be alight with witnesses to such, considering how much commotion both groups always made.
But if he wasn’t captured, where was he? As much as Valerie liked hunting without the distraction, it was uncanny that he wasn’t around, especially since Technus had attacked earlier that day, and Valerie knew those two were definitely still major enemies. Phantom had been showing up less and less in general over the past month, even obviously choosing to ignore smaller less-destructive ghosts, but he’d still been around to help with larger incidents.
At least, until yesterday. The concert had been a huge issue, three known major ghosts congregated at once, yet from Phantom there had been crickets. Had Phantom finally shown his true colors as an evil ghost, now siding with the ectoplasmic scum instead of fighting them?
Valerie shivered at the idea, pushing it away; no, the mere idea of Phantom turning on the town struck fear in her. He was well known to be one of the most powerful ghosts around, and as much as Valerie hated him she could admit that he’d been helpful at times, even if he also sometimes caused the destruction and chaos characteristic of ghosts. For him to stop his attempts at being a hero and embrace villainy instead would lead to the fall of Amity Park, of that Valerie was sure.
Valerie then arrived at Fentonworks, double-checking that her hood was up; they only knew her as the Red Huntress, as far as she knew, and she wanted it to stay that way, just in case they objected to a 16-year-old engaging in the type of intense ghost hunting that she did (even though they did pretty freely give ecto-guns to kids). Valerie used the newly-installed handprint pad to open the front door and entered the house; they’d told her a while ago that she didn’t need to bother knocking.
Jack Fenton quickly hurried over from the kitchen, looking excited, then his face fell. “Oh. You’re not Danny,” he said.
“Your son is missing?” Valerie asked as she walked with him to the kitchen, barely managing not to tack on ‘again’ (it was no secret that Danny had a penchant for disappearing; she still didn’t know where he went during ghost attacks), as well as trying to keep the fact that she knew him secret as that had the potential to reveal her identity.
“He’s not missing,” Maddie said, seated at the kitchen table as she fiddled with what appeared to be a disassembled ecto-gun. “He’s just with his friends.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t tell us again,” Jack pointed out, looking slightly frustrated. “Sure we shouldn’t call them to make sure? I mean, he did run away, after a pretty bad argument.” Valerie assumed the argument had been about the ghost-band and Danny helping the ghosts escape. She was entirely unsurprised that Danny had run off after that fiasco.
Maddie sighed. “He just needs space, Jack. It’s how he is. He’ll be back tonight, I’m sure; probably after curfew as usual, but he does have school tomorrow, and didn’t take anything with him, so he needs to return.”
“He is going to be so grounded after this!” Jack growled, though Valerie could tell there was immense worry underneath; for some reason, she had an inkling that not everything was as it appeared.
“Right,” Valerie said, ignoring the odd feeling. “Well, if you don’t mind, I actually have somewhere to be, so I’m just going to go empty this and leave,” she said, holding up the thermos.
“Oh, sure thing!” said Jack. “Don’t mind us; just do what you have to do.”
Valerie nodded, then headed into the lab, mulling over the Fentons’ words as she emptied her thermos. Something simply didn’t sit right with her; had they seriously not even tried to contact Danny after running away, when earlier that same day he’d been collaborating with ghosts? Sure, Sam and Tucker were the ones he’d usually go to, but what if those ghosts had convinced Danny to go with them instead? Ghosts could be tricky like that, luring you in with nice promises and then stabbing you in the back. Surely the Fentons had thought about that.
Well, hopefully Danny would be in school the next day, easing Valerie’s fears.
Later that night found Jack wandering around the streets of Amity Park, allegedly ‘patrolling’ but in reality he just needed some time away from his wife to clear his head.
Imagine that? Jack Fenton, needing time away from his wife. A couple years prior, Jack would have thrown whoever suggested such into a sanatorium! Yet, since the portal had happened… Well, that growing rift hadn’t been just between Jack and his son. They tried to hold the illusion together in public and around their kids, but when alone, there were more fights than not lately! Before then they’d fought sometimes, sure, but it had never been this bad… had it?
Something in the back of Jack’s mind told him that this had started long before the portal incident and had been gradually growing, that their relationship hadn’t been a healthy one for a long while, but as usual Jack pushed that down—surely it wasn’t that bad.
Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, most of their fights revolved around either how to raise their children or their ghost research, and the one just a short time ago was a combination thereof.
Jack’s mentality towards disciplining his children was that it was best to let them do what they want and learn their lessons on their own, as experience is the best teacher. Stay up until 4am and fall asleep in class? That embarrassment was enough to avoid doing that in the future, no need to be punished more. Obviously stepping in sometimes was necessary, like if there was a significant danger, but everyday life lessons Danny could learn on his own; if punishment was needed, grounding or removal of privileges like non-homework computer use should suffice.
Maddie, however, was much stricter, which combined with her overprotectiveness turned into her wanting to take a heavier approach to Danny, one that Jack did not agree with. At this point, Maddie wanted to put secret tracking devices on Danny, and even suggested removing the door from his room, which Jack had immediately vetoed. It was a huge privacy violation! Jack could never do that to his children. He hadn’t even been able to bring himself to spank them when they were little; in fact, he stopped Maddie after the first few times seeing his kids cry from such. Common punishment or not, he still saw it as cruel.
Jack was still partially in denial that his wife had struck Danny during that argument; honestly, Jack didn’t blame Danny for running off like he did. Jack would have done the same if his mother ever hit him when he was a boy.
Tonight’s argument started as Jack and Maddie discussed how Danny should be punished for being in a band with ghosts, once he returned from whichever friend’s house he was hiding at, and morphed into a general argument about the nature of ghosts. Maddie wanted to inflict harsher punishments, having a zero-tolerance policy for their kids interacting with ghosts, still insisting they were unfeeling mindless beings, but Jack wasn’t sure anymore.
Maybe Jazz had a point, with her theories that ghosts could feel complex emotions; seeing those ghosts in that band, how could there not be emotion involved? But Maddie refused to hear it. Told him he was going soft, that he shouldn’t give in, that he should remember they were always trying to trick them. But was it going soft? Was it being tricked? Or was it actually just as it appeared, where the ghosts were simply truly happy to have an opportunity to play music in the human realm?
After Maddie kept interrupting Jack to berate him for his views, with much name-calling mixed in, never letting Jack explain anything, Jack had said he was going ghost-hunting to cool off and stormed out, ignoring whatever hit the door as he closed it; hopefully whatever she’d thrown wasn’t breakable. He carried a Fenton Bazooka just in case, but he honestly wasn’t in the mood for any fighting, hoping to actually not find a ghost—out of character for him, maybe, but he was just so tired of everything. Tired of his wife treating him like a child to be scolded rather than a genuine partner.
A fleeting thought wondered at what point Alicia had come to the conclusion that divorce had been better than staying with her ex-husband, then he immediately dismissed the thought; Jack still loved Maddie very much, despite the conflict. In a few days this would all blow over. They’d be fine… Right?
Unless Maddie hit Danny again… But no, surely that was a one-time thing? Afterwards, when Danny had fled and Jazz stormed up to her room and Tucker had awkwardly left, Maddie had told Jack that she regretted it, that it wouldn’t happen again… She’d been sincere in that, right? Of course she’d been. True, she said that often to Jack, but this wasn’t Jack, this was Danny… she wouldn’t, would she? No. Jack tossed those thoughts away; it was a fluke, everyone makes mistakes…
Jack’s mind fell back to the ghosts in the band, and how in-sync Danny had been with them. He even claimed the ghosts were his friends! That couldn’t be true, right? And yet… Maybe, if ghosts could have emotions, they could be friends with humans. Jack imagined the research opportunities that could open up; if ghosts could be friendly, if they could be trustworthy, could interviews be in the running? They’d probably avoid speaking to Jack, but Danny and Jazz might be willing to help with that.
Now Jack hoped that he’d run into one of the more humanoid ghosts that night. Maybe even that Phantom kid, if he was lucky; the Ghost Boy was the only regularly-seen one that actively avoided attacking him and Maddie, usually, and had actually saved Jack that one time, so maybe he’d be willing to talk. Plus, there was something almost familiar about the kid that Jack couldn’t quite place. Maybe it was because the boy looked like he had died at about the same age as his own son, or because the boy’s eye color was the same color that Danny’s sometimes glowed. Or maybe it was the hazmat suit. If it weren’t for the difference in hair color and the fact that Danny’s hazmat suit was white, they could almost be mistaken for the same person! Come to think of it, where was Danny’s suit? The boy never wore it anymore; perhaps he’d grown out of it. Jack would put it on his to-do list to make Danny a new one.
Jack wondered where Danny was at the moment. Maddie had assumed he was at Sam or Tucker’s, but for some reason Jack didn’t fully believe that. Where else would he be, though? Hopefully not on the streets; it was a little chilly that evening. Danny seemed to not care much about the cold, though… Wait. Was he really entertaining the idea that Danny could be on the streets? No, Maddie must be right; Danny was just at Sam or Tucker’s.
Jack wondered if he should try to talk to Danny on his own. Typically, he and Maddie would do so together, or Maddie would do so alone; when was the last time Jack and Danny had spent any significant amount of time together, just the two of them? Time enough to have a genuine conversation? There had been that fishing trip nearly a year prior…
Jack recalled a part of that song Danny had been singing at the concert: All the days you spent with me / Now seem so far away / And it feels like you don’t care anymore.
Jack felt that way too, towards Danny. He didn’t want Danny to be feeling that way about him, either. So, Jack had to get out of the lab and spend some more time with his son, if the boy would let him. Maybe go on a father-son bonding trip? But, somewhere Danny wanted to go this time, so Jack could show that he cared about his son’s interests.
But Jack, to his horror, realized he didn’t know what places fit his son’s interests anymore; when he was younger he loved space, and going to museums involving such, but would a teenager still like that? Jack just didn’t know… Well, then, he would just have to try to pay more attention!
Yes, Jack was going to fix things. It would all work out!
The next morning (at least Danny assumed it was morning; the Ghozt Zone didn’t exactly have day-night cycles, but he’d fallen asleep on Johnny’s couch and woken up a short while ago feeling actually rested for the second ‘day’ in a row), Danny headed off to visit Clockwork, wanting more definitive answers for things.
Clockwork gave Danny a flat look as he let him into his lair. “And what, pray tell, are you doing here on a school day, Danny?”
“Uh. Skipping,” Danny sheepishly admitted, knowing that if he tried to lie and say there wasn’t school that day or something then Clockwork would call him out on it. “I, er, wanted to talk to you…”
Clockwork considered that for a moment, then sighed. “Will it be short? I really need to work on the timestream repairs…”
“It should be quick; I just have a question,” Danny assured the Time Ghost (or, more like Time God, pretty much).
“Yes,” Clockwork told Danny. “Your answer is yes.”
“I didn’t even ask it!” Danny protested, though that was par for the course for Clockwork.
“I know,” Clockwork said with a mischievous grin.
“Yeah, yeah, you know everything,” Danny grumbled. “So, I really am… immortal?” he said, the word feeling uncomfortable in his mouth.
“Correct.”
“Vlad isn’t though. I’ve seen him age.”
“True; Vlad, however, received a comparatively small blast of ecto-radiation. He is a true half-ghost, or ‘halfa’ as you say. He will age slowly, and live longer than a human, but he will age.”
“Wait, ‘true halfa’?” Danny noted. “So I’m not a halfa?” he concluded, heart thumping—heart thumping, meaning he still had some human in him, he wasn’t a full ghost.
“You are a liminal being, of the type colloquially known as a halfa, in the aspect that on some level you have a combined form of both human and ghost DNA,” Clockwork assured Danny, then elaborated, “But, it is not half and half, like Vlad is. As I know you already know, you received a much larger blast of ecto-radiation, combined with a strong electrical current. This significantly affected the proportion of human to ghost.”
“And I’m closer to… to 90% ghost, right?” Danny said, heart thumping as he finally voiced the suspicion. “Last I tested my blood, it was a 1-9 blood-to-ectoplasm ratio. Is that the final amount, or will it keep going until…”
“Do not fear; you will not become a full ghost in such a manner,” Clockwork said gently. “Your system is stable now. Any excess blood has finally been expunged, and your body is now producing just the proportion it needs to have.”
“Not a full ghost, but still mostly ghost,” Danny said. 90%. That was… a whole lot higher than Danny wanted to believe, but he’d seen the blood samples. “It’s enough that at this point, I can relate more to ghosts than humans.” He surprised himself with this admission, then realized that to his horror it was true. He felt more comfortable here in the Ghost Zone, among his ghost friends, than he’d been feeling lately in Amity Park. Danny wasn’t sure what he thought of that realization.
Clockwork nodded. “You may exhibit some human traits, but for all intents and purposes, you are a ghost—proven by the timeline you avoided.”
“What do you mean?” There were technically three that had been erased. “The one with Dan?” he guessed.
“Correct,” Clockwork confirmed, then elaborated, “In that timeline, when your human part was ripped from your ghost part—truly was, unlike the ghost catcher, which merely split your personality—it did not survive.”
Danny winced at the mention of that timeline. “But I thought he murdered me after merging with Vlad’s ghost? And Vlad was split, too…”
“Vlad is truly half, as I said before. His human part can survive on its own, though with some health issues. Yours cannot. Vlad, unaware, may have been slightly wrong about that particular story when he told it to you, as he assumed you were like him. However, whereas it’s true that the being you call Dan technically killed your human portion, it was for all intents and purposes a mercy killing, as the alternative would have been a rapid and painful deterioration.”
“Oh,” Danny said, unsure how to reconcile that new information with what he had thought he’d known. “But, couldn’t merging again have fixed that?”
Clockwork was quiet for a moment, then revealed, “Perhaps. However, your human portion did not wish this—despite merging with Vlad, the split-off Phantom still was connected on some level to the human portion, the feelings evident. So he did what he felt your human portion wanted him to do.”
It was assisted suicide, is what Clockwork was basically saying, Danny realized, and he decided he didn’t want to talk or even think about that anymore. Then, he frowned. “Wait a second—back to the human portion being unable to survive—are you really sure about that? I’ve lost my powers before, and survived.”
“No; with the exception of Desiree’s doing, those other times your ghostly core was only suppressed,” Clockwork revealed. “Unsure what to do, your body reverted to a human form, but it was only a form.”
Honestly, Danny had suspected that, on some level; during the Disasteroid, even though he had ‘purged’ his powers, he still faintly felt his core, and the other ghosts hitting him with ecto-blasts had essentially recharged it, not created it again. He’d actually started to feel it very slowly powering back up the moment he entered the Ghost Zone—the ghosts had just significantly sped thing up.
That point, actually, had been where the timeline split occurred; after Danny recharged his core, and Danny, his sister, and his friends returned, that’s when Miskatonic University announced their own plan to save the world, before Danny’s group could reveal their plan (if they had even gotten around to planning that; Danny wasn’t sure of the specifics, only that instead of their plan being announced, MU’s was). The plan? Summon a race of eldritch insects that ate ecto-ranium, although they told the humans it was nanobots. The ghosts knew, though; the creatures had a collective hive mind, of which the feelings had been so strong that the ghosts could sense it even while in the Ghost Zone. Kitty had described it as the most terrifying thing she had ever felt, a feeling that she was glimpsing a species no being, living or dead, should dare to interfere with, and claimed that every ghost had been relieved when the things finally were returned to whatever hellish dimension they had been summoned from.
The power malfunction during the recent time-glitch incident had been due to his purpose having been lost, which again only suppressed his core until he found a new one, given that ghost energy was powered by emotion and drive; he’d only thought his ghost part had been vanishing in that case. Or, maybe it had been—although now Danny knew that if his ghost part had faded, he himself would have perished, not just lost his powers.
“Why are you actually telling me stuff instead of being all cryptic like usual?” Danny wondered.
“Do you want me to be cryptic?”
“No, no! I like this better,” Danny assured the ghost, hoping he hadn’t just screwed things up.
“I am telling you this because you need to know it. You need to accept it. You cannot be the bridge between the two realms if you reject who you are.”
“I don’t reject it,” Danny said automatically.
“On some level, you do,” Clockwork said patiently. “You are particularly in denial about the immortality aspect.”
Danny winced at the bluntness. “It’s just… difficult to imagine,” he said, trying to explain.
Clockwork nodded. “Yes. Time is vast. Contemplating eternity can be a difficult task, even for those whose lives are endless. For one who formerly had limited time, the absence of such can be daunting. Many ghosts struggle with accepting such.”
“That’s an understatement,” Danny said with a small chuckle, then sighed and wondered aloud, “How do I even begin to tell my friends and family something like this?”
To Danny’s surprise, Clockwork gave Danny a knowing smile and said, “It may be easier than you expect, or at least by the time you return to them it will be.”
Danny frowned. “Back to the cryptic stuff, huh?”
Clockwork raised his staff, and some mirrors floated towards them. Upon them were what appeared to be video clips, but Danny knew they were really live streams from different times and potential timelines. All featured Jazz, Sam, Tucker, or a combination thereof, all looking around the age they currently were. They were all comparing photographs, and closer inspection revealed that they were all of him, ones from two years prior and current ones.
“So, what, this means in every potential timeline they figure it out before I go home?”
“Ah, you’ve improved your critical thinking ability,” Clockwork said, sounding proud. “Of course, these are merely the most likely ones; as always, there is the potential for other timelines—for example, you could go back immediately and tell them right now.”
“Definitely not happening,” Danny said with a scoff.
“As one would expect,” Clockwork said with a fond smile. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to return to my vital task.”
As Clockwork escorted him out, Danny remembered something else. “Wait! I need to know—”
Clockwork cut him off with a loud sigh. “I did my best with the timeline repair. Every major event leading up to the Disasteroid happened largely as you remember, every person and their points in life are the same. However, despite common belief, I have no actual power to read minds; all I know is events that happen.”
Danny blushed; he actually had thought that Clockwork was more or less all-knowing, including thoughts. Now that Clockwork mentioned it, the knowledge of what questions would be asked probably came from predicting the future of just a few seconds ahead, or maybe just an ability to skillfully read people honed over millennia. “So that means…?” Danny trailed, wanting more clarification.
“It means that I cannot guarantee that the thoughts, feelings, and motivations people had during those times were exactly the same, even though the end results were. Different thought processes still can result in the same outcome, after all. Because of this some things may take a different path in the future than as they would have most likely taken in your original timeline.”
“Oh. Well, they wouldn’t be that different, would they?” Danny hoped, or maybe wished for Clockwork to deny; he wasn’t sure which would be worse between his mom always having these feelings below the surface or if that was brand new to this timeline.
Clockwork sighed. “Even if the differences are miniscule, unfortunately, one cannot tell whether the ripples caused by these differences will be small or vast.”
Danny wilted slightly. “So, my parents—”
“May or may not react as they did in other timelines when they learn your secret; it all depends on you, and how you shape things from here.”
“Being cryptic again, huh?” Danny muttered.
Clockwork continued, “Even if at the moment they would not be accepting, which once again we cannot know, a stray comment here and there, a seemingly insignificant action… you know how even tiny differences can snowball. The butterfly effect, as the humans call it. You have far more power to shape your own future than you might think.”
Danny nodded; his experience with the timeline that had the hybrid of his and Vlad’s ghosts, triggered simply by cheating on a test that honestly wasn’t nearly as big a deal as the teachers made them believe, was an attestment to that. “Any way you can give me a hint? A clue about what I need to do for them to accept me?”
Clockwork gave Danny a look that seemed almost like pity, or maybe sympathy. “Unfortunately, the timestream is still too damaged; it was all I could do to show you that brief glimpse earlier. I cannot even give you the probability of whether they will accept your secret or not once you tell them; I sincerely hope they will, but I simply do not know.”
A thought then occurred to Danny. “But, they still accepted me during the Freakshow and Disasteroid things, right?”
“Those incidents were erased,” Clockwork reminded Danny. “It is impossible to know if the current circumstances of this timeline would yield the same result, and I cannot investigate with the timestream still being so deeply damaged.”
“Oh. Well… What if I were home right now and revealed it at this moment?” Danny asked, knowing he was pushing things, but he was desperate to know—he had a gut feeling that this time it would be bad. “That’s related to the close present, not the far future, so you can see it, right?”
“That is a waste of my power, and will do you no favor to know, considering you have no intention of doing so,” Clockwork said sternly.
“Then what—”
“What I will tell you is that, regardless of outcome, you have enough of a support network to ensure that even a negative outcome will be bearable. Now—” Clockwork stopped mid sentence, looking at Danny with worry. “Danny? What’s wrong?”
Danny wiped at his eyes, realizing he’d gotten so worked up that tears were beginning to fall. “S-sorry, sorry, I don’t mean to, I don’t know why I’m, just, I’m sorry, it’s nothing.”
Clockwork was quiet for a moment. “It is not nothing, if you are crying about it,” he eventually said. “Did I… Did I say something that particularly upset you?” he asked awkwardly.
“N-no, everything you said made sense, I just… I guess I was hoping… Well, I’ve been able to sense emotions better lately, and I noticed… some people are different than I thought they were, and I don’t know if they were always like that or if it’s new to this timeline, and I just have this really bad feeling that things won’t go well this time…” The tears were coming faster as Danny trailed off.
“Ah,” Clockwork said, then drifted over and cautiously put his arm around Danny’s shoulders; Danny leaned into him as the ghost said, “I know this is not what you want to hear, but the emotional profiles of the people in this timeline are more likely than not to be the same or extremely close to those of your original timeline. If they were too far changed, the events would have almost certainly been different.”
Danny had suspected it, but actually hearing that things could only have changed so much left a bitter feeling in him. He sniffled. “I was really hoping it was new in this timeline, but I’m pretty sure my mom resents me, not in my Phantom form but human form too, and I don’t know what to do because I’m terrified that when I get home she’s going to, to, I don’t even know, but I keep sensing that she wants to hurt me! And I think she’s already been hurting my dad. Please tell me that’s new, that there was somehow a really big mix up.”
Clockwork squeezed Danny's shoulder. “My apologies, but as it stands, the majority of differences are only benign ones, like which cereal was chosen for breakfast. Anything larger, even things like spousal fights—which, I might add, tend to start small before escalating, often over years, not a mere two months—happened in both the original timeline and this one. If the fighting is that bad, it is surely not new. I would much prefer it to be a new thing, too, to save you the pain of realizing the emotions behind the mask have been there for much longer than the six weeks since what you are calling the Time Glitch Incident. However, I do not wish to lie to you.”
Danny then thought of something. “But the way she acted during the two erased reveals… It seemed nice. But, then again, she does seem nice often, even with the negativity below it…”
“Yes, that is one of the downfalls of sensing emotions,” Clockwork said somberly. “People often do not act in accordance with the emotions brewing in them, causing conflict.”
Danny then had a horrible realization. “Does this mean she was faking during those, only acting accepting because so many other people were around so she’d have eyes on her if something happened? Like, in the Freakshow one, what we saw was only the public persona, maybe the aftermath would have been different… But the Disasteroid one… well, maybe seeing the ghosts save the day shifted her view enough? And she couldn’t attack a world-known Hero without horrible social repercussions… So was she only nice to me out of self-preservation?”
“I cannot say,” Clockwork said. “It is true that the decisions people made in the past very well may not have been for the reasons you imagined. However, even if the emotions beneath were negative ones, it is possible over time they would have shifted. Remember, the mind is not immutable—emotions may not change overnight, but with time and the right nudges they can and do change.”
Danny shook his head, tears coming back. “Maybe, but I just, it feels like it’s come too far to even try to change at this point, and it hurts so much, and I… I just don’t know how much more I can take! S-sometimes I think it would have been better if I never came back out of the portal.” Danny frowned at the ground, internally wincing at letting that last part come out. He didn’t mean to let that slip.
Clockwork’s arm tightened around Danny’s shoulder. “Danny,” he said, turning slightly. “Danny, look at me.” Danny forced himself to look up and lock eyes with Clockwork, who continued, looking more serious than Danny had ever seen him, “I searched through many timelines in order to cobble this one together. Every single one where you died that day was worse off for it, often by leagues. You are the protector of Amity Park, the bridge between worlds. Humanity needs you. The ghosts need you. The universe needs you. Your friends and family need you; we’d all be devastated if you were gone. Do not throw your existence away.”
Danny stared at Clockwork for a moment, then looked back to the ground, unsure what to say. Talk about pressure!
“Danny?” Clockwork prodded with urgency. “Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand,” Danny said quietly. He slipped out of Clockwork’s grip and said. “I guess I should be going now, I’ve taken too much of your time, I know you said you have to work. Sorry about doing, er, that.” He made a vague gesture with his arm, then turned towards the door.
“No, you will not be leaving at this moment,” Clockwork stated, and when Danny paused to look at him in confusion gestured to the side of the room and continued, “You will sit on the couch over there while I work, until I am certain you have sufficiently calmed down. You can play your music, or the cabinet and shelves beside it have various activities such as puzzles, prose, and coloring books if you prefer.”
Danny looked at Clockwork in slight confusion, not expecting the unusual… request? Demand? Offer? “But I am calmer now,” Danny said.
“‘Calmer’ is not calm,” Clockwork noted, as he opened a large number of time windows and began rapidly sorting through them. “Just, ‘humor me’, as you humans say.”
“But—”
“Danny. I know what happened earlier in the summer that the portal opened.”
Danny paled. That… yeah, that would explain Clockwork’s concern. “Okay,” he agreed, sensing he had no real choice in the matter.
He sat on the couch, stepping around the coffee table in front of it on his way, summoned his guitar, and began to play some quieter, calming music. The term ‘suicide watch’ came to mind, although Danny had no actual plans to do that. He just vaguely wished he didn’t need to exist anymore, which, sure, was concerning, but he knew he had to be around to protect the town and be the bridge and all that.
Danny ended up staying for a few hours, opting to do some coloring and then a 3D puzzle after his guitar session, although the 3D puzzle was left unfinished because Danny was pretty sure the pieces followed some strange non-euclidean geometry that his brain simply couldn’t comprehend.
He also read a cute easy reader book about a space-traveling cat that he remembered from his childhood—it had been one of his favorites, actually, making him wonder if Clockwork intentionally included it in the pile of random-seeming books. Only afterwards did he realize that it had been written in Latin, to his confusion. Before he could ask, Clockwork had briefly explained that most ghosts could instinctually read dead languages before returning to his work—apparently, like the emotion-reading, that had been suppressed until Danny had began consuming ectoplasm (and would have been immensely useful to have during the Time Glitch Incident). Danny suspected the book had intentionally been written in such so he could discover that.
As Danny, who had moved to sitting in front of the couch to use the coffee table to color and do the puzzle, began doing some more coloring—the books were very intricate, with detailed patterns, unlike any coloring books Danny recalled from childhood—Clockwork sat down on the couch beside him.
“Are you feeling any better?” The Time God/Ghost asked gently.
Danny considered that. He was feeling slightly better but still not great, so simply shrugged in response, looking at the ground. Sensing Clockwork would prefer an actual answer, and the truth, Danny told him, “I’ve been better. Honestly, it’s a lot of information to process.”
Clockwork nodded in understanding. “That it is. I must apologize; perhaps I, as I believe you kids say, ‘info dumped’ more than could be handled at one time.”
Danny shook his head. “No, not at all,” he assured Clockwork. “I needed to hear all that. I just need some time to process it, that’s all… Being here did help, though.”
“That is good to hear,” Clockwork said earnestly.
Danny was quiet for a long moment, and Clockwork didn’t say anything more, letting him think. Eventually Danny said, voice quiet as he said something else he’d been thinking for a while but never wanted to say aloud. “I’m really not human, am I?”
“You still have some humanity in you,” Clockwork said gently.
“Yeah, but I’m not human,” Danny said, realizing what Clockwork had meant earlier about him not accepting himself yet. A part of him still didn’t want to admit it, but he had to say it. “Not really. I haven’t truly been human since the accident. I… I can’t keep pretending that I’m still human. I thought I’d accepted my ghost half after the Time Glitch Incident, but in my heart—in my core—I still was seeing it as half and half, two sides of the same coin, but that’s not true. It’s not two separate parts. It’s all me. I’m not a human with ghost powers, or an even split, I’m a ghost with just enough humanity left to stay connected to the human realm, to be the bridge between worlds, and to somewhat pass as human, but still mostly in essence a ghost.”
Clockwork didn’t refute that. Instead, he put a comforting hand on Danny’s shoulder, and Danny realized he had tears beginning in his eyes again, which he wiped away with his hand before Clockwork could see, although he likely had already. The Time God/Ghost told him, “You are just as you are supposed to be, Danny.”
Danny and Clockwork sat just like that for a while, until Danny had calmed fully—well, not fully, but as calm as he could get at the moment, with all the new information. Danny’s core hummed in contentment at Danny’s greater acceptance of his identity.
It wasn’t until Danny returned to Johnny’s that he realized Clockwork, although he said Danny himself was as he was supposed to be, never once said his signature ‘everything is as it’s supposed to be’ line; Danny had heard Clockwork utter those words so often that he could hear them in the ghost’s voice, yet this time, it wasn’t there… Because Clockwork didn’t know. Although he had done his best to make things as close as possible to how they were, the Time God/Ghost had no idea if things were as they should be or not, no idea if the future was progressing in the best possible way. The timestream was still in severe disrepair, the far future wholly unknown.
Yes, this timeline was truly uncharted territory, and whatever happened now, there would be no more do-overs, of that Danny was certain.
Notes:
Next up: A few more days go by, and people start seriously searching for Danny.
Chapter 5: Revelations
Summary:
Lancer asks Jazz about her brother, and comes to a realization that she confirms. Sam, Tucker, and Jazz discuss looking for Danny themselves, as well as come to a realization that Clockwork predicted. Lancer then stops by the Fentons', and seriously questions why CPS was never called.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Curiously, Daniel was not in school the Monday after the concert, nor Tuesday. By Wednesday, when the boy still hadn’t appeared, Lancer began to become extremely worried. The boy did skip often, but rarely so many full days in a row, and he hadn’t called in sick. His parents had been quite angry after the concert; did something happen? Hopefully his suspicions about the boy’s home life were unfounded; his parents seemed like nice people on the surface, albeit a bit absentminded, but people could be different behind closed doors, and Daniel did often have bruises and injuries…
As the school day ended, Lancer noticed Jasmine in the hallway, and called her into his classroom. Despite having graduated, her presence was no surprise; she was often at the school, sometimes helping maintain the anti-ghost security systems and other times allegedly to talk to Poindexter, who apparently helped her with one of her ghost-related classes at the recently-opened branch of Miskatonic University nearby Amity Park, but Lancer suspected it was also to keep an eye on her brother.
“Mister Lancer?” Jasmine asked, standing just inside.
“Jasmine. I noticed Daniel has been absent from school for three days thus far; I was wondering if you know the reason.”
Jazz winced. “Ah, well…”
Lancer frowned when she didn’t continue. “Jasmine?” he prodded. “Is everything okay at home?”
“What? Why wouldn’t it be?” Jazz asked in a high-pitched voice, a little too quickly.
“Well, I can’t help but to have noticed that Daniel often has injuries. His parents seemed very angry on Saturday, and now he isn’t in school, so—”
“It’s not that,” Jasmine interjected, quickly catching on. “Our parents don’t hurt either of us, not intentionally.”
Lancer raised an eyebrow at that. “Intentionally?”
Jasmine winced. “Ah, well, there’s been some lab accidents and stuff… But it’s fine, everyone’s more or less physically fine!”
“‘More or less’? ‘Physically’?” Lancer questioned, wondering why the qualifiers were needed.
Jasmine winced. “I mean, everyone’s stressed sometimes, right? Yeah, we’re all stressed, I mean we live in a ghost town after all… but otherwise, hopefully fine!”
“‘Hopefully’? Jasmine, you’re not arguing your case very well,” Lancer said, feeling even more worried. “Where is your brother? Is he okay or does he need help?”
Jasmine sighed in resignation. “I honestly don’t know,” she admitted.
Lancer couldn’t help but raise his eyebrows in surprise. “You don’t know?” he asked quietly.
Tears now formed at the corners of Jasmine’s eyes. “I don’t know. He ran away.”
“Ran away?” Lancer asked, alarm bells ringing. Did that mean Daniel was on the streets somewhere? Or did he at least have friends to stay with? Should a missing persons case be launched?
Jasmine nodded. “Yeah. I mean, it’s not the first time, but it still worries me, especially as it was after a pretty bad fight with our parents—they weren’t happy about him being in a band with ghosts. During the weekend I was hoping he was just laying low at Tucker’s or Sam’s or something, and would be in school Monday, but… As you know, that didn’t happen. I asked them about it a little while ago and they haven’t heard from him either. He’s not even answering their texts. I thought maybe he just needed space, since this isn’t the first time he’s left home for days, but I’m getting worried now.”
“I see,” Lancer said, processing that, and finding the fact that this was apparently not the first time Daniel had vanished awfully concerning. “Do you know anywhere else he could be?”
“Not really,” Jasmine said. “He doesn’t really know anyone else well enough to be comfortable crashing at their places, except… Oh,” she said, seeming to realize something. “Oh no.”
“What is it?” Lancer asked, worried about her expression of dread.
“The Ghost Zone,” she said. “Dammit!” Jasmine uncharacteristically cursed. “I bet that’s where he went, the one place none of us can easily go, especially with the Specter Speeder currently in the middle of being upgraded!”
Lancer scrunched his brow in confusion. “The Ghost Zone? I thought Daniel was terrified of ghosts; he runs out of the classroom immediately when there’s any hit of an attack!” Although, considering he seemed to be close enough to some ghosts to be in a band with them, perhaps that was not entirely accurate anymore… But, if the vehicle was out of commission, how would he travel through it?
“Ah, well, that’s…” Jasmine trailed, seeming unsure how to answer. “It’s, ah…”
Suddenly, the ghost attack alarm began ringing, preventing the conversation from continuing as the two followed protocol and made their way out of the building.
As everyone stood outside the school after evacuating, while yet another giant hornet ghost—or rather, two—rampaged through the school, the Red Huntress fighting them quickly joined by Jack and Maddie Fenton—Lancer realized someone else was missing: Danny Phantom had not shown up. In fact, there had been no reports of him for a few days now, not since…
The suspicion—or rather, realization—that Lancer had during the concert creeped up again, this time stronger than ever before. The clues fell into place fully, and Lancer was confident of his conclusion, however tragic it was. He simply could not deny it as he tried to the other day; the absence of both the schoolboy and the hero was too damning, when combined with everything else.
“Jasmine?” Lancer shakily said to the girl standing next to him. He was certain she knew.
“Yes, Mister Lancer?”
Lancer took a deep breath. “Daniel… isn’t human, is he?” he asked, still unsure if he wanted to know for certain.
Jasmine froze, then said carefully, “What do you mean?”
“He’s… He’s a ghost. Specifically, Phantom.”
Jasmine looked at Lancer with wide eyes. After a few moments, she whispered, “How do you know?”
“I put the clues together,” Lancer said sadly. “His parents don’t know, do they?” They surely had all the clues too, plus some, yet were apparently oblivious to everything, from what little Lancer had observed of them.
Jasmine winced. “No, they don’t,” she confirmed. “And you can’t tell them!”
Lancer frowned. “Do you truly think they won’t accept him?” he asked, because that’s the only reason it could be. It was a heartbreaking thought, but he’d be by far the first child to have unaccepting parents. Lancer’s own parents had kicked him out when he was a teenager for something entirely outside of his control.
Jasmine nibbled on her lip, then replied, “I don’t know. I’d like to think they both would, usually I’m pretty certain of it, but then something always happens to make me doubt that, like the fight the other day—my mom said some pretty insensitive things, even though I don’t think she really meant it. I do think it would probably be better to say something either way, since then he’d have some closure rather than be constantly on edge dancing around them, but Danny’s convinced himself that the second he tells them they’ll shoot him down or experiment on him—which, for the record, I highly doubt would ever happen!” she hurriedly said. “They’re not bad people. Even if they reject him at first, I’m sure they’d come around eventually.”
“That’s still no way for him to live—his parents told me the other day that their things still lock onto him, you know. And we all know how they react when they see Phantom. It’s no wonder he’s always under so much stress… But to think, a ghost… Oh, The Island of Dr. Moreau, please tell me they weren’t the cause of it,” he said, a dreadful suspicion dawning.
Jasmine winced again. “It’s, ah, I mean, it was technically one of their experiments I guess, but it was an accident! They weren’t even home at the time! And, to be fair, he’s technically only half-ghost.”
Lancer scrunched his brow in confusion. “Half-ghost? How can someone be half-ghost?”
“He was inside the portal when it turned on,” Jazz revealed, to Lancer’s horror. “He got blasted with highly charged ectoplasm, best we can tell is it did something to his DNA, infused him with so much ghost energy that he somehow became a hybrid of ghost and human. At least, that was our original theory…”
“Original theory?”
“Yeah… I, er, haven’t really talked to him about this yet, but I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s not a fifty-fifty split like we thought?” Jasmine said, speaking quickly, as though all the information had been rushing to escape, and Lancer got the feeling she’d never had anyone to talk to about this before. “I mean, he has the two forms that he can switch between, but at first it had blood or ectoplasm depending on which form he was in but gradually more and more ectoplasm got mixed in with the blood in human form that now it’s definitely more ectoplasm than blood—it’s a darker green than most ghosts, so likely there’s still some blood in there, but definitely green.
“Also he can still use some of his ghost powers in his human form and other markers in his human form are off, like his heartbeat is super slow and body temperature super low and stuff. He still eats and sleeps, but he definitely doesn’t need to breathe, he’ll just stop doing that when he wants to be extra stealthy, not even sure if he realizes honestly.
“Plus…” she shifted nervously, as though she'd rather not say, but proceeded anyway. “He’s 16 now, but looks no different than when he was 14. Like, literally zero difference, if you compare photos from then and now you’d think they were from the same time. I know it might be too soon to tell for sure if he isn’t aging, since it’s only been two years, but he’s a teenager, there should be at least some growth. Even his hair is the same; it hasn’t grown or needed cutting in two years.”
“Picture of Dorian Gray,” Lancer whispered as he processed all that. “And you haven’t told him this yet?” he confirmed.
Jasmine shook her head. “No, I haven’t. I’m worried what’ll happen. I think he’s been holding onto the ‘half’ aspect very tightly, somewhat in denial that it’s not. Obviously there’s still some things about him that are more human, but, well… It’s definitely not half, at least not anymore if it ever was, of that I’m certain.”
Lancer couldn’t help but think that both Daniel and Jasmine needed heavy therapy to help process all this, especially since this had all flooded out in the way it did, but he wasn’t sure if any counselor was equipped for dealing with the trauma of a human-ghost hybrid. Perhaps the Ghost Zone had one—or rather, one that was an actual therapist, not one like the ghostly counselor the school had once accidentally hired.
The ghost alarm chirped with the signal that the school was safe to return to as the Red Huntress chased the hornets off into the distance.
Lancer began walking back to the building with Jasmine, and asked her, “Do you plan to tell your parents that Daniel may be in the Ghost Zone right now?”
Jasmine shook her head with vehemence. “No. There’s too great a chance they’ll storm in, which I don’t think is good for Danny right now. I think it’s best if I go without them; he needs a gentle touch right now.”
“You’re going alone?” Lancer asked, worried.
Jasmine nodded, then paused, and shook her head. “No, I’ll take Sam and Tucker. They both can navigate it better than me, and Sam knows for sure where the band members’ lairs are; those ghosts are some of the only ones he regularly interacts with in there, apart from the Yeti in the Far Frozen, but if he’s all the way over there those two might not make it to class tomorrow given the distance.”
“But what about the Speeder not working?” Lancer asked.
Jasmine sighed. “Tucker and I can probably fix it, at least enough to get us to him,” she said, though added in a mutter, “I hope.”
“I’ll leave it to you, then,” Lancer decided; in other circumstances he might insist on going too due to the danger as they were teens, but even though she was a teenager Lancer felt Jasmine was more than capable of doing this. “If it takes overnight to find him, Miss Manson and Mister Foley will be excused… Also, when Daniel returns, tell him to schedule a meeting with me, okay? Perhaps we can work out a plan for his homework and absences, now that I know the reason for them.”
Jasmine smiled at Lancer. “Sure thing!” she said, and then took a different path down the hallway.
To Sam’s surprise, Jazz showed up at Tucker’s house shortly after Sam and Tucker arrived there after school. Or perhaps, not so much a surprise—Danny hadn’t been in class for three days, after all, and it seemed not even Jazz knew his location. Until Jazz had asked them about it earlier, Sam and Tucker had both initially suspected that Danny was simply brooding at home, as he occasionally did, especially when angry at his friends. Or, more specifically, Tucker—Sam had assumed ignoring her too had been a by-association thing.
“Is Danny with you?” Jazz asked immediately, as expected.
Sam shook her head. “No, sorry. Like I said earlier, I haven’t seen him since the concert—I was grounded until today because of the music we played.”
“They only grounded you for three days?” Jazz asked in surprise; understandable, as the girl knew Sam’s parents liked grounding in weeklong increments.
Sam nodded. “We made a deal: a reduction in days in exchange for attending some formal business gala with them Sunday night.” Sam suspected even having a punishment to begin with had just been an excuse to get her to the gala, considering her parents had bought her excuse of the ghosts tricking her into it, and been very worried about that. She scrunched her nose in disgust at the memory as she told them, “They made me wear a bubblegum-pink dress.” It had been the most awful one yet, puffy sleeves studded with pink rubies and the look completed with long magenta gloves and stockings, but people had still infuriatingly complimented her on it. The only thing she’d managed to avoid was the bright pink stilettos after ‘accidentally’ breaking a heel, after which they let her ‘downgrade’ to kitten heels.
“So, do you know what’s going on with Danny?” Tucker asked warily. “I just thought he was avoiding me because he was angry…”
“Danny hasn’t come home or contacted anyone since he ran away Saturday night,” Jazz told them in a no-nonsense manner, ignoring Sam’s comment about the dress, which only served to emphasize how serious she was. “I think he’s been living in the Ghost Zone.”
“What?!” Sam yelled at the same time Tucker shouted, “No way!”
Jazz nodded. “I can’t think of anyplace else. His parents and I assumed he was at one of your places, but obviously he wasn’t, and he wasn’t in school… I know he’s run after arguments before, but usually it’s just for a few hours, or he goes to one of you. I can’t help but to think that this time it’s worse than I’d thought.”
“But why the Zone?” Tucker wondered. “It’s full of enemies!”
“And some friends,” Jazz corrected.
“They’re not his friends,” Tucker said stubbornly. “That was just a heat-of-the-moment declaration.”
Sam sighed and crossed her arms. “No, Tuck. Sorry, but Jazz is right—he’s definitely friends with those three.”
“No. Stop joking about that,” Tucker said, sounding desperate. “We were only associating with them because of the band…”
“I’m not joking. You saw him at the band practices.” As much as Sam hated it, since even before the band there had been a bond there that Sam honestly wasn’t sure she and Tucker could replicate. The dynamic was strange, not quite how friends would act if they were human, especially given the violence, but Sam had a feeling that’s what ghost friendships were like—the banter during Danny’s fights with Ember had honestly been verging on flirting for the better part of the year.
“But they’re ghosts!”
“And Danny’s part ghost,” Sam pointed out. Possibly mostly, given he bled green now, but Sam didn’t want to think about that too closely, especially given that—despite Danny saying otherwise—Sam was the one at fault for the accident, since her peer pressure convinced him to take the risk, even more so after the incident with Desiree.
“Honestly, I think it’ll be good for Danny to have ghost friends his age,” Jazz said. “Until now, they’ve all been older, more like mentors than friends.”
Tucker scoffed. “Not sure how I feel about that, either. Frostbite, sure, he’s cool, and even Pandora, but Clockwork?” Sam could understand that reluctance; Danny’s attitude towards Clockwork seemed to have shifted lately, to become something almost like a father-son bond if Sam didn’t know any better—surely Danny hadn’t forgotten that the ghost had once tried to kill him, even though he’d later saved him? Tucker continued, “Besides, aren’t Johnny, Kitty, and Ember much older too? Like, pretty sure Ember died in the sixties or seventies, and Johnny and Kitty both died in the eighties.”
“That doesn’t matter for ghosts,” Jazz explained patiently. “Their psyche stays around where they were when they died. For all intents and purposes, Ember is sixteen, and Kitty and Johnny are eighteen and nineteen respectively.”
“And they definitely act like it,” Sam backed her up. Back when they were practicing, she’d even forgotten a few times that they were ghosts. If she were honest, she and Kitty had become… not quite friends yet, but she could see the potential for it. Or, maybe they were friends already; Sam would have to think on that some more.
Tucker frowned. “That’s… actually kinda sad. They never got to legally drink…”
Sam scoffed. “That’s what your first thought is?”
Tucker shrugged. “Well, yeah? Or, I guess more like, they never got to grow up, is what I mean. They were teens when they died. Can you imagine that? Never growing up, stuck as we are right now? Which, I might add, is something Danny probably isn’t thinking about.”
“Which is something he needs to think about,” Jazz said quietly, to Sam’s slight confusion.
“Seriously! He’ll basically end up as a creepy middle-aged dude that hangs around with teens!”
Jazz shook her head. “No. It’ll be the opposite,” she corrected, voice sounding almost as though she were afraid to say it. “He’ll be the teen with the adults.”
Tucker looked confused now. “Okay, you’ve lost me.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure what you mean, either,” Sam said, though a sneaking suspicion crawled through her mind as she noticed some stubble on Tucker’s chin, recalling how excited he’d been to finally see some hair there. Danny, as far as she knew, hadn’t had that happen yet… Plus, Tucker and Sam were both a few inches taller than Danny now, who had yet to have any growth spurt since the accident. Hell, he’d only recently bought the first batch of new clothes since then, and it wasn’t even due to need.
“I know it’s not definitive proof,” Jazz said slowly, “But I compared some photographs of Danny. He’s gained a little muscle, but… well, otherwise they’re the same. He hasn’t changed since the accident.”
“Maybe he’s just a late bloomer,” Tucker argued, but in her heart Sam knew Jazz was right. She’d started to notice that too, but didn’t want to think about it. “I mean, Vlad seems to be aging, right?”
“Vlad’s accident was also significantly smaller,” Jazz reminded them. “It’s possible the effects were different in some ways. Maybe certain effects showed up more intensely for Danny. Or, maybe different halfas simply get different ghost traits; we only know two after all.”
“True, but immortality? That kinda seems a little too ghostly, even for a halfa.”
Sam walked over to Tucker’s corkboard, which hosted many photos, mostly of her, Tucker, and Danny. She found one of the three of them from their middle-school graduation party, shortly before the accident, then the most recent one they’d taken just a few days prior, right before the concert. It was an easy comparison, as they were similar poses. She handed them to Tucker.
Tucker looked back and forth between the two photos for a couple minutes, face paling as he did so. “Oh, damn,” he said quietly by the end. “Okay, wow. That’s… yeah, that’s pretty obvious. We haven’t changed that much, other than clothing style,”—Sam winced at that; by the end of middle school, she’d managed to get her parents to let her wear blue jeans and darker (not black) blouses, but hadn’t quite yet gotten to full-goth—“but it’s still noticeable, particularly in height. Danny, on the other hand… Oh god, do you think he knows?”
“No, he doesn’t,” Jazz said confidently. “I heard him complaining the other day about his apparent lack of growth spurt—if he knew, he wouldn’t be hopeful that it’ll happen.”
“Unless he’s in denial,” Sam pointed out.
Jazz nibbled her lip in contemplation. “I suppose that’s possible… Wait, this isn’t what we need to focus on right now—we need to go find him, before this gets worse.”
“Worse? How do you think it’ll get worse?” Tucker asked.
“Well, first, Ember absolutely hates adults and authority, so she sure isn’t going to encourage Danny to go back after a fight like that. But more concerning is Kitty and Johnny, who were runaways,” Jazz said, to Sam’s surprise. Despite hanging out with them over the past few weeks, she hadn’t known that. “They both had bad home lives, and as soon as Kitty turned 18 they hopped on Johnny’s motorcycle and fled together—and died while doing it.”
“How do you know that?” Sam couldn’t help but interject.
“I study ghost psychology; of course I looked into all the ghosts we know. Death records are pretty easy to find, at least for more recent ones like them; they only died in ‘89, you know,” Jazz answered, to Sam’s surprise—that was the year she’d been born, so those two had been potentially still been alive at the same time as her, however briefly. Jazz continued, “Anyway, because of that history, they are going to have very strong opinions on cruel parental figures and runaway teens, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to convince Danny that it’s best to stay away.”
“Dammit, I knew they were a bad influence,” Tucker growled.
Jazz shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t say that. They’re just not trusting of authority figures, especially parents. With Danny being so paranoid about his parents reacting negatively to his secrets, and now fleeing after a fight, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re reminded of their own abuse and interpret it as Danny going through… something… similar…” she trailed off, a thoughtful yet worried look crossing her face.
“Jazz? You okay?” Sam prodded.
“Oh god, it is something similar, isn’t it?” Jazz asked, horrified. “Objectively, it is. They don’t know Danny’s actually Phantom, true, but—”
“Jazz, hey,” Sam interjected, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Before freaking out, let’s go find Danny, okay? We can get his perspective on things, and then think about all these implications, okay? Like you said, they don’t know he’s Phantom, and it’s not like they’ve intentionally hit him in human form, right?”
Tucker and Jazz glanced at each other, and Sam got the feeling that there was something she’d missed. “Guys? They haven’t hit him, right?” she asked, hoping she was wrong but a sinking feeling in her stomach claimed otherwise.
“His mom did, Saturday night,” Tucker said quietly, looking at the floor. “Right before he ran.”
Jazz nodded and said in a strained voice, “As far as I know, it’s the first time that happened, but Danny sometimes hides when he’s hurting, so it could be more. Mom says she regrets it. But… I don’t know if I believe her.”
“Though honestly, her dragging him into the house while still in the ghost net and throwing him on the ground is kinda objectively worse, come to think of it,” Tucker said with a frown.
“She did what?!” Sam hissed, then took a deep breath, and trying to keep a level head continued, “Right. Okay, so maybe it’s a little worse than we thought. Still, we need to go find him.”
Jazz took a deep breath. “Yes, yes, you’re right. Let’s—oh. Crap. I forgot.”
“Forgot what?” Sam prodded.
Jazz sighed. “The Specter Speeder is currently out of commission. I was thinking we could fix it ourselves, but I just remembered Mom saying they’re waiting on a part they had to special order, that hasn’t arrived yet as far as I know…”
“Oh, right,” Sam recalled. Danny had been flying her to any band practices that happened in there because of it; whatever the part was, it had to be imported from Japan, and seemed to be taking forever to be delivered.
“Wait, aren’t there jetpacks?” Tucker reminded them.
Jazz winced. “Yes but my parents recently tried to upgrade them to make them safer and now for some reason they give the user LSD-like side-effects.”
“Ooh, yeah, bad idea then… Damn, what should we do? No one else can navigate through the Zone, can they? Well, except Dani-with-an-I, but she was in Taiwan last I heard… Oh, and Vlad, but he’s been hiding in the Zone as well and knowing him he’d just try to convince Danny to go with him instead… That’s it, right? Oh wait, we can summon him!”
“We are not doing that, Tucker. Ghost summoning rituals require blood sacrifice,” Sam pointed out. Unless Danny’s half-life was in immediate danger with no other way to save him, she was NOT going to end her vegan lifestyle via slicing up a poor chicken or whatever and using its blood to draw sigils, nor was she going to let Tucker or Jazz do that.
“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Jazz told them. “After that cult tried to use him to assassinate the Pope, I’ve been drawing an anti-summoning charm on him. He does not need more of that trauma.” Right; Sam had forgotten about that, as Danny always wore a shirt. The tattoo was done in black henna, on his chest over his core, and being a magic sigil showed up regardless of form. She reapplied it whenever it started to wear down, and Danny planned to get it permanently tattooed on him once he turned 18—or rather, once his ID said he was 18, since apparently he was eternally 14.
Tucker winced. “Oof, I forgot about that one… Really glad summoning rituals don’t force the ghost to obey or anything. Oh! There’s also Valerie!”
“Valerie is just as likely to shoot Danny than rescue him,” Sam said flatly.
“You sure? I mean, she’s loosened up a bit lately, since finding out about girl Dani being friendly with Phantom.”
“Yeah but barely. Besides, she still doesn’t know Phantom is Danny,” Sam pointed out. “And pretty sure Danny doesn’t want her to know.”
“Well, you got any better ideas?”
Sam sighed. “Guess not. But we don’t tell her anything about Danny being Phantom! He’s just as likely to be in human form anyway, and if he isn’t we can pull him aside and ask him to ‘help’ locate Danny.”
“Another option is to borrow something from the artifact vault at MU,” Jazz offered. “They’ve got things that can fly us through there, I’m sure.”
“No offense, Jazz, but something tells me that messing with anything at that school of yours is a bad idea,” Tucker pointed out.
“Yeah, guess you’ve got a point,” Jazz said. “It’s somehow been ten whole days without any mysterious disappearances, so we probably shouldn’t push it,” she told them, disturbingly calm despite the implications of the words, giving no info beyond that.
“Oh, that reminds me, I should text Lurker,” Sam realized, pulling out her phone, then explained to them, “We have a date later. Or, had a date. Hope they don’t get upset about that.”
“Oh, I’m sure Lurker understands,” Jazz said as Sam drafted the text, her tone implying that Lurker already knew, which, yeah, Sam wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. Lurker was pretty cool, but there was definitely something supernatural going on there. Sam preferred not to dwell on that—besides, she’d dated a half-ghost before; it wasn’t like a possible lovecraftian horror was much different.
“Right, that’s taken care of,” Sam said, pressing send and then flipping her phone closed before pocketing it. “Let’s go find Danny.”
Jazz and Tucker agreed, and they all headed off.
Lancer sighed as he arrived at the stoop of the Fenton townhouse (or, whatever the lab-house-thing could be called). He trusted Jasmine to find her brother, but he still had to notify the boy’s parents of the three-day absence from school that he suspected they were somehow unaware of—this wasn’t the first time Lancer had to make a house call, as their place was on his way home and they notoriously very often did not answer their regular house phone, usually due to being busy in the lab, according to Jasmine. The ghost hotline he could get an immediate answer on, of course, but they had not been happy the last time he used it for something other than a ghost attack.
That wasn’t the only reason Lancer wanted to stop by the home, though. After learning about everything from Jasmine, Lancer felt he had to see firsthand if the place was safe for the boy. He also had growing concerns about Danny’s mental health, which he did not want to discuss over the phone—although he had to approach that gently, and be sure not to indicate that he was aware of what may be causing some of the stress on the boy. Lancer highly suspected that the way the Fenton parents tended to speak about ghosts played a part in their son’s deteriorating mental state as well. Words could be just as potent as fists, especially to an impressionable teenager.
Lancer knocked on the door.
Maddie answered fairly quickly, in her trademark hazmat suit, hood off. “Mr. Lancer!” she greeted cheerfully. “How unexpected! What brings you here?”
“I’m here to talk about Daniel,” Lancer told her. “May I come in? Or should we schedule another time?”
“Oh, now is fine,” Maddie said, opening the door, allowing Lancer to enter as she directed him to the kitchen. “I’ll put some tea on. I’m afraid Danny isn’t home from school yet; do you need him here too?”
“No, that is unnecessary,” Lancer said, eyeing what appeared to be a bazooka on the kitchen table, partially disassembled with tools beside it.
Maddie noticed him looking. “Ah, that’s the Fenton Bazooka! We’ve been trying a modification to home onto ghosts, but for some reason it keeps trying to target Danny… thankfully, he’s good at dodging! Not that he needs to be, of course,” she amended after noticing Lancer’s look of horror. “The energy blast only affects ghosts, after all; the worst it’ll do to a human is stain their clothes, or maybe knock them over if close enough to it.”
Suddenly, Jack Fenton burst out from the door in the kitchen that Lancer knew led to the lab. “L-Man!” he greeted, hurrying to the table, carrying what appeared to be more ecto-weapons, which he dumped onto the table before taking a seat. “Didn’t expect you! Hey, do you happen to know how Danny and Tucker did on the English project that was due last week? They really worked hard on that! Danny even slept at Tucker’s a few nights to get it finished on time.”
“Oh, I, er, didn’t grade it yet,” Lancer said, slightly baffled at the strange nickname as he also took a seat at the table, as far away from the weapons as he could get. There had been no English project due the previous week, but Lancer suspected telling the parents such wouldn’t end well. If Daniel needed to lie to get a break from a home where weapons were regularly shot at him, Lancer wouldn’t take that away from him.
“Oh, I see. Well, why are you here?” Jack asked, entirely oblivious to the fact that he’d bumped one of the weapons and it went off, singing the wall. It truly was a miracle his children had survived so long… Well, mostly survived, Lancer supposed, heart tugging at the reminder that one of the children was at least half, if not more so, dead.
“Well, it’s about Daniel,” Lancer began as Maddie sat a cup of tea in front of him and a glass of what looked like chocolate milk in front of Jack. She herself had tea as well, pushing the Bazooka away to make room for it as she sat too.
“What’s wrong with Danny?!” Jack declared in a too-loud-for-the-room voice.
Lancer sighed, expecting the reaction. “Well, there are a few things I would like to discuss. Firstly, I’m not sure if you are aware, but he wasn’t in school today—nor was he in school yesterday or Monday. We have not received any notice from you of an extended absence, and although he is known to regularly skip class, it is rare for him to skip an entire day. Frankly, I’m worried.”
Maddie sighed. “He hasn’t been home in a few days. We assumed he was at Sam or Tucker’s, but the absence from school is a little concerning, I suppose.” She sounded resigned.
“I see,” Lancer said. “Well, the past three days notwithstanding, he’s also skipped class an impressive amount. In the past month and a half since the school year began, my English class alone he has missed 11 times, and that’s not including all the times he was late or left class early. Are you aware of anything going on that would explain this?” Lancer, of course, knew the reason now, but he wanted to know just how much these two knew, if anything.
Maddie sighed again, as though she wasn’t surprised—considering how often they had had the same discussion over the previous two school years, it would have been more surprising if she was surprised. “I wish I knew. At first we thought it was innocent teenage rebellion, then we thought maybe drugs, but now—”
“Now we think ghosts are involved!” Jack declared. “He claims he’s friends with some, can you believe it?” Oddly enough, Lancer couldn’t tell if Jack was worried or excited about the prospect.
Maddie nodded, her demeanor definitely more of a cold anger, if not vehemence. “Yes, it is the only thing that makes sense. They must be influencing him! His behavior is all the fault of ghosts.”
The conclusion was sadly predictable, but Lancer pressed on. “Are you certain? I’ve noticed that he often exhibits signs of stress and anxiety—that could potentially be the cause for his behavior, so perhaps a therapist may be in order?” Of course, the stress and anxiety wasn’t the behavior’s cause, Lancer knew, rather the boy’s displays of stress and anxiety were likely a result of his home situation and the fact that he was constantly battling ghosts, but Lancer was not going to tell the parents either of those things.
“Oh, don’t be silly, Danny doesn’t need therapy,” Maddie said, sounding amused.
“Yeah!” Jack corroborated, although there seemed to be an underlying uncertainty amidst the outwardly confident assertion. “Once we convince him to stop listening to those ghosts, he’ll be fine!”
“Jack, honey, are you forgetting?” Maddie said in an almost sickly-sweet voice. “We’re going to break those ghosts apart molecule by molecule, remember? Only when they’re fully gone will he be fine.”
“Sure thing, Mads,” Jack said, trying to continue to sound confident but there was definitely some growing uneasiness underneath; Lancer got the distinct impression that the two were at significant odds in regards to the way ghosts were to be handled, despite putting up a unified front in public.
“And if he isn’t fine after that?” Lancer pressed, putting his teacup down and trying not to vomit as he realized what appeared to be ectoplasm was splashed on the rim; yet another telling sign that living here was a hazard to children. It was also concerning that the two apparently wished to destroy their son’s friends, ghosts or not. That would surely scar Daniel permanently if it were to occur.
“Impossible. Danny’s a Fenton!” Maddie declared, as though that made metal health issues an impossibility. Daniel was very lucky that Jasmine did not have that same belief.
Neither did his father, it seemed, as Jack said, “Well, Maddie, if nothing else is solving—”
“No, Jack, don’t be ridiculous,” Maddie said with a scowl, crossing her arms and sending Jack a fierce warning glare. “Danny is perfectly mentally stable. He doesn’t need to see some shrink.”
“Yes, of course, you’re right, Maddie,” Jack said, looking apologetic, yet also slightly fearful; when Maddie looked away from him, Jack looked at Lancer and mouthed ‘sorry’.
“I see,” Lancer said, internally noting that maybe it wasn’t just the kids who weren’t in the best home situation. He decided to drop the mental health angle for now and said, “Then, back to our earlier topic: do you know where he might have been instead of school for the past three days?”
“Of course; with Sam and Tucker,” Jack said instantly. “Right, Mads? You said he’s been with them since Saturday night!”
“Yes, dear, that’s usually where he’s at,” Maddie replied.
“Has he really been with them?” Lancer asked. “Do you know for certain? Those two were in school, and claim to have not heard from him.”
“Oh,” Jack said, face falling. “Well, I’m sure he’s fine,” he said, perking up some. “Danny just runs off sometimes, but he always comes back!”
Lancer gave pause to that. “He does? What is the longest he was away for?”
“Hm? Oh, maybe a week? Or, no, maybe two? But that was in the summer, we just assumed he went on vacation with his friends and forgot to tell us.”
Maddie sighed. “He’s so bad at communication. We tried to call him, but he didn’t answer—I’m almost thinking that he was ignoring the calls!”
“Don’t worry, though; he was grounded after,” Jack said.
Lancer didn’t comment, neither about the irony of the comment on bad communication or the likelihood that Daniel actually was ignoring them. The comment about the week or two that Danny had vanished and neither parent actually looked was concerning, too. It seemed that it only mattered to them when a ghost was involved—when Ember had flown off with him a few weeks prior, they had been driving all over town with megaphones inquiring where Danny was. Yet without a ghost explicitly involved, he could vanish for weeks and they would barely question it. Honestly, Lancer had half a mind to call CPS, if he thought they’d do anything—given that Daniel was already 16, at least on paper, they likely wouldn’t. Plus that could be dangerous, if it ended up revealing Daniel’s secret and the GIW got involved.
Actually… maybe the threat alone would be enough; they didn’t have to know that he wasn’t actually going to call them. “Mr. and Mrs. Fenton, I am going to be blunt. What I have seen and heard is more than enough to warrant a call to CPS. I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt for now. However, if things do not improve, I will be calling them.”
Maddie frowned and gave Lancer a frankly frightening glare. “And just what do you mean, ‘what you’ve seen and heard’?” she demanded.
“Well, for starters, your son had been missing for days, yet it appears you didn’t even think to check if he was actually at his friends’. Your kitchen table is full of weapons, some with the safety off, which you didn’t notice went off when you bumped it.” He gestured to the scorch mark on the wall, then pointed to his cup. “Your dishware is contaminated with ectoplasm, which from my understanding is toxic, and you didn’t even notice before using it to serve someone.”
Jack looked a bit guilty. “When you put it like that…”
Maddie, however, waved it off. “Like I said, Danny’s done this before, and it’s always fine. The mug and weapon safety issues were just flukes, that doesn’t happen much.” Lancer got the impression that ‘not much’ was a lot more often than she was implying.
Jack gasped in realization, shifting the subject slightly as he did so. “Wait a second. Mads, what if Danny is staying with those ghosts? Ghosts don’t go to school, so maybe that’s why he hasn’t been in school!”
Maddie then gasped too. “You’re right, Jack! They must have kidnapped him! Oh, no, our baby is out there alone, trapped and held hostage by ghosts—we must find him!”
Lancer got the distinct impression that the parents had completely different interpretations on what might have happened, with Jack entertaining the (very likely) idea that Daniel was willingly skipping school to spend time with his ghost friends whereas Maddie was refusing to believe anything other than the ghosts having malicious intent and in denial that Daniel would ever willingly be with ghosts. Regardless, both parents leaped out of their seats and grabbed the functional weapons off of the table. Jack then grabbed a square scanning device.
“Wait, Jack, that one’s only programmed to track Phantom,” Maddie told him, then said under her breath, “Or at least it would if I could get it working for more than five minutes.” Lancer resisted smiling at that; he was sure the machinery failure was more likely the result of sabotage than simple malfunction.
Jack gasped. “Mads! What if Phantom knows where Danny is?!”
Maddie frowned. “Why would Phantom know where Danny is? They probably don’t even know each other, seeing as we’ve never seen them in the same place together.”
“Well we didn’t know he was associating with those other three ghosts until the concert,” Jack pointed out, then frowned.
“But… Doesn’t Phantom have some sort of vendetta against those three? We’ve seen them fighting,” Maddie pointed out.
“Yeah but those fights always seemed more playful than with other ghosts.”
“Pfft, ghosts don’t play,” Maddie said, waving a hand in dismissal. “You know that, Jack,” she said, then her eyes widened. “Wait—if Phantom’s against them, and Danny’s with them, Phantom may be after Danny too!”
Jack frowned. “Are you sure, Mads?”
“Of course, Jack! It’s the only logical conclusion! What’s with you lately? Do you want to save Danny or not?!”
“R-right, sorry! You’re right, of course,” Jack stammered, then said more resolutely, “Come on, we can’t waste another second.” He hurried towards the door and as he ran out yelled, “Danny, we’re coming for you! Phantom’s going down, molecule by molecule!” It was an obvious act, at least to Lancer—and his parents tried to say that being a thespian in school would never be useful in the long run!
The two dashed out the door, Lancer left sitting in the kitchen in mild shock. Well, no wonder the boy didn’t want to tell his parents his secret! Lancer couldn’t help but think that something felt heavily off, though; Jack seemed to perhaps be hiding his actual views, unless Lancer was reading into it too much. His thoughts on ghosts had clearly started to shift over the past two years. Maybe he’d even take Daniel’s secret well. Maddie, however, definitely seemed like a real danger, and Lancer wouldn’t put it past her to be unaccepting of her son having any ghostly abilities.
Moments later, voices sounded at the door, and a group of teenagers walked in, heading right to the kitchen as they talked about how they were lucky the parents had left just then: Jasmine, Tucker, Sam, and to Lancer’s surprise, Valerie—the last one wearing a suit with the hood down, one well known to belong to the Red Huntress.
Tucker noticed Lancer first as they entered the room. “Lancer?!”
“That’s Mister Lancer to you,” Lancer instinctually corrected. Before they could ask, he told them, “I was having a meeting with Daniel’s parents when they ran out the door.”
“What did you tell them?” Jasmine asked with suspicion.
“Only about his school attendance problems,” Lancer assured her. “They did not seem nearly worried enough about where he was, until they—well, Maddie—suddenly decided that ghosts must have kidnapped him, and then concluded that for some reason Phantom is targeting him too, upon which they rushed out.”
Jasmine sighed in resignation. “Yeah, that sounds on brand for them, unfortunately.”
Lancer stood up. “Apologies if I’m overstepping, but do you mind if I see the lab? After being in the kitchen, I have worries about their lab safety, and want to be sure they’re unfounded.” He gestured to the mug and weapons.
Jasmine scoffed at that. “Oh, they’re not unfounded. Whole thing is a big OSHA violation; honestly not surprised that Danny and I aren’t both dead by now.”
Lancer frowned, not having missed the emphasis on the word ‘both’. “That… is highly concerning, Jasmine.”
Jasmine winced. “Sorry, not sure where that came from; I seem to be on edge today,” she said apologetically. “Anyway, you can come down if you want, we’re headed there anyway, that’s where the portal is.”
“Ah, yes, you believe young Daniel is in the Ghost Zone,” he recalled. He supposed it was lucky the two parents had fled.
“What! You told Lancer?!” Sam said, looking at Jasmine in disbelief.
Jasmine shrugged. “He figured things out, and I kinda trauma dumped a bit. Pretty sure everything’s good, though,” she said, looking towards Lancer in a way that indicated she wanted confirmation.
“Yes, it’s all good; I won’t tell your secrets, especially to your parents,” Lancer assured her. “Or yours, Miss Gray,” he added, looking towards the girl.
Valerie, hood now on, winced. “Damn, I was really hoping you wouldn’t notice that,” the girl grumbled.
“Well, then!” Jasmine said, clapping her hands together. “To the lab!”
Once they made their way down into the basement lab, and Lancer saw all the biohazards and weaponry around, the kids paying no heed to it, he pulled Jasmine aside.
“What’s wrong, Mister Lancer?” Jasmine asked.
“This entire house isn’t safe, for either you or your brother,” he told her quietly. “Is it?”
Jasmine shifted nervously, then said a quiet, “No, it’s really not. My parents mean well, but… It’s not a good home for children at all. And… they’re not great parents, either… Neglect, I believe, is the term that fits. I more or less raised Danny, truthfully. I don’t doubt they love us, but their ghost obsession often takes precedence over our wellbeing, until there’s an emergency like now,” she explained, then added in a somewhat bitter mumble, “which apparently still gets ignored until ghosts are involved.”
“Have you considered moving out? You’re 18,” he pointed out. “You could take Daniel with you.”
Jasmine sighed. “I’ve considered it, yes. But with how often we need to use the portal and borrow equipment… it’s just not tenable. I know you’re worried, Mister Lancer, but we’ve got it handled, trust me.”
“I do trust you,” Lancer said. “It’s just… learning you two grew up in a place like this… I’m sorry. Someone should have noticed sooner. If they had, perhaps Daniel wouldn’t be… well, you understand.”
Jasmine sighed. “Unfortunately, I do understand. It’s heart wrenching… Ah, sorry, looks like they’re calling me over. Hopefully, Danny will be back in school tomorrow, don’t you worry! Or, well, maybe the next day? Time can be weird in the Ghost Zone. If they’re all not back in school by Friday, then you can worry!” she told him.
Lancer let out a slow breath. “Okay. Best of luck,” he told her, and she hurried over to hop onto the Red Huntress’s hoverboard, which had expanded in size to fit all four teenagers.
Lancer watched the group fly through the portal, desperately hoping that things would work out—as well as more than a little concerned that apparently Amity Park’s safety had largely rested in the hands of his own teenage students for the past two years.
Notes:
Next up: Danny is (reluctantly) rescued!
Chapter 6: The reluctant rescuee
Summary:
The search for Danny is on! Jack and Maddie take to the streets with the GAV, and Valerie escorts Sam, Tucker, and Jazz through the Ghost Zone to go rescue Danny.
They find Danny contently chilling with his ghost friends while watching TV and drinking a radioactive smoothie; can his friends convince this runaway to come home when he clearly doesn't want to?
Oh, and Valerie finally puts some things together.
Notes:
(yes, spellcheck, 'rescuee' is a real word, I checked the dictionary)
Warning for depiction of child abuse in 4th scene (when they get home).
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Valerie contemplated her situation as she flew her enlarged hoverboard through the Ghost Zone, with Sam, seated cross-legged in front, occasionally directing her. Jazz and Tucker sat behind Valerie on either side, legs dangling. The three seemed much more comfortable there than Valerie had expected; she herself still wasn’t quite used to the eerie atmosphere despite having been there before. Tucker had explained that they’d been mapping it using the Specter Speeder, but still, it was uncanny to see humans being so familiar with this place.
“So, let me get this straight,” Valerie said. “Danny, for some reason, is lost in here?” They hadn’t given her much information at all, only that Danny was likely here and they needed help finding him. The fact that they knew she was the Red Huntress was extremely surprising, and a little suspicious, but Danny was her friend so Valerie hadn’t hesitated to help.
That didn’t mean she didn’t want answers though. Why would Danny possibly be in this godforsaken place? He was terrified of ghosts! …Wasn’t he? Actually, no, he wasn’t anymore, if the band was any indication. When had that changed?
“Well, not exactly lost,” Tucker said cagily.
“Then why are we looking for him?” Valerie asked, then realized, “He was kidnapped, wasn’t he? After the band thing? The ghosts tricked him into helping them and then took him! Why didn’t you say so earlier!? It’s been days!”
“He wasn’t kidnapped!” Tucker hurriedly denied. “I swear he wasn’t! It’s more like… ran away?”
“Ran away?” Valerie asked, now even more confused. “Why would he run away into the Ghost Zone?”
Sam sighed. “He got in a fight with his parents. They’d never think to look here.”
“Seriously?! He runs away and his first thought of where to hide is the freaking Ghost Zone?! You’ve gotta be pulling my leg.”
“Unfortunately no,” Tucker said dryly. “He’s got ghost friends here, apparently.”
“The band,” Valerie realized. “I was wondering why Danny would be in a band that had ghosts in it…” Of course, they were ghosts, so couldn’t truly be his friends, but if he thought they were then him being in a band with them and then hiding with them would make sense.
“Yeah,” Sam confirmed. “That’s why Danny fought with his parents.”
“But—wait, you were in the band too! Don’t tell me you’re allegedly friends with them too?!”
Sam sighed. “Not really. It’s more of a working relationship. We needed more band members, and he recruited them without consulting with me,” Sam revealed.
“And you let them in the band?!”
Sam shrugged. “Like I said, we needed members. Honestly though, they're actually pretty cool once you get to know them. Anyway, he’ll probably be at one of their places; take a right here, that’s Ember’s lair, we’ll check that first.”
They headed to the lair in silence, Valerie still floored at how Danny, known to the school for being terrified of ghosts, had not only invited ghosts into his band, but had apparently fled to them. Clearly they were tricking him; but, as a Fenton, shouldn’t he be well aware ghosts did that, and knew enough not to fall for their tricks? In that case, something else must be going on; maybe he was overshadowed?
Once at their destination, the others jumped onto the slab of earth, right in front of a door covered in band stickers. Valerie disengaged her hoverboard and landed as Sam knocked.
Ember McLain answered the door; Valerie had to resist shooting on instinct. This was the ghost’s home, after all, not Amity Park. Valerie had to be civil, even if she didn’t like this particular ghost at all, having not forgotten how she tried to take over the world with music; it was a miracle nothing happened at that Fall Festival concert.
“Babypop ain’t here,” Ember told them bluntly. Valerie bristled at the gall of a ghost having a nickname for her friend.
“Could you tell us where he is?” Sam asked, a strange tension between the two.
“Nope,” Ember said, popping the ‘pe’.
“And why not?”
“‘Cuz we’ve got a hot date later today.”
Sam scoffed at that, though Valerie could sense a little concern too as the girl said, “No, you don’t.”
“Okay, fine, I don’t. But I totally would if he actually liked girls—he’s so much hotter than Skulker! Great kisser, too.”
The group stared at Ember; Tucker and Sam looked very confused, as Valerie was, although Jazz looked more surprised that the three of them were surprised. Valerie considered the info; it was true that when she dated Danny, it seemed hardly different than friendship, and any kiss or affectionate touch, even hand-holding, had seemed to make Danny slightly uncomfortable even when he said it was fine, but Valerie had chalked it up to inexperience. Was that not the reason after all? Could he actually be gay? Did he know it back then? No, he couldn’t have.
“What?” Ember asked, seeing their expressions.
“What do you mean, Danny doesn’t like girls?” Valerie asked.
Ember scrunched her brow in slight confusion, then her eyes widened in realization. “Oh, crap. You didn’t know that, did you?” she said, seeming worried. Could ghosts even get worried? Valerie surprisingly found herself unsure; it was pretty realistic if the ghost were faking.
Tucker scoffed. “Come on, Danny’s totally into girls! He dated some! And, wait a second, you two kissed at the end of the concert!”
“Yeah, well, comphet’s a bitch,” Ember said with a shrug. “And the concert was just for kicks; no rule that friends can’t kiss, right?”
“Danny isn’t gay,” Tucker insisted. “I’m his best friend; I would know that.”
Ember shrugged. “Well, if you say so. Forget I said anything, okay? Anyway, he’s not here, so you can go away now.”
“No; you know where Danny is,” Sam said, apparently not wanting to dwell on Ember’s suggestion of Danny’s sexuality—Valerie wondered if a similar thing had happened when she briefly tried dating Danny, where the friendship aspect was stronger than any romantic aspects. Was that why they’d broken up after such a short time together? And what did Ember mean by that other word, ‘comphet’?
Ember crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. “Come on. He’s clearly hiding from you mortals. I’m not going to break his trust like that.”
“He’s with Kitty and Johnny, isn’t he?” Sam concluded.
“Again, ain’t gonna confirm nor deny; now scram!” Ember closed the door in their faces.
“Well that was productive,” Tucker said flatly.
Valerie opened her hoverboard again and decided, “Let’s go try Kitty and Johnny’s, then.”
Danny had not been kidnapped by ghosts, of that Jack was certain. If he was with ghosts, it was likely his band mates, and he would be with them willingly, just like he had been visiting them for weeks prior—after all, the band had to practice to get that good.
Jack didn’t dare mention that to Maddie, though; honestly, he wondered how she hadn’t realized that. Maybe she’d chalked it up to ghost magic. That, or she was in denial.
The current plan was driving around in the GAV, Maddie in charge so as to drive slowly and carefully enough to run the scans. So far the only ghost they’d found was the Box Ghost, which they’d taken care of using the portal gun, twice; not for the first time Jack wondered if that ghost had some sort of way to create portals or had a sixth sense for natural portal locations. That, or what they thought was one ghost was actually quintuplets or something.
Jack stared out the window and thought about the current situation, which wasn’t looking good. Lancer had mentioned the possibility of CPS. It wasn’t that bad though… was it? Jack thought back to the reasons Lancer listed.
Firstly, they hadn’t noticed Danny had run away—which wasn’t fair. Maddie had told him that he was with his friends! …Although, Jack had just assumed she had followed through on that. Perhaps he should have asked her if she had. Of course, her reply probably would be venomous because she didn’t like it when he questioned her, meaning it would likely lead to another fight…
Then there was the matter of the weapons on the table, which was… well, that actually was fair. The ecto-weapons didn’t damage humans too badly, but that one had actually singed the wall permanently due to incorrect calibration, which might damage humans—it had been on the table to fix that issue. So that was definitely objectively bad. But that didn’t happen often… did it? Maybe it did. Well, that was an easy fix—in the future, weapons work would be restricted to the lab in a designated area with protective shields.
Then there was the ecto-contamination, which was… also fair. The evil weiners were still haunting the fridge, and there were definitely issues with contaminated dishware. Storing toxic ectoplasm samples in the same place as food meant for human consumption probably wasn’t the best idea; they should invest in a fridge for the basement. Maddie would probably say it was a waste of money and electricity to get a second fridge, but it was a matter of health and safety. Perhaps Jack should just buy it himself; he had a substantial amount of inherited family money (most of which he rarely touched as their joint account that contained the money from their patents and ecto-science book sales, along with research grants, usually covered most things, especially as they didn’t have a mortgage due to the property also being inherited). He’d been saving the inherited money for emergencies and to use for the kids when needed (such as to pay for Jazz’s psychology summer camp a few years back, which was surprisingly expensive), but didn’t this count as both?
Maddie pulled to the side of the road and sighed. “Jack, this isn’t working,” she said.
“What’s not working?” Jack asked, snapping out of his thoughts.
Maddie ambiguously waved a hand. “This! We keep driving around and getting nowhere! No ghosts are even around, other than—oh for fuck’s sake!” she yelled, and Jack winced; Maddie almost never cursed like that.
Jack glanced out the window, seeing the Box Ghost flying past. Maddie was already leaning out the window with the portal gun; she got the ghost in one shot.
Maddie took a deep breath and she drew the weapon back into the GAV. “Okay, we need a new plan. Danny obviously has to be with the ghosts, and they’re obviously not in Amity. Where else might they be?”
“Well, those ghosts he’s friends with have lairs in the Ghost Zone, right? Maybe he’s there?” Jack suggested. The Specter Speeder was down, but they could fix it—the part they’d been waiting on had arrived earlier that day.
Maddie scoffed at that. “Jack, the portal is in our basement. We would have noticed if he snuck back inside the house and then went into it.”
Jack absolutely was not sure of that at all, but decided not to argue. “So where should we look?”
Maddie considered that for a moment. “The local news channel might be willing to send out a message for us. Let’s try that.”
Jack nodded. “Sounds good, Mads,” he said, although he doubted that would do much, especially if Danny didn’t actually want to come back.
Danny sat with his legs curled up on the couch in Johnny and Kitty’s lair, wearing black jeans and a green t-shirt with a black cat silhouette across the front that he’d gotten at a local ghost tailor, watching the local Amity Park evening news on the TV—despite the ‘vacation’, he couldn’t simply ignore the town! Watching the evening news each night had been a compromise. He clutched a strawberry ecto-smoothie in his hands, which Johnny had brought back for him from a ghost smoothie shop a few lairs over, where he and Kitty had finished their afternoon date. The two were currently seated at a small table doing a puzzle.
There was a knock on the door, and Kitty called, “come in!”, likely assuming it was Ember, as she’d told them she’d stop by sometime that evening.
Danny had assumed that too, until he caught the scent of human emotion in the air which caused him to turn to the door. He froze when instead of Ember a group of humans entered the lair, looking around with wide eyes. Thank the Ancients that he was currently in his human form! Well, human-ish form, given the ever-present fangs.
“Yo, the hell are you all doing here?” Johnny asked testily, though didn’t bother to move either.
“Yeah, we didn’t invite you!” Kitty chimed in.
“Hey, you’re the one who said we could come in,” Tucker pointed out, vibe giving off nervousness despite the casual joking demeanor that he expressed on the surface.
“Well, we thought you were Ember,” Kitty replied.
As the group of humans proceeded further in, Shadow sprung up from Johnny, blocking them and snarling; they all took a step back, surprise and fear palpable.
Johnny sighed and said tiredly, “Shadow, retreat.”
Shadow shot Johnny a questioning look, then after a brief pause returned to the ghost, and the humans calmed slightly.
Danny smiled in amusement and went back to watching the news, wanting to catch at least some before Sam, Tucker, and Jazz confronted him. For some reason, he wasn’t that nervous about the situation—if anything, he was a little irritated that they were interrupting his much-needed vacation.
“So, does that mean we can come in?” Sam asked tepidly, frustration building under the wariness.
“Sure, whatever,” Johnny said with a shrug. “After all, three more smokin’ hot chicks are—”
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Johnny!” Kitty chided. “You promised not to flirt with other girls!”
Wait. Danny scrunched his brow in slight confusion. Did Johnny say three girls?
Johnny rolled his eyes at his girlfriend. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway,” he said to the humans, “There’s some leftover pizza from yesterday in the fridge, help yourself I guess.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” Tucker said, nervousness being replaced with eager anticipation as he made a beeline for the kitchen; was Tucker seriously that food-driven?
Danny turned back to look at the remainder of the group and blinked, finally processing who exactly was there with the group. “Wait. Valerie!?” he asked, still not moving from his seat; he knew none of the humans would attack, and he was comfortable. He was surprised he hadn’t sensed her though; the other humans were easy to recognize from the emotions wafting off them, but Valerie’s felt subdued. Maybe her suit was protecting her.
“What? You know who I am too?!” Valerie asked in a slight panic; right, her Red Huntress costume was fully on, hood included, and she thought her identity was a secret. Oops. She hid her demeanor quickly, but despite the emotion being subdued clearly exuded worry about her identity no longer being as hidden as she’d thought, which Danny understood.
“Well, duh. It’s kinda obvious,” Danny replied snarkily, not really caring about much at the moment and slightly ticked off that they’d appeared just as he had sat down to relax with his dinner and interrupted news time. Plus they undoubtedly were here to get him to go home even though he would prefer to be here; the ghosts had been right, Danny had desperately needed a few days away from everything, especially because he now had to process the fact that he was immortal and far more ghost than human. He’d planned to stay the rest of the week, at least, providing Amity Park wasn’t falling to ruins—honestly, learning that the town could hold up okay even with him gone for a few days was therapeutic in and of itself; he hadn’t realized how little trust he previously had in the other hunters, even Valerie.
“Excuse me?!” Valerie bristled. “What the—whoa, wait, Danny, what the hell are you drinking?” she asked, frustration rapidly shifting into worry so palpable that even the humans probably could feel it as she hurried over to him.
Danny moved the drink away as she tried to grab it. “Relax, it’s just a smoothie,” he told her, aware that the pink glow was a bit damning.
“It’s glowing!”
“Um…” Danny did not have a good explanation for that; glowing to this degree meant radioactive or ectoplasmic, everyone knew that, and everyone knew humans could not drink either in such high quantities without some very unpleasant side effects. If only the smoothie cup and straw hadn’t been clear plastic! “I didn’t notice?”
“How do you not notice something like that?! …Wait.” She sniffed the air. “Is that strawberry?”
“Well, yeah, it’s a strawberry smoothie,” Danny said, moving to take a sip; he was surprised she could tell; humans usually didn’t have such strong noses. “Hey, that’s my dinner!” he then protested as Valerie anxiously grabbed it away.
Jazz’s voice chimed in, “A smoothie isn’t dinner!”, though neither Danny nor Valerie replied to that.
“Are you trying to die?!” Valerie asked Danny, her frustration, hurt, worry, nervousness, concern, and… grief?... almost suffocating. Her emotions were strong, even when lessened by the suit, which Danny wasn’t quite sure how he knew but he found himself glad about because otherwise they’d be completely overwhelming. It was almost like she was projecting them, like ghosts could sometimes do…
Danny decided to set that puzzle aside for later. “Uh. Little late for that,” he joked, then winced upon seeing her expression. “I’m joking, sheesh!”
“Well it’s not funny,” Valerie said sternly. Danny suspected Valerie used anger to hide other emotions.
“Okay, okay, fine,” Danny said in a bored voice. “Can I have my smoothie back now? I’m kinda hungry. I swear it isn’t going to kill me.” In fact, the ecto-foods Danny had been consuming recently had been energizing him better than human food ever had.
Danny took some comfort in the fact that he did still definitely need some human food too, as he’d discovered by the third day of eating only ecto-things, although possibly less than a pure human would need as long as he had ectoplasm; he suspected without the ectoplasm though, he’d need the same amount as usual. That’s why there was leftover pizza; Johnny and Kitty had taken a joyride yesterday to go retrieve it, and as they weren’t sure how much Danny needed ended up getting way too much. Of course, those two and Ember had some slices as well, but they didn’t actually need it, just enjoyed the taste.
“Seriously, Danny?” Valerie continued pleading. “Even if it won’t, you’re already going to be super ecto-contaminated from being in the freaking Ghost Zone for four whole days without protection; do you really plan to add more to that by drinking this thing? Come on, we’re here to take you home.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to go home,” Danny told her, feeling defiant as he grabbed the smoothie back and immediately took a large sip, to Valerie’s clear horror. He frowned, noting the smoothie had warmed a little too much for his liking, so slightly cooled it using his ice powers.
“So, what, you’d rather stay here, drinking crap like that?” Valerie asked incredulously.
“Sure. I like it here. It’s nice,” Danny told her, taking another sip of the now-perfect-temperature smoothie.
“Danny, no. You belong in Amity Park, not the Ghost Zone,” Valerie insisted, emotions shrinking again, protected by the suit. Danny concentrated, and got the sense she was… afraid? Danny was scaring her now. Well that was just great.
“Debatable,” Danny grumbled under his breath, even though he knew what she said was true. Though he was having a nice break here, and it was fun being with his ghost friends, he wouldn’t want to live in the Ghost Zone forever. Amity Park was his home.
But for now, Danny would much rather stay here; just four days away from his parents was not enough.
“Hey, kid, your folks are on the TV,” Johnny interjected. While Valerie and Danny were arguing, he and Kitty had returned to doing the puzzle, Jazz and Sam having joined them while Tucker watched Danny and Valerie interact while munching on a slice of pizza, looking mildly concerned, confirmed by that same vibe mixed with contentment from the pizza—because of course ‘food happiness’ was somehow a distinct emotion.
Danny halted his argument with Valerie and swerved his head towards the TV. Sure enough, his parents were on screen.
“Oh, this can’t be good,” Jazz said with a sigh, her and everyone else now watching too.
“We have a missing person’s case,” the reporter on screen said. “Danny Fenton, son of local ghost hunters, has reportedly been kidnapped by ghosts. Here are his parents to speak more about it.”
“Thank you,” Maddie said, speaking first. “Yes, our son has been missing since Saturday evening; at first we assumed he was with his friends, as this isn’t the first time he’s left without telling us, but when he didn’t show up at school it became evident that something was wrong. After some investigating, we have now come to the conclusion that ghosts may have kidnapped him. If you have any information, we implore you to come forward.”
Jack then added, “We also suspect Phantom may have information as to where they might take him! If anyone has news on him, please let us know too, as he may be able to help lead us to our boy!”
Danny, finding himself frustrated that he couldn’t remotely read their true emotions from the screen, scoffed at that and muttered, “Sure, but he won’t,” before taking another large sip of his radioactive smoothie.
Valerie, hood now off, narrowed her eyes at that. “Are you connected to Phantom in some way? Is the Ghost Boy one of your so-called ‘ghost friends’, too?”
“Tch. Wouldn’t you like to know,” Danny muttered, while the humans other than Valerie tried not to laugh and the ghosts actually laughed. Honestly, Danny was somewhat amazed that Valerie hadn’t drawn the connection yet.
Before Valerie, mildly confused at everyone’s reactions, could answer, Sam sighed loudly as the news broadcast moved onto some nature segment and said tiredly, “Danny, you really need to go home; continuing to avoid your parents will only make it worse.”
“Not if I avoid them forever,” Danny pointed out snarkily.
“No, Sam’s right,” Jazz said gently, radiating care for her brother. “If you need a vacation, I’m sure we can figure something out, but running away and going no-contact isn’t the way to do it.”
“But they’re going to be so angry,” Danny whined. “Like, I’ll be grounded for life! You know what they said on the news broadcast was a lie; they don’t think I was kidnapped by ghosts, not really. They know I made friends with ghosts, the fight was about that—it’s not a far stretch for them to conclude that I’m currently willingly with ghosts. If they seriously do think I’ve been kidnapped, they’re deep in denial.”
“Well, they don’t need to know the true story,” Jazz pointed out. “They don’t even know we’re here looking. You could always claim you were just wandering around in the human realm, maybe went a few cities over.”
“Which I’ll still be in trouble for. I ran away from home and skipped three days of school, Jazz. I’m in big trouble either way.”
“Yes, but the blow would be lessened.” Despite Jazz’s calm demeanor, she was definitely nervous below it.
“You could always just say we were influencing you,” Kitty pointed out. “Like, they probably get it wasn’t overshadowing, but like, Ember can affect emotions with her guitar, right? Then you won’t be in trouble!”
Danny shook his head. “No, that would only make them hate ghosts more. I want to lessen the divide between the realms, not increase it,” he reminded them, then he sighed in frustration and muttered, “At this rate it’ll take centuries though.”
Johnny casually shrugged and said, “Hey, you’ve got the centuries, so no need to rush, right?”
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Danny muttered, sinking into the seat some.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Valerie asked, clearly confused. None of the others seemed unaware, though—Tucker winced, Sam projected clear sadness, and Jazz had that look and vibe of pride that she got when she was right about something. So, they’d figured it out, just as Clockwork said they would. Great.
“Don’t worry about it,” Danny told Valerie. He threw the empty smoothie cup into a trashcan across the room, surprisingly making it in even though he thought the trajectory was way off, and stood up, stretching out his back. “Okay, you all win, I’ll go home,” he told them, hoping to distract the group from that accidental reveal and well aware that they would keep fighting until he complied—he could feel it, after all. He headed towards the door. “See ya, Johnny, Kitty. If you see Ember, tell her I’ll swing by her place this weekend, okay? If she doesn’t decide to meet up sooner, that is.”
“You got it, champ,” Johnny said, giving him a thumbs up.
“See ya, Danny,” Kitty said with an air kiss goodbye.
Danny hopped out the door and into the air, zooming off as the humans followed behind him.
“Hey, whoa!” Valerie called, and Danny looked back to see her hopping on an enlarged hoverboard, Sam, Tucker, and Jazz joining her. “Since when can you fly so fast through here?!” she asked as she caught up to him, a subtle scent of both surprise and suspicion wafting off her.
Danny winced. He’d totally messed up. Whereas it was true that humans could float in the Ghost Zone, they had no real way to actually fly through it or accelerate, having to rely on inertia from pushing against things which usually led to moving relatively slowly. That used to be the case for Danny when in human form too, but ever since starting to consume ecto things he’d found he could fly in human form here too; or perhaps he always could, but as a lot of ghost things were powered by emotions the mere belief that one couldn’t do something could cause a block.
“Uh. I pushed off of the ground really hard?” Danny tried, though it was obvious that she didn’t believe him. If there had been any chance Valerie wouldn’t figure things out, Danny had just blown it.
Valerie sped up slightly, then swerved around to stop facing Danny, her passengers complaining at the sudden change of movement as they gripped the board tightly to stay on. Danny stopped short before hitting her. “B.S.,” Valerie growled as she crossed her arms, quiet anger surrounding her along with more suspicion. Fuck.
“How so?” Danny challenged.
“For one, at that speed, you’d have had to push off with a force humans just don’t have. Second, you clearly shifted direction, not to mention stopping suddenly. You’re flying, not floating.”
“Okay, fine,” Danny said. “The ghosts taught me how to properly fly in here, okay?”
“B.S.,” Valerie said again. “Tell the truth, Danny.”
“What truth?” Danny asked, trying to delay the inevitable; Valerie knew, or at least had a very strong inkling, that he was a ghost, maybe even Phantom.
“The real reason you can fly here, the real reason you could safely drink that ecto-contaminated drink, the real reason you’re perfectly comfortable being in the Ghost Zone for days without protection. The reason you have fangs. The reason that ghost said you had centuries. The reason that, when you threw the smoothie cup in the trash, it changed direction, as though moving telekinetically while your eyes glowed green.”
“Wait, I actually used telekinesis?” Danny said, momentarily happy at the realization that he’d managed to do so, even if it was accidentally, as it was a ghost ability he’d suspected he had but practicing had only ever caused slight floating of light objects like paper. Then he remembered the situation and quickly said in a nervous stutter, “I-I don’t know what you mean,” though he knew Valerie wouldn’t believe that.
Tucker sighed. “Danny, I think the jig is up, dude.”
“Yeah, I have to agree with that,” Sam said with resignation.
“Do you want one of us to say it?” Jazz gently offered.
Danny nibbled his lip slightly as he debated that. Valerie was waiting on a response… Maybe Danny could get away with a half-truth? He knew the ecto-contamination one wouldn’t work; he could use that for some things, like occasional glowing eyes, but flying, drinking ecto-smoothies, and immortality could not be explained away by such. But, he currently was not in his Phantom form, so she didn’t have to know that part.
“Danny,” Valerie sharply prodded, hands now on her hips, eyes narrowing dangerously—she hadn’t bothered putting her hood back on. For a second her eyes seemed to have a golden ghostly glow—a side effect of her suit?
“Fine, you got me. I’m… not exactly human anymore,” Danny told her, looking away.
“You’re a ghost,” she flatly stated.
Danny sighed and confirmed, “Yeah. I’m a ghost. And no, my parents don’t know.”
“Half-ghost, technically,” Tucker clarified, and Danny resisted wincing at that. He really needed to discuss his recent revelations with his friends.
Valerie was quiet, and Danny risked peeking at her face, concentrating on reading her emotions through whatever the block was. She didn’t look angry; she looked, as well as felt, incredibly sad, yet accepting of it, as though she hadn’t wanted to be right, had been hoping he wouldn’t confirm it. “Not just any ghost, though, right?” She asked quietly. “You’re Phantom, aren’t you?”
Danny looked at her in surprise, not expecting her to have figured that out, too. “How did you—”
“You’ve both been absent,” Valerie told him before he could finish the question. “You’re both friends with these ghosts, but you two have never been seen together. You’re the same age, with the same hairstyles, and have the same expressions. You both even got new ear jewelry and fangs at the same time. It’s too uncanny to be a coincidence. Oh, and I noticed you used ice powers to chill that smoothie—Phantom is the only teenage ghost I know of whose eyes glow ice blue when using those, which yours did.”
“Damn,” Danny muttered; he’d used that power without thinking. “Yeah, you’re right,” he reluctantly confirmed, wondering if he should find a way to shift jewelry between his forms, considering having identical, albeit inverted-color, ones was apparently suspicious. “I’m Phantom.” He thought about switching forms, then decided that wasn’t the best idea at the moment.
Valerie’s vibes, though muted, projected a clear sense of betrayal and devastation at the confirmation; Danny had a feeling that the friendship they had been rekindling when Danny was in human form was shattered now. Maybe eventually it could recover, but it would likely be a long while until then.
Danny then realized Valerie just might summon a weapon, though she hadn’t yet; he put his hands up and said, “Before you shoot me, I do want to say that Cujo really wasn’t my dog, not back then. He was an untrained puppy, and only kept returning to the lab because he wanted his chew toy that was left there. That’s all it was—I wasn’t out to get you, or anything like that.”
Valerie seemed plain confused at that. “Why would his chew toy be there?”
Danny couldn’t meet her eyes as he said quietly, “What do you think happened to the guard dogs, even the in-training ones, once the technology system replaced them?”
Valerie was quiet for a moment, then gasped in realization, putting her hands over her mouth as a feeling of sadness overcame her. “No…” she whispered.
“...Yeah,” Danny confirmed. “I really am sorry, though, for that entire situation. If I figured out what he wanted sooner, maybe—”
“No, don’t blame yourself,” Valerie said with determination. “Blame Axiom for doing something so cruel… Um, back to earlier, though… How did this happen? How did you—Oh wait, that’s kinda rude to ask, isn’t it?” She felt slightly ashamed at having almost voiced the question.
“Most ghosts consider it rude to ask how they died, yes, but I don’t mind,” Danny told her, even though he somewhat did, then took a deep breath and revealed, “I was inside the portal when it turned on. It changed me. Technically I’m not a full ghost, I’ve got human traits too.”
“Like Danielle,” Valerie said with a nod, as though she expected that. “I should have drawn that conclusion sooner; if she’s half-ghost, and she’s your clone, it stands to reason that you would be half-ghost too.”
Danny shrugged, glad that Valerie’s frustration at him had, as much as he could tell with her, already shifted to resigned acceptance, and a softer emotion, maybe pity? At least, for now; maybe it’d change when she processed it more, and he couldn’t sense as deep an emotional profile as he should be able to so maybe anger was still underneath those. He told her, “Well, it’s understandable why you wouldn’t think of it. I mean, it’s not like half-ghosts are all that common,” he pointed out. “My parents are ecto-scientists yet don’t even know it’s possible.”
Valerie was clearly confused at that. “But, Vlad—”
Danny interjected, “They currently think Vlad is a full ghost with transformation powers.” Which Danny was honestly thankful for, as that meant they likely wouldn’t as quickly consider it a possibility when it came to Danny.
“Oh. I thought they only told the world that to hide the existence of half-ghosts for public safety,” Valerie said. “Bet he hates that; he revealed his secret to the world just for it to spit back in his face.” She was spitefully amused at that.
“Well, technically he only revealed he was a ghost; he never actually explained he was still half human,” Danny pointed out, then grinned. “So they think Plasmius either kidnapped or murdered the ‘real’ Vlad, so that ‘missing person case’ is actually real too, not a decoy. His assets have even been frozen. Not that that’ll do much though since he’s got lots of money elsewhere and can easily create a false identity, but still.” Despite Vlad having helped, and redeemed himself somewhat, during the Time Glitch incident, Danny still enjoyed seeing him suffer a little. Call it payback for all the horrors he inflicted before his change of heart, which Danny had definitely not forgiven him for and still had nightmares about. Of course, Danny was also immensely appreciative of what Vlad had done, and was still doing, but it was still nice having him out of the picture.
“Ugh. That bastard… if I knew where he was…” Valerie growled, a furious desire for vengeance palpable. Okay, yeah, she was definitely projecting that; from the looks of it, even the other humans could feel it. Valerie really should look into anger management, Danny decided, though he wasn’t about to suggest that to her—and he definitely wasn’t going to tell her his theory that her ghost-created suit was giving her subtle ghost traits.
“Er. I dunno if that’s a good idea,” Danny cautiously said.
“What, you think I can’t take him?!” Valerie retorted with yet another flare of pure rage.
Danny put his hands up. “I didn’t say that! Just, uh, no need to poke the tiger? Plus, you know, vengeance kinda never ends well.”
Valerie drew her wrist gun, probably an automatic response but that didn’t stop a jolt of fear shooting through Danny at the display as she said, “Well I need someone to take my anger out on and blame for my misery! Unless you want to take the fall again!?”
“Uh, no, no, I’m good,” Danny said nervously, worried she might actually shoot him with how tense she was. “Um. Could we put the weapon away now, please? Those things do actually still affect me in human form.”
“Oh, sorry,” Valerie said sheepishly, only just seeming to realize it was out and retracting it, rage suddenly falling.
“Girl, you need therapy,” Tucker commented.
“I’m already in anger management,” Valerie muttered, to Danny’s relief, then turned the board back around and as she began moving said, “Come on, let’s get back to the human world.”
The group proceeded towards the portal, Danny flying beside them. He had half a mind to just take off in a random direction, further avoiding returning home, but resisted.
Eventually Danny decided to dare to ask Valerie something he needed to know, though wasn’t sure how she’d react: “So, I know you’re kinda probably still processing everything, and if you need more time fine, but do you think you could ever forgive me for ruining your life?”
Valerie sighed. “Honestly? I don’t know,” she said, and Danny couldn’t sense any emotion from her, not even enough to tell if she were sincere when she said, “I want to. Knowing the truth, I know I should. I know you weren’t at fault for the dog thing, and I’m assuming the other bad things you did all have stories behind them too, especially since Vlad was around for some. You already knew my identity so I guess you knew I wasn’t in my suit that time you destroyed it, too.”
“But…?” Danny prompted. He had a suspicion she still definitely was not pleased with the situation.
Valerie sighed. “But you’re right, I do need time to process things. There’s a lot of anger and resentment I need to unpack, a lot of reevaluation to do. So I can’t say I forgive you yet, but I do understand.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” Danny accepted; it was a little disappointing, but he did understand.
“For now, though, how about a truce between the Red Huntress and Danny Phantom?” Valerie offered.
Danny smiled, able to tell she was sincere in that, just by knowing her as a friend. She wouldn’t propose a truce just to break it; her moral code was too rigid for that. Danny told her, “Yeah, that sounds good. Publicly, or no?”
“Well, you’re still ‘Public Enemy #1’,” Valerie pointed out. “But, I won’t shoot you just for existing; you do your thing, I’ll do mine, sound good?”
“Sounds good,” Danny agreed, relieved that there was one less ghost hunter he’d have to watch out for, even if she did still maybe hate him.
Danny’s sister and best friends were quiet during the conversation, but looked and felt approving of the situation.
For the rest of the journey, Danny contemplated what he should do upon getting out of the Ghost Zone (even though he really didn’t want to; he knew his friends wouldn’t let him stay though). What should he tell his parents? First thing he’d obviously have to do was phase their group out of the house. Then, they could enter from the front door, and if his parents weren’t there Jazz could call their parents to say he was home. Or, he could ‘turn up’ at either Sam or Tucker’s. Alternatively he could let his parents ‘find’ him. Maybe that was best? But should he be casually walking around, should he appear injured, should he arrange it so they see him going into a building where he’d been ‘hiding’? Should he tell them ghosts were involved?
As it turned out, none of those options would happen.
As the group returned to the lab, jumping off the hoverboard or simply touching down, Danny noticed the Specter Speeder had been moved closer to the portal, with the sounds of metal clanking as Danny’s parents worked on it, his dad on his back underneath and his mom doing something to the rear.
As soon as the two heard the sounds of the kids returning, Jack scrambled out from under the speeder and Maddie grabbed a weapon from the nearby table, aiming it at them for a brief moment until she processed who it was, upon which she tossed it back onto the table and rushed forwards, her and Jack in sync as they yelled “Danny!” in clear relief.
Danny, without thinking, sidestepped them. “Hi Mom, Dad,” he said sheepishly.
Danny’s mom reached over and grabbed him by the upper arm, harder than expected, as she pulled him back to her and Jack so they could hug him, not noticing how uncomfortable Danny was with it, as usual. Danny winced in slight pain; why did it hurt? Oh. Crap. She had a Specter Deflector on. Danny didn’t react to those as much as he used to, a combination of increased power and simply getting used to it, thus he didn’t instinctually leap back, but it still wasn’t pleasant to endure, like a barrage of static shocks.
Unsurprisingly, neither of Danny’s parents noticed his discomfort, and, miraculously, once again didn’t notice that his body temperature was impossibly low for a human.
Surprisingly though, both parents radiated love; Danny had been half-convinced his mom’s love had already been lost.
“We were so worried, Danno!” Jack said, and Danny didn’t need to feel his emotions to tell he was sincere about that. “We looked all around town for you! We were just finishing up the speeder maintenance to look for you in there; guess we should’ve done that from the start.”
Maddie finally stepped back and put her hands on her hips, anger now far eclipsing the worry and love, as unfortunately Danny had expected. “Just why were you in the Ghost Zone, young man!?”
“Obviously the ghosts kidnapped him,” Jack said, though it didn’t quite sound like he believed it, then noticed the others. “Jazzikins! Sam, Tucker! …Red Huntress?”
Valerie, hood up again, told them truthfully, “These three told me their friend might be trapped in the Ghost Zone, and I couldn’t just ignore it.”
Maddie looked at the other three disapprovingly. “And you all had to go?”
“Of course; we had to find Danny,” Tucker said, as Danny began slowly moving away, wondering if he could escape to his bedroom. If he got out of sight, he could use his invisibility...
Maddie frowned. “Well, I can’t fault you for that, but you should have told us first.”
“I sent a text,” Jazz said, feeling disappointed beneath the casualness, which Danny understood too well; it was unfortunately an expected occurrence.
Jack frowned, moving to the nearby table and grabbing his phone. He did a double-take, then said sheepishly, guilt radiating off him, “Ah, so you did. Guess I, er, left it on silent after watching a movie again.”
“Jack!” Maddie chided, her angry vibe now directed at him. “How many times do I need to tell you to remember to turn the sound back on?” she sighed in frustration, an urge to hit now directed at Jack, though she didn’t act on it. “What’s the point of paying for a cell phone plan if you never use it? Honestly!” Then, she noticed Danny sneaking away and her rage flared, now directed at him. “Oh, no, young man. Don’t you dare run off!” She grabbed his wrist, hard, pulling him back to the group as he let out a surprised squeak. She didn’t let go.
Danny twisted his arm, trying to break the painful grip without using his intangibility, which he was really tempted to do. Sure, it was tight enough of a grip that it would hurt a human, but he had his ghost durability, so it shouldn’t hurt. Why did it hurt so much?!
“Mom, let him go! You’re hurting him!” Jazz yelled, a panicked worry both in her voice and emanating from her.
Danny then realized why it hurt: right, duh, his mom was wearing a Specter Deflector. So even if he tried he couldn’t use intangibility. Danny tried not to panic. “Yeah, mom, come on! Let me go!”
Maddie glared at Danny, squeezing his wrist harder, now enough to actually hurt him, something strange in her vibe. Did she want to cause him pain? Was that a conscious tightening? “Will you stay put for once?” she asked coldly.
“Yes, yes, I’ll stay put!” Danny told her, himself now panicking, frightened even, as he continued trying to twist away. He’d never felt so afraid of his mom before, at least not when in human form!
Finally, Maddie released his wrist, and Danny rubbed it slightly, realizing that thanks to the device there was a slight burn, in addition to a blooming bruise; hopefully if he kept his hand on it his parents wouldn’t notice. His heart raced from the small adrenaline rush; well, raced for him. It was probably closer to a regular human heartbeat.
Jack, to Danny’s surprise, was glaring at Maddie. ”Mads! Isn’t that going too far?” he said angrily, in a rare display of opposition to his wife. He was outraged inside, more so than his demeanor revealed, outraged that someone would hurt Danny, even if that someone was his wife. Well, at least Danny knew his dad was in his corner.
“I didn’t grab him that hard,” Maddie defended, crossing her arms, and Danny sensed only irritation from her. She turned to the others. “Sam, Tucker, Red Huntress; you may go now. We need to have a family discussion.”
“I’ll be fine,” Danny mouthed to Sam and Tucker when they looked at him, their eyes asking if they should stay, both clearly unnerved and worried by the scene. Despite his words, Danny wasn’t actually sure he’d be fine, especially as his mom’s emotions again seemed worryingly different than Danny had expected. She was scary. Danny was scared of her. He had ghost powers, regularly fought powerful enemies, yet was scared of his own mother. How pathetic was that?
The three left, leaving Jack, Maddie, Danny, and Jazz alone in the lab.
“Let’s talk about this upstairs,” Jazz suggested. “That way we can all sit on the couches.”
Thankfully the parents agreed, and Danny sent Jazz a look of thanks as they headed upstairs.
“Out of curiosity, Danny, where did you get those clothes?” his mother asked as they found seats on the couches, Danny sitting as far away as he could. She didn’t seem curious, though, only disappointed. Where did she think he got them? When Danny didn’t immediately answer, she continued, “When you left, you were still in your band outfit, and I don’t remember you having a shirt like that.”
Danny shrugged. “Ember got them for me.”
Maddie’s lips thinned as she said tersely, “That ghost, huh. And where would a ghost get spare clothes?”
“From the tailor?” Danny said, ending in a question as he wasn’t sure where his mother’s line of thought was headed. He could sense emotion, not read minds, and all he got from her at the moment was disappointment.
“Stolen, then,” Maddie concluded.
“Uh, no, she bought them,” Danny corrected.
“Honey, ghosts don’t have money,” his mom said in a condescending sickly sweet voice, as though she were talking to a small child.
“Okay, firstly, yes they do. Secondly, the tailor was in the Ghost Zone. Thirdly, the Ghost Zone, surprisingly, has its own currency. Ember bought them for me.”
“I see,” Maddie said tersely, disappointment swirling with irritation. “And even if the ghost were telling the truth, just why would a ghost buy you clothes?”
“Because she’s my friend, and I didn’t have any ghost money. And it is the truth; I literally picked this out and watched her pay for it.”
“I see,” Maddie said curtly, still not believing that.
Jack, on the other hand, had excitement radiating from him as he declared, “Wow! That’s amazing; to think, the Ghost Zone has an economy! And a tailor? Why would a tailor be there? Is it just the manifestation of a ghost’s obsession, perhaps the job when they were alive? Do ghosts actually need clothing? Is their clothing not actually part of them?”
“Uh. Yes and no?” Danny said, unsure how to explain, mood lifting slightly at Jack’s exuberance. “Their default outfits kinda are, they even self-repair, but they can also switch them if they feel like it, like they did during the concert. But to switch back they don’t really need to change, they just re-manifest it.” Danny was grateful for that, as otherwise the suit he wore in Phantom form would be shredded to bits. He also decided it best not to mention that multiple outfits could be attuned, upon which they acquired the same self-healing effect and could be switched between at will; Danny had actually done that with this outfit, taking Ember’s suggestion that he have something if Phantom needed to go stealth. He also had a ghost baseball cap and sunglasses attuned for that reason.
“That’s amazing! How do you know all that?”
“Uh. I asked,” Danny said truthfully. Ember, Johnny, and Kitty had answered a lot of his questions about ghosts, even ones he didn’t even know he had; he really should have befriended some ghosts sooner instead of trying to figure so much out on his own.
Jack was visibly excited at that; Danny wasn’t sure if the thought of communicating with ghosts had occurred to him before, or if it were new, but it was definitely something Jack was eager to do too. “Oooh, then could you ask—”
“Jack,” Maddie sharply interjected, vibe heavy with disapproval and frustration. “These are ghosts we’re talking about. They lie and manipulate. For all we know, that information is false—and if it is true, it could simply be part of a ruse to gain trust.”
Jack wilted slightly. “Yes, you’re right. Sorry.” He seemed more resigned than actually in agreement, simply not wanting to fight more than anything.
Danny felt a flash of anger at that, and sensed that his eyes had flashed briefly; thankfully Jack was looking at the floor and Maddie was glaring at Jack, so neither saw, but Jazz looked at Danny with worry emanating off her. Danny was pissed, though; his dad seemed to be receptive and open minded, yet his mom was still so rigid, and was squashing that! Where was the mom who had willingly accepted him? Oh wait, this time he wasn’t a world-saving hero, right, he was just a moody rebellious teenager. Guess that had influenced things more than he’d realized, Danny bitterly thought. Or she’d been faking due to the fear of negative publicity.
Danny started to bite his lip to halt an incoming growl, then remembered that, wait, he had fangs; thankfully he didn’t bite down hard enough to draw ectoplasm—that would be a surefire way to reveal his biggest secret. Well, one of them. The growl and anger dissipated with the flash of fear at the realization that he’d been so close to such a mistake.
“Ugh, those fangs again,” Maddie muttered, noticing Danny moving them against his lip. “They haven’t fallen out by now?”
“Um. About that…” Danny trailed, scrambling for some explanation. Telling them that they would not fall out due to being real would not go over well. Unless… “I was mistaken the other day; they’re actually permanent,” he admitted, then lied, “I got them attached at a ghost body modification shop, and on ghosts they would be temporary but apparently they work differently on human teeth. So, my bad, now I’ve got permanent fangs. But it’s okay, I actually kinda like them!”
Maddie put her palm over her face, looking exasperated but the rage and disappointment still simmered underneath it. “Oh, Danny. How could you be so naïve… Did we teach you nothing?”
Jack chimed in, “Ghost safety 101, son: never trust a ghost to make any changes to your body!” He was outwardly confident about the assertion, but there was a vibe of unsureness to it.
“Well, lesson learned,” Danny said dryly, relieved that somehow the excuse had worked for his parents, even if Jazz looked a little incredulous at it. “So, how long am I grounded for?”
“For the teeth? I think just having them be permanent is punishment enough,” Jack said. “Although, they’re pretty cool, so maybe that’s not so much a punishment?” he asked contemplatively. Danny resisted laughing at his father’s unexpectedly sincere admiration of his fangs, of all things.
“Jack, I think he means for everything else, not just the fangs,” Maddie said tersely, clearly angry at her husband now, maybe just as much as she was at Danny, which was highly concerning and made Danny once again wonder if his own relationship with his mother wasn’t the only one strained. “You know, the ghost friends, the ghost band, the running away from home and hiding out in the Ghost Zone…”
“Oh, right. That all happened too.” Jack frowned, and Danny couldn’t place the emotion beneath the words. “Well, running away usually has a reason, so we should have a conversation about that,” he suggested. “So, Danny, why’d you do it, and how can we make it better?”
Danny looked at his father with wide eyes, not expecting that though happily surprised. His dad actually wanted to listen? To him? He wanted to understand his side of things? Maybe Danny should actually try to explain, at least as much as he could without revealing his secret.
“Jack!” Maddie hissed. “No! That’s not a punishment!”
“Well, maybe this time—”
“No! He needs discipline, and talking is not discipline! It’s not like talking will get anywhere anyway—he never properly explains anything, you know that. He’s more likely to lie if you try to talk,” Maddie said, and wow, ouch. Danny’s core pulsed uncomfortably at the lack of faith—er, wait, no, his heart dropped, that was the feeling, why did he think of his core first?
Danny chimed in, “That’s not true,” but neither parent heard him.
“Maddie, nothing’s going to change if we don’t try to understand him,” Jack argued.
“Of course it will, with proper punishment! A deterrent works best.”
Jack sighed, a vibe of resignation coming over him. “Fine. Danny, you’re grounded the rest of the week.”
Maddie sighed in frustration. “Seriously, Jack? Grounding for two days won’t help if he thinks he’s friends with ghosts,” Maddie pointed out. “They could just snatch him away.”
“But, Danny knows now that he shouldn’t have ghost friends,” Jack said. “Right, son?” For some reason, his dad winked at him when his mom wasn’t looking. Did his dad… want him to have ghost friends?
“Uh, yeah, I definitely know that now!” Danny chimed in, jumping off of what Jack had said, even though it was definitely not true. “They were tricking me, I can see that now. I’ll be more careful, promise!”
Maddie clearly didn’t buy it, going by both her expression and vibe as well as her words confirming it. “Somehow, I don’t fully believe that. What specifically did those ghosts do to you while you were there? Did they hurt you!?” Oh, good, there was some actual worry in that, though anger and frustration still dominated it.
“No, of course not,” Danny said as calmly as he could. “We pretty much just hung out. They said I needed a mental health break, so we played board games and ate pizza and played music and read books and did puzzles and went shopping and whatnot. You know, normal relaxing things. We even went to some hot springs one day, one of the permanent natural portals led to them.”
“Wait, there are permanent natural portals!?” Jack asked in obvious awe. His vibe felt like… Danny wasn’t sure what the emotion could be called, but it was like when a child first discovers there is a whole world outside their front door.
Danny nodded; maybe learning more about the Ghost Zone and its culture would get his parents, or at least Jack, to be less wary around ghosts; not for the first time, Danny had a feeling that a lot of Jack’s prejudices were a result of Maddie. “Yup! There’s the typical known locations, like the Bermuda Triangle, which have really big ones, but there’s also a bunch of smaller ones around; the hot springs were in some secluded mountains in Japan!”
“Fascinating! Hey, if we use those portals, we can go anywhere in the world, no need to take long trips or go through customs!” Jack said excitedly, joy radiating off of him; Danny’s core buzzed in contentment as he unconsciously absorbed some of the emotion. “No more enduring searches every time we go through the airport! Danny, you have to show me!”
“Jack!” Maddie said loudly, a warning in her voice. “We are not using the Ghost Zone to illegally travel! And that includes you, Danny,” she said sternly, and his mood dropped again as he sensed her emotions. She was seething, her vibe of rage almost visible in the air along with… fear? Fear of… losing control, maybe?
Jack crossed his arms and pretty much pouted, though his excitement still wasn’t squashed. “Oh, fine. But Danny, you think you could lead a trip into there? Since the Zone’s atmosphere is clearly safe for humans, we—”
“You are NOT going on a trip to the Ghost Zone with our son!” Maddie shouted, hands on her hips and glaring at Jack. The urge to hurt him was there again.
Suddenly, the doorbell rang.
Jack perked up. “Oh! That’s the pizza!” he happily cheered, rushing over to the door. Apparently, like Tucker, Danny’s dad was very food-motivated. He seemed relieved, too, at the interruption.
“Oh, right, we did order that,” Maddie recalled, seeming more irritated at the interruption, then suggested, “Let’s move this discussion to the kitchen; Danny, you’re probably really hungry after all those days there.” It was said in a kind voice, but the comment entirely lacking any true concern, and Danny felt his heart sink at that realization. He wondered if maybe it wasn’t a good thing to be able to taste emotion after all.
“Not really,” Danny said, the mood boost from his dad’s unexpected happiness fading away. “The ghosts got me food.”
Maddie frowned, seeming thrown off by that. “Ghosts eat human food?”
“They got it for me!” Danny told her, opting to avoid the fact that he also ate ghost-specific food that might kill a human. “Yesterday we had pizza—and yes, they paid for it.” Well, probably; Danny hadn’t actually asked.
Maddie put her hands on her hips and gave Danny a stern look. “Don’t lie to me. Yesterday a pizza shop had a large number of pizzas stolen by ghosts.”
“Actually, Maddie, they left money on the counter,” Jack clarified, returning with an armful of pizza boxes. “Substantially more than was needed. Employees seemed pretty happy once they realized.”
“See? Told you,” Danny said.
Maddie scoffed at that. “Allegedly; we don’t know for sure if that money was from the ghosts. And if it was, they likely stole the money!”
Yup, Jack would definitely be the easier one to turn around when it came to his parents’ views on ghosts, Danny determined (if he hadn’t already, and was hiding it from Maddie?). Hopefully he could do it before they noticed that he wasn’t aging.
Danny sighed; instead of going to the kitchen, as the others were now moving towards, he moved to climb the stairs to head to his room, not really in the mood for a family dinner.
“Oh, no, you’re not running away from us again!” Maddie said, grabbing Danny’s upper arm, and he couldn’t help but let out a surprise yelp as he stumbled back down the two steps he’d climbed.
“I’m not running, I just want to be alone!” Danny told her, a small whine escaping as he again squirmed to escape the hold—the specter deflector was still around his mom’s waist, and it hurt!
“No, you just got back; you WILL eat dinner with the family,” Maddie insisted.
“Okay, okay, just, please let go, it hurts!” Danny said, suddenly very conscious of the fact that his dad and Jazz both were in the kitchen and he was alone with his mom.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Danny’s mom said, rolling her eyes as she pulled to get him to move.
“It does,” Danny told her quietly. Not just because of the deflector, either; that grip was tight!
Maddie pulled Danny towards her and glared at him. “If you don’t stop whining, I’ll show you something that really hurts,” she hissed. “Understand?”
Danny stared at his mom with wide eyes, heart racing in fear. She was serious. His mom seriously wanted to hurt him. Human him. That was a distinct desire to cause pain.
“Understand?” his mom repeated.
Danny nodded, finding himself terrified as his mom’s anger and desire to cause pain tried to suffocate him. “Y-yeah, I understand,” he squeaked out.
“Good. Now, let’s go,” Maddie said, clutching his arm tighter and roughly leading him to the kitchen.
Maddie unceremoniously deposited Danny in his usual chair. Jazz gave him a worried look upon seeing him rub his arm afterwards; he wondered if she had overheard them talking, too. The weapons on the kitchen table had been shoved aside to make room for the pizza boxes; as everyone helped themselves to pizza, the continued tension in the room was palpable, with the exception of Jack’s quiet internal contemplation of something that he found exciting, but thankfully it gradually eased up.
Ten minutes into dinner, Jazz said cautiously yet confidently, “So, one of my professors at Miskatonic University has a doctoral degree in paranormal psychology, and is a licensed therapist. He specializes in ghost-related matters, and has helped lots of people who were affected by ghosts and ghost-related objects. I think maybe it would do Danny good to talk to him about his own ghost troubles,” she said, giving Danny a Look implying she actually meant about Phantom before continuing, “You know, because he was ‘tricked’.” Danny could practically see the quotation marks on the word.
“That’s a brilliant idea!” Jack boomed.
“Really?” Jazz asked, clearly thrown off by that. Danny hadn’t expected his dad to agree so easily either.
Maddie scoffed at Jack, a wave of disbelief coming over her. “You can’t be serious. Danny’s a Fenton. He doesn’t need to see some shrink.”
In the past, Danny might have agreed with that. Now, he wondered if he actually would benefit from it, after his interaction with Clockwork, who seemed very concerned with Danny’s mental health—with good reason, given what had happened in that timeline he’d rather not think about.
“Yes, he does,” Jazz said. “Probably more than he lets us see.”
“I’m right here you know,” Danny quietly muttered, though her statement was definitely true.
“Mister Lancer suggested therapy too,” Jack revealed. “I know in the past I’ve always been opposed to it, but I thought about it some more as we worked on the speeder earlier, and Danno, I think maybe it actually could be good for you!” He seemed somewhat ashamed about admitting that, but resolute as well, and hopeful.
Maddie sighed. “I suppose it’s worth a try, seeing as nothing else has helped with the behavioral problems,” she conceded with clear trepidation and held-back frustration, serving to emphasize that she always had a ‘no kid of mine needs a shrink!’ mentality, so her even reluctantly considering it was a big deal. “But, at MU? That place is just so strange, and their views on ghosts are rather out there. I’d be concerned they’d encourage the ghost friendships.”
“Mom, that’s my school,” Jazz said flatly, hurt wafting off her, as well as tiredness—their parents didn’t approve of MU, or at least their Mom didn’t; Danny found himself unsure now if his dad agreed or just repeated what his mom said about the school.
“Yes; and you know my thoughts on you going there.”
Jazz sighed with clear frustration. “Mom, views on ghosts or not, MU is literally the top school for paranormal research in the world. I would have eventually gone anyway—the plan was to start at community college, and then transfer there, remember? We’re incredibly lucky that they suddenly opened a branch here, otherwise I’d have to move all the way to Massachusetts!”
“I was hoping we’d have two more years to convince you not to go,” Maddie grumbled. “That place is simply too radical. Ghosts need to be fought and dissected, not asked about their nonexistent feelings!”
“Oh, so now you’re dissing my major again?” Jazz bristled, her own anger simmering now, to Danny’s surprise. She was studying paranormal psychology with a focus on ghost psyche. She stood up. “You know what, I’ll be staying with a friend tonight,” she told them, stomping out the door, grabbing her coat and school bag on the way out.
“Jazz!” Danny tried calling as she left, but his sister didn’t hear him. Didn’t she realize that he needed her support? Jazz usually acted as a buffer during arguments. Danny’s nervousness rose substantially.
Maddie now glared at Danny, rage fully focused on him once again. “See what you do to this family?” she said, with more vitriol than Danny expected; a slight fear that she would hit him again bubbled up. Maddie continued, “If it weren’t for you, Jazz wouldn’t be heading down the wrong path!”
Danny decided to focus on his pizza to distract himself from the lump that had gradually been growing in his chest, well aware that tears were beginning to form, too. He couldn’t cry here, though; knowing his luck his tears would glow. Typically he’d react with anger to accusations like that, but Danny found he just didn’t have that in him, instead feeling numb and empty, except for that lump.
“Now, Maddie,” Jack said with a firmness to his voice that Danny hadn’t heard his dad direct at his mom before, “Don’t be so hard on him. You know Jazz has had radical views on ghosts for long before Danny befriended some! If anything, Jazz influenced Danny.”
Danny shook his head. “No, it’s true. I’m the one at fault,” he muttered. After all, if he hadn’t activated the portal, if he hadn’t turned himself into a ghost, none of this would have happened. Neither parent seemed to hear him though.
Jack continued, “Besides, what’s so wrong about exploring other views? Maybe they’re even right!” Surprisingly, his vibe gave off a sense of… justice? Or something similar, along with frustration.
Maddie spat at Jack, “They think ghosts can be good! Of course they aren’t right!”
“But they’re not the only ones saying that. If so many people—”
“No, Jack! If everyone told you to leap off a bridge with them, would you?”
“I mean, if everyone were jumping off a bridge, I’d assume there's a good reason?”
“Ugh! Not the point! When did you start sympathizing with these evil ectoplasmic manifestations of the impressions of dead souls?”
“I’m not—I’m just saying—Maddie, please just listen, be reasonable about this for once!”
“I am being reasonable! You’re the one being a fucking moron!”
Danny stood up, unable to handle the loudness of the voices combined with the emotionally-charged atmosphere. “I’m going to my room,” he said, leaving his pizza unfinished as he walked away. He wasn’t even sure if his parents noticed.
As Danny climbed the stairs and headed to his room, he could hear his parents continuing to argue with each other; when he finally got to his room, he locked the door and collapsed face-down on his bed, unable to stop himself from loudly sobbing as tears soaked the pillow, softly glowing in the unlit room.
Danny couldn’t help but think that he shouldn’t have returned after all.
Notes:
Next week: It's back to school! The students have questions. Dash is still a jerk. Phantom gets shot by his mom again, and Jazz patches him up. Danny learns something surprising about Star and Paulina. Danny finally comes out to Sam and Tucker.
Chapter 7: Back to routine?
Summary:
Danny is back at school! Sam is becoming worried about Danny's increased use of ghostly abilities in human form; Dash's bullying has grown worse; Lancer finds Danny injured after a ghost fight and learns more about how he because a ghost-human hybrid; Jazz brings up the topic of therapy again; and Danny comes out to his sister.
Notes:
Happy Pride Month! Fitting that coincidentally the section of this fic that more directly deals with Danny's sexuality (next chapter particularly, but also the last scene of this one) will be posted today.
This is 1 of 4 chapters I'll be posting this weekend! Yes, you read that right, 4--this first chapter is only slightly more than half the average size of the other chapters in this fic (under 6k words), and the other three are relatively shorter ones as well (between 7k and 9k; for reference the longer chapters of this fic are between 10k and 12k), so I figure all together it'll be about the same word count as posting 3 of the usual length. I may get all 4 edited and posted today, or might have to do some tomorrow, but there will be 4 this weekend!
Warning in this chapter for some heavy bullying and depiction of a bad injury (Jazz has to stitch it up), as well as a little internalized homophobia (he's realized his sexuality but is still not wholly accepting of it--remember, it's 2006 in this fic. But Jazz is here to help!).
After the first section starts a stretch where the POV is either Danny or Lancer, for the rest of this chapter and all of the next one. But don't worry; chapter 9 will have the POVs of Sam, Valerie, and Jack!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sam decided she needed to watch Danny especially closely at school the following day. She could tell he was hiding things—well, other than the immortality, which she was sure that he knew that they knew but they should still probably formally talk about. Sam was also concerned about peoples’ reactions to the concert, which they all knew by now had ghosts involved. The school now largely thought Danny had been kidnapped by them, the rumor being the ghosts in the band had betrayed him, so Sam and Tucker both had to watch him today in case people tried to ask him about it and he accidentally let something incriminating slip, or even worse, his emotions caused him to slip up and use a ghost ability, something which seemed to definitely be happening more frequently since the Time Glitch Incident, and even more so after befriending Ember and the other ghosts.
As Danny stopped by his lockers, not unexpectedly Dash appeared, shouting his typical greeting of “Yo, Fen-turd!”
Sam bristled as Dash violently pushed Danny up against the locker. She had half a mind to punch the bully, but would rather not get detention, and she knew Danny could handle him, even if only because he was half ghost.
“What do you want, Dash?” Danny asked tiredly.
“Is it true?” Dash demanded. “Were you really kidnapped by ghosts for a whole five days!?”
Danny scoffed. “Four days, and I was with them willingly,” he said.
“No, five days,” Dash sneered. “There’s no way your singing is that good. I bet there was one possessing you to be in the band, and then they took you.”
“No, they’re actually my friends,” Danny said calmly. “Ember taught me to sing and play guitar, and then I skipped school to hang out with the ghosts for a few days. Kinda wi—wanted to have stayed longer, actually.”
“Tch. You can’t be serious,” Dash said. “No way scaredy-cat Fenton was willingly with ghosts. Stop trying to put up a front.”
“Oh, no, I’m dead serious,” Danny said with a feral grin, showing off his fangs and growling slightly; Sam didn’t see his eyes, but she really hoped they hadn’t glowed, as they often did when his emotions were high—not such a great thing for an angsty teen half-ghost trying to hide amongst humans.
Dash dropped him, blinked, then narrowed his eyes. “Oh, what, you think pretending to be a… a cat or something is gonna throw me off?!” Sam tried not to laugh; a cat? That’s what Dash interpreted it as, in a town of ghosts?
“Well it did, didn’t it?” Danny said, grinning even wider.
Dash glared at Danny, drawing up to his full height. “You’re so gonna pay for that snark!” he said—and was that a flash of genuine panic on Danny’s face?
Danny looked resolute again. “Yeah? Whatcha gonna do?”
“Okay, enough of that, drama king,” Sam said, tugging Danny away before he could do something more incriminating. When they were a sufficient enough distance away, she turned to face Danny and said, “Since when are you so cocky towards Dash?!” She opted to ignore the semi-joke about being dead; Danny already knew she didn’t like him joking that much about it.
Danny shrugged. “Maybe I’m just fed up with being the punching bag. And I really would prefer that rumor about me being kidnapped to die.”
“And the truth getting out would be so much better?” Sam countered. “Good thing Dash didn’t take that more seriously!”
Danny winced at that. “Okay, maybe you have a point there.”
“Did I miss something?” Tucker asked as he joined them.
“Dash thinks I’m part-cat,” Danny said with no inflection.
“Wait what?”
Danny grinned, fangs peeking out. “I growled at him. While showing my fangs.”
“And that means… cat?”
“Yup, Danny’s a cat now,” Sam said, trying to contain her laughter as they entered class, surprisingly on time.
Unsurprising was the rush of questions.
Sam could tell that Danny was holding back another growl. He stood up and addressed the class despite Sam and Tucker’s protests, took a deep breath, and said calmly yet firmly, “Let’s get this straight. I was not kidnapped; I was willingly staying with the ghosts. Ember, Johnny, and Kitty are my friends. Yes, I am actually in a band with them, along with Sam and a cryptid from MU named Lurker. I know it’s surprising, given that you’ve convinced yourselves that I’m afraid of ghosts, but that is the truth. That’s all.”
He sat back down, and the students began whispering to each other.
“Order, order!” Lancer said from the front. “Now, if you’re done gossiping, let’s get to the morning announcements.”
“Uh, no, we’ve got questions!” Star interrupted.
“Yeah! Like, have you been lying about the ghost fear all this time?” Lester asked.
“Where do you go, then?” Mikey wondered.
“Wait wait wait,” Paulina said, clearly excited, “More importantly, if you know those ghosts, do you know Phantom too? Do you think he’d go out with me?”
Sam put a hand on Danny’s arm, aware that he likely had an incredibly strong urge to go invisible at that moment—the last thing they needed was a ghostly slip-up now.
“Ugh, I can’t believe you’d really want to go out with a ghost,” Valerie said, rolling her eyes at Paulina. “Especially Phantom.” She glared at Danny. Sam winced; yeah, the girl was definitely still angry at Danny. The previous day she’d said she wanted to do better on that front, but it seemed some processing time may have changed that—if Valerie ever forgave Danny, it would be a while until then, Sam concluded.
Danny shrugged. “Who knows? You’d have to ask him,” he said, and Sam frowned. Hadn’t he gotten over Paulina? And from what Ember said… Well, maybe Ember had been wrong. Then again, Danny might have just said that to not arouse suspicion—knowing Phantom’s thoughts on things would potentially lead to connections he didn’t want being made.
“So you do know him!” Paulina said happily. “I knew it.”
“I didn’t say that!” Danny protested.
“Interview with a Vampire, students!” Lancer loudly said. “Leave the poor boy alone! We have class now!”
Thankfully, the class actually quieted this time, along with the questions. Sam internally sighed in relief; Danny’s secret was safe for now.
Later the same day, Danny entered the locker room for gym class only to find himself immediately slammed against the wall, a frighteningly sadistic vibe coming from the person holding him there.
“Dash,” Danny said, recognizing the boy, though mildly confused at the vitriol coming from him. This wasn’t the first time Danny had felt such since properly charging his core; had Dash always given off vibes like this? It seemed a little too intense for just a bully. Regardless, Danny still asked, “What do you want?”
Dash sneered. “Well, Fentina, your little girlfriend pulled you away earlier before I could make you pay!”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Danny told him, for what felt like the hundredth time, then grunted as Dash’s fist barrelled into his stomach.
“Hey! Let him go!” Tucker said, hurrying over as soon as he entered the locker room. Other students simply walked by, not wanting to get involved—or rather, too afraid of Dash to get involved.
Dash looked at Tucker with what Danny could only describe as a malicious expression with a vibe to match. “Yeah? What are you gonna do about it, Techno-loser?” he challenged.
Danny wanted to tell Tucker to run, but if he did that it would only instigate Dash; Danny could handle whatever ill intent Dash had, but Tucker was just a regular human. Danny didn’t want to believe that one of his classmates would intentionally severely harm anyone, at least when not possessed, but he didn’t think he was misinterpreting the vibe.
“Dash, leave him alone,” Danny said instead, maintaining a calm, blasé demeanor despite his internal confusion and worry.
Dash turned his attention back to Danny. Within seconds, Danny found himself in a headlock. As Danny tried to wriggle out of it, he realized that Dash’s arm was right in front of his mouth.
It was too tempting; Danny bit Dash.
“Yo! What the fuck, Fenton!” Dash yelled, waving his arm; Danny held on with his hands while he drove his fangs in—unfortunately though, the letterman jacket was thick, and Danny’s fangs were pretty small, so it wouldn’t break skin, but it would maybe bruise…
Wait. Wait, no. Danny did not do things like this to humans. Especially not while literally snarling. He was not a cat, even if Dash probably thought he was more than ever now with this display.
Danny abruptly let go with a gasp and was immediately flung into the wall.
“Oh, you’re gonna get it now!” Dash growled, shaking out his arm and glaring at the wet spot on the jacket. Thankfully it looked to be only drool, no blood. He grabbed Danny again and called some of his buddies over.
Not unexpectedly, Dash’s choice of punishment was tossing Danny into a locker, although this time he went a little beyond the usual, having his football buddies add duct-tape to hold his wrists together and gag him before that. The locker was taped closed too; Danny suspected they’d used a full roll.
Danny easily phased out of the tape, then waited for Tucker to signal that the coast was clear so he could phase out of the locker too.
“Dude. I think maybe Dash has escalated to dangerous levels,” Tucker said, radiating concern and some fear.
“What do you mean?” Danny asked, ignoring his racing heart and rubbing his wrist slightly; that tape had been tight!
“Oh, I dunno, maybe the fact that he took away your ability to scream for help? While you were trapped in a locker that was taped closed?”
“But I didn’t need help. I could phase through.”
“Okay, yeah. But if he did that to Mikey, or Lester, or me? What if no one else saw? You see how that’s bad, right?”
“Yeah but he did it to me. Besides, I bit him, so…”
Tucker seemed slightly frustrated. “Okay, biting aside—which was pretty badass, honestly—you’re still not getting what I’m saying… If it wasn’t you, and it easily could have been, that would’ve been much worse. The tape looked like it went over your nose too, did it block your air?”
Danny considered that. Had it? Maybe. He put a hand over his still chest, thinking back, then concluded, “Not sure. I think I stopped breathing before he did that.”
“...And you still aren’t,” Tucker said with some fond exasperation.
“Oh. Oops,” Danny said, blushing and rubbing the back of his head as he began imitating breathing again.
Tucker laughed. “You seriously gotta work on that.” He then looked contemplative for a moment before saying, “You know, that actually has potential for a good prank…”
Danny scrunched his brow in confusion. “Prank?”
“Yeah! Next time he bullies you, close your eyes and stop breathing! Like, give him a scare. Who knows, maybe it’ll make him realize that he’s gotta ease up.”
“Eh, I’ll consider it,” Danny said, although he was definitely not sure even that would make Dash ease up. Those vibes had been, well… Maybe Ember’s comment that Dash would murder someone someday wasn’t so far off.
Lancer had just finished returning some Spirit Supplies to their storage space near the gym, long after school and sports practices had finished, when he heard soft sniffling coming from the locker room. Strange; why would someone be there so late? Curious, and somewhat worried, Lancer made his way into the locker room.
Sitting on a bench, feet tucked under and arms around his legs, sat the local ghostly Town Hero, Danny Phantom, crying into his knees. He seemed unaware that someone else had entered the room, despite his usual hyper-awareness of such.
Lancer sat down next to the boy, who jumped slightly once he noticed and stared at Lancer, teary eyes wide. “Mister Lancer?” he asked nervously. “Uh, I mean… Hello, citizen that I definitely don’t know!” He looked slightly panicked, yet stayed curled up.
“Relax, Daniel,” Lancer said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder; he flinched slightly but allowed it. “I know.”
“Y-you know? Know what?” Daniel asked quietly, looking like he was trying to hide dread.
“That you’re Daniel Fenton,” Lancer revealed, feeling no need to hide it. He’d thought Jasmine would tell her brother so, but he supposed it slipped her mind in all the chaos of the past 24 hours.
Daniel froze and stared at him with glowing green eyes for a moment, before his expression softened as he apparently concluded that Lancer meant no harm. Two translucent slightly glowing white rings appeared around him, moving up and down until tearful blue eyes stared at Lancer instead.
Then, Daniel winced, hands moving from around his knees to around his stomach, breath heavy as though he were in pain.
“Daniel?” Lancer asked, alarmed.
“Sorry, forgot it hurts more in human form,” Daniel said. “I’ll be fine, though, I swear.”
“May I see the injury?” Lancer asked, “Maybe I can help.”
Daniel first shook his head, then paused a moment before he sighed and removed his hands, showing green ectoplasm rapidly staining the white portions of his black-and-white checkered v-neck shirt. “It looks worse than it is,” Daniel told him. “Seriously. I heal fast. It’ll close on its own soon, and then I’ll probably be sore tomorrow, but by Thursday it’ll be gone.”
“Are you certain?” Lancer asked, worried. “I’m not very familiar with ghost physiology, but that seems to still be bleeding rather heavily.”
“Y-yeah,” Daniel stuttered out; the dim flash of light returned, Phantom replacing Fenton. “Sorry if it’s weird talking to me in this form, but it’s less painful, and Jazz won’t let me have my own bottle of painkillers anymore, apparently I was using them so often that she was worried I’d get addicted.”
That was mildly concerning, but Lancer chose not to pursue that at the moment, sure Jasmine was on top of that. “What happened?” he wondered, gesturing to the wound. “Was it the GIW?” They hadn’t been around lately for some reason but the Red Huntress surely now knew of the situation thus wouldn’t shoot, and the Fentons tended to use the burning gun weapons with exception of the Creep Stick and a close-combat staff with knives on the ends.
“No; they’re actually out of the picture for now, according to Jazz,” Daniel revealed. “MU apparently sicced lawyers on them after they tried to raid the school, and their operations were temporarily suspended while that gets resolved. That’s why they weren’t at the concert either—I’m sure they’ll be back in a week or two though.”
“I see; that’s good to know,” Lancer said. The GIW were a nuisance, and the town needed a reprieve from them, however brief. “So then who…?”
“My mom shot me,” Daniel revealed, too casually for such a statement. “There was a ghost fight earlier; I got the ghost but then my parents showed up. Mom fired the weapon before I could flee, and it was a new one that instead of the usual balls of ecto-energy she found a way to make it hard and sharp. But I was able to turn invisible and fly here, it was the closest place I thought would be empty. They seem to somehow have gotten the idea that I want to kill myself—which, though sometimes tempting, I’m pretty sure is impossible.”
Yet another concerning statement. “Daniel—”
“I mean, they’re thinking that Danny Phantom wants to kill Danny Fenton,” Daniel hurriedly clarified. “Not that I’m gonna do that as me. Sorry, should have worded that better. And the second part was a joke!”
“Was it?” Lancer asked gently. He had noticed Daniel often made self-depreciating death-related jokes, likely as a way to cope with being partly so, but sometimes there was truth hidden within jokes.
Danny quieted for a moment and looked towards the floor, arms once again moving to wrap around his legs; Lancer didn’t speak, giving the boy time to consider his answer.
“No, not really,” Daniel said after a while, barely audible. “If I did though, I’d probably just be stuck as Phantom permanently…” he trailed, then sighed. “Oh, who am I kidding. My forms aren’t really two separate species anymore, probably never were. You saw it—I bleed ectoplasm regardless! There’s a little blood mixed in, and some other irregularities, sure, like having a heartbeat, and gravity working by default when human, and a few more things like that, but otherwise for all intents and purposes, I’m a ghost,” he said the last phrase with a slight bitterness to it, likely self-hate fostered by his parents’ constant rhetoric, if Lancer had to guess. The boy continued, “Don’t get me wrong, I do actually like some parts of being a ghost—flying’s really great, and can’t fault the rapid healing—but sometimes I just want to be normal.”
“No one is truly ‘normal’,” Lancer said gently. “That’s purely a social construct, and no one fits society’s mold of such perfectly. True, some people are more unique than others, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, you’re a Hero, Daniel—you do so much good. If you were so-called ‘normal’, well… most of Amity Park likely would have been destroyed by now.”
Daniel scoffed bitterly at that. “No, it wouldn’t be. I’m the one who opened my parents’ portal; ghosts can get in through natural portals, sure, but most of the dangerous ones come through theirs. If I hadn’t opened it, Amity Park would be so much safer! Especially since half the crap that happens is my mistake, like the stupid Fright Night thing… Although, I guess they’d probably have gotten the portal working eventually anyway… Which would just make my life suck that much more since I wouldn’t have powers… Maybe it would’ve been better if all it did was electrocute me, killed me and spat me out of the portal before the ectoplasm had a chance to change me.”
“You were electrocuted?” Lancer said with a gasp, then realized it was probably 1) rude to ask about a ghost’s death; and 2) addressing the worrying last part of the sentence would have been the better choice regardless.
“Oh, right; you know my identity, but probably don’t realize how I died,” Daniel said with a sigh. “Sorry if that was a bit much.”
“No, I did know the gist of it, that you were in the portal when it turned on,” Lancer said, pushing aside his surprise at how casually Daniel had used the word ‘died’; he was a ghost, true, Lancer knew that, so of course that meant he’d technically died, whether it fully took or not, but it was still a little jarring to hear the word be used. “Your sister told me—she was there when I put the puzzle pieces together and realized who you were, so I asked her about it, and she… what did she call it? Trauma-dumped? When she said it hit you with highly-charged ectoplasm, I didn’t realize that meant electricity was involved.” He should have though, based on the word ‘charged’, given that he was an English teacher!
“Oh. Yeah, I got hit with a shock ten times more powerful than lightning,” Daniel explained, shivering slightly. “My ghost form has some pretty intense Lichtenberg scars under the jumpsuit; ghosts carry over their death-scars,” he explained. “I don’t really like thinking about that… Wait, you said Jazz trauma-dumped? Seriously? Ugh, she must be more stressed out than I realized… She’s probably worried I’ll be mad at her for talking about it, I’ll have to make sure she knows I’m not. Um. You’re not going to tell anyone about all of this, are you?” Daniel then asked nervously.
“Jasmine already made me promise that,” Lancer told the boy, who visibly relaxed. “And I fully plan to honor that.” Technically he was a mandatory reporter, but Lancer had a feeling that it was best to let that slide in this situation. “But, I would highly recommend both you and your sister try therapy—from an actual licensed therapist this time.”
Daniel sighed. “Yeah, I know,” he said, to Lancer’s surprise. “Especially since I just said maybe I should have just plain died, right? I know you caught that and are worried.”
“Yes, that is rather worrisome,” Lancer said, unsure how Daniel could be so confident in knowing that; could ghosts sense emotions, or had that just been a confident guess? Either way, “Honestly, I don’t know if I can leave you alone, after hearing that.”
“I’ll be fine,” Daniel assured Lancer. “I’m not actually going to do anything, I swear. Also, I am getting help; Jazz actually knows someone who does ‘ghost therapy’. One of her professors at the University has a license on paranormal psychology, which is a thing apparently? He’s a licensed therapist, and specializes in things related to ghosts and ghost-related artifacts. She’s going to ask him if he’ll do it for an actual ghost, too. She seems pretty confident that he will.”
“Oh, good,” Lance said with a sigh of relief. Leave it to Jasmine to have things handled. “I’m glad you’re getting the help you deserve.”
Daniel gave Lancer a small smile, fangs peeking out slightly. “Thanks, I guess,” he said, then his eyes drifted to the wall clock. “Crap, is that the time!?” He jumped up, clutching his stomach slightly, although the bleeding seemed to have halted. “Argh, I’ve really missed curfew—my parents are going to kill me! I actually somehow managed to escape being fully grounded, since they mostly blamed the other ghosts, but I still have to be home before dinner every night…”
Daniel seemed almost terrified, a haunted look in his eyes that made Lancer think that maybe it wasn’t just Phantom, but Fenton as well, that had to fear one or both of his parents.
Lancer stood up too. “I can write you a note saying you were helping me clean up the Spirit Supplies,” he offered, which Daniel looked relieved at. “But, first, tell me: will you be safe at home?”
Daniel sighed. “As safe as I ever am,” he said with a wry smile.
“That’s hardly reassuring,” Lancer pointed out. When Daniel simply shrugged, he decided then and there, “Well, if you ever need a place to hide, I have a spare room.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I have other places I can go where my parents won’t know to find me,” Daniel told him. Lancer had a feeling he meant the Ghost Zone.
“Well, if you ever find yourself unable to go to those places, just know you have somewhere in the human realm you can take refuge at too,” Lancer said.
Daniel looked momentarily surprised that Lancer knew the place which Daniel was thinking of, but then smiled gently and said, “Thanks.”
“Of course; it’s the least I can do,” Lancer said. “Now, let’s get you that note.”
Dinner was ready as soon as Danny arrived home, and his parents and Jazz were already eating. Or, his parents were, Jazz was sitting at the table with a plate but not touching it. A fourth place setting was already prepared and served.
“I told them to wait, but they didn’t,” Jazz said flatly, radiating irritated quiet anger and shooting a glare towards her parents, who stopped eating and put down their silverware.
“Hey, no need to let the food grow cold when we don’t even know if he’ll be home,” Jack pointed out, oblivious to how much those words hurt even if his vibe was more neutral than anything—to him it was just pointing out a fact. They hadn’t even tried to call, and Danny actually had had his phone on him this time. They didn’t care enough to even be worried, Danny couldn’t help but conclude, even though he could sense that there was still some worry underneath it all, or at least in regards to his dad.
“Where were you, young man?” Maddie asked sternly, with the expected mix of disappointment and anger. “You know you’re supposed to be home by 6:30 now!”
Danny, wearing a black AC/DC hoodie he’d had in his locker to hide the ectoplasm stains and trying not to show how much pain he was in, sat at the table. Clenching his teeth so as not to cry out or whimper at the movement of sitting down, he wordlessly handed her the note from Lancer, which she read through.
“Oh! You were helping your teacher,” Maddie said, anger dissipating and replaced with a relieved contentment, maybe a little pride as well. “Why didn’t you say so? You could have called, then we would have waited.”
“You could have called too,” Danny muttered under his breath, then grabbed his fork and took a big bite of mashed potatoes that were tinged green; Danny tasted ectoplasm, no doubt from his dad forgetting to wash out a pot from an experiment before putting the potatoes in. Jazz, who hadn’t touched hers, scrunched her nose in disgust, but to Danny it tasted delicious.
Ignoring Danny’s comment, if she’d even heard it, Maddie said, “Now, Jack, why don’t you tell the story about the fight earlier? You were excited about what happened…. right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jack said, obviously a lie, and it seemed Maddie knew it. Nevertheless, Jack began telling the story about their earlier fight against Phantom, although oddly enough even though he acted like he was clearly excited about it the underlying emotions entirely lacked that excitement. In fact, there was a strong undertone of something like worry—Danny was too tired to analyze the emotions too deeply. That had been a very underhanded fight, in Danny’s opinion, as they’d hidden behind a bush and waited until after he had captured Skulker before starting to shoot. Danny tuned it out, focusing on eating and ignoring Jazz’s worried look when Jack got to the part about Maddie landing a solid hit with a new ecto-kunai launcher before he flew off.
When he was finished, Danny excused himself from the table, dinner only partially eaten, and headed straight to his room, feeling slightly dizzy. His hoodie felt sticky in front, where he knew the wound was; it must have opened up again. Thankfully the color hid such.
Jazz followed Danny. “How bad is it?” she immediately asked as soon as the door was locked behind her, worry, panic, and concern swirling off her in waves.
Danny took deep breaths, attempting to endure the pain without screaming. It was so much worse in human form! “A, uh, painkiller would be nice?”
Jazz sighed. “Danny…” she trailed.
“Please? Honestly, it’s a surprise I made it through dinner without fainting,” Danny admitted, voice strained. “It was healing before, I swear, but I think it reopened when I was flying home or something.”
“Let me see the wound first,” Jazz said with a frown. “That ecto-kunai-launcher thing uses sharp blades, meant to slice into ghosts.”
Jazz helped Danny move to the bed to sit down and then helped lift his sweatshirt off, gasping at the large patch of green staining his t-shirt. She quickly removed that too, and when she saw the wound, immediately concluded, “Yup, that definitely needs stitches.”
“I know,” Danny said. Technically it didn’t need them, but having them would make it heal much faster, reduce the chance of it scarring, plus would help calm his sister’s worry. He added, “Props for not visibly panicking.”
“Well, you didn’t actually faint, so I know it’s not the worst it’s been,” Jazz admitted, as she opened the bottom drawer of Danny’s dresser, which contained towels, washcloths, a few bottles of water, and an extensive first-aid kit. “I know you can sense I’m panicking inside, but I can use that logic to help ease it.” She handed Danny a towel, which he placed on the bed before lying down on it, familiar with the routine.
“Hey, um, about that painkiller…” Danny said as he pressed his shirt over the wound to hold it closed, wincing in pain; being in Phantom form would make this easier, but Danny did not want to risk being in Phantom form when home if he could help it, even with the door locked, although how he’d explain this if his parents did happen to walk in was beyond him.
Jazz sighed, then momentarily left and returned with a bottle of prescription painkillers left over from when she’d gotten her wisdom teeth out over the summer.
“Where’s the stuff Sam got?” Danny wondered.
“You used that up,” Jazz said flatly. “And I already told her not to get you more. I’m serious when I say you need to lay off them. This is a bad wound so I’ll let you have some this time, but for anything less you’ll have to stick with ibuprofen or acetaminophen.”
“Fine,” Danny reluctantly said, then dry-swallowed the pill Jazz handed him, which she rolled her eyes at. Danny didn’t understand why Jazz was making such a big deal about this; he’d already only been taking the painkillers for the worst wounds anyway.
Jazz used one of the water bottles and a washcloth to clean the wound. Danny winced, realizing it had cut clear through the skin, to the point he could see the very start of a green-tinged fat layer. Even knowing it would heal it was still gross. Due to the ectoplasm, which was a natural disinfectant of human disease, Jazz forewent disinfectant, though spread some hospital-grade numbing cream around it, which worked almost immediately—it didn’t erase all the pain from the needles, but did enough. Sam had managed to acquire it despite it being a restricted substance; Danny assumed excessive amounts of money had been involved. Jazz then got straight to stitching it up with practiced skill, using ecto-line so Danny didn’t accidentally phase out of it.
“So, I talked to my professor about you today,” Jazz said while she worked. When Danny tensed, she chided, “Don’t move, it’s not bad news, just what we talked about yesterday. Just listen until I’m done, okay? Anyway,” she continued in a more pleasant tone, “I asked Professor Warren if, hypothetically, he’d be willing to give an actual ghost therapy, and he said yes. If you’re still open to that, I set up a tentative appointment for Monday after school; I didn’t tell him who you are yet, but I'm positive he’ll keep your confidence. I can even go to the first meeting with you if you want.”
“Don’t you have classes?” Danny asked. Though appreciative of the gesture, he didn’t want her to miss school for him!
“I made sure it’s during a time I’m free, too,” Jazz replied with a knowing look, an air of sisterly affection and protectiveness surrounding her.
“In that case, guess I got nothing to lose,” he said, not liking it but honestly he couldn’t deny that he’d probably needed help for a long time. “Besides, mom and dad want me in therapy anyway to teach me ‘how to cope with ghosts tricking me’.” He rolled his eyes.
Jazz sighed. “Danny, you—”
“I know, I know, I need to tell them,” Danny said, predicting her line of thought. They’d gone through this routine before. “Like I always say, I’m not ready. I’ll probably be ready soon, just… not now.” His mom definitely wasn’t ready either, though Danny hadn’t yet told his sister just how strong his mom’s emotions were. His dad, though, probably would be accepting. Maybe. He did seem excited about learning more about ghost stuff, and Danny had a feeling that the shots going extremely wide when shooting at Phantom wasn’t unintentional.
“Okay, little brother,” Jazz said gently as she tied off the last stitch. The room was quiet as she washed off the wound again before wrapping it. When she finished she said, “There, that should last the night. We’ll reevaluate it in the morning.”
“By then I probably won’t need the bandages,” Danny pointed out.
“True. Just, let me help you,” she said gently, the care and love she felt for Danny still radiating off her.
“Fine,” Danny grumbled, then moved to help clean up the towels and medical supplies.
Instead, Danny got a pair of pajamas thrown at him, and Jazz ordering, “Put these on, and go brush your teeth and whatnot. I’ll clean up here, and you’re going to get some sleep.
“Huh? Wait, but—”
“Nope, no need to patrol tonight,” Jazz said, predicting what Danny had planned. “You’re resting that injury! Remember, you’re not the only protector this city has,” Jazz pointed out. “It’s fine to rest when you need it.”
Danny sighed in resignation, as it was evident that Jazz wasn’t going to change her mind on that. “Okay, yeah, you’re right,” he told her. He’d realized that during his time in the Ghost Zone, but sometimes he had to remind himself of it. Come to think of it, there was another thing he’d recently realized, but not yet told Jazz…
“I feel like there’s something else you’re thinking about,” Jazz said, catching on it that way she could always do with Danny. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Danny blushed, feeling called out. “Well, kinda? I…” he wasn’t sure how to say it. He sat back down on the bed and looked at the floor, clutching the edge of the bed with his hands as he slowly admitted, “There’s… another big secret… something I recently figured out about myself… It’s, er, not even ghost-related… Well, some ghosts know, Ember actually helped me come to terms with it… But no humans know… Um. I don’t know how to say it,” he said, aware he was now blushing vigorously in his embarrassment. “I know you won’t hate me for it, I know that, but it’s still hard to say.” He knew she’d be okay because Jazz had two college friends who were boys and dating each other, she’d told him that for some—oh. “You might have realized already though,” he realized, “Maybe even before me…”
Jazz smiled gently. “Is it the fact that the kiss with Ember was a way to hide your sexuality?”
Danny chuckled, unsurprised. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.” He sighed. “I really don’t want to be… to be gay,” he said the word in a whisper. “Not on top of all the other shit I have to deal with, but…”
“But it’s not a choice,” Jazz said gently, surprisingly not calling Danny out on his language. “Not something you can control.”
Danny nodded, throat dry. “Yeah… There’s really no way to fix it, is there?”
“There’s nothing to fix,” Jazz said firmly.
“But—”
“But nothing. It’s a perfectly normal thing. It’s human society that insists otherwise, spurned by religious BS. Homosexuality is found in every species, and is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of.”
The way Jazz said it, and with the emotion of certainty she projected, Danny could almost believe it. He wanted to. “I know it shouldn’t be. But I still am. You hear what everyone says!”
“No, I don’t, because it isn’t everyone saying it,” Jazz pointed out. “There are plenty of people around who are gay; the issue is that you all hide it. But eventually, you’ll encounter other people who are, and realize you’re not alone. In fact, I’m sure there’s other people at your school who are! And some of them may surprise you.”
“Really? …Wait, do you know of any?” Danny asked hopefully.
“I have some suspicions,” Jazz revealed. “But, it’s not my place to say. I don’t want to out anyone, even though I know you have the sense to not tell.”
Danny nodded, a bit disappointed, but, “I understand. I wouldn’t want you talking about this to anyone either, even if you think they wouldn’t tell… You won’t, right?”
“I promise,” Jazz said with clear conviction.
Danny felt relieved. “Thank you,” he said. Then, he paused, tensing again as he realized something. “Um. Off of that… How do you think mom and dad will react? Not to kiss, I know what they think of that, I mean to the fact that I’m… that I don’t like girls.” It was still difficult to say the word ‘gay’, even though he had before.
Jazz frowned, considering that for a moment. “I… I’m honestly not sure,” she concluded. “I can look into it though. Maybe mention my friends and see what they say. I have a feeling that Dad might be more accepting than Mom on this, too—just, don’t do anything until I’m sure it’s safe, okay?”
Danny nodded. “Okay,” he said, heart thumping. If Jazz had to investigate first… Did she suspect it wouldn’t go well? Well, Danny knew the stats weren’t good, so maybe she was just being extra cautious.
Suddenly, Danny was very aware that him being Phantom might no longer be the biggest secret he had to hide, including from his parents.
Notes:
Next up: Danny has a more detailed discussion with Lancer about being a halfa, and some of his worries related to such, which ends up more like an impromptu therapy session with some surprising revelations. Then, during a sex ed class, someone asks about same-sex relationships; the most the teacher can do is direct them to a section of the library, so Danny heads there after school, where he finds two very surprising allies and then comes out to Sam and Tucker.
Chapter 8: Section 306.76
Summary:
Lancer and Danny have a more in-depth discussion about Danny's ghostliness which is closer to an impromptu therapy session, causing some surprising and not-so surprising revelations.
Also question comes up in sex ed. class that the teacher can't answer, but she can direct them to a section of the library that can. Danny goes there after school and meets some surprising people there before coming out to his best friends.
Notes:
This is chapter 2 of the 4 being posted today! Make sure to read the previous one if you didn't see a new chapter notification today until this one!
This is the chapter that deals the most directly with Danny's sexuality. Please remember that the year this takes place is 2006, and I have drawn from my personal experience of being a closeted queer kid in high school at that time, with the differences between them and today not being an exaggeration. Lots of progress has been made in the past 20 years! (How has it been 20 years already??)
CW: second section depicts a panic attack (not very detailed though). Second and third contain mentions of homophobic family members, including discussion about teenagers (not Danny) being kicked out of their homes for such.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Dude, you okay?” Tucker asked Danny as he sat down in the Health Sciences classroom Friday afternoon. “You look dead on your feet,” he joked.
“Only mostly,” Danny said with a chuckle, belatedly realizing that he should have said ‘only half’ as he hadn’t told them his more-than suspicion that he was much more than half ghost.
“Ha, ha, very funny,” Sam said dryly, thankfully not catching Danny's slip—or if she had, chose not to mention it.
“I’m fine, guys, seriously,” Danny told them. “Just didn’t sleep well, like usual.” It wasn’t even a lie; Danny was a side sleeper, and the wound had not been happy with that.
Danny had a feeling that an ecto-drink would probably help immensely, especially because he’d gotten used to having something with ectoplasm daily yet now couldn’t thanks to extra security around the portal and his parents’ extra-watchful eye in the lab—why they suddenly cared so much about lab safety, including securing ecto-waste and counting every sample, was weird when for Danny’s entire life until then they’d just had everything scattered around. There wasn’t even anything in the upstairs fridge anymore! No, yesterday while Danny had been at school his dad had bought and installed a locked lab-specific one.
Thus, that day Danny found himself struggling; he was having trouble focusing not just due to the lack of sleep, but also because his injury was still sore, especially as Dash had managed to unknowingly punch him in it that morning, apparently still angry about the cat thing from the previous day.
Danny put his arms on his desk, chin resting on them with his eyes closed. Why was sleep of all things one of the human things he frustratingly still needed?
Along with the lack of sleep and sore wound, Danny also had a slight headache from when Dash had pushed him into his locker after lunch—all things combined, Danny was not just struggling to focus, but also having a little more trouble than usual with his powers.
Something Danny had noticed was that, since coming to the realization that he was more ghost than human, the difference between his forms had become even less distinct. He’d starting to much more liberally use his ghostly abilities while in human form, and had more than once nearly jumped into action without remembering to change first. He’d gotten so used to flying in human form while in the Ghost Zone that he had almost done so in this world too, the first time surprised as he hadn’t realized it wasn’t exclusive to that place and only saved by Sam grabbing his leg to pull him back down.
So now his powers were glitching like they had when he first gained them… No, that wasn’t right. They weren’t glitching, they were just coming more naturally. There was no longer a separation between forms in his mind, so the powers didn’t differentiate either. He didn’t have to consciously draw on his ghost core to use them in human form, he simply used them. He wasn’t two beings in one, he was a singular being. Whereas Danny didn’t mind this new ease of power usage overall, it was definitely starting to look like a potential threat to his secret! Especially when his focus was shot, during which he often forgot basic human functions.
“Hey, I think Fenton’s not breathing,” came a whisper from Kwan, worry palpable.
Basic functions like breathing.
“No way,” Dash replied, also in a whisper, vibe confirming that he was slightly worried too, to Danny’s surprise. “I didn’t hit him that hard earlier, did I?” Ah, so that was the real reason for the worry—he didn’t want to get in trouble. Dash hadn’t really done anything intentionally though; Danny had tried squirming away, causing him to bang his head on the side of the locker. He would be fine though, thanks to his ghostly healing.
“Should we say something?” Kwan whispered back, fear slipping in too. “Like, he might need CPR—you recently took a workshop on that, right?”
Oh yeah, Danny needed to breathe.
Danny took a deep exaggerated breath, which he could tell surprised the two boys as well as filled them with relief, then focused on keeping that up—the last thing he needed was for his secret to be discovered via someone misinterpreting his lack of breathing for an emergency and Dash attempting CPR.
“Fenton, pay attention, this is important info!” Mrs. Tetslaff’s voice sounded from the front of the room. On Fridays, the gym teachers taught Health class (or driver’s ed one semester for the sophomores) instead of regular gym; this semester, the unfortunate topic was sex ed.
“Not important for me,” Danny muttered under his breath as he sat up; maybe in ten or twenty years schools would start covering non-straight stuff, but unfortunately it was 2006. Besides, he wasn’t susceptible to human diseases, so all the STD stuff was irrelevant. Pregnancy risks and whatnot were of course a non-issue as well.
But, Danny still had to pay attention; the last thing he wanted was to give the bullies yet another thing to bully him about, so he had to at least pretend to be interested in the mechanics of things, if only to keep his cover. Plus it was school so he needed to know the info for the tests because he couldn’t afford more bad grades.
Part of him wished he’d never had that realization at all, wished there was some way to make it so he did like girls… He’d tried telling himself for years that he’d liked girls like Paulina and Valerie and eventually even Sam, but it had always been forced and awkward. He did like getting platonic affection from them, holding hands and even cheek kisses, but the thought of doing anything more? He’d feel disgust, which he was pretty sure was the opposite of what someone should feel when their significant other brought up going any further than lip kisses.
Ironically, ghosts were a lot more accepting than humans on that front. Maybe that was another reason that Danny felt more comfortable among them. Ember had even been the one to comfort Danny after he finally fully realized things, when the suspicion had turned to fact, which happened while they were watching a movie of all things; Danny still thought that was pretty wild, to have a ghost be the one to help him through that, even if they were friends now (imagine what the Danny from a year ago would think about that!). Later on she’d also encouraged him to tell his close human friends too, but even though he’d told her he would so far he’d only told his sister.
Jazz also told Danny that morning that he should tell Sam and Tucker too, which he had planned to ever since Ember suggested he do so after she helped Danny realize it, he really did, but he kept chickening out. He’d vowed to do it after the concert, but then he had the fight with his parents and ran away. Doing so immediately after that had seemed like a bad idea. He really did need to tell them soon though.
Star, vibe nervous but outwardly confident, raised her hand and asked, to Danny’s surprise, “Why’s this all about girl-guy stuff? Are we gonna cover girl-girl stuff or guy-guy stuff too? I mean, I don’t need it, but some people—”
Paulina elbowed Star in the side, hard, and shot her a warning glare, vibe slightly panicked, upon which Star glanced at her with a look of apology and slight blush, a small wave of affection flying off her. That was… interesting. Was something going on between the two? Danny might have expected that of Star, but Paulina had always seemed aggressively into guys—then again, Danny had done the same thing, acting like he was interested in girls, hadn’t he? Although, bisexuality was a thing, of course, so maybe that was it… Danny shook the thoughts away; he shouldn’t try to speculate.
Mrs. Tetslaff sighed, ignoring the handful of students chuckling at the question, and told them, “Though I agree that all sexualities should be discussed, the school board has explicitly excluded anything but heterosexuality from the curriculum, and I would prefer to keep my job. However, I can tell you that the local library does have books on all sexual orientations in their general collection; the Dewey Decimal number it starts at is 306.76. Now, back to the lesson…”
After school, Lancer called Daniel into his Vice Principal office as he walked by. Lancer didn’t really like being Vice Principal in addition to his preferred role of teacher, but unfortunately the school had so much trouble hiring anyone that most teachers at Casper High had to fulfil multiple roles and the other teachers had thrown him under the bus when he was absent for the meeting that decided who got that role.
Sam and Tucker gave their friend questioning looks, but Daniel waved them off and said they could go, telling them that his parents wanted him home after that anyway. The two looked worried, but left anyway—understandably so, Lancer had to admit, as they probably expected him to be getting detention or some other form of discipline, as most people expected when called into the Vice Principal’s office.
Daniel, however, did not look nervous, likely accurately having guessed what this was about, although when Lancer closed the door and had him sit down in one of the plush chairs the office held he winced, briefly placing a hand on his stomach—after which he did look nervous when he realized Lancer had clearly seen such, then placed the hand there again upon realizing there was no reason to hide the injury from someone who knew about it.
Lancer sat in another plush chair, perpendicular to Danny’s, and turned slightly to face the boy. “Daniel,” he said, “I’ll be blunt: I’m worried about you. I couldn’t help but notice you holding your stomach a few times earlier today, as though in pain. A few other teachers mentioned it to me, as well. Plus, you fell asleep in class, which you haven’t done in a while.”
Daniel winced. “Ah, well, the sleeping thing is because apparently I can consume ectoplasm to get energy. How much I eat affects how much I need to sleep, and I got used to not needing a normal human amount of sleep after I started eating it like a month ago. But after my stay in the Ghost Zone my parents restricted the lab more, actually are locking stuff up now, so it’s been difficult to access it. So I just gotta remember to get a normal amount of sleep again and it’ll be fine! Probably.”
Lancer had a feeling that that wasn’t the only reason as he watched Daniel shift nervously. “Though I don’t doubt that may be part of the reason, that is not the only reason for your tiredness, is it? Please, be honest with me, Daniel; are you injured worse than you told me last night?” Lancer sincerely hoped that was not so, but the evidence was compelling.
Daniel winced, and Lancer could tell that a downplaying was coming. “Um. Not really? It is healing, I swear! Though putting energy towards that might make me a little more tired I guess. But I did say I would be sore, remember? It’s basically just a thin line with a big bruise now, I can probably even take the stitches out.”
“Altered Carbon, Daniel!” Lancer exclaimed, not expecting that. “You needed stitches?! You told me you were fine!” Perhaps Lancer should have pushed Daniel to immediately get medical help after all. If the boy was adamant about no hospitals, Lancer could have even stitched him up himself; all the teachers had had emergency first aid training due to the frequent ghost attacks, as people sometimes got injured from such.
“I was fine,” Danny argued testily. “Seriously. I probably didn’t even need them, it was only ten this time, Jazz just insisted when she saw.”
“Ten stitches?!” Lancer gasped, then frowned, considering that for a moment. His parents had been the ones to unknowingly do this to the boy. What if next time the hit wasn’t a blow to the side, rather a direct hit? Enough for him to accidentally transform, even? That wouldn’t end well at all! Lancer told him, “Daniel. I know you’re scared, but I truly believe you need to tell your parents. They’re the ones who did this to you; surely they would stop if they knew?”
“No, I can’t!” Daniel said loudly, sounding panicked at the suggestion. “They wouldn’t react well!” he said insistently.
“Are you certain of that?” Lancer asked gently, knowing that teenagers could often get worried about parent reactions to things, working themselves up when in reality there was little to no danger. Of course, not every situation was like that, which is why investigation was needed.
“Yes! I’m a ghost. They hunt ghosts,” Daniel said in an anxious rush. “Yeah I still got some humanity, but probably not enough to be worth it in their eyes—well, for my mom, at least. Dad might be okay with it. Actually, he probably would at first, might even be excited about it honestly, but he’d then insist I tell Mom, and Mom would definitely interpret it as her son being dead, which I guess I basically am, and an allegedly malevolent ghost having replaced him, even though I definitely am still myself, and then would try to convince my dad of that, and he’d probably agree because he just listens to whatever she says. Mom wouldn’t hesitate to shoot me down, then dissect me.” Daniel took in rapid gasps of air that, from Lancer’s understanding, he didn’t actually need, and shook slightly. “She’ll kill me permanently.”
Lancer put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder, recognizing the signs of the onset of a panic attack. “Come on, breathe with me,” he said, guiding the boy, hoping calming the breathing would help like it did with full humans. “In, two, three, four; out, two, three, four…”
Daniel closed his eyes, then began to follow Lancer’s instructions. It did manage to calm him down, after a few minutes of that. The boy’s eyes were watery afterwards.
Daniel chuckled slightly, “Bet you didn’t expect a ghost to have panic attacks,” he said, trying to joke. “I mean, I don’t even need to breathe!”
The plural worried Lancer; had the teenager been handling this all on his own, or did he have a support network? He asked, “Does that happen often?”
Daniel sighed. “Guess three’s no way around admitting this to you,” he concluded, but didn’t protest. Just like the prior night, he opened up much more than Lancer expected—likely, if Lancer’s suspicions proved correct, because he hadn’t actually had an adult in his life that he could truly talk to about these things. Lancer wondered if the boy had any adult at all in his life that he felt supported him. Daniel told him, “They started after the accident. At first they happened a lot, then they got better, but lately they’ve increased again. I know it’s because I’ve been under a lot more stress lately; just as I was getting used to things, the—well, some big ghost-related incidents happened back to back, and I had a few realizations about myself, and I swear my mom’s ghost hatred has only gotten worse, especially because she—nevermind. But, don’t worry,” he assured Lancer. “Like I told you yesterday, Jazz is sending me to therapy, I’m sure they’ll help me with them.”
Lancer nodded. “I’m sure they will,” he agreed, then decided to again address the boy’s home life, which clearly was one major factor in the stress. “But Daniel, I must say again, from an outside perspective, I am convinced that you should not be living in that home, not while your parents are still actively hunting Phantom, not when you’re constantly on edge that their weapons may decide to target you at home. It is surely in part leading to your stress, causing anxiety. That stress and anxiety undoubtedly affects other things, like your schoolwork and sleep, and may even cause loss of concentration in… in battle, leading to injuries like yesterday’s.” Lancer still struggled with the fact that his student was in so much danger, actively fighting the ghosts—a stark contrast to what he, like most of the school, had thought before, which was that Daniel was afraid of ghosts. That was likely a cover story, Lancer realized, a way to throw people off his trail, evidenced further by the previous day’s outburst in class.
“I know that,” Daniel snapped. “I already…” He took a deep breath, speaking more calmly. “Last night’s injury was actually caused by a failure to pay attention to my surroundings; as I finished catching a ghost, they snuck up behind me and shot me; well, Mom did, Dad’s shot went ridiculously wide as usual. But, I still love my parents! And I need to be there because of the portal. And seeing what weapons they’re working on helps me know how to avoid them, and having access to the new trackers and stuff is important too so Tucker can reprogram them to not react to me. I can’t just leave.”
“Whereas that all makes logical sense, it’s extremely detrimental to your mental health. Is that sacrifice truly worth it?” Lancer asked the boy.
Daniel looked at the ground as he considered how to answer, then said in a semi-reluctant tone, “I want to say yes, that’s a necessary sacrifice, but honestly, it’s kinda getting hard to deny that I’m… that I’m suffering because of it. I really felt so much better when I was able to relax in the Ghost Zone, away from my home and all the stressors. A part of me even wi—wants that I hadn’t been forced to return. So, honestly… I don’t know if it’s worth it,” he concluded in a small voice. “I just don’t know anymore.”
Lancer nodded solemnly. “Well, as I said yesterday, if you ever find yourself needing somewhere to stay, or even just need to talk, my door is open,” he offered once again. He wished to do all he could to help this child, this child that had died much too young, even if only partly so. The fact that he found the Ghost Zone more welcoming than the human world was simply tragic.
“Thanks,” Daniel said with a small smile. “I really do appreciate it… But, I will have an actual therapist! Jazz’s professor’s actually willing to do it, she apparently asked him while I was at school yesterday. The consultation appointment is Monday after school. My parents think I’ll be going there to, quote, ‘learn how to cope with ghosts having tricked me’.” He added air quotes to that last bit.
Lancer smiled gently at him, very glad that Daniel would be finally getting some professional help. “That is very good to know. Well, if you ever need to talk outside of that, again, I am here for you.”
“Thanks,” Daniel said again, then he frowned and trailed off. “...Maybe there is something else I need to say, that I recently realized, and have kinda been struggling to cope with…” he trailed off, looking down and nibbling his lip as he thought; Lancer internally winced at that, noticing how sharp the fangs were, hoping the boy didn’t hurt himself. Daniel continued, “Some ghosts know, and I think my friends and sister know too, but before I actually talk to them about it I guess I need to see how a human would react. I mean, you’ll probably notice eventually anyway, everyone will, my parents included, and I’m kinda struggling with it…”
Lancer had a sneaking suspicion he knew what it was, as Jasmine had mentioned her suspicions of such, but Lancer would let the boy tell him himself. When Daniel was quiet for too long, his fangs biting even deeper into his lip, drawing green blood, Lancer spoke up. “Daniel, you’re bleeding,” he said gently, grabbing a tissue from a small side table adjacent to the chairs, and Danny looked up to see Lancer holding it out to him.
Daniel opened his mouth and touched his lip. “Oh. Sorry; I keep forgetting I have these,” he said sheepishly, then accepted the tissue to wipe the ectoplasm away. “They’re, er, kinda new. My teeth can regrow when they’re knocked out, and apparently my body decided it wanted fangs this time around,” he explained.
“I see,” Lancer said, mildly surprised at that info, though considering Daniel’s ghostly nature probably shouldn’t have been. He then asked, before they drifted too far away from the subject, “So, what is it you wanted to say?”
Daniel took a deep breath and loudly spat out in a rush, “I’mgonnabefourteenforever.”
Lancer didn’t catch all of that, so scrunched his brow and said, “Apologies, but perhaps you could speak slower? I couldn’t catch that.”
“S-sorry,” Daniel stuttered out, then took another deep breath and repeated at a slower pace, “I’m gonna be fourteen forever.”
Lancer raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t particularly surprised, having suspected this was what the boy had wanted to say. He thought of what he should say; he had to approach this delicately so as not to upset the boy. Lancer had plenty of experience with upset teenagers and various issues, but this was the first—and hopefully only—time ghostly immortality was the topic. “Well, you are a ghost, right?” he said, deciding reason would be the best choice. “Unless they’re shapeshifters, ghosts don’t change appearance significantly without a big catalyst, from my understanding.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Daniel said, shaking his head, looking more upset; perhaps that was the wrong approach. “It’s not just appearance,” the boy told him. “I’m literally stuck at 14. Stuck as a teenager.” His voice rose as he spoke, emotion taking over, and Lancer felt a pang in his heart, realizing the implications of that before the boy voiced them. “My brain will never mature beyond this. I’m 16 in calendar years, but still 14 in all other ways. Brain chemistry, hormones, thought processes, reasoning ability, emotional response, et. cetera. I can still gain knowledge of course, and apparently develop trauma and whatever other things teens can get, but otherwise physically and cognitively I’m still at the exact point I was when I… when I died.
“What’s going to happen in a few years? When people notice that someone who looks like a freshman is graduating, when they realize I never had that growth spurt, that I still act fourteen? Can I even go to college looking like this? What about when outsiders start to think I’m my friends’ younger brother, then kid, then grandkid? What about when I try to have a relationship? Unless it’s with another ghost, things are gonna be creepy! And I’m never going to get rid of the teenage angst, never going to grow out of my ‘emotional regulation problems’ as Jazz calls it.
“I’m 14, and always will be. Forever!” Silent slightly-glowing tears had begun to fall as Daniel spoke, so Lancer handed him another tissue, which Daniel wiped away the tears with after giving Lancer a look of appreciation.
Lancer took a moment to process everything Daniel had said. There had been a lot, and Lancer likely wouldn’t be able to remember every point, but, “Perhaps we could address those questions one by one,” he suggested. “First of all, graduation and college. There are plenty of people in college who look much younger than the calendar says. When I was in college, I was even friends with a girl that people often thought was my little sister, despite her being a year older than me! So I don’t think you’ll have much of an issue with that.”
“You sure?” Daniel asked, clearly skeptical.
“I’m sure. Some people simply don’t have that growth spurt. Trust me, unlike high school, in college people tend not to care so much about that—they all have better things to think about than the size of their peers,” Lancer told him gently, keeping his smile small even though he wanted to cheer that Daniel actually did plan on going to college. Despite his grades, which there was still time to pull up, Daniel had options: he could always find a college that accepted alternate application methods, find a college with a provisional program for those with poor high school grades, or possibly do community college for a couple years before transferring to a 4-year school.
“Eh, guess that’s true,” Daniel said. “Plus, since I can’t just leave Amity to all the ghosts, I’ll probably end up going to MU—that place is so weird that an unaging teenager is probably seen as normal. In fact, it’ll probably boost my chances of getting in,” Danny joked, and Lancer found that he truly did not doubt that. If he revealed his ghostly status to the admissions counselor, he would probably even be automatically accepted without question.
Daniel then tilted his head, giving Lancer an odd look. “Why do you feel proud?” he asked.
“What?” Lancer asked, mildly confused.
Daniel blushed and looked a little guilty as he said, “Sorry! I, er, ghosts can kinda sense emotions, I don’t mean to, it just happens, and I didn’t expect… Ah, that.”
“Ah, I see,” Lancer said. He hadn’t known that about ghosts, nor that Daniel had that ability. Lancer told the boy, “No worries; as you said, you can’t help it. Yes, I am proud of you, Daniel,” he said honestly. “You are planning for the future. You want to go to college. That’s a good thing. I was worried, for a while, that you might try to drop out… Before I knew you were Phantom and realized how hard you actually are trying, that is. You’ve done so well despite your struggles. So yes, I’m proud of you.”
Danny grinned broadly, fangs showing and eyes glowing. “Thanks, Mister Lancer,” he said wholeheartedly, and Lancer got the feeling that he’d rarely, if ever, heard an adult tell him that, other than likely his sister.
Then, Daniel frowned and looked down at the ground, clenching his fists as they rested on his knees. “Actually, I guess while I’m admitting so much, might as well say that I actually have occasionally thought of dropping out,” he said quietly. “Especially since the start of this year. It’s not because I don’t want to be in school or go to college or whatnot, it’s just that everything’s been so difficult. I just… Some days it feels like I just can’t do it anymore. Some days I just want to run away. Even before my, er, brief vacation there, it crossed my mind to maybe go to the Ghost Zone and stay there. For more than just a few days, that is. Maybe use the natural portals there to explore some of the world, who knows. Just, be anywhere but here, really.”
Lancer was both surprised and unsurprised at the same time.
Daniel continued, “I know I have a duty to Amity Park. I know I can’t just leave forever. I do care about the town. I feel responsible for protecting it. But sometimes it’s difficult to not want to just give up and abandon everything.”
Lancer nodded. “I know, trust me I know,” he said, then shifted slightly, wondering if it would be appropriate to share a story of his own.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” Daniel said, then blushed. “I could, er, tell you were conflicted about saying something—yeah, that’s a distinct emotion, somehow. Sorry, I didn’t mean to!”
Lancer smiled gently at Danny. “No worries,” he said, then took a deep breath. “It’s… difficult to talk about, but I actually do understand, more than you know. I was… I was a teenage runaway,” he revealed, something no one beyond his parents, former schoolmates, and those who helped him afterwards knew. “A high school dropout because of it, in fact. It wasn’t wholly by my own choice, as my parents kicked me out, but instead of trying to stay in town I decided to simply vanish, go to the city—Chicago, as it was near my hometown—and try to make it on my own. I was 17.”
Daniel looked at Lancer with wide eyes. “This isn’t another story like your nonexistent sister, is it?”
“It is not,” Lancer confirmed, though from the way Daniel asked he surely knew that already. “When I got to the city, I lived on the streets for a while, then at a group shelter for teenagers like me. I eventually found a job, and then while working I managed to get a GED and then go to community college before proceeding to get my dual Bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education and English; by that time, I was nearly 30, after which I moved and got my job here. I’m one of the lucky ones; most teenage runaways do not get that far. It is not a path that I would recommend, however tempting running away may seem at the moment.”
“Yeah, that… wow,” Daniel said with astonishment. “That was not what I expected… Um. Might I ask why you were kicked out? If you don’t want to say it’s fine, I’m just curious.”
Lancer considered that. He knew Daniel had some very real fears about having to leave his own home if his parents ever found out about his ghost half—the secret was, honestly, very similar psychologically, involving hiding an identity. However, Lancer hadn’t come out to anyone at the school, not even other staff let alone students. Very few people knew. He also wasn’t sure how much he could reveal without potentially getting in trouble with the school. Lancer settled upon, “My parents discovered something about me that they did not approve of. Something that cannot be changed.”
Danny took a moment to process that, then his eyes lit up with an expression Lancer could only interpret as understanding. Oddly hopeful understanding. “You mean, you’re gay?” he asked bluntly.
A panicked jolt ran through Lancer. “Not so loud,” he said in a whisper. “No one else here knows, but yes. Please keep it a secret.” How had Daniel concluded that so quickly? Well, at least he hadn’t reacted negatively.
Daniel quickly nodded. “Don’t worry. You’re keeping my secret, so I’ll keep yours,” he said resolutely, then grinned. “Besides, I’m the same!” Daniel then looked surprised at himself. “Wow, I think you’re the first human other than my sister who I’ve admitted that to—it’s, er, only a recent realization…” he then frowned, looking worried. “Oh no. I’ve been so worried about my parents kicking me out or worse if they find out I’m a ghost that it didn’t even occur to me that they could kick me out for that too!” he exclaimed in distress.
“Daniel, deep breaths,” Lancer said, in retrospect not as surprised at the admission as he might have been—knowing the stats, the possibility had been something that crossed his mind a few times after Daniel’s grades, attendance, and mood began to sharply drop, before learning he was Phantom. Knowing how delicate a situation this was, Lancer calmly explained, “I left home in 1980, which was more than two decades ago. It was a very very different time compared to today. I am sure that your parents are not like my parents were.”
“No you’re not,” Daniel said.
Lancer was the one embarrassed now, being caught in the lie that was meant to be comforting. “You’re right, I am not sure. I don’t know if anyone can know for sure. But I do have high hopes; not once have I heard them use any sort of homophobic language, for one,” he said, though at Daniel’s slight wince maybe that wasn’t true behind closed doors. Lancer continued, “It is also, as I said, a very different time. Queer teenagers are much less likely to find themselves homeless today than they were in my time.”
Despite this, the statistics were still quite scary though; Lancer had recently seen a joint report by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute and the National Coalition for the Homeless that reported that approximately 1 in 4 LGBT youth whose parents learned of it ended up being kicked out. 1 in 2 experienced a negative reaction, and more than half of those negative reactions involved physical violence. Lancer only had anecdotal evidence as to his own youth, as not many such studies had been done back then, but he was certain it was higher back then in regards to the ones left homeless—at least, he sincerely hoped so, because if not, that meant progress was not as strong as he thought.
“Guess that’s true,” Daniel said. “It’s still scary though. I’ve already got one big secret that could get me killed further, having another on top of it is… a lot.”
“Understandable,” Lancer said. “Again, if you ever need a place to go, or simply need to talk, my door is open.”
“Thank you,” Daniel said with clear relief as he stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulder. “It’s… nice to know there’s an adult in my corner,” he admitted with some embarrassment. “I should probably go now, but it was good to talk. I might take you up on it again.”
Lancer nodded and smiled gently at Daniel. “Anytime, Daniel.”
Daniel smiled, then stepped towards the door, hesitated, and turned towards the window instead, shooting Lancer a more mischievous grin as he leapt into the air, shifted to Phantom, and flew straight through the closed window.
Lancer shook his head in fond amusement as he watched his ghostly student fly away.
Instead of heading home after his talk with Lancer like he told his friends he would, Danny flew to the local library. He briefly debated whether or not he should go in as Fenton or Phantom, then decided if someone saw him as Phantom it might tarnish his already poor reputation, so changed to his human form in the alley beside it and then headed in. Thanks to Jazz, who had dragged him there many times when he was younger, Danny easily navigated the library, quickly finding section 306.76. He scanned the shelves, skipping over heterosexuality—the largest group of books by far—and bisexuality, finding homosexuality was classified as 306.766, male homosexuality more specifically being 306.7662. There was barely half of a single row, with most of them being denser academic-oriented books, but there were a few thinner ones, which upon inspection actually seemed to be meant for teens—Danny suspected parental protest had moved them there instead of the YA section of the library.
As Danny flicked through a book, debating if he should check it out or find a corner of the library to try to read it in, two people navigated the row he was in, though he didn’t pay much attention to who it was at first.
He did when they stopped at the same section he was in; turning, Danny saw Star and Paulina there, vibes of content amusement drifting off them, the former who glanced at the book he was holding and said, “Somehow, I’m not surprised to find you here, of all our classmates.”
Danny froze slightly; he was half tempted to turn invisible and high-tail it out of there, but resisted. “What do you want?” he asked in resignation. This was going to be all over the school by the next day, wasn’t it? Maybe leaving town was his best option after all.
“Relax, kitten,” Paulina said. “We’re not gonna tell anyone.”
“You won’t?” Danny asked skeptically, though vaguely registered that they seemed amicable, no malicious vibes from them at all. “And, wait, ‘kitten’?”
Paulina shrugged. “What can I say, the cat thing’s catching on. Anyway, we’re here for the same reason,” she revealed. “Loser or not, we’re not going to out you.”
“Uh. Thanks?” Danny said, finding himself believing her; perhaps it was the same kind of respect that the ghosts gave when it came to his identity: like protecting like, even if they didn’t usually particularly get along. “I won’t tell anyone about you, either. Um. The lesbian section is here,” he said, gesturing to the other end of the row he was looking at, “and the bi section is here,” he said, gesturing to the end of the row above. He hoped he had guessed right.
“That’s all there is?” Star asked, surprised.
“Damn,” Paulina said, disappointed vibes in the air. “I knew there wouldn’t be much, but this is pathetic.”
“I have a feeling we’re lucky the library has anything about it,” Danny said wryly. “So, are you two…?”
“Dating? Yup!” Star said, excitedly enough that her joyful vibes seemed to charge Danny’s ghost core slightly.
Paulina winced. “Star! Not so loud,” she whispered, her vibes being a slight giddiness combined with the fear of someone finding out.
“Oh, right. Secret,” Star recalled with some guilt, which shifted to curiosity as she asked, “So, Danny, are you secretly dating anyone?”
Danny shook his head. “No. Honestly, I only recently realized I’m… er, gay,” he said, still struggling with voicing the word in reference to himself. “You’re kinda the first humans I’ve told, other than my sister.” And Lancer, but then they’d probably ask why he had told him, and Danny didn’t want to accidentally out his favorite teacher.
“Humans? So the rumor you’re friends with ghosts is true!” Paulina perked up, excitement palpable. “Ooh, do you know Phantom? Can you introduce me to him?”
“Sorry, I can’t,” Danny told her. “But, I thought you’re dating Star?”
“Well, yeah, but I can date him too,” Paulina said in a confident purr, an emotion coming off her that Danny couldn’t recognize and wasn’t sure he wanted to. For some reason, Star didn’t look jealous, seeming perfectly fine with the concept of her girlfriend dating someone at the same time as her. Danny hadn’t heard of consensually dating multiple people before, but maybe it was a thing? If so, it must also be something people didn’t talk about, like being non-straight.
“Well, you’re not going to have much luck with that,” Danny said. “He, er, kinda plays for the same team as me—don’t, er, tell anyone about that though,” he added. “He said it’s fine to tell other queer people but he doesn’t want it otherwise getting out,” he added, so they didn’t think he was going around outing people.
Paulina sighed, vibes a mix of disappointment and acceptance. “Dammit. Well, good for him, I suppose.” Danny was surprised she didn’t question how he knew that. “But, hey, if he ever needs to fake-date a girl, we’re both available,” she added chipperly.
Star explained further, “Sometimes we gotta date guys to keep people off our trail. So if he ever needs to date a girl to save his reputation, we got him!”
Paulina added, “And don’t worry, we’re not going to out anyone, especially not the Town Hero.” Her vibes were resolute; this was something she sincerely stood by.
“Oh!” Star gasped, eyes lighting up. “If you know that, does that mean you’re dating Phantom?” she asked with contagious excitement.
Danny laughed, unable to help feeling his mood boosted. “No, no, of course not. I know him, yeah, but I’m not dating Phantom; he’s rather out of my league,” he told them. Technically not untrue, as he couldn’t exactly date himself.
“So? I’m out of your league too, and we dated, even if I don’t remember it,” Paulina pointed out. “Same for Valerie, even if she hangs around losers now.”
“And you literally kissed Ember on stage,” Star pointed out. “Like, I would kill for that chance,” she said, and Danny found he couldn’t tell if she was serious or not about that, which worried him a little. Then she looked contemplative. “Oh, but I guess that was probably just so people don’t suspect… Anyway, what we’re saying is, don’t sell yourself short!”
“Yeah! Go for Phantom if you want him!” Paulina encouraged. “Honestly, you two would look cute together.” Adoration swirled around her.
“...Right. Well, I’m going to check these books out now, see you at school I guess,” Danny hurriedly said, before the girls could start seriously trying to convince him to date himself and Paulina’s emotions took a turn into even more awkward territory. He grabbed a couple other books that caught his attention and headed out, both the girls waving goodbye to him before they moved to where he’d been standing and began looking at the books.
Danny checked the two books out, thankful that the library assistant at the desk didn’t react to the titles, and slipped them into his backpack.
To Danny’s total surprise, waiting outside of the library, leaning on the railing, was none other than Sam, although Tucker was nowhere in sight.
“Thought I’d find you here,” Sam said with a gentle smile, exuding amusement, then casually asked, “Section 306, right?”
“How did you—” Danny began, but cut himself off. “I mean, w-what? Why would I be there?”
Sam sighed and shifted to a standing position. “Danny, you’re my best friend, and we dated. Did you honestly think I wouldn’t at least suspect it?”
Danny nibbled his lip and looked away, panic rising even though he could tell that the only vibes Sam gave off were accepting and caring ones, no negative ones in sight.
“Relax,” Sam said gently, putting a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “I’m not mad or anything.”
Danny looked up at her and, feeling he needed verbal confirmation despite her kind expression and vibes, warily asked, “You don’t find me disgusting, or a freak, or—”
“No,” Sam cut him off. “If I did, I would be a hypocrite.”
Danny scrunched his brow in confusion. Was she implying what he thought she was? “Wait, you’re gay too?” He could have sworn she was still attracted to him. Although, she was kinda dating Lurker, who wasn’t a guy or girl, or at least was interested in them—although Danny had a feeling that sexuality was entirely irrelevant when it came to anyone falling for that particular cryptid.
“I’m bi,” Sam revealed. “I know it’s not quite the same, since I can hide it a lot better, but I do know how scary it can be to realize you’re not straight, and the urge to suppress it and try to be a so-called ‘normal’ person. You’re not alone.”
“Thanks,” Danny said as the two began to walk, heading towards Tucker’s place without having to discuss it. Now that Sam knew, it was only fair that Tucker did, too. Hopefully he wouldn’t reject Danny.
“Out of curiosity, when did you finally realize it?” Sam asked.
“Um. The thought started occurring to me a while ago, but I was kinda in denial until a couple weeks ago, after a discussion with Ember. We were watching a movie and she noticed I found the actor hotter than the actress, and then talked to me about it.” Danny was not going to mention the ‘test’. “I told Jazz last night, and earlier today I told Lancer—don’t look at me like that, it just slipped out during an impromptu therapy session, don’t worry he’s definitely LGBT-friendly—and I’ve been trying to work up the courage to tell you and Tucker—what about you? When did you realize it?”
“Middle school,” Sam said easily. “But, I hid it. Tried to pretend I only like boys. My parents are… Well, let’s just say if they found out I also like girls, it wouldn’t end well. Like, send-me-to-a-camp kind of shit at best, outright kick me out at worst. They’re already pretty unhappy that I’ve been hanging out with Lurker, although they somehow assume Lurker’s a human male and we’re not going to correct them.”
Danny winced. “I know the feeling,” he said. “I mean, I guess I don’t actually know if my parents would or wouldn’t be supportive of me being gay—honestly, I think my dad had a thing for Vlad at some point, as disturbing as that is given it’s Vlad—but…”
“The ghost stuff is pretty much the same thing, right?” Sam said with an understanding smile, feelings of empathy evident. “You already are sure they won’t accept it, despite the other timelines.”
“Yeah,” Danny admitted. “Now more than ever—I’m serious when I say that this time around, I don’t think they’ll be as easily accepting as they were the last couple times, or at least my mom won’t be. Honestly I’m starting to think maybe she wasn’t as okay with it those times as she said she was, since she really often hides her real emotions to save face, like more than most people. Dad actually might still be okay with it, but mom’s perception of ghosts, especially Phantom, seems to be getting progressively worse. I’ll have to somehow turn that around first.”
The two then arrived at Tucker’s house.
Danny froze, unsure if he wanted to go in. Should he really tell Tucker about this? What if Tucker reacted badly? He honestly had no idea what Tucker thought about gay people. He’d never said anything bad, but never anything good either. Then again, neither had Danny; it was just something that didn’t get talked about. The only time Tucker uttered the word was in the standard slang way to mean something was uncool, which literally everyone their age did, even Danny until he’d started to realize that he himself was gay and understood how it hurt to hear people use the word that way. Sam hadn’t used the word that way though, as far as Danny could recall; she was always more self-conscious about that.
“Hey, Danny, relax,” Sam said. “It’ll go fine, I’m sure of it.”
“You don’t know that,” Danny said.
“Do you want me to come out first?”
“You’d do that?” Danny asked, though could sense she was serious.
“Of course.”
Danny considered her offer, then sighed. “No, I’ll do it first. It’s not like it matters; if he doesn’t support you he won’t support me, and even if I don’t tell him I’ll still know he won’t… Okay, here goes.”
Danny knocked on the door, and Tucker’s parents let them in and directed them up to Tucker’s room.
“Danny?” Tucker, who had been at his computer playing Doom, asked in surprise, only noticing the two when the door banged closed. “Thought you had to go home.”
Danny winced. “I, er, kinda lied about that,” he admitted, looking at the floor. “I was at the library. Section 306.”
Tucker looked slightly confused. “Section… Oh,” he realized. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Danny questioned warily, unsure of the reaction. It seemed very anticlimactic somehow. The vibes seemed neutral; had he already known?
“Yeah, okay,” Tucker said, then shrugged. “Dunno why you never said something sooner, but hey, glad you told me eventually.” That made sense; Tucker never did like when Danny kept secrets.
“Well, I only just figured it out a couple weeks ago,” Danny pointed out, then frowned. Tucker’s attitude still seemed a bit subdued, and Danny was having trouble interpreting the vibes. “So… you’re cool with it?” he ventured.
Tucker then seemed to realize how he sounded, guilt and worry swirling around him as he said, “Oh! Sorry, I didn’t mean to come across as unsupportive! You’re my best friend, of course I’m cool with it!”
“Really?” Danny asked with relief; he could definitely identify the vibes as supportive now.
“Really,” Tucker confirmed. “Being the token straight guy just means more girls for me!” he joked.
Danny blinked and looked at Sam. “Wait, you told him before me?” he complained, slightly hurt.
Sam put her hand over her face, slightly exasperated. “Ugh. No, I didn’t… Tucker, I’m bisexual, okay? Now everyone here knows.”
“Oh, I already kinda figured that,” Tucker said, completely unsurprised.
“You did?” Sam asked, looking slightly confused. Danny was too; Tucker usually didn’t catch onto things like that as quickly as others. Danny certainly hadn’t, even for himself.
Tucker shrugged. “I mean, you’re pretty much dating someone who I’m pretty sure has non-human biology, which is pretty not-straight,” he pointed out. “Anyway, Danny, I didn’t react so much because, it’s just, as far as bombshells go, this doesn’t really compare to, like, the immortality, or being half-ghost or whatnot.”
Danny winced. “Um, about the half-ghost thing… It may, er, be a little more than half now?” He looked nervously between Sam and Tucker.
“What do you mean?” Sam asked warily, intense vibes of worry and dread now surrounding her. “Did something happen?”
“Wait, you didn’t like, fully die or something, did you?!” Tucker asked with wide panicked eyes, the same emotions coming over him, and Danny realized his mistake.
“What? No, no, nothing like that!” Danny assured them, and their relief was palpable. “Or, not really? Probably not. I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking lately, and talking with the ghosts, including Clockwork, and it all leads to the conclusion that although I am still technically a ‘halfa’, it’s not an even split. It probably never was. And as my power grows, that just becomes more and more evident. And before you ask, no, Vlad isn’t like this—he really is truly half and half. It’s probably because my portal accident was so much larger than his. He got blasted in the face with a small one, but I got the full-body experience with the large one, which was ten times more powerful and had all that electricity. I’m not a human with ghost powers, I’m not half human half ghost, I’m basically a ghost with human powers.”
The two took a moment to process that, then Tucker laughed, amusement evident. “Sorry, sorry, I know this isn’t supposed to be funny, but ‘human powers’? What’s that even mean?”
Danny shrugged, smiling slightly at Tucker’s reaction, glad their dynamic hadn’t changed any due to the earlier revelation. “Well, I still do have a heartbeat, even if it’s slow, and I do need to sleep for some reason. I still need to eat human food too. And when in human form, gravity is the default, and things are more painful, though Jazz thinks that might be psychological. But otherwise, for all intents I’m a ghost. Since accepting that, the divide between my ‘human’ form and ‘ghost’ form has been pretty much nonexistent, except for looks. Apparently needing to focus to use my powers while in human form was more of a mental block? It feels more natural now.”
Tucker chuckled slightly. “Yeah, we noticed that.”
“And that’s different from Vlad?” Sam asked curiously.
Danny nodded. “As far as I know, he still needs to transform to use his ghost powers to their full extent. There’s more differences too, like in human form he bleeds red, but I bleed green; it’s not 100% ectoplasm, if you put it under a microscope you can see there’s still some blood cells mixed in too, but still. And…” Danny shifted nervously, aware they knew this but not having actually voiced it himself to them, and said, “Clockwork told me that Vlad is aging slower than a normal human, but I’m actually legit immortal.”
“Damn,” Tucker said quietly, a vibe of unsureness solidifying into acceptance. “I know you know we’d already figured it out, but to hear you actually say the word…”
“I’m honestly still processing it too,” Danny admitted. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he’d live far beyond his friends, watch all the humans he knew die… And definitely didn’t want to think about the fact that unaging was also a part of it, eternally 14, meaning soon people would start mistaking him for the younger brother of Sam and Tucker, and then eventually their child, then grandchild. His talk with Lancer had helped a little, but it was still harrowing to contemplate.
“Well, you’ll still have Dani-with-an-i, right?” Tucker said, realizing what Danny was thinking. “Like, if she’s based on your DNA, she’ll be the same, right?”
Danny paused at that. “Huh. I didn’t think about that.” Honestly, if so, that was a little worse—her appearance was younger than his. Being a middle school kid for eternity was definitely worse than being forever a high school kid. But, they’d have each other… Wait, did Dani even know? “Oh, man, how do I break the news of that to her?” Danny wondered with a groan.
Sam chuckled. “Knowing her, she’ll just say ‘awesome, now I really can see the whole world!’ or something like that.”
“Besides,” Tucker said, “There’s always the chance that Vlad’s cloning process ended up making her closer to him, truly half and half, if he didn’t know you’re more.”
“True,” Danny conceded.
Tucker then had a sad feeling to him. “Oh, man. I just realized, if you look 14 forever, you won’t be able to ever do, like, any adult things… Like drive…”
Danny raised an eyebrow. “My calendar age says otherwise. I pass as 16; just because I haven’t bothered to get a license yet doesn’t mean I can’t.” Flying was so much easier.
“Okay, point. But what about voting?” Tucker said unhelpfully.
Danny shrugged. “Plenty of people look younger than they are, I’m sure the poll workers are used to that.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll give you that. But what about stuff where it’s even more obvious you don’t look the age on the ID? You know, like smoking? Drinking? Getting married?”
“No interest; I’ll just have you guys buy it; illegal regardless of my age.”
“Not in Massachusetts!” Sam added. “Besides, I’m sure within the next ten years the US will legalize it nationally, just you watch.”
Danny raised an eyebrow. “You really think it’ll go from one state to national in just a decade?”
“I mean… peoples’ thoughts on that do seem to be changing,” Sam said, although Danny wasn’t so sure of that. “Well, kinda… Okay, maybe twenty years,” Sam amended. “But eventually it’ll be legal!”
“Oh, on that note, one thing before I forget,” Tucker said with an urgent realization and slight… fear? He told them firmly, “This is directed at both of you. Do not, under any circumstance, tell my parents that you are anything other than 100% straight. I’m serious about this. They’ll ban me from ever seeing you again.”
“Seriously?” Danny asked, completely shocked by how sure Tucker was of that. Tucker’s parents were two of the kindest people Danny knew; growing up they’d practically been a second set of parents to him.
“Seriously,” Tucker said grimly. “One of my second cousins came out when we were in middle school, and her parents kicked her out. My parents told me about it, and said in no uncertain terms that if they even suspected I was the same, I’d be dead to them, and that I wasn’t to associate with… well, I’m not going to quote the words they used, but yeah, make sure they don’t find out.”
Suddenly, it made a lot more sense as to why when they got to high school, Tucker had suddenly started expressing an aggressive desire to be seen as a ‘ladies man’.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Danny told him. “It’s not like I’m even crushing on anyone or anything anyway. Plus, I could always ask—well, I’m sure there’s girls who also need to keep stealth,” he said; he wasn’t going to out anyone. “So if I ever need to throw people off I’ll just fake-date one of them.”
Sam narrowed her eyes at Danny. “It sounds like you know people. Are they ghosts?”
Danny chuckled. “You sound like my parents. No, they’re not ghosts; they were also visiting that section of the library, and already offered to if needed. But I’m not outing anyone, so don’t ask for names, okay?”
Sam and Tucker both agreed.
Danny then noticed the clock on the wall. “Aw, crap. I’m gonna be late for the before-dinner curfew if I don’t leave now,” he realized, so bid farewell to his friends, grabbed his backpack, and flew out the window.
Or, started to, until Sam grabbed his foot, halting him in mid-air. “Change first,” she reminded him.
“Right,” Danny said, embarrassed over yet another slip-up, then changed to his Phantom form before leaving.
Notes:
The study Lancer mentioned is an actual real study that came out in 2006 shortly before this story takes place! And yes, the statistics surprised me, too--I knew it was bad but didn't realize it was quite that bad.
Section 306.76 is in fact the Dewy classification number for LGBT+ topics. I was actually pretty excited to be able to use knowledge from my career in my writing. When I was in high school, back in 2006, much like here there wasn't anything at the school library and barely anything at the public library. Then when I started working at an academic library, back in 2010, I noticed the general LGBT+ nonfiction section was much smaller than it could have been despite being at a college that's considered extremely progressive; looking into it, I learned that there simply wasn't a whole lot published at that point, unless you wanted detailed academic/scientific publications, which wouldn't likely be at a public library. Now it's much less of an issue, as in the past decade rapid progress has been made on that front, with a tremendous amount of new LGBT+ material having been published. It's really inspiring! I just wish it had been this way in 2006.
Anyway, next up: The start of the "it gets worse before it gets better" arc of the fic. Maddie's abuse of Danny escalates, leading to him running away again for a couple nights, except this time he can't get into the Ghost Zone...
Chapter 9: Escalation
Summary:
--Danny flies into Sam's room in a panic, sporting injuries that are not from a ghost fight. Danny reveals to Sam what's been going on, and she does her best to comfort him.
--Skulker's back, and confronts Danny about his relationship with Ember, observed by Valerie.
--Danny skips class to get some sleep, and Jack finds him doing so while in Phantom form, causing him to further reevaluate what he thought about ghosts.
--Lancer becomes even more worried about Danny.
Notes:
This the the 3rd of 4 chapters I am posting today! If you didn't catch the previous two, make sure to give them a read first!
This is the start of what I'm calling the "it gets worse before it gets better" arc. There are some happier scenes mixed in, but overall Danny is not having a good time--just remember, things do eventually get much better, and this fic definitely has a happy ending!
CW: First scene includes detailed description of physical child abuse (Danny explains what happened off-screen to Sam). There are more mentions throughout of Danny wishing the portal accident hadn't brought him back.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Late Sunday morning, Sam was lounging on her bed reading a book when Danny flew into her room. Used to such, she barely reacted as her friend intentionally crashed onto the bed and shifted from ghost form to human form.
“Thought you were spending the day with your parents,” Sam commented. “Something happen?”
Danny sat up on the bed, legs folded sideways beneath him and one hand on the bed partially supporting his weight. The other hand ran through his disheveled hair, and Sam realized that Danny looked near-panicked. Alarm bells rang in her mind; clearly something had happened, something bad, and whatever it was Danny was still processing it.
“Was it a ghost attack?” Sam wondered as she placed her book on the nightstand, although she wasn’t used to seeing Danny quite this rattled after those; maybe it was a new ghost? “Are you injured?” There was some obvious bruising on Danny’s arms indicating he’d been fighting.
Danny lowered his other hand to the bed instead of his hair, shook his head, took a deep breath, and said shakily while looking down at the bed, “Not a ghost. Just… family troubles, I guess,” he mumbled the last bit.
“‘Family troubles’?” Sam quoted, narrowing her eyes. “What exactly does that mean?”
Danny shrugged, and Sam realized his eyes were puffy, like he’d been crying. Was the bruising not ghost-related?
“Were your parents fighting again?” Sam prodded. She was well aware that in private Danny’s parents were not as pleasant towards each other as they were publicly, and the increasing number of fights had been bothering Danny.
“Um. Kinda, I guess,” Danny said, then shifted into a more comfortable cross-legged position, which Sam then mimicked.
“Want to talk about it?” Sam asked, noticing that Danny’s cheek was slightly bruised too, now that he wasn’t staring down at the bed. It looked about a day old so he must have only gotten it a very short while ago; it would likely be gone entirely within a couple hours, or at most by the next morning—honestly, it was a mystery what determined the speed of Danny’s healing, given the same wounds could take very different amounts of times to heal, although they had a number of theories.
“Not really,” Danny said, then sighed. “I dunno. It’s… I don’t know. I’m still processing it I guess? Like, Jazz has some event at school today, so my dad decided that me, mom, and him should do something together.” Danny started speaking faster, it all coming out at once. “Which, okay, fine, I can sense that he feels guilty for the past and he’s been trying to do better, which to him means more family time, so I agreed. But then at breakfast, he and my mom ended up fighting about ghosts again. She’s still super insistent that they’re nothing but monsters to be destroyed, and this time he just flat out told her that he’s sure she’s wrong. I agreed with Dad. Somehow my ghost friends got brought up. Dad says he thinks they’d be good to talk to, Mom just flat out says he’s delusional, they just kept arguing like that. Then she threw something, so then Dad stormed off, said he was taking a walk to clear his head. Only, that left just me and my mom, and she was really angry…” Danny trailed off, looking unsure about continuing.
“Danny,” Sam said firmly, staring at the bruise on Danny’s cheek and recalling how his mom had grabbed him the day they’d returned from the Ghost Zone, as well as what Jazz and Tucker had told her about her hitting him just before he ran off after the concert. She glanced at the bruises on Danny’s arms (he was wearing a black band t-shirt as usual), and recalled that one of their theories was that the speed of healing was affected by emotional impact… Sam looked Danny in the eyes and asked, “Did your mom hurt you again? While in human form?” She hated how that clarification was needed.
Danny’s stricken expression was answer enough, and Sam saw tears beginning to pool in his eyes before he surged forward and wrapped his arms around her.
Sam returned the hug and let Danny cry into her shoulder, unsure what else to do. Danny almost never cried in front of people, not like this. Sam wasn’t good at comforting people; she truly had no idea what to say… Evidently, she didn’t need to say anything.
Danny seemed calmer when he finally withdrew, stuttering “Sorry about that” as he wiped the remaining tears from his eyes with his palms. He looked at his palms, then at Sam’s shirt, and winced as he added, “and that.”
Sam looked down at her black blouse in confusion. To her surprise, there were faintly glowing tear stains on it. She looked back at Danny, noting that his open palms were glowing slightly too, as were the dried tear tracks on his cheeks. “Your tears glow,” Sam said in mild disbelief.
“Uh, yeah,” Danny said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Guess it’s a good thing I don’t usually cry around people? Um. Thanks, though, really. I think I needed that.”
“Yeah, of course,” Sam said, still trying to process things. “Hey, so, is it just the face and arm bruises, or…?”
Danny winced, then his hands moved to the hem of his shirt, which he fiddled with for a moment before taking a deep breath and in one motion lifting the shirt off.
Sam gasped; Danny looked worse than he did after many ghost fights. He was bruised all over, particularly on his sides, as though someone had kicked him over and over. “What happened?” Sam asked quietly.
Danny took another deep breath, closed his eyes, then said slowly with his eyes closed, fairly subdued as though he were mildly dissociating as he reviewed the incident, “Once Dad left, and it was just me and Mom, I could sense her intent to hurt me, and tried to leave before she could. I got to the stairs but she grabbed my arm to pull me down. I twisted as I fell and hit my cheek on the railing.
“She got angry that I shouted in pain, like anyone would when getting hurt, and next thing I know I’m on the floor and she’s grabbed both my arms and her knee is in my back as she’s yelling who-knows-what at me. Something about it being my fault Dad has been going against her lately. She also called me some slurs, so there’s that—I don’t know if she figured out I’m gay or if she just used them out of anger, but I’ve never heard her say that before.
“And I just took it because doing anything could reveal my secret, and if that happened in that state of mind she wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot, I’m certain of it. Anyway, so then I thought she let me go, but as I moved to stand up she started kicking me, hard, and I guess I made some sort of noise because then she got mad at me for whining, but it really hurt, especially because she had that damn specter deflector thing on the entire time! I think she might have even cracked a rib.
“Then she grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to my room, and at this point I’m getting really bad vibes from her, like she wants to cause significantly more pain. But she left after she tossed me in my room. I dunno if she planned to come back but I immediately flew away, I just couldn’t be there in case she did come back. So I came here.”
Sam took a moment to process that. “That… Danny, that sounds really bad.” She knew the situation with his mom wasn’t the best, but to that degree? It sounded like Danny was in significant danger living with her!
Danny shrugged, then began to deflect as expected. “I mean, it was scary, yeah, but I heal fast. The bruises will mostly be gone by the end of the day, maybe a few lasting until tomorrow. So it’s not that bad.” He seemed like he was trying to justify it to himself, rationalize it as a way to cope.
“Your mom beat you up, pretty much unprompted,” Sam pointed out. “Literally all you said was you agreed with your dad. Her doing that is definitely bad, enhanced healing or not.”
Danny looked down at the bed, hands clutching the blanket that covered it. “I guess,” he said, voice small. Sam had never seen him look so lost before. Danny shook slightly as he said, “I… I just don’t know what to do… I shouldn’t… Why am I so afraid of her? I shouldn’t be, especially when in human form. Human form is supposed to be the safe one. She should only be trying to hurt my ghost form. I just don’t understand.”
“She’s a shitty parent, what more is there to understand?”
“I guess,” Danny said despondently. “I just wi—sincerely want that I wasn’t able to feel emotions so strongly in the first place. It sucks. If I couldn’t, maybe then at least I’d have hope that her apologies were sincere, that she really didn’t mean to hit that hard, could pretend that these were one-offs that she was sorry about… Could believe that it would someday stop. Pretend that she doesn’t want to hurt me most of the time.
“Instead, I know for sure that she doesn’t regret it. She really means to cause pain. She… she doesn’t love me anymore.” Danny’s voice cracked slightly at those words. “Wait, no, that’s not true,” he corrected. “Sometimes I do catch a vibe of love from her, but then pretty much as soon as I open my mouth that shifts again. Sometimes it even shifts to hate. How can she both love and hate me at the same time?
“And it’s all my fault too, I know it. I opened that damn portal, it all starts there… Sometimes I think it would’ve been better if the portal killed me fully.”
“Okay, whoa, no, stop that,” Sam said firmly. She had to nip that line of thinking in the bud asap. “None of this is your fault. None of it. She’s a shitty person, end of story. It is not your fault that she hurts you. And in absolutely no way would it have been better if you never walked out of that portal. Understand? Your parents would’ve opened it eventually, and then there would be no hero to save the town. Me and Tucker would be devastated, scarred for life. Your family, including Jazz, would be heartbroken. You dying would have only made things worse.”
“But I did die,” Danny pointed out, probably an instinct at this point; Sam decided to let that slide.
“I mean, all the way, without returning as a half-ghost. Things would have only been worse.”
“What if it was all the way but I returned as a full ghost though?” Danny asked. “Maybe that would—”
“Do NOT finish that sentence, Daniel James Fenton!” Sam said firmly. “And please, for the love of all things, talk to your therapist about this, seriously,” she said more gently. “All of this, abuse included.”
“It’s not abuse,” Danny muttered as he grabbed his shirt and slipped it on again.
“Fine, then about the hitting,” Sam amended, knowing it wasn’t worth fighting over terminology at the moment, even though by all definitions it was abuse—severe abuse at this point, given that if he were human he’d likely need a hospital, if a rib truly were cracked. “Your first session is tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah, it’s just the consultation one though,” Danny said, sounding tired.
“Then it’s even more vital you tell him, so that he knows exactly what help you need.”
Danny sighed. “Fine, whatever, I’ll say something to him.”
“Okay, great,” Sam said, clapping her hands together, although she had a strong feeling Danny wouldn’t be mentioning it despite saying he would. “Now, I think a distraction is needed—want to grab Tucker and go to the Nasty Burger for lunch?” That place not only always cheered Danny up, but it also usually had cheerful people, and Sam was pretty sure Danny got energized by happy emotions now that he could better sense them. “Then we can go to that little amusement park a couple towns over, I just got a new car now so we can use that!”
“Another one?” Danny asked with slight amusement, though his demeanor was still fairly dispirited.
“Shut up,” Sam said with a blush. So she had a thing for fancy (fuel-efficient environmentally-conscious) cars now that she could drive. “This one’s a convertible, you and Tucker have been talking about how fun that would be for months.”
“Aww, you bought us a car?” Danny teasingly cooed.
Sam rolled her eyes. “I said shut up. Now, go get your glowing tears off of you while I change my shirt,” she instructed.
Danny compliantly scurried to the bathroom, and while he was there Sam quickly changed to a near-identical black blouse and pulled out her phone to brief Tucker on the situation.
Honestly, Sam wasn’t sure what she or Tucker could do, if anything. Obviously CPS was out, but Danny’s home life was getting too dangerous for him. Maybe his therapist would know what to do; as long as Danny tells him about it, that is. If any place knew about how to handle CPS cases involving non-humans, it would be MU. Otherwise the alternatives would either be Danny running away, or him enduring it for the next two years and likely ending up with much more trauma than he already had.
Things might get better if Danny said something to his dad. But, Sam wasn’t confident enough that his dad wouldn’t try to deny it or side with Maddie; Jack could be a bit of a doormat towards his wife, although given the described fight maybe that was changing. Sam was confident, however, that if Jack ever found out about Danny’s ghost powers, he would be accepting; however, Maddie, not so much. Whereas Jack’s opinions on ghosts seemed to have shifted towards more positive over time, Maddie’s simply went further negative. If Danny told Jack, the man was likely to simply tell Maddie about it thinking she’d be accepting too—after all, Danny was their kid. But Sam wasn’t sure that Danny’s mom’s hatred for ghosts wouldn’t take precedent over the life of her own child… So, telling Jack anything was out.
Sam supposed for now all she could really do was continue to support Danny whenever he needed a place to crash or needed someone whose shoulder he could cry into. And probably get him some more painkillers—Jazz had said no, but Danny seriously looked like he needed some at the moment, especially if he had a cracked rib; why Jazz was so adamant about reducing their use was a mystery to Sam. After all, Sam’s mom used them so often that she hadn’t even noticed when Sam occasionally swiped a bottle for Danny, and her mom was still perfectly fine.
Valerie frowned as she watched Danny Fenton-slash-Phantom in Lancer’s class on Monday morning. Something felt off about him. He seemed tired, as evidenced by the fact that he was trying to sleep at his desk once again, but somehow it felt heavier than his usual didn’t-sleep-last-night tiredness—and he should have slept considering there was, surprisingly, no ghost attack the previous night.
Danny also seemed to be in somewhat more wrinkled and dirty clothes than expected, as though he had slept in them and not bothered to change upon waking up; his open sea-green zipper-hoodie, stained and two sizes too large, looked suspiciously like one that had been lingering in the school’s lost-and-found since the previous year.
Plus there was that faint bruise on his face; how had he gotten that if there was no ghost fight the previous night, or this morning? And why was it still there? He hadn’t confronted Dash yet that day either, so obviously it was from the weekend. So why wasn’t it healed? Valerie had seen Phantom heal from severe bruises in minutes… A recent report from MU had claimed emotions affected healing abilities; was that way? Was Danny too depressed to heal or something?
Danny suddenly jolted awake as a puff of icy breath escaped his lips, something that Valerie had noticed typically happened just before ghost attacks—something that made more sense now given Valerie’s extra context; from what she could tell, it was one of Phantom’s powers (she still was having trouble seeing them as the same person) manifested in his human form, possibly uncontrollable, that indicated a(n unfriendly?) ghost was near.
Valerie’s ghost tracker buzzed in her ear and she got ready to make a quick exit.
However, neither Danny nor Valerie needed to leave to find the ghost, as he had floated down into the classroom.
“I have found you, child!” the ghost boomed.
“Skulker, ugh, what do you want?” Danny said tiredly, looking up at the robotic hunter ghost in front of him. “And since when do you come into the classroom?”
“Mister Fenton,” Lancer called. “Please keep your ghost friends out of my classroom!”
“This one’s not my friend!” Danny clarified.
“I most certainly am not!” Skulker angrily growled. “You, boy, are in big trouble!”
Danny crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. “When am I not? Let me guess: you’re pissed because Ember still won’t get back together with you?”
“Because of you!” Skulker raged. “How dare you steal her away from me!”
Danny scoffed at that. “I didn’t ‘steal’ anyone from you, dude. Ember’s my friend. We’re in a band together. That’s the extent of it. If she doesn’t want to get back together with you, that’s not my problem.”
Valerie subtly aimed a wrist ray at the ghost.
“But it is! She told me that—ow!!” Skulker shouted as the ecto-shot hit him, turning to glare at the other students, some which seemed slightly scared of the ghost, some which seemed mildly worried for Danny, and others that just seemed bored; no one was bothering to actually escape, apparently too used to ghosts like Skulker appearing or expecting Phantom to appear, unaware that he couldn’t. Skulker demanded, “Which one of you whelps did that?” He glared at each in turn, stopping at Valerie and giving her a longer look before moving on. “If that happens again, someone is going to be in pain,” he told them, then turned back to Danny.
Unfortunately for Skulker, Danny wasn’t there.
“Dammit! Where the hell did you go?!” the ghost shouted angrily. “Ugh, no matter. Run all you want, but I WILL find you!” he shouted as he flew out through the window.
Valerie quickly excused herself to the ‘bathroom’ as the tired Mr. Lancer told the class to settle down and continued his lesson on the joys of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, apparently unconcerned as to Danny’s whereabouts. No wonder no one other than herself and Jazz had actually figured out his secret yet; Danny could turn invisible right in the middle of the classroom and even the teachers were oblivious.
Soon Valerie was outside in her Red Huntress suit. She found Skulker on the roof; it appeared either he had just found Danny, now in Phantom form, or maybe Phantom found him given the boy’s confrontive body language.
“Again, she’s just my friend, Skulker. Any ‘girlfriend’ talk you’ve heard is just rumors,”
Phantom told him.
“I know that! Friend, lover, whatever, that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that she said that if I ever want her to talk to me again, I need to stop hunting you! How is that fair!?”
“How is attacking me IN CLASS, when I’m in HUMAN FORM, any fairer?!” Phantom yelled back. “It’s, like, an unspoken rule that you don’t do that! If my secret gets out because of some stupid relationship trouble, I’m going to lock you in a thermos and have Clockwork throw you back into prehistoric times!”
Skulker, to Valerie’s surprise, seemed mildly stunned by that declaration. After a beat he decided, “Surely, you jest.”
“Nope. Not jesting,” Phantom said, crossing his arms with a smug grin.
“There is no way you know an Ancient well enough to ask asinine favors such as that.”
“Do you really want to risk it?” Phantom taunted.
Skulker frowned, considering that. “Fine. I will refrain from encountering you in class,” the ghost decided, apparently deciding the risk wasn’t worth it, then raised an arm. “But here is fair game!” He shot a small missile from a wrist gun.
Phantom easily dodged it, then got a sly grin on his face. To Valerie’s surprise, and apparently Skulker’s too, he manifested a guitar out of thin air, the same one he’d used during the concert, albeit with colors inverted, the base cyan instead of purple and accents purple instead of cyan—so it had been a ghostly trick that made the instruments appear!
“Is that… is that Ember’s old guitar?” Skulker asked, clearly confused.
“Yup,” Phantom said, popping the ‘p’, grinning mischievously—purposely antagonizing the other ghost, Valerie realized. Had Danny always been that malicious, or had ghostly malevolence been influencing his personality? He claimed it didn’t, but maybe he was unaware...
Skulker’s expression became outraged. “How dare you steal from her, welp!”
“Actually, she gave it to me,” Phantom said with a shit-eating grin. “And, she taught me how to use it!”
Phantom strummed a chord on the guitar, and a wave of sonic energy emitted from it, distorting the air in the same way heavy heat might, visible by how it warped the background. Skulker dodged easily, but the chimney behind him did not.
“Dammit, I’m supposed to be trying to do less damage,” Phantom muttered, staring at the shattered chimney, and apparently no longer paying attention to the ghost.
Valerie zoomed forward, twisting in the air and flipping her board to block a small barrage of missiles aimed at Phantom. “Pay attention, Phantom!” she scolded.
“Right, sorry!” Phantom said, dismissing the guitar and zipping around and zooming at the hunter ghost with a raised glowing fist.
The move was incredibly predictable, and Skulker responded by shooting a net at Phantom, ensnaring him in it before the punch could land. Valerie resisted facepalming; how had he survived until now?
“Fucking shit,” Phantom grumbled from the destroyed chimney where he’d landed, as he tried to untangle himself from the net.
Valerie raised her eyebrows, not expecting such language. “Aren’t you supposed to be a family-friendly superhero?” she wondered, as she shot at and destroyed a second net coming for her.
“Ghosts aren’t known for being family-friendly,” Phantom quipped back, as he glowed blue and then quickly spread his limbs out, shattering the now-frozen net and completely destroying the rest of the chimney. Well, at least he acknowledged that aspect of his ghostliness.
Phantom flew up and summoned his guitar again. Which apparently wasn’t a replica, rather had been gifted to him by Ember herself and seemed to have similar attack capabilities… Well, that was just great. Valerie really didn’t like the idea of there being two musician ghosts with such a large variety of unpredictable wide-sweeping attacks! Even if one was kinda an ally, at least until he got bored of the hero stuff and showed his true colors, as Valerie was sure would happen someday.
Phantom played with a little dial on the guitar and then strummed it again, creating a wave of yellow that slammed into Skulker. “Cool! It really does have an electric attack!” Phantom cheered.
“No!” Skulker shouted. “My suit!” The ghost shook, paralyzed by the blast as various parts of the suit clearly malfunctioned. “I’ll get you for this!”
“Yeah, yeah,” Phantom said, dismissing the guitar and pulling out a thermos. “Kinda gotta be able to move for that,” he said as he easily sucked Skulker into it. Valerie glided over to him and he grinned and told her, “That attack is definitely going to make fighting both Skulker and Technus much easier.”
“How the hell did you even get one of Ember’s guitars?” Valerie asked. “She didn’t seriously just give it to you, did she? And how can you just summon it and put it away?”
“It really is mine now,” Phantom said smugly. “She really did give it to me—we’re friends, she taught me to play. I can summon it because ghosts can do that sort of thing, when it comes to ghost-zone objects—or, I guess ecto-influenced objects in general, since I can do it with the thermos too, but only if it’s empty. Haven’t tested the extent of that though.”
“Huh. And you can do this with anything?” Valerie asked, thinking about the horrible implications of ghosts secretly carrying around whatever they wanted. She didn’t like the idea of hanging around talking with a ghost, especially Phantom, even though he was technically Danny, but if he was willing to give her important info like this, she would play nice.
Danny shook his head. “There’s a limit. Dunno the specifics as to how that limit is determined, I think it’s something about general mass combined with how spiritually connected you are to the things, but apparently if you try to carry too much you start to feel it, like get super tired and stuff, and at some point you just can’t acquire anything more unless you drop something. For example, Johnny can’t really be connected to much else while he stays connected to his bike. Think of it like, spiritually carrying things instead of physically carrying things—it’s actually the same mechanic as your suit, come to think of it.”
“My suit?”
“Yeah, like how it blends into you, weapons included. It uses ghost tech, you know.”
“I know that,” Valerie said, scowling. She had made peace with it, but still didn’t like thinking about that. Then she realized something else. “You know, you can’t really use that guitar as Phantom in public; you used it in human form at the concert. People will notice they’re the same.” Maybe that would get him to not use it anymore in fights.
“Nah; the colors get inverted when I switch forms,” Phantom explained. “Technically I can change the colors more, Clockwork showed me how, but it’s a bit of a nuisance, so I figured I’d just do what it defaulted to.”
“And you think just inverting the colors will work?” Valerie asked skeptically, as well as little concerned at how Phantom seemed to be friends with a ghost that, from Valerie’s understanding, was akin to a god. How deep was he in all this? If Valerie didn’t know better, she’d say he was closer to full ghost than whatever human bit he had left—maybe he even was for all she knew. Danielle was clearly half human and half ghost, but was it always such an even divide?
Phantom shrugged. “It works for the rest of me.”
Valerie frowned. “Guess that’s true,” she muttered, still annoyed at how long it had taken her to figure out that Phantom was Fenton when in retrospect it was so obvious. “Anyway, better get back to class,” Valerie said, turning to leave, then when Phantom made no move to asked, “You coming?”
Phantom shrugged. “Kinda not feeling school right now, honestly.”
Valerie frowned. It was only first period! “Well, you’re going,” she told him. “Not going to have your friends thinking I destroyed you or something when I return without you.”
“Oh, yeah, they might think that,” Phantom—no, Fenton now, as he’d shifted back while still floating—said sullenly. “Fine, I’ll go back.” He turned, and his hoodie slipped off his shoulder; Valerie caught a glimpse of bruises on Danny’s arm before he pulled it back up in a panic, and before Valerie could question that he vanished into thin air—or rather, went invisible, more likely.
Valerie didn’t know if Danny was intentionally taunting her by changing back into Fenton while floating and then doing ghost things like turning invisible, or just didn’t care, but either way, it angered her immensely.
Valerie sighed in frustration, though it came out as more of a growl, and headed back to class, hoping that Danny had the sense to return as well.
Valerie was not liking this new, more self-assured brazen Fenton-Phantom, having preferred it when Fenton was just an innocent cinnamon roll for her to protect and Phantom was a menace she could just shoot without all the complicated moral implications that came with learning he was half-human getting in the way. There was also the matter of the slight crush that was obnoxiously still there—why did she have to fall for the one guy at school who happened to secretly be half ghost, of all things?
Danny did, in fact, choose to skip class. He did remember to send a quick text to Sam and Tucker letting them know he was okay, and that he just didn’t want to go to class. They’d probably chew him out for it later, but he was just so tired…
There hadn’t even been any ghost attacks the previous night; maybe if he’d snuck back to his room and fallen asleep on his own bed, things would have been fine, but he hadn’t, even though that’s what he’d told Sam he was doing. He just couldn’t bring himself to go back. He wondered if his parents had even noticed his absence.
Danny wondered which he would prefer: his parents to have not noticed at all, or his parents noticing and then punishing him for it. Would his mom try to finish what she started? If she did, would his dad try to stop her? Or would he simply let her do it? Or would she wait until he wasn’t there? Danny didn’t think the first option would happen, and wasn’t sure which of the other two would be preferable.
Danny took note of the fact that the spot where a small piece of chimney shrapnel had hit him had already healed fully, despite being a cut. Yet the bruises from his mom still remained, healing much slower. What was with that? With the ecto-weapons it made sense, because they were designed to inhibit ghost healing. But bruises should heal much faster. Did it depend on what form he got them in? No, that can’t be it; he’d gotten cuts in human form before, yet they still healed faster than these bruises were. It can’t be cuts versus bruises either, because Danny had gotten bruises from ghost fights before that healed more rapidly too. Did it depend on if a human or ghost gave him the wound? Danny decided this was too much to think about at the moment and shoved the thoughts aside to analyze later.
Danny returned to the sleeping place he’d found the previous night—a small dilapidated abandoned shack on the highway leading out of town. It likely had been some sort of storage building, one room with a concrete floor, but at one point someone, likely homeless, had put some blankets in the corner, now decaying and clearly abandoned too. He’d found it after wandering around for a while, but it had been sufficient enough to get him at least two hours of sleep.
It wasn’t the best place to stay, but Danny knew no one would find him there, and it wasn’t exposed; he curled up on top of the blankets and immediately fell back asleep.
Jack was wandering around town just after lunch, searching around for ghosts while Maddie did some shopping. He wanted to see if he could find one of the friendlier-seeming human-based ones, in the hopes of talking amicably with them, see if he could see just how Danny could so casually be friends with them and maybe get the word out that he was interested in talking over fighting. If he got lucky, maybe he’d even find one of those ghost friends!
So far, all Jack had found was a strange tentacled creature in an alley that had an extremely dissettling aura (and which he couldn’t focus on for more than a second without getting the sense he’d go mad). Since it didn’t register on the ghost tracker, Jack decided best to ignore it; strange things like that had been appearing ever since MU appeared in town, and Jack would rather deal only with ghosts. It was likely fine; Danny had a similarly tentacled cryptid in his band after all, although this one looked less human than Lurker did, possibly more of a canine, if canines had potentially dozens of tentacles and existed in something beyond 3D that the human brain couldn’t properly process.
Finally, a blip appeared on the EMF meter, at the very edge of the range. Jack frowned. That spot was on the edge of town, along a wooded highway, at what Jack recognized was the eyesore of a large abandoned concrete shed the town previously used to store road maintenance supplies but had exchanged for a fancy new one ten years back. The roof was caving in, the windows were all broken, and it was graffitied to hell—really, the sort of building one would expect to encounter a ghost in, although usually not a human-based ghost… which, come to think of it, further proved that they weren’t mindless emotionless beings, right?
Well, might as well check it out anyway, Jack decided—it wasn’t like there were any other signals to investigate, at least not in the vicinity of this handheld device.
The walk took a little longer than Jack would have liked; perhaps he should have taken the GAV—no, a scooter or smaller car, if he showed up in the GAV he’d scare away the ghost. Well, he supposed adding an extra twenty-minute detour to his route wasn’t too bad, and Maddie was always pressing him to get more exercise anyway. Besides, this highway wasn’t used very much, and it was actually somewhat relaxing to walk next to the woods like this.
Soon, Jack approached the decaying shack. He narrowed the range on the ghost radar so it encompassed just the building in front of him, getting a better view of where the ghost was inside. Oddly enough, the blip was completely still, not moving at all.
Jack cautiously opened the heavy metal door, which barely held onto its rusty hinges, and slipped inside, trying to cause as little noise as possible. He resisted jumping in joy when he somehow actually managed it.
Jack looked around the small room; it was a simple ten foot by twenty foot rectangle, dimly lit by some small windows lining the upper walls, mostly cleared out except for some broken rakes and similarly unusable maintenance equipment. In one corner was a pile of moth-ridden blankets.
Curled up in a ball on his side and floating a few inches above the blankets was none other than Danny Phantom. He wasn’t moving.
Jack crept closer, wondering what the ghost was doing. “Phantom?” he asked quietly, not wanting to startle the ghost.
Phantom didn’t move. As Jack got closer, he realized that the ghost boy’s eyes were closed and he was completely still, almost like he was sleeping. Actually asleep? Ghosts could sleep? Since when could ghosts sleep? Did they usually sleep during the day, or was this a nap?
Jack wanted to wake the boy to ask him, but felt that would be rude; upon closer look the boy had dark bags under his eyes, as well as a bruise on his cheek indicating he’d likely been in a fight recently, meaning he probably really needed the sleep. Plus, the boy looked so peaceful, a softness to him that Jack had never seen before. It honestly reminded him a little of his own Danny.
Jack decided to leave the boy alone; true, he had been looking for a human-based ghost to talk to, but he could wait until a time where he didn’t need to disturb someone’s sleep to do that.
Jack slowly crept back out of the building, thankfully not disturbing the sleeping ghost, and returned to his preplanned circuit.
Jack briefly thought that he should tell Maddie about this, then realized that she wouldn’t find it as fascinating as he did. She’d claim Phantom was trying to trick him, even though logically it made no sense given that the ghost boy didn’t react at all when Jack got close enough to see his eye bags; if it were a trick, he would have attacked at that point. Then Maddie would scream at Jack about messing up a perfectly good opportunity to shoot Phantom down.
So, for now, Jack had to keep this new knowledge of sleeping ghosts a secret.
Unless… maybe he could talk to Jazz and Danny about it! They would be interested. Oh, but then they’d question why he wanted it kept a secret from Maddie… Then again, discussing ghosts with them—specifically, talking about understanding ghosts rather than killing ghosts—might be a good way to bond with the kids.
Jack sighed, mood dropping as he thought about how his relationship with his kids had become so deteriorated, Danny especially. He hadn’t even seen the boy since breakfast the previous day; after the planned family day had been a bust, Danny had run off to a friend’s place and stayed there, or so Maddie told him—not that she would have reason to lie about that. Jack should probably apologize to Danny tonight about that fight; he’d looked pretty upset when Jack had run off. Jack hated that Danny had to see that.
Maybe explaining to the kids that he and Maddie had different views on ghosts now would help? But again, that would bring up why Jack hid his views, and he didn’t want his kids knowing that…
Jack sighed again. Why did everything need to be so complicated?
“Daniel, please stay after class,” Lancer said as Danny was about to leave.
Danny held back a groan, not liking the prospect of being late to lunch again; Tucker and Sam gave Danny sympathetic looks but left after he waved them away. What now? He managed not to fall asleep in class this time despite some close calls. His homework? Yeah, probably his homework; he’d slept during study hall earlier instead of doing it, and the things due the previous day were done but still at home since he hadn’t returned there. “Sorry I didn’t get my homework done again,” Danny told his teacher as he approached the desk after the students finished filing out.
“This isn’t about your homework,” Lancer said in a gentle voice. He seemed cautious and very worried. “I can’t help but notice that you look rather disheveled. You wore the same outfit yesterday, which is clearly dirty, and look like you possibly slept in it. Your hair is clearly dirty and disheveled, as if you didn’t shower nor comb it, and the bags under your eyes are more noticeable than usual.”
“Oh, yeah, don’t hold back,” Danny muttered, taking a moment to readjust the hoodie from the lost-and-found so it didn’t slip off (the black one he usually kept in his locker was still at home, and he needed something to hide the bruises), not liking that Lancer had noticed all that.
Lancer ignored the comment and continued, “You also don’t have your backpack, nor did you yesterday, you were sharing a textbook with Sam, and that sweatshirt is clearly the one that’s lived in the lost-and-found for a year. Plus, your father called earlier to ask if you were in school; he said you messaged him claiming to be at a friend’s for the night and would be at school, but after last week he wanted to double check since you did the same Sunday night too.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize he’d actually check in…” Danny said in a small voice. He felt a little bad that his dad was getting hurt by Danny’s absence; it was his mom he needed to hide from, not his dad, but unfortunately he couldn’t hide from just one. He hadn’t messaged anyone the first night though; had Jack assumed, or had Maddie lied to cover up that he’d run because of her?
“He did,” Lancer said, voice still gentle. “Daniel, frankly, I’m worried about you; have you been sleeping in the streets?”
Danny winced. “Uh, no, not the streets,” he unconvincingly muttered. He was hoping no one would find out that he hadn’t been home, especially where he’d been sleeping. Was it really that obvious?
“But not at home, nor at a friend’s?”
Danny looked at the floor, not wanting to answer.
“Daniel?” Lancer prodded, worried vibes only increasing.
“It… it was an abandoned storage shed on a highway,” Danny admitted to the floor, wanting to be honest with Lancer. “I’ll go home today, don’t worry,” he said, and at Lancer’s skeptical vibes added, “Really, I promise. It’s just, me and my folks were fighting again and I didn’t want to be at home… But, I know I should go back. You’re right, I do, uh, need to shower and stuff,” he muttered the last bit. “And do my homework.”
“Don’t worry about the homework,” Lancer said, clearly resisting the urge to correct Danny’s grammatical error (yet another strange thing to be a distinct emotion, but Danny wasn’t surprised anymore at what counted as such). Lancer continued, “I’ll sort it out with your other teachers.”
“Really?” Danny asked, finally looking up at Lancer, eyes wide.
“Really. And I’ll excuse your absence yesterday afternoon, too—just please, Daniel, promise me that next time, you won’t sleep on the streets, or in an abandoned building, or anything like that? If you have nowhere else, I do have a guest room.”
“Oh, you don’t have to—”
Lancer cut Danny off. “I know, but I want to. Please. I can’t stand the thought of one of my students being on the streets. Let me help you.”
Danny considered that. It would be nicer to sleep in a guest room instead of that abandoned shack, and Lancer seemed very insistent upon it. Danny then recalled Lancer’s own story about being a teenage runaway who lived on the streets for some time—no wonder he wanted to do all he could to prevent another teenager from having to do that, and why his vibes proved he wouldn’t back down on that matter! “Okay,” Danny decided, completely truthfully. “Next time, I’ll come to you, if there’s no one else. Promise.”
“Thank you,” Lancer said, vibes of relief coming off him.
“Is that all…?” Danny asked quietly, though seemed to know and dread that it wasn’t.
Lancer contemplated asking, then decided that he should. “You mentioned you and your parents were fighting again. Do you want to talk about it?”
Danny shook his head. “No, that’s okay. I’ve got a therapy session after school today, so I’ll bring it up then,” he said, though wasn’t actually sure if he would. His first one, the consultation, had been the previous afternoon (during which he learned his mom had lied to the family, claiming he went to Tucker’s for the night; Jazz seemed to suspect that wasn’t true, but didn’t say anything), and they now had regular sessions scheduled for twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, since apparently Danny’s psyche was so worrisome with so much needing addressing that it required more than one session a week.
Lancer nodded kindly, but thankfully didn’t press. “Well, then, I won’t delay you from lunch anymore. Just remember: I’m here if you need me.”
Danny nodded. “Thanks. I really am grateful for that,” he said truthfully. “Really. There’s just some things I’m not ready to talk about yet. But…” he shifted awkwardly, realizing he was blushing a bit as he looked at the ground. “It’s really nice to know that there’s someone there for me. An adult, I mean. One that knows I’m also… well, you know. So, thanks.”
“Of course,” Lancer said with a gentle smile as Danny looked back up. Danny couldn’t help but think that the caring and comforting vibes Lancer gave off really should be something his mom should have too. His teacher shouldn’t feel like more of a parent than his own parent.
“Right. Off to lunch, then,” Danny said as he hopped over to the window, peeked his head out while it was still closed, and then phased through. He couldn’t help but grin as he felt a vibe of surprise followed by a fond resignation from Lancer.
Notes:
Next up: Maddie implements some new punishments. Danny finds himself at Lancer's house, and both Lancer and Jazz learn about Maddie's abuse towards Danny. Jazz has a plan. Jack learns of it too, and decides he is done with Maddie's shit.
Chapter 10: The Last Straw
Summary:
Maddie's punishments escalate again, and Danny finds himself taking refugee at Lancer's. Jazz shows up and decides Fentonworks isn't safe for Danny, leaving her parents with an ultimatum. Jack and Maddie have yet another fight.
Notes:
This is chapter 4 of 4 posted today! If you're just tuning in for the first time today, go check out the other 3 first!
Like the previous one, this chapter is very mean to Danny. Good news is that this is the worst the abuse gets.
CW: Physical child abuse, including using cages and withholding meals as a form of punishment.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Oh, look who finally came home,” Maddie sneered, turning towards Danny as he entered the kitchen. It looked like she was starting dinner, currently cutting vegetables. The efforts of her and Jack to actually have family dinners now was honestly rather bizarre to Danny; they hadn’t cared for most of the first 16 years of his life, so why were they suddenly now?
“Where’s dad and Jazz?” Danny asked, heart immediately speeding up and core pulsing, not liking that it was apparently only him and his mother home—and not liking the fact that she was holding a knife while her emotions were clearly somewhat volatile. She’d obviously been angry about something else, and Danny had come home just in time to become the target for that anger.
Danny had promised both Lancer and his therapist that he’d come home tonight, but was already starting to regret it, fear pooling in his core. He hadn’t told either the true reason for leaving after the fight, only saying that his parents had a nasty verbal fight while leaving out the beating he took afterwards—if they’d known, would they still have suggested he return home?
Maddie scoffed as she continued the dinner prep. “Your sister is doing a presentation on ghost psychology for one of her classes. She invited us to observe; I have no idea why your father decided to go, since it’s a ridiculous premise, something about why child ghosts are more likely to feed on positive emotions. She’s probably going to fail, given ghosts do not feed on emotions. Some get power from them, sure, if it’s part of their obsession, like that music ghost that loves attention, but it’s not some universal ghost thing!”
Danny resisted saying something to counter that very wrong conclusion, instead asking, “When will they be back?”
“The class is from 5 to 7, so probably not until around 8,” Maddie said, and Danny glanced at the clock; it was now only 5, as he’d come right home after his therapy appointment. “It’s just you and me for dinner; they’re going to get something at the cafeteria at the school.”
“Oh. Okay,” Danny said, really not liking the idea of that. “I’m just going to go up to my room, then.” He turned to do just that.
“No, you’re not,” Maddie said calmly, setting the knife down and moving towards him; Danny couldn’t help but flinch.
“W-what do you mean?” Danny asked shakily. Was she going to continue where she left off two days prior?
“You’re going to tell me where you were for the past two nights,” Maddie said in a saccharine voice that Danny knew cloaked quiet rage. “And don’t say Tucker’s; I told your dad that, but you and I both know that isn’t true.”
“Then why’d you tell him that?” Danny couldn’t help but wonder.
“Because it would upset him too much to learn you were with those ghosts again.”
“What? How would I be with them without portal access?” he pointed out, opting not to mention that he was pretty sure his dad would be the opposite of unhappy, rather probably would want to ask more questions about them.
“Not in the Ghost Zone, in Amity Park,” Maddie explained, now standing in front of Danny. “The one on the bike and his girlfriend were spotted around town.”
“Oh. Well, I didn’t see them,” Danny told her truthfully. They must have been on the other side of town, and Tucker had filtered out certain ghosts, including them, from his PDA ghost alert app (connected to the full-town scanner in the ops center). Danny wondered if they’d used a natural portal or if Johnny acquired a portal gun that he’d incorporated into his bike again.
“Liar!” Maddie accused, then reached out and slapped Danny on the cheek. “Tell the truth.”
“I am!” Danny said, automatically putting a hand on the spot where she’d slapped him (he knew better than to back up or try to run).
“Then where were you?” Maddie demanded.
Danny winced. “Um. I’d rather not tell you.” She’d probably be upset that he’d been sleeping in a shed for the past two nights.
“Then it was with the ghosts,” Maddie concluded. “It seems the punishment wasn’t enough, then. Come with me,” she demanded, grabbing Danny’s wrist—which stung, as once again she wore the Specter Deflector.
“Wait, what? Where are we going?!” Danny asked in mild panic—she was dragging him to the lab! Had she figured things out? Did she know he was a ghost? Was she going to experiment on him?
“Stop struggling!” Maddie ordered, gripping Danny’s wrist harder.
Danny shook his head, still trying to pull away. Logically he knew cooperating would be better, at least until he knew what her plan truly was, but he was scared! He had to remember not to go intangible no matter how much his core wanted him to—it wouldn’t work with the Specter Deflector, rather would just cause a larger shock.
“Fine, then,” Maddie hissed, and pulled Danny towards her. She grabbed him around the chest and Danny bit back a scream at the additional contact causing the Specter Deflector to succeed in weakening him enough to not fight back as hard as he should be able to; he let out a whimper, letting his body go limp as he realized fighting was useless.
Maddie carried Danny to the lab and mercilessly tossed him onto the floor, ignoring his shaking.
“Shirt off,” Maddie told Danny as she searched for something in a drawer.
“What?” Danny asked in confusion as he weakly scrambled to his feet. She didn’t know his secret, then? But then what…?
“Shirt off,” Maddie said again, as she appeared with what looked like a bullwhip.
Danny’s eyes widened and his heart rate increased. “You’re going to whip me!?” he concluded, horrified.
“Well, clearly grounding doesn’t work; maybe this will teach you,” Maddie said coldly. “Now, shirt off, hands on the desk.”
Danny subconsciously began to slightly shake again, eyes widening in fear, only increased by the angry, violent vibes his mother gave off. It wasn’t like he’d get too damaged by it, at least not so badly it would take long to heal. Probably. But, still. Danny fell to his knees, too nervous to stand, trying not to whimper—he didn’t want her to get angrier again because of a pathetic sound.
“Danny,” his mom said, warning in her voice.
Danny slowly removed his shirt, but didn’t move otherwise. His mom didn’t comment on all the bruises; after all, she probably assumed she had caused them rather than the ghost fights from earlier that day and Dash, since the ones from just a few days prior wouldn’t have yet healed as much as they had if he were truly human. “Please, don’t,” he muttered, closing his eyes. “Please don’t.”
Maddie paused. “Okay, I won’t.”
Danny opened his eyes and looked up at his mom. “You won’t?” he asked. “Seriously?”
“Not this time. Let the fear be enough of a lesson. Next time, however, I won’t show mercy, understand?”
Danny nodded. “Y-yes, I understand,” he stammered out, sensing she was being serious about that.
“Good. Now—Danny, what’s that on your chest?” Maddie asked, eyes narrowing.
Danny glanced down, then realized what she meant. “Oh. Um, Jazz put it on, it’s just black henna, not a real tattoo. It’s a symbol to protect from ghosts,” Danny hurriedly lied.
Maddie looked at it, as though she were trying to recall something, then seemed amused. “To prevent overshadowing, right? Yes, I do remember one of the more outlandish books having that in it… Unfortunately, honey, ghosts don’t care what tattoos you have. It’s pseudo-ecto-science.”
“Oh,” Danny said, trying to look a little disappointed. In reality, it definitely did work, but prevented summoning—so, technically Maddie was right, Danny supposed, as it was an anti-human ward, not an anti-ghost one (ghosts summoning other ghosts was considered a major social taboo that would get one not just shunned by all other ghosts but also arrested by the Observants).
“Now, for your actual punishment,” Maddie said, and Danny looked up in slight fear again. There was more? Danny squeaked as Maddie grabbed him by the hair, dragged him over to a small containment chamber, and tossed him in despite his protests, locking it after.
“Hey, what the hell?!” Danny shouted, banging on the side of the kennel-sized tank of ecto-proof glass.
“If you want to fraternize with ghosts, you’ll be treated like a ghost,” Maddie said curtly. “Don’t make me use chains, too. Now, I am going to finish making dinner; you’ll be released when it’s ready.”
Danny, on his knees, watched hopelessly as his mom disappeared up the stairs. He didn’t even have a shirt on! Flashbacks to nightmares he’d had of getting caught by his parents came to mind, but in those he’d been Phantom—now his mom thought he was fully human, yet had still locked him up. Being in the glass chamber also made him think of that time Vlad tortured him to get his DNA, even though it was a different shape.
A rush of panic engulfed Danny at the memory of being in Vlad’s torture chamber, and Danny did his best to bite it down, but couldn’t help the same emotions from that time engulfing him no matter how much he told himself it was not the same situation.
Danny twisted so he wasn’t on his knees, rather could curl up with his knees in front of him and arms wrapped around him. He stared into the distance as he felt the tears silently start to fall, doing his best to stay quiet instead of loudly sobbing like he wanted to do. He’d say any glowing residue they created was due to the tank not being fully cleaned, or maybe ecto-contamination—he had been in the Ghost Zone a few days, which theoretically could make that bad enough to have glowing tears, right?
Thankfully, Danny’s mom did remember to release him at dinner time, during which they ate in relative silence, until his mom spoke up near the end.
“Just so you know, we’ll be implementing a new punishment,” she said, voice irritatingly pleasant and vibes neutral, clearly feeling no qualms about what she’d done to Danny. “Perhaps it will encourage you to come home on time, as grounding clearly doesn’t work. So, here’s how it will be: from now on, if you’re not back by curfew to eat dinner with the family, you won’t be getting any dinner. We won’t save you anything, and you won’t be allowed to get any snacks or anything, either. Understood?”
Danny simply nodded in response, not having the mental energy to verbally respond.
Lancer was sitting in his armchair near the warm fireplace, reading a book with one of his cats, a calico named Princess, lounging on his lap, when a black and white blur flew intangibly through his doorway and then crashed into the side of the couch.
“War of the Worlds!!” Lancer proclaimed, leaping out of his seat, book flopping onto the ground and his cat angrily yowling as she ran down the hall, no doubt to hide under the bed. He moved to see if he still had an ecto-weapon in the drawer of the cabinet near him, then realized that he recognized the figure. “Daniel?”
Daniel, in Phantom form, groaned as he stood up, using the couch arm as an assist. “S-sorry about that, Mr. L,” he said, rubbing a hand on his back, likely the spot that collided with the couch arm.
“What are you doing here?” Lancer wondered. “It’s…” he glanced at the clock, “Quarter to eleven, shouldn’t you be in bed?” If the boy was out this late at night, presumably ghost fighting, it was no wonder he constantly fell asleep in class.
Daniel shook his head. “Couldn’t sleep, then my ghost sense went off. Turned out it was just Boxy, but then my mom showed up… Don’t worry, I’m not bleeding heavily this time,” he joked, voice sounding concerningly weak despite that. “Um. S-sorry for barging in though. I was fleeing from them, and I saw your name on the mailbox and remembered that you told me I could stop by if needed…” he shifted awkwardly. “Um, that is still okay, right?”
“Of course,” Lancer said gently. “Sit down, I’ll put on some tea.”
“Y-yeah, sitting, probably good to do,” Daniel muttered, stumbling slightly as he moved to the couch, a hand flying to his head. There was a flash of light, and Daniel changed into his human form before essentially falling onto the couch, breathing rather heavily, hand remaining pressed to his head.
Lancer paused on his way to the kitchen. “Daniel? Are you okay?” he asked, worried. He hoped Daniel didn’t need stitches again; it hadn’t even been a week since he found Daniel in that locker room.
“Y-yeah, just a little dizzy, it’s fine,” the boy claimed, closing his eyes.
“Dizzy is rarely ‘fine’,” Lancer pointed out. “Did you hit your head?”
Daniel shook his head, then winced. He put his other hand on his stomach, which growled loudly.
Lancer scrunched his brow, a sneaking suspicion coming over him. “Daniel, when was the last time you ate something?” he wondered, suspecting the stomach pains and dizziness may be linked. He knew the boy sometimes skipped lunch, particularly if there were ghost fights during it.
Daniel looked like he actually had to think about that. “Uh. This morning, I guess? I was running late though, so I only grabbed a banana… then I missed lunch due to a ghost fight… Kitty showed me how to make some ectoplasm drinks that I could keep on hand for situations like that, but my parents have had the lab more locked down than usual since I ran into the Ghost Zone so I wasn’t able to get any ectoplasm to make them.”
“And why didn’t you have dinner?” Lancer asked, when the boy didn’t continue. Had Daniel continued living on the streets instead of going home, and was perhaps not eating because of it?
Daniel winced. “Ah, well…” his shoulders drooped slightly and his hands fell to his lap. “I just, um…” Daniel trailed off, looking like he was trying to come up with a story. Lancer knew that look on him well thanks to all the excuses for being late and not doing homework.
“Daniel,” Lancer said, going for stern but gentle, hoping the boy would tell the truth, the fact he was potentially trying to hide the reason increasing his concern. Another horrible thought came across Lancer, so he asked, “Have you been intentionally not eating?” He knew Daniel had issues with depression (the boy never explicitly stated such, but Lancer had been teaching long enough to recognize the signs in teens; thankfully Daniel now had a therapist who could properly address such), which could lead to issues with eating…
Daniel shook his head. “No, it’s not that—well, not on my part, at least…” He looked at a random point on the floor, but sighed and nervously said truthfully, “Y-you know how I’m supposed to be home by 6:30 most days now, unless I get permission? Well, apparently being late, even by just a few minutes, means I don’t get dinner. Same thing happened yesterday too, though it was by like an hour so I guess that’s more understandable,” he said hurriedly, glancing at Lancer at the end, who was desperately trying to suppress a horrified expression.
“Daniel, that’s… They can’t do that,” Lancer told him. That kind of punishment… it was abuse, plain and simple. Lancer needed to get Daniel to understand that, although first he had to figure out just how bad this was and get the kid some food.
“Well, they did,” Daniel said dejectedly. “Or at least my mom did, my dad looked like he didn’t agree but as usual he didn’t say anything.” His stomach growled again.
“Please tell me that you at least ate lunch yesterday?”
Daniel looked sheepish at that. “Um. Not exactly… But, I had cereal in the morning! And technically, I don’t need to eat as much human food as regular humans, so I’m sure I’ll be fine…”
“Daniel,” Lancer said sternly. “Your stomach is growling, and you’re feeling dizzy. Even if you need to eat less, those are clear signs that currently your body is demanding food. Consuming only a bowl of cereal and a banana over the course of 48 hours is surely much too little, even for a ghost-human hybrid.”
“I guess when you put it that way, it does sound bad…”
“Come to the kitchen; I have leftovers from dinner, I’ll reheat them for you,” Lancer decided. “No objections,” he told Daniel as the boy opened his mouth, and then he headed to the kitchen.
As he left, Lancer heard a quiet “Thank you,” from the boy, who didn’t immediately move to get off the couch. Lancer had a feeling Daniel had more to say, so he turned to listen. The boy said, “Um. So I actually do have some bad bruises… From ghost fights! Just from ghost fights,” he added the last part quickly, as though he didn’t want Lancer to get the wrong—or perhaps in this case, right—idea.
Lancer’s idea was not a happy one. He had seen too many abused kids during his long tenure at Casper High, and Daniel was exhibiting enough signs that in any other situation Lancer would be calling CPS—unfortunately, CPS was a government organization, and the moment they realized Danny wasn’t human they’d almost definitely be contacting the GIW; the organization had stopped getting so involved with their town since MU appeared, particularly after MU sicced their lawyers at the GIW, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t respond if directly contacted.
Daniel continued, “So, um, do you have any painkillers?”
Lancer gave pause to that, recalling something the boy had said the previous week. “Didn’t your sister want you to reduce their use?”
“I mean like aspirin or tylenol, not the stronger stuff!” Daniel clarified. Lancer decided it best not to ask where Daniel had gotten ‘stronger stuff’, given he didn’t go to the hospital or have a human physician.
“Ah, then yes; I’ll go retrieve some,” Lancer said, and made his way to the bathroom to find some.
By the time Lancer returned, Daniel had fallen asleep on the couch. Another one of Lancer’s cats, a black one named Shadow (Lancer knew he was not the most creative with cat names; the third one, who was definitely hiding, was a white longhair named Snowball), sat curled up next to the boy, purring.
Lancer sighed gently. He knew the boy needed sleep, but right now he also needed food, and the latter was currently the more urgent matter—plus, Lancer wasn’t certain if it was just sleep, or if he had fallen unconscious, and seeing the cat there Lancer feared the latter given cats often purred as a way to heal and lend comfort to people.
So Lancer gently shook Daniel’s shoulder to wake the boy, who was concerningly slow to respond; eventually Daniel slowly blinked his eyes open and sat up, placing his hand on his head as though he had a headache. “Sorry, didn’t mean to blackout like that.”
So he had unintentionally fallen unconscious, Lancer concluded, as he handed the boy, who was now gently scratching behind Shadow’s ears, the pills and a glass of water. He had to get food in the boy asap.
Shadow purred more and bumped his head on Daniel’s chin, demanding more pets; Daniel complied and, curiously, began to emit a similar vibration sound from his chest, in-sync with the cat, looking very content. Lancer decided it must be a ghost thing and left it alone as he went to prepare food for the boy.
A short while later a plate of mashed potatoes, broccoli, and meatloaf was sat in front of Daniel, who was now seated at the kitchen table (which he’d needed assistance getting to, as he was shaking as he moved); the boy was wolfing the food down faster than what was probably safe. Lancer let the boy know that he was going to call his sister, then moved back to the living room to do so. Thankfully he already had her cell phone number as the girl often did tutoring sessions.
“Mister Lancer?” Jasmine asked when she answered the phone, no doubt confused at the hour.
“Hello, Jasmine,” Lancer greeted. “I have your brother here—”
“Danny?! Is he okay? What happened? Why’s he at your place? Is he safe? Is he hurt?!”
“Relax, Jasmine,” Lancer told her gently. “Daniel is safe here. He is not badly injured, as far as I know. He was out as Phantom, and flew in here to escape a fight with ghost hunters. I gave him ibuprofen for some bruises and a headache, but nothing is bleeding.”
“Okay. So, why are you calling me?” Jasmine understandably wondered.
“He briefly fainted from hunger,” Lancer told her, knowing she preferred to get right to the point. “He reluctantly admitted that all he ate today was a banana, and all he had yesterday was some cereal in the morning. Were you aware of this?”
Lancer could almost hear Jasmine’s face pale. After a brief silence she said quietly, “No, I wasn’t. Yesterday I was at the college studying with friends until late, and tonight I had a long evening class that overlapped with the usual dinner time… Did he say why he hasn’t eaten? Is it… Is it intentional?”
“No, not in the way you’re thinking,” Lancer said, realizing how she had potentially interpreted it. “He said that the lunches were because of ghost fights, and he couldn’t get to the lab to make the ectoplasm drinks he uses in case that happens. The dinners… Well, it seems your parents are now using missed meals as a punishment when he returns late.”
“What?!” Jasmine hissed. “That… What are they thinking?!” She sounded outraged despite a relatively quiet voice. “Okay, give me the address, I’ll come pick him up and take him to the diner.”
“No need; I had some leftovers he’s eating now,” Lancer told her. “I just wanted you to be aware; I know how much you care about him, and that if you’d known you wouldn’t have allowed it.”
“Damn right I wouldn’t have!” Jasmine exclaimed, and Lancer resisted the instinctual urge to call her out on the language. “I’m still coming over though, the lab portion of my class actually only just got out so I can be there relatively soon,” she said, and Lancer briefly wondered what class she could possibly have that went until past 11pm until he realized that there was a non-zero chance that he really wouldn’t want to know, considering it was an MU class. “Make sure he stays put,” Jasmine ordered before abruptly hanging up.
Lancer returned to the kitchen to find Daniel at the sink, washing his plate and silverware, and told the boy, “Your sister just got out of class; she’s on her way. Would you like some ice cream while you wait? I have Rocky Road and Strawberry Cheesecake flavors.” Not only would that help ensure he stayed, but also would help ensure his blood sugar rose to an appropriate level, whatever that was for a ghost-human hybrid; Lancer was unfortunately well acquainted with the fact that Daniel mostly had ectoplasm running through his veins, but allegedly there was still a small amount of human blood mixed in, which presumably needed to have the right balance of nutrients. Lancer did have a test kit, due to Shadow being diabetic, but he wasn’t sure how accurate it would be in this case.
Daniel’s eyes widened. “Ice cream?” He asked, eyes momentarily flashing green, which Lancer interpreted as an indication of excitement. Then, Daniel shifted nervously and said, “Um, if that’s okay, I don’t want to inconvenience you more…”
“It’s not an inconvenience,” Lancer said gently as he went to get the ice cream out of the freezer. “Do you have a flavor preference?”
“Strawberry Cheesecake,” Daniel said without even needing to consider it.
Lancer prepared a bowl of that for Daniel and a bowl of Rocky Road for himself, then sat at the table with the boy to eat it.
Daniel laughed as Shadow jumped on the table and tried to steal some ice cream; Lancer shooed Shadow away and firmly told the cat, “You know better than to steal ice cream. Sneaking human desserts is exactly how you became diabetic.” He hoped saying that would also warn Daniel about the danger of trying to sneak the cat a lick of ice cream, because Shadow liked to beg.
Daniel giggled again. “I didn’t know cats could have such personality,” he said. “I never was allowed to have a pet growing up; my parents said the house was too dangerous.”
“Ah, that’s a shame,” Lancer said, noting the fact that Daniel’s parents apparently had deemed the house too unsafe for animals but apparently not too unsafe for their own children. “Cats are quite wonderful creatures. You have a dog now though, correct? The ghost one?”
Daniel moved his hand in a so-so gesture. “Cujo kinda bonded with me I guess, but I wouldn’t exactly call him mine. He’s a ghost, so doesn’t really need much care, and comes and goes as he pleases. Basically he just visits me when he’s bored and wants to play. Or, well, he used to; I guess nowadays he’s been stopping by more lately, sometimes just hanging out with me and my friends, happy to just cuddle and take naps.” He chuckled. “Jazz says he’s like a therapy dog. She tried to get me one of those back in middle school, actually…” he trailed off, looking lost in thought as he took another bite of ice cream.
“Oh?” Lancer prodded gently, curious as to why Jasmine would think he needed one, and slightly worried too.
Daniel nodded. “I… wasn’t really doing well back then,” he admitted. “Honestly, I’m still not, but back then… It’s the reason Jazz got so invested in psychology, I think. At that point even I realized that I probably should get help, but my parents were just so adamant that it was just regular teenage angst, even though I… Well, with the thoughts I was having, let’s just say it was lucky I made it to high school alive—well, partly alive.”
“I see,” Lancer said somberly. “Well, I for one am certainly glad you made it so far. These thoughts though—you’re still having them, aren’t you?” Lancer knew for a fact the boy was, given some of his comments when talking about his portal accident.
Daniel sighed, then nodded slowly. “I won’t act on anything though, promise,” he told Lancer. “My therapist says it’s one of the first things he wants to work on; he’s having me keep a feelings journal, and wants me to note how often I have thoughts like that.”
“Oh, good,” Lancer said, relieved that Daniel would finally be getting help after what had apparently been years of needing it. Lancer regretted not intervening sooner.
The atmosphere melted into a comfortable silence where the two were simply eating the ice cream, before Daniel spoke up again. “Why are you being so nice to me?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Lancer countered, somewhat expecting the question to eventually rear its head. Most students he tried to help had similar reactions; it could be jarring to suddenly find an adult being caring when a child has only ever experienced ones who weren’t.
Daniel shrugged. “I dunno. I mean, you’ve always been nicer than my other teachers, I guess, even with the detentions, but it’s kinda weird, like Jazz was the closest I had to an adult I could trust. But now you know my secret, and have been so nice about it, and are even giving me food… I just, I don’t understand. Not even my parents pay this much attention. And you listen! I think you’re the first adult who has actually listened to me.”
“That is something I find very concerning,” Lancer told the boy. “Parents should be there for you; they should listen to you, and make you feel welcome in your home. They should provide food for you if you’re hungry, not punish you with lack of it.”
“The food punishment’s new,” Daniel quickly said. “Usually they just yell at me and ground me, but the grounding doesn’t really matter since I can just lock the door and phase out of my room.”
“Do they yell at you often?” Lancer asked, aware that verbal abuse could be just as damaging as other forms of abuse.
Daniel shrugged. “I mean, yeah, I guess? But I deserve it. Like, I constantly get home past curfew, my grades suck, I always forget to do chores, my friends are a ‘bad influence’, you know, the typical things. I should be better, Jazz never had trouble with any of that.”
“Do your parents compare you to your sister often?”
Danny gave off an amused scoff. “When do they not? I mean, Jazz is awesome at everything, I get that, I’ll never live up to her example. It’s just annoying that they keep reminding me of that. And the way they say it too, like they’re so disappointed with me… But if they’re so disappointed, if they want me to be better, why don’t they do anything to try to help? They’re in the lab most of the time, occasionally they seem to suddenly realize they’ve been ignoring me and Jazz and go on a random weekend vacation but then it’s back to forgetting we exist. I guess their insistence on family dinners is maybe an attempt to fix that, but it doesn’t feel like it, not when it inevitably ends up with them talking to Jazz about everything going on in her life or them rambling about their inventions designed to eliminate me—well, Phantom—while I sit there quietly. They don’t even bother to ask me how my day was anymore, it’s like they’ve assumed I’m a lost cause and gave up on me or something.”
“Daniel, you are not a lost cause,” Lancer said firmly. “You’re a teenager. You need guidance, not scolding.”
“Yeah, well, tell that to them,” Daniel said, though there was no heat to his words, as though he simply accepted that this was the way things were.
The doorbell rang. Lancer answered it, and before he could process who it was or say a word a redheaded blur rushed by shouting “Danny!”
Lancer smiled in amusement and closed the door before returning to the kitchen to find Jasmine fretting over her brother, who was blushing in embarrassment with the ice-cream spoon still in his mouth.
“Oh thank goodness! Danny, I was so worried—did they really not feed you?”
Danny shrugged. He put the spoon back in the bowl and told her, “It’s okay. It was my fault.”
“No, Danny,” Jasmine said sternly. “We talked about this, remember? People causing you pain is not your fault.”
“They didn’t cause—”
“Yes, they did,” Jasmine asserted, cutting Danny off. “Lancer said you fainted. With the small amount you ate I’m sure your stomach must have been cramping something fierce too.”
“Well, yeah, but I’m the one that missed lunch, if I hadn’t—”
“We’re not talking about lunch, that’ll come later,” Jasmine said firmly. “We’re talking about the fact that our parents punished you by restricting food! The fact that they even thought that was okay to do in the first place! If they can do this, what else can they do? Wait, there haven’t been other punishments I don’t know about, have there?” she asked worriedly. “Other than, of course, Mom hitting you in human form, I mean.”
Daniel quickly shook his head. “No, no, everything’s fine! And Mom doesn’t hit me, that was like, a one time thing, and it was just a slap, anyway.” It did not sound sincere at all, Lancer determined—there were definitely other incidents, and Lancer would guarantee that the physical abuse was more frequent and worse than Daniel wished for his sister and Lancer to know. Daniel quickly continued before anyone could call him out on the obvious lies, “Hey, can we go home now, before they get home? Soon mom’ll realize that Phantom escaped again and stop looking, if she hasn't already. I don’t want her finding me gone.”
“No,” Jasmine said.
“No?” Daniel questioned.
“No. It’s not safe for you there right now.”
“But then, where…” Daniel trailed, seeming confused.
“You are welcome to use my guest room,” Lancer offered.
Jasmine smiled. “Thanks, but that won’t be necessary,” she told Lancer, then turned back to Daniel. “MU has a small wing of temporary dorm-style rooms for visiting researchers; I managed to secure you one. Until I’ve sorted things out with our parents, get them to understand that this type of discipline is wrong, you’ll be staying there.”
“What?” Daniel asked, looking like he was having trouble processing that.
“Home is less safe than usual for you right now,” Jasmine explained, “Don’t think I didn’t notice you lying about being hit; I’ve seen you with bruises that I know aren’t from ghost fights or school, and I see the way you’ve been flinching everytime Mom gets near you! Things are much worse than you’re willing to admit to me—I know you think you’re protecting me by hiding it, so I won’t make you admit it, but regardless, you can’t stay there.”
Daniel visibly paled. “Th-that… Um… Look, it’s not that bad, really, I can handle it! I get hurt worse ghost fighting.”
“It’s not a matter of degree of injury, Danny,” Jasmine pointed out. “A parent should not hit their child out of anger!”
“Apologies for interjecting, but I must agree with your sister,” Lancer said gently. “You need to get out of that house, Daniel. It isn’t safe.”
“But…” Daniel looked like he was scrambling for an excuse not to go. “Um, okay, what about Sam or Tucker’s? Or, I could go to the Ghost Zone again?”
Jasmine replied, “Our parents will look for you at Sam and Tucker’s, and the lab is currently locked down so you can’t go to the Ghost Zone. This is the best option. Is it being MU the issue?”
Daniel shook his head. “Not really. Or, kinda? Not MU specifically, it’s just… I don’t want things to change,” Daniel said, the last part in a quiet mumble.
Jasmine gave her brother a sympathetic look. “I know. Change is difficult. But you’re not alone; I’ll be there with you.”
Daniel considered that for a moment. “You’re not going to let this drop, are you,” he concluded, not as a question.
“Nope,” Jasmine said.
Daniel sighed. “Okay, fine… How’d you even manage to get the dorm, anyway?”
“Professor Warren was still in his office when I was leaving, so I asked him, and he took care of it,” Jasmine said, as though it were perfectly normal for a professor to be in his office at that hour and arrange something so quickly. Maybe it was for that place. “I’ll be in the room next to you,” the girl added.
Daniel scrunched his brow slightly as he took a moment to process that. “Do mom and dad know?”
“Not yet,” Jasmine told him. “I’ll call them once we’re there; they won’t be able to storm the university, but I don’t want them trying to intercept us on the way or something,” she said, and that broke Lancer’s heart a little more—to think, his students were in such a situation where that was something they had to worry about!”
“What about school tomorrow?” Daniel asked, and Lancer wasn’t sure if it was due to worry or if he was still trying to convince Jasmine to let it go. “They can grab me on the way. And my homework—which I did manage to complete for once—and phone and stuff is all in my room.”
Lancer answered the latter. “I believe this counts as extenuating circumstances, thus as Vice Principal I am allowing you an extension on any work that is due…” he glanced at the clock, “Today. There are spare textbooks the school can lend you, considering it’s a matter of not having access to your own rather than forgetting to bring them in.
Jazz, to Lancer’s surprise, giggled. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “Danny, aren’t you forgetting something?”
Daniel scrunched his brow in confusion. “Huh? What?”
“You can easily phase into your room and get your things, invisibly.”
“Oh, right, duh,” Daniel said as he slapped his palm to his forehead. “So my work isn’t an issue at all, then—but, they still might show up at school!” he reminded them.
“Easily solvable,” Lancer said gently. “I can issue a no-admittance order for them, unless there’s urgent ghost-related business.”
“Okay, but what about getting to school?” Daniel countered.
Jasmine jumped in, “Okay, firstly, that’s a non-issue as you could always just fly there like you do half the time; but if you really don’t want to do that, I’ll drive you.”
“No, I can fly,” Daniel muttered.
Jasmine smiled knowingly. “As I thought. Offer’s still open if you do want a ride, though. Don’t worry, little brother; you can let the adults handle it from here.”
Daniel opened his mouth, then frowned.
“Something wrong?” Jasmine asked.
Daniel blushed and scratched the back of his neck as he told his sister, “I, er, was about to say the usual, ‘you’re not an adult yet’ line, but then realized that you actually are now.”
Jasmine laughed and ruffled Daniel’s hair; Lancer smiled at the display of easy sibling affection. Lancer still had half a mind to call CPS, but again knew it likely wouldn’t be the right call here, given that an investigation would very likely lead to Daniel’s ghostly status being revealed. Thankfully, Daniel’s sister seemed to have it handled; Lancer had a feeling that as long as Jasmine was in the picture, Daniel would persevere, no matter what happened with his parents.
Jack sat alone at the kitchen table munching on some fudge, immensely worried. It was well past midnight, and Jazz had not come home yet, which was unlike her—yes, her class went until 11:20, but usually she came straight home, and if the class went longer or something else would cause her to come back late or not come home for the night she would call right away with her plans. Danny, too, wasn’t there, having snuck out—Jack had checked immediately after Maddie left to blow off steam via ghost fighting (to Jack’s immense relief, as otherwise he’d surely have been the target). Maddie had gone to sleep as soon as she arrived home, unaware that Jack was waiting for the kids, who he’d tried messaging and calling a few times to no avail.
So, Jack sat at the table, too worried to sleep—not that he’d be able to well anyway, given he’d be using the couch tonight (they technically had a guest room, but Maddie would get mad if he tried using it) after the fight he and his wife had gotten into earlier about her new punishment for Danny returning home late. Who does that to their kid? Two nights in a row it had happened!
The first night Jack had slightly protested, then awkwardly went along with it, against his better judgement—it had been a cowardly move driven by fear of retaliation, but he should have fought for Danny. He’d tried to sneak some food to him after, but Maddie unfortunately caught him.
The second night Danny had run off right away, apparently anticipating the punishment, as though he’d already been aware that Maddie intended to do it every single time he was late. So, Jack fought with his wife about it. He vaguely wondered if Danny had overheard the fight before sneaking out, or if he instead simply had left immediately.
After heavy arguing, as Jack became near certain that Maddie would escalate to violence, the woman got a signal on a ghost tracking device and took off. Jack hoped it hadn’t been Phantom she was chasing, but he was too tired to follow, and he instead used the opportunity to try bringing Danny some dinner—only to discover his son had already left.
Suddenly, the home phone rang.
Jack scrambled up, heart racing. He desperately hoped it was Jazz belatedly letting him know where she was, as the other options Jack could think of for a call this late at night would be the police or hospital.
Before Jack could imagine too many scenarios of Danny or Jazz being arrested or hospitalized, he was at the phone, grabbing it and asking, “Hello?”
“Dad,” came Jazz’s voice, to Jack’s relief.
“Jazzikins,” Jack said breathlessly. “Thank god. I was getting worried! Where are you? Are you okay? Do you know where Danny is? He ran off after—”
“Whoa, Dad, one thing at a time,” Jazz interrupted. “First, Danny is fine. He ended up at our teacher’s house, who called me and gave him food.”
“Oh, good, he did get food,” Jack said, relieved. “Well, if he’s still hungry, I saved him some dinner, he can eat that when he gets home, just don’t tell Maddie.”
“Dad. We won’t be coming home,” Jazz stated, tone carefully devoid of emotion.
Jack took a moment to comprehend what she said, then whispered, “What?”
“We’re not coming home tonight,” Jazz repeated, and Jack was relieved at the addition of ‘tonight’, then dread formed again as Jazz continued, “Danny literally passed out from lack of food. We’re lucky he found his teacher’s house just before that; it very well could have been in the street.” Jack frowned, wondering how that had happened. Passing out didn’t happen just because of one missed meal—had Danny not had lunch, either? Jack recalled he’d only had a banana at breakfast… Oh no. Did Jack miss Danny having an eating disorder? Did he often skip lunch? He was concerningly underweight, even though he didn’t look like it…
“I’m glad he was able to get help,” Jack said quietly, feeling like if that were the case then Jazz would be on top of it quickly thanks to her psychology obsession. “I’m guessing you won’t be convinced to return tonight, huh? Where are you staying? Someplace safe, I hope?” He trusted Jazz to take care of her brother.
“We got permission to stay in MU’s dorms temporarily, and we’re not coming home until you and mom agree to stop inflicting such extreme punishments on Danny,” Jazz informed him.
“I’ll try talking to her again,” Jack said, though wasn’t sure what more could be done to try to convince her to stop. Maybe the kids leaving by itself would give her a reality check?
“Again?” Jazz asked, sounding surprised.
“This isn’t the first time we’ve had disagreements about punishments,” Jack admitted.
“I see. Well—what?” she asked, and it sounded like Danny was there saying something to her. “Seriously? How didn’t I—Danny, that’s got to be an exaggeration—what do you mean, murderous intent?!”
“Jazzie? What’s going on?” Jack asked, very confused at what he was hearing from one side of the conversation.
“Danny, apparently, thinks Mom has been physically abusing you too,” Jazz informed Jack.
Jack’s blood ran cold. “Too?” he repeated. “What do you mean, too? Has she been—shit, has she been hurting Danny too?!” Maddie sometimes hitting Jack was one thing, he could take it, but for her to do that to their teenage son, especially as Danny was fairly scrawny for his age? No wonder Danny had been pulling away from them!
“Jack, who’s that on the phone?” a sickly-sweet voice asked, and Jack turned to see Maddie at the kitchen entrance.
Jack froze. “H-hold on,” he stuttered into the phone, over which it sounded like Jazz and Danny were chatting again, this time muffled. “Can we, er talk about this a different time?”
“Dad? What’s wrong?” Jazz asked worriedly.
“Sorry. Just, thank you for letting me know you two are safe. I’ll let your mother know. Love you both.” He slammed the phone back on its wall mount, hanging it up.
Maddie narrowed her eyes at Jack. “Was that the kids?”
Jack gulped. “Um. Yeah. Jazz says they’re staying at the University dorms tonight. She said Danny fainting from hunger was the last straw and that we need to shape up or neither will come home.”
Maddie’s eyes darkened at that. “‘Shape up’ how?”
Jack frowned. Wasn’t it obvious? “I assume she means more appropriate punishments.”
“That was appropriate,” Maddie immediately replied, tone indicative that she wouldn’t even consider otherwise.
But, Jack had to at least try to get her to understand. “It put Danny at risk. Punishments should be things like grounding or taking away video games, not things that cause fainting!”
“It was just one meal, Jack,” Maddie said with a huff. “Hardly a punishment, honestly—we skip meals all the time when we lose track of time while working on a project.”
“Okay, you seem to be glossing over the fact that Danny fainited.”
“Hmph. Obviously that was an exaggeration. You don’t faint after missing just one meal.”
“Okay, but what if it was more?” Jack stressed. “It was two nights in a row. I’m pretty sure the only thing he grabbed this morning was a banana because he was running late. What if he didn’t eat lunch?”
“If he didn’t eat lunch, that’s on him. We don’t control his lunch.”
“Exactly! But we can control what he eats for dinner!” Jack said. “It’s our responsibility as parents to make sure our children are fed. We failed at that for years, forcing Jazz to take care of herself and Danny because we were so engrossed in our work. We have a chance now to fix that, to be better parents. And that means not withholding food!”
“Whatever, fine,” Maddie grumbled. “If it gets the kids to come home, I’ll agree to stop that. I’ll just have to try something else.”
Jack was concerned that the reason she was going to stop was just because she wanted the kids home, not because it was an objectively bad punishment and had caused her kid to faint. “What kind of something else?” he asked, suspicious.
“Oh, you know,” Maddie said with a wave.
“No, I don’t know; tell me,” Jack said insistently. “Do you have any ideas that won’t cause pain?”
Maddie, to Jack’s horror, didn’t immediately answer.
“You know what, nevermind,” Jack said, making a decision. He put on some shoes, grabbed one of his pre-packed go-bags from a cabinet under the stairs (they all had some there; Jack noted that Danny’s and Jazz’s were missing) and tossed on a coat.
Maddie, fists on her hips, glared at Jack. “And just where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m staying at a hotel tonight,” Jack told his wife, who looked stunned at those words. “We’ll talk tomorrow.” With that, Jack was out the door.
Notes:
Looks like Jack has finally reached his limit! He's going to become a much larger player in this fic soon...
Next up: Finally a somewhat more fun chapter! Well, for the reader. Danny confronts Paulina and Star about a rumor spreading related to Phantom; they didn't spread it, but they might have figured something else out about him... Danny then decides to counteract the rumor with a bigger scandal, which he recruits Ember to help with. Later, Jack actually finds Phantom and has a chat with him! Then, the Phantom Phan Club has an interesting request...
Chapter 11: Changing relationships
Summary:
Danny confronts Paulina and Star about a rumor spreading related to Phantom; they didn't spread it, but they might have figured something else out about him... Danny then decides to counteract the rumor with a bigger scandal, which he recruits Ember to help with. Later, Jack actually finds Phantom and has a heart-to-heart with him! Then, the Phantom Phan Club has an interesting request...
Notes:
A FIFTH chapter this weekend? Am I crazy? Maybe just a little (well, maybe a lot, if you ask my psychiatrist, lol). When I decided to post 4 yesterday instead of 3 I forgot that I had worked out the numbers in such a way that certain chapters after this would get grouped together, and that extra 4th chapter messed up that flow. So, you get another extra chapter this weekend to solve that issue! It's a longer one, too!
Totally not confident with the title; so much happens in this chapter and I couldn't figure out something related to all of it. If anyone has a better idea for it, please let me know!
This chapter is (comparatively) lighter than the past few, so hopefully it's a nice break. Still plenty of angst (especially in the 3rd and 4th section), don't get me wrong, but some fun stuff is mixed in with the heavy stuff this time too!
CW: discussion of child abuse (Danny tells Sam and Tucker why he's staying at MU; he omits the worst stuff; Jack talks about how Maddie made Danny skip dinner), small mention of suicidal ideation in 4th scene.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The last thing Danny needed after the night he’d had was for a rumor about him to pop up, but luck was not on his side. Immediately upon arriving to school, slightly early thanks to Jazz driving him, he heard it whispered between classmates in the hallways. Of course, people weren’t careful to avoid talking about it around him, for one reason: they didn’t know the rumor was about him.
The rumor? Danny Phantom is gay.
Danny could only think of one place this rumor could have come from.
“Hey, what gives, Fenton?!” Paulina complained, irritation thick in the air, when Danny pulled her and Star into the janitor’s closet.
“You said you wouldn’t tell,” Danny accused, voice sharp.
The two simply looked, and felt, confused. “Tell what?” Star asked.
“There’s a rumor going around that Phantom’s gay!”
“Oh, that,” Paulina said in realization.
“Yeah, that! So what gives? I thought you said you didn’t out people!”
“We didn’t!” Star claimed. “Seriously!”
“Yeah? Sure about that? Because last I checked, you Gossip Queens are the only ones I told about that!” Danny pointed out, only vaguely noting that their emotions didn’t match up with what they should be if they had spread the rumor intentionally.
“Maybe someone just made it up or something,” Star said.
“Or maybe he told someone and they spread it,” Paulina suggested.
Danny frowned. Right, he had told Sam, Tucker, and Jazz, and his ghost friends… but no, Danny was sure they were all trustworthy. Biting down his own emotions, he could now tell that the two girls were just as harrowed as him about how the rumor got out.
“No one knows that who I—he isn’t certain wouldn’t tell,” Danny said, his brain still accusing these two even though he knew in his core that they hadn’t done it.
Paulina narrowed her eyes. “You told us, and he trusted you you.”
“That’s different!” Danny argued, feeling rage flare up, only vaguely catching the vibes that felt like suspicion, or rather confirmation of suspicion.
“Is it?”
“Yes!” Danny practically hissed, bearing his fangs in a snarl.
“Why?” Star asked much too calmly, almost teasingly. “Got some insider information?” She had a smirk on her face, a knowing look in her eye, vibes that Danny could best describe as pleased about uncovering something, face slightly shining… green?
“Oh, he definitely does,” Paulina purred with a shrewd look, the same vibes coming off her. “More than that, I’d say.” Her face also had a green reflection…
Oh, crap.
The anger immediately dissipated, and Danny stepped back, eyes widening. Crap, crap, crap. He quickly willed his eyes to stop glowing, then the green reflection subsided, leaving them largely in the dark again, the closet only lit by a single dim bulb.
“Wh-what are you talking about?” Danny asked nervously, rubbing the back of his neck.
“You’re Phantom,” Star stated. It wasn’t a question. She definitely seemed pleased at having figured it out.
“What? That’s crazy,” Danny protested, though knew it was futile.
Paulina crossed her arms. “Danny, the jig is up. I know my Ghost Boy’s eyes, and that green glow is definitely his.”
Danny wilted at that. “Okay, fine, you got me,” he admitted, choosing to ignore Paulina’s clarifier of ‘my’, seeing no way out. “Was it just the eyes and fangs, or…?”
“We’ve suspected since the library,” Star said. “You just knew too much.”
“After that we reviewed, like, everything we knew about you, and the clues just fit,” Paulina said. “This was just confirmation.”
Danny took a deep breath. Then, he looked at them with determination. “So, now that you know, you can’t tell anyone else,” he emphasized. “My mom would literally kill me—or, well, kill me more—if she found out. That isn’t an exaggeration.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll keep your secret,” Paulina promised.
“So you’re, like, actually dead?” Star asked bluntly.
Paulina gasped and gently slapped her friend in the arm. “Star, that’s rude! You can’t just ask someone if they’re dead.”
Danny winced. “It’s okay,” he told them, then explained. “I’m, er, only kinda dead? Like, I definitely died, but then I came back to life, but only partly, with the rest of me ghost? It’s complicated. I can shift between a human and ghost form.”
“Wait, that’s possible?” Star asked, surprised yet intrigued.
“How can you only be part-dead?” Paulina wondered, then Danny could practically feel a lightbulb appear above her head as she concluded, “Oh, wait, it’s like those comic books, isn’t it? A normal kid has some sort of funky accident and it makes them a hybrid, like Spider Man.”
“Or it was intentional, like his parents are mad scientists, right? They could have wanted a super-soldier, like Captain America,” Star suggested with more excitement than was probably warranted given she’d just suggested that Danny’s parents experimented on him, then she frowned as she realized, “Wait, that would mean your parents would know.”
Danny winced. “Uh, yeah, Paulina’s is definitely closer,” he said. “Actually, I guess that’s a really good way to describe it,” he realized, then decided that at this point he might as well explain fully, if only to avoid any more speculation about his parents intentionally making him like this. “Pretty much exactly that, actually. I was screwing around with my parents’ ghost portal while they weren’t home, before it was working, and it ended up turning on with me inside.”
Both girls’ eyes widened as they processed that; Danny could taste their horror.
“Yeah, it’s, er, kinda horrifying to think about, I guess,” Danny said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“So it, like, what, killed you, then revived you, or something?” Paulina asked, now more curious again.
Danny sighed. “Yeah, I guess you could say that… I was hit with a huge blast of combined electricity and ectoplasm, basically. The ectoplasm bonded with my DNA, preventing the electricity from killing me fully, but I still died enough to get the ghost abilities.” ‘Enough’, in his case, likely being closer to 90%, but he’d let them assume it was less.
Star nodded. “Definitely dead then.”
Danny glared at her. “Hey! Rude!” he told her. “Like I said, I’m still partially alive. I still have human stuff. I have a heartbeat, and I eat and sleep.” Then, he sighed, figuring he might as well say a little more, as the girls seemed uncannily unphased by the ghost stuff and genuinely curious. “But yeah, honestly, I guess I am more ghost than human at this point,” he admitted. “The ghost parts have steadily been increasing over the years; there’s not much of a divide anymore between my human and ghost sides, if there ever truly was.”
“Wait wait wait,” Paulina said, seeming to realize something that gave off some vibes of concern. “If you’re, like, mostly ghost now, does that mean you’re immortal?”
“That’s so sad,” Star said, pity wafting off of her.
Danny winced, hating how Paulina came to the conclusion that quickly and the pity it had evoked. “I, er, don’t really like to think about that part,” he muttered. “Anyway, we probably should come out of the closet now—I mean, literally, not figuratively!” He clarified. “Class will—”
Danny was cut off by the bell; the three scrambled out of the closet, and raced down the hall, arriving to class together to the stares and clear confusion of their classmates and friends; Lancer only sighed, vibes something between a mix of exasperation and, oddly, relief, and shook his head before beginning class.
Danny’s mind raced; he had to get ahead of this rumor somehow… Maybe Star was right, and someone just made it up without any proof, to harm his reputation. What should he do in that case? Take Paulina up on her offer from the library? He thought kissing Ember would have—wait no, he’d been Fenton for that. Actually… Ember might be down for fake-dating. She did enjoy flirting with him—and honestly, he kinda enjoyed flirting back, even though he knew he’d never want to go beyond kissing her.
Danny needed a way to the Ghost Zone though; with his parents’ lab on extra-lockdown and him and Jazz both not being at home for, most likely, at least a few days, if Jazz had been serious, that would be difficult…
Or would it? Maybe MU had a portal; he wouldn’t put it past them. He’d ask Jazz about it when he got back that evening.
Miskatonic University did, in fact, have a portal to the Ghost Zone.
The issue was that the portal was not at their Amity Park, Ohio location, rather at their Arkham, Massachusetts location.
This turned out to actually be a non-issue as apparently Miskatonic University had a portal that could transport people between any of their locations, which explained how approximately a hundred students whose concentrations involved ghosts could suddenly move into the dorm without the town seeing any signs of that many people moving in at once—they saw some, of course, mostly freshmen and transfers who lived closer to the Amity Park location than another branch, but anyone who started at or nearby a different location simply had used the portal. The portal was perfectly safe, used daily for students who had classes at other locations. Jazz herself had apparently used it many times, although its existence was one of the many things about MU that students there had to swear secrecy to.
It had been easy to get access; all Danny had to do was mention it to Dr. Warren, who of course knew both his identities, and the professor got him a pass to both use the school transport portal and Ghost Zone portal, although to use the second Danny also had to explain the situation to the college’s dean, who was extremely excited to meet a halfa (because of course MU would already know that people could be human-ghost hybrids) and offered him a full scholarship simply for existing, which Danny was fine with as he hadn’t been sure how he’d get into something other than community college in the first place. It also explained why at least half the students were undoubtedly non-human or part-human entities.
It had also been easy to find Ember and convince her to fake-date him.
The next step had been Danny, in Phantom form, and Ember making out semi-publicly in an alley in the middle of the afternoon, in view of a reporter who thought they were being sneaky as they filmed it, along with a small crowd at the start of the alley getting progressively larger—in reality, Danny and Ember had made sure the reporter and other passerby had noticed them ‘sneaking’ into the alley.
They’d quickly flown off once Danny heard shouts from his parents (who, interestingly, seemed to have arrived separately) at the edge of the crowd, the two hunters excited about the prospect of catching two high-profile ghosts—well, one hunter excited about that, but the other’s emotional profile clearly indicated he was simply excited to learn something new about ghosts (that is, that ghosts could feel attraction; at the start he’d expressed that much, to Maddie’s clear chagrin, as she ‘reminded’ him that ghosts ‘only pretended to emote as a trick’).
Then they had a date at the cafe just outside of MU, which was filmed by a reporter as well, from the outside because non-MU-student humans tended to avoid the place, after which they parted ways, agreeing to meet again in a few days.
Which brought Danny to standing in Tucker’s room with Sam and Tucker glaring at him.
Sam held a newspaper in her hand, the front-page top headline reading: PUBLIC ENEMY #1 DATING GHOSTLY POP STAR!, complete with a large photo of the two making out and two smaller ones, one flying off while holding hands and the other of their coffee date.
“Wow, the press really moves fast,” Danny joked, though a little miffed that they were still calling him ‘Public Enemy #1’.
“Seriously? That’s what you comment on?” Tucker asked dryly.
“Look, I was actually going to tell you tonight,” Danny said with a sigh.
“Were you?” Sam asked flatly.
“Yes! I didn’t realize the evening paper would have it. I thought they’d wait until morning.”
“Wait wait wait,” Tucker said. “Are you saying it’s true?! I thought you were gay!”
“I am gay!”
“Then why are you dating her?” Tucker asked, now just plain confused.
“I’m not,” Danny said. “Or, I guess technically I am? Kinda. We’re fake-dating, so we can squash the rumor about Phantom being gay.”
“And you didn’t tell us because why…?” Sam asked, clearly peeved.
“I told you, I was going to tell you tonight. The idea was kinda spur-of-the-moment, Jazz picked me up right after school so we could go MU to get permission to use their portal since my parents have the lab extra-locked-down and then I went immediately to find Ember, and since I was so nervous about the rumor spreading we decided to act on the plan immediately.”
“Wait, MU has a ghost portal?”
“In Massachusetts, which they have a portal to as well. No, you two can’t use it, I needed to get special permission. Which meant revealing my secret to the college dean, but that was actually a good thing because now I have a spot at the school after I graduate.”
“Just like that?” Tucker asked, surprised.
Danny shrugged, then grinned. “Just like that. Seems they like the idea of having a halfa student.”
“Oh, that’s awesome!” Sam declared, mood changing. “I actually think I’m gonna apply there, too. All this paranormal stuff keeps getting more and more interesting—do you know they study occult rituals there?”
“Spoken like a true goth!” Tucker laughed. “But actually, I was thinking of going there, too; I heard they have a really great paranormal engineering program. I think I have a good shot at getting in, if they see what I’ve been doing to modify your parents’ ecto-tech.”
Danny winced. “That reminds me of something else I need to tell you,” he realized. “We, er, might not have much access to Fenton equipment for a while. Last night Jazz decided I can’t stay at home, and got emergency permission to use one of the dorm rooms they use for in-residence researchers. Which is where I’m staying now, for a few days at least, until Jazz can get my parents in line.”
“Dude!” Tucker declared. “MU’s dorms? Really? Wow! Oooh, what’s it like living there? Is it true that half the students are cryptids, and they have weird experiments set up everywhere and rituals every night?”
“Er. I’ve only been there one night, Tucker,” Danny pointed out. “Not much time to see anything,” he told them, although he was pretty sure he saw what looked like a werewolf entering the dorm room a few doors down from his as he left that morning. “But even if I did, I actually signed a preemptive nondisclosure agreement, so even if I saw something supernatural in the dorms, I legally can’t talk about it… And I’m pretty sure the contract was on cursed paper so I don’t want to risk it.”
The other weird thing Danny saw was the breakfast spread; he’d only been in the cafeteria briefly to grab something quick before rushing to school, but they had some non-standard things (some which were a little creepy; one of the drink dispensers was simply labelled ‘blood’) in addition to the standard American breakfast fare—including ecto-coffee, of which Danny happily took a cup to-go.
“Dude,” Tucker said, eyes wide. “Okay, now I really want to get into that school!”
“Tucker,” Sam said scoldingly. “Did you miss the part about emergency housing? What happened, Danny? Did your parents find out and react badly this time?”
Danny shook his head. “No, no, Ancients no,” he assured them. “They still don’t know I’m Phantom. Honestly, I think Jazz is kinda overreacting? I don’t know what she told my parents, or if they noticed I was gone. Anyway…”
Danny explained everything to his friends.
“Okay, barring the fact that you forgot to tell us that Mr. Lancer knows you’re Phantom and has offered you asylum,” Tucker began, and Danny winced, having not realized he never told them, “What the fuck, dude. Just, that whole situation is so messed up! Who withholds food as punishment? You need that to live! Or, you know.”
“Yeah… I’m not sure if my parents would’ve done that if it were the original timeline…” Danny trailed.
“Wait, what? Why would it be different?” Sam asked sharply.
Danny winced. “Oh, um, so I talked with Clockwork about that…”
Danny explained his conversation with Clockwork.
“So in short, although they’re probably close, don’t assume peoples’ thoughts are exactly the same as they were, even though the events up to the Disasteroid were the same,” Tucker summarized. “Well, we didn’t really know peoples’ thoughts before anyway, not really—except, I guess, for the reveals?”
“Yeah, and I’m becoming increasingly sure that revealing things with my parents won’t go well this time,” Danny told them. “Clockwork seems to think if I ease them into it, get them to not think so badly of ghosts first, there’s a chance, but I just don’t know if that’s possible… Actually, no, I’m sure it’ll work with my dad, honestly he seems agreeable already, but my mom’s a different story, and he tends to side with her on everything even if he has different opinions.”
Sam looked contemplative. “Back to the punishment—are you really sure they wouldn’t have done that if this were the original timeline and not a cobbled-together one?”
Danny considered that; it was true that if the thoughts had deviated too far, things wouldn’t have happened the way they did. So he concluded, “No, I guess I’m not. Previously it was just missing curfew and failing tests and stuff. They thought I was a slacker, not a delinquent. This time it’s being friends with ghosts, which in their minds is a whole lot worse. Or at least, in my mom’s,” he amended. His dad seemed to, oddly enough, like the idea, even if he pretended otherwise.
“Either way, just being friends with someone isn’t a reason for a parent to starve their kid,” Sam asked. “I mean, my parents get mad at me for my friends all the time, but they’ve never starved me because of it.”
“They didn’t starve me,” Danny said, rolling his eyes. “It was just dinner, not like I haven’t skipped a meal before. They couldn’t have known that I’d also skipped lunch and barely ate breakfast.”
“Okay, but it’s still denying their kid food, you get that that’s bad, right?” Sam pressed.
“Yeah I get it,” Danny said tiredly.
“No, I don’t think you do. If you heard someone was refusing to feed a child, you wouldn’t just say ‘eh, it’s fine’, right?”
“Of course not.”
“Then, why’s it different because it’s you?”
“Because—”
“If you say any form of ‘I deserve it’ or ‘I can take it’, I’m going to suck you into the thermos,” Tucker threatened, though Danny knew it wasn’t a serious threat. Probably.
Danny closed his mouth. He folded his legs criss-cross under him and put his elbow on his knee to rest his cheek on his fist. “I guess it’s not,” he mumbled. To Danny’s confusion, both Sam and Tucker began giggling. “What?” he asked.
“Dude, you’re pouting while sitting in the air,” Tucker said, amused.
“It’s actually kinda adorable,” Sam added. “But, uh, maybe don’t do that in public? At least not in human form.”
Danny blushed, only then realizing that, yup, he was floating. “I’m in Tucker’s bedroom, not public.”
“Still probably a bad habit to get into, dude,” Tucker pointed out, and Danny shrugged in response.
“So, back to the topic of Jazz forcing you to move out,” Sam said. “Maybe you could stay moved out?”
Danny frowned. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know why not; I need access to the ghost portal, and the equipment.”
“Which you don’t need to get from them,” Sam pointed out, to Danny’s confusion.
“Um, Sam, that’s the only one in town—Vlad is gone, remember?”
Tucker laughed. “Come on, Danny, you’re not that dense! If you can’t access your parents’ portal right now, how’d you find Ember?”
“Oh!” Danny realized, and smacked himself on the face. “Duh! I can use the one at MU. If they’ll let me, I mean.” For all he knew that was a one-time thing.
“From what you’ve said about the dean, I have a feeling it’ll be easy to arrange something with them,” Sam said, seeming amused. Yeah, that was probably true.
“Okay, but the tech is still an issue,” Danny pointed out. “I need to check up on it.”
“I can hack into the security feeds,” Tucker offered. “And we can always sneak in to check anything extra-suspicious out.”
“...I guess,” Danny muttered, seeing that they wouldn’t give up. He didn’t want to leave home forever though; he still loved his parents. His mom might still come around eventually, there was a slim hope there… Maybe he could talk to his dad, get him to help convince his mom? Or, Danny could try to better hide his ghost friends, then she’d be happy, and things would be back to how they were. This was just a temporary displacement.
Annoyingly, Danny felt tears prickling at his eyes, once again. He blinked a few times, trying to stave them off; he’d been crying way too much in front of people lately for his liking, his liking being ‘never’.
“I’m going to head back to the dorm before Jazz gets worried,” Danny told them, quickly flying away before either could say anything more or notice his shift in mood.
Valerie was in luck; almost right in front of her, a natural portal appeared and spat out an entire pod of ectopi. Valerie had been itching for a fight, and though they were weak there were plenty of them to help scratch that itch. It probably wasn’t the healthiest thing for Valerie to use fighting to deal with her emotions, but it worked for her.
An even better opponent would be Phantom, but she’d agreed to a stupid truce. That was actually the issue Valerie was currently trying to work out via violence. It had been nine days since finding out that Danny was both Fenton and Phantom, and she still had mixed feelings about it. She simultaneously wanted to kiss him (only in Fenton form!) and shoot him (regardless of form), to her complete annoyance. At times he seemed just like the sweet innocent Danny Fenton she knew before, and a part of her still loved, and other times even in human form she could clearly see the Phantom persona slipping through, which a part of her still insisted on hating. Which was the real Danny? Could they possibly both be? Some things were clearly an act, like the fear of Dash—why he let Dash do all that to him Valerie had no idea, if she were in that situation she’d have blasted the bully by now—but other things seemed genuine.
Valerie was outraged at the entire situation, and the more she thought about it the angrier she got. How dare he do this to her! Danny should have just let her keep believing that Fenton and Phantom were separate entities. Then again, if that happened, and she ever had injured Phantom enough to change him back to Fenton—she wasn’t sure how that worked—then she would have been devastated.
Ugh! It was all such a damn mess. Valerie blasted an ectopus so badly that it exploded into so many pieces that her thermos refused to pick it up; it would reform, but probably not for an hour or so, meaning she’d just given herself more work. Ugh.
Out of the corner of her eye, Valerie glimpsed a black-and-white streak flying through the sky; ugh, speak of the devil. Couldn’t he just let her blow off some steam in peace? She braced for the confrontation. Well, verbal one at least. Why did she agree to a truce again? Maybe the ghost of her (former?) friend would be up to a ‘friendly’ spar.
But to Valerie’s surprise, Phantom merely glanced at the scene and made no change of course. It didn’t look like he was in much of a hurry, so why wouldn’t he come over and bother her like usual? Was he on his way to a more urgent fight? No, he was flying too slowly for that. Headed home? Curfew? But no, that never stopped him before, and he wasn’t going towards his house. So again, why ignore her?
Well, the ectopi were high in the sky, not damaging anything yet, so she could afford to step away to investigate.
“Yo! Phantom!” Valerie called, flying towards him.
He glanced her way, then ignored her.
A flash of anger caused Valerie to growl. “Don’t you ignore me!” she shouted.
Phantom slowed down and stopped mid-air. “What do you want, Valerie?” he asked tiredly, though didn’t face her.
“I want to know why you’re ignoring a ghost fight,” Valerie said in a demanding tone as she swerved to stop in front of him so she could see his face, though he refused to look at her, rather kept his head bowed.
Phantom sighed. “They’re ectopi. Figured you had it handled.”
“Yeah but that’s never made you ignore a fight before!”
Phantom shrugged. “Maybe I’ve changed.”
Valerie narrowed her eyes. “Changed how?” she asked, suspicious. Had he succumbed to malicious ghost aspects? “What, are you not doing the hero thing anymore?”
“I am. Just, like I said, you have it handled, right? I trust you with it. Unless you want me to help?”
“No! I don’t need your help, ghost,” Valerie spat. “But you’re acting strange; I had to investigate!”
“Well, I’m fine, so just leave me alone, okay?”
Valerie frowned. “That sounds the opposite of fine,” she said accusingly. It wasn’t like him to be so despondent.
Phantom simply shrugged again.
Valerie felt another flash of anger at his attitude. He was the same as always! Such a cocky uncaring bastard! Knowing that he also was Fenton just made it that much worse. She definitely still hated Phantom. Yet a part of her still loved Fenton; they just couldn’t be the same person. Maybe it was one of those multiple-personality things? Or maybe he was doing what all ghosts instinctually do, and that was tricking her for his own gain. After all, he dated her while knowing who she was yet failed to tell her who he was. What could be more shady?
“Hey, don’t you fly away!” Valerie said, realizing that Phantom had started moving again. With a burst of speed she pulled in front of him again, causing him to stop short.
“Valerie, come on. Clearly you don’t want me here,” Phantom said tiredly, finally looking at her. Were those tears in the corners of his eyes? “Why won’t you let me go?”
To him, it was clearly meant to be more literal, but to Valerie, it felt more metaphorical. Honestly, she was unsure exactly why she’d stopped him, but, “I may not like the Phantom part, but I still like Fenton. Clearly something’s bothering you. So, spill.”
“No,” Phantom said.
“Tch. Fine, be like that,” Valerie bristled, then asked, “But before you go—why are you dating Ember?”, suddenly realizing that she needed to know. What did a ghost have that Valerie didn’t?
Danny sighed deeply. “Because I like her. Can I go now?”
“No! She’s a ghost, Danny,” Valerie said; maybe using his first name would help.
“Yeah, well, newsflash: so am I.”
“Yeah, but you’re human too,” Valerie pointed out. “Why would you date a ghost when there’s plenty of humans who would happily date you?”
Phantom scoffed at that. “Seriously? Who, you? Yeah, it’s dead obvious you have lingering feelings, at least for Fenton. Unfortunately, that ship has way sailed. Besides, you hate Phantom as much as you like Fenton, if not more—you seriously think that would work?”
“I don’t hate you,” Valerie defended.
Phantom gave Valerie a deadpan look. “Yeah, you do,” he said, then turned and flew off.
Valerie growled in frustration, then turned back to the ectopi. She hoped a stronger ghost showed up so she could use it to really vent her anger; Phantom was Just. So. Frustrating! She didn’t hate him though… did she? She was angry at him, sure. But hate? She couldn’t hate him, not with him also being Fenton… could she?
Instead of flying to the dorm as he’d initially intended, after the encounter with Valerie Danny flew to a secluded grassy hill a short distance into the woods on the outskirts of town, one where he used to go stargazing with his dad on the rare occasions Jack paid attention to Danny. That hadn’t happened in years, but Danny still found the hill comforting.
The sun was already setting; Jazz was probably worried. Danny vaguely registered that he should text her, then realized that his phone had been in his backpack, which he left at Tucker’s. He really should see if there were ghostly phone options he could attune, although he doubted it, given the Ghost Zone definitely did not have cell service, or even landline—or whatever the equivalent would be given all the land there floats.
Danny was still trying to hold back his tears as he tried not to think about his entire situation, sitting with his knees up and head buried in his arms which were resting crossed on top of them.
Whether she was working through her thoughts on the matter or not, Valerie still hated Phantom. He could feel it—not just with his usual ability to sense feelings, which was still muted, but from her projecting them (he really should investigate how she was doing that). Danny couldn’t help but think that Valerie always would hate him, at least in Phantom form—he was the same person, but clearly she still considered them largely separate.
His mom surely would always hate Phantom too. His dad might not though; honestly, Danny had a feeling that Jack probably already liked Phantom.
Plus, there were other things on top of that bothering him. Two more people now knew his secret—or rather, all of his secrets, impossibly. Paulina and Star were much nicer this year than they had been in prior years, but historically they’d been sorta-enemies, so Danny wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Sam and Tucker both seemed mildly jealous of his friendship with Ember, which was also frustrating. He was now living at a dorm because his home wasn’t safe with his mom there. Plus, Dash’s bullying had been getting worse again. It was all too much.
Once again, Danny wondered if it would have been better if the portal had just straight-up killed him rather than made him into this freak hybrid… Ugh, he’d have to remember to write that down later, as the notebook was in his backpack; it had only been 4 days, yet there were already pages filled with negative thoughts. Dr. Warren had a lot of work to do.
As his thoughts continued to spiral, Danny gave up on holding back, and began to cry loudly; in ghost form this apparently translated to near-wailing, eerie and clearly ghostly. Great, just what he needed, more proof that he wasn’t human. He’d told Clockwork he’d accepted that, thought he had, but every new reminder of his inhumanity still felt like it struck a blow. Now that Danny was crying though, he couldn’t stop—thankfully it was just harmless sound, not the actual attack version of his wail.
Danny didn’t register the footsteps until the visitor had sat down next to him; Danny didn’t look up, though, sensing that whoever it was didn’t have malicious intentions. After a few minutes, the person put their large hand on Danny’s back, and began to rub it.
Once Danny had calmed down, the hand stopped, though stayed there as Danny took deep breaths to try to calm himself; he knew this hand, and the presence of the person, without having to look. He wondered why his dad was comforting him when he was in Phantom form, but the vibes showed nothing but worry for him and kindness.
“You know, I didn’t know that ghosts could breathe,” Jack casually commented.
Danny gave a wet chuckle. “It’s more habitual, not really needed,” he explained. “It’s calming, especially after crying… Sorry you had to see that.”
“Why would you be sorry? Crying’s good! It helps you take care of icky feelings,” Jack said confidently.
“I guess,” Danny replied despondently. He didn’t feel much better.
“Talking helps, too,” Jack said. “So, what’s a ghost got to cry about?” His vibes gave off the feeling that he truly did just want to help however he could.
Danny sighed. “Just… a lot’s been going on,” he told his dad. “I don’t really want to talk about it though.” Especially since part of it was about his dad.
“Well, that’s okay too,” Jack said.
After a few beats of silence, Danny asked, “How’d you find me here? A tracker?” The unspoken question: were you out hunting me?
“No. I needed a break, so I was taking a walk,” Jack explained, with a few said vibes. “My feet led me to the edge of the woods, and I heard the wailing.”
Danny couldn’t help but to lift his head and raise an eyebrow at his dad. “You walked all the way here? From Fentonworks?”
Jack’s vibes only got sadder, heartbroken even. “No. I’m staying at a hotel tonight,” he revealed, to Danny’s complete surprise.
“What? Why?” Danny couldn’t help but ask, then winced and looked towards the grass. “Sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Jack said, slightly amused. “This isn’t really anything new—I know we make an effort to look like a united front in public, and even around our kids, but…” Jack sighed deeply. “Behind closed doors, it’s a bit of a different story. Guess I just needed a break, after yesterday’s fight. Dunno if I’ll stay just these two nights, or the weekend too—it’ll depend how mad she still is.”
“Oh,” Danny said, unsure how he felt about that particular confirmation, as well as the phrasing of ‘how’ instead of ‘if’. He’d suspected his parents were more at odds than they showed, being able to read their emotions, especially after that time he’d intervened, but hearing it confirmed aloud was a different story, as was learning that it had driven Jack to take a hotel. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Do… do you want to talk about it?” he offered.
Jack slowly shook his head. “Not much to really say; it’s the same as usual… or, maybe it’s gotten a bit worse lately, I don’t know, but still, arguing isn’t anything new.” He seemed like he was trying to convince himself of that, and Danny tried to identify the whiff of emotion mixed in with the sadness—denial, maybe? Jack then laughed slightly, a hint of amusement popping in. “Actually, one of the things we argue about is you.”
“Me?” Danny asked, scrunching his brow in confusion.
Jack nodded, a contemplating vibe around him. “Yeah. She still really wants to hunt you. She thinks all ghosts are evil, and that your hero thing is just some long con towards an unknown goal. She says that’s what all the research has always said. Thing is, the point of science is that it’s supposed to adapt when new data is presented—and there’s plenty of new data now that ghosts have become common around here! All that new data, to me, shows that that original hypothesis was wrong. Ghosts clearly have emotions, and there are clearly good ones too—especially you, as you’ve been catching the bad ghosts. She doesn’t see it that way though, focusing on how you sometimes let ghosts go, but I think it’s fairly obvious that you’ve only been letting them go if they don’t mean harm, right?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah. Not all ghosts are bad, and even some that do bad things sometimes aren’t bad all the time, or can be reformed—like Ember, for example. She got over the whole world-domination thing; really, even then she just wanted to have fun and get people to pay attention to her. I mean, she’s 16, basically, who could blame her? Took me a bit to figure that out, though; at first, I thought all ghosts were evil, too. Really hated myself for becoming one.”
“Is that what drove you to being a hero?” Jack wondered, genuinely interested.
“Yeah, one of the reasons,” Danny told him. “But after two years, I know better now. I’ve accepted what I am, more or less. I’m trying to be friendlier with the nicer ones, and someday I hope humans can see that ghosts aren’t all evil, too.”
“Well, you do have some humans that already believe that!” Jack said. “Me, for one—even if I don’t really show it since Maddie might turn me into a ghost if I ever suggest that again. But, my kids do openly believe it! Danny’s even got some ghost friends! Ember is one of them, actually. They’re in a band together! A really good band!”
Danny couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I heard them play at the festival.” Technically true, considering he was one of the ones playing.
“You were there?” Jack asked, surprised. “Huh. I was wondering about that, since we didn’t see you fighting them. I guess you realized they weren’t doing any harm?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah. Those three are cool now. They might still cause mischief accidentally sometimes, but they’re really trying to stay more in-line.” He had had a talk with them about that; they’d even agreed to keep any playful fights to areas with little likelihood of property damage.
Jack nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind… Huh, the ghost tracker didn’t show you around the concert, you know…”
Danny chuckled. “Fishing for how I seem to ‘disappear’ from your trackers, huh?”
“Huh? No, not at all!” Jack said hurriedly, and Danny could tell it was truthful. “I was just, you know, thinking aloud.”
Danny smiled. “Yeah, I know. You’re not the type to pretend to be nice just to gather information.” He then figured he could throw his dad a bone and reveal one of the ways he ‘hid’, as it really was a conclusion both his parents should have drawn long ago. “But, for reference, I was just flying kinda high up,” Danny lied. The short-range trackers’ range extended in all directions, including up, after all. His dad didn’t need to know that it actually did pick him up, just as Danny.
Jack took a moment to process that, then declared, “Well, that’s embarrassingly obvious in retrospect.”
Danny shrugged. “Well, to be fair, most ghosts don’t like flying that high, unless they were a bird or something. Or just really love outer space, like me; stargazing up there is amazing.”
“Huh. My son likes stargazing, you know; I think you two would make good friends,” Jack said wholeheartedly.
“Maybe,” Danny hummed. “He was pretty cool at the concert… Oh, speaking of, thank you for letting the ghosts escape.”
Jack looked surprised, then sheepish. “Was it that obvious?”
Danny laughed. “Your shots were so wide they would’ve missed the broad side of a barn, and you didn’t even bother to try to escape that net! Yes, it was obvious—at least, to someone watching closely.”
“Closely, huh? Did you plan to step in if any of the ghosts got caught?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah; I wouldn’t have let any of them get captured. I’ve heard Maddie describe what she wants to do with any humanoid ghosts she catches, and just can’t let that happen to anyone.”
Jack nodded in understanding. “Honestly? Neither can I.”
Then the two were silent for a while, until Jack’s vibes began to give off huge amounts of curiosity, a question brewing.
“I can tell you want to ask something,” Danny said, slightly amused. “No need to hold back.” Well, hopefully; it could end up being about Danny, which might not be good.
Jack’s question practically burst from him. “Earlier you said Ember is 16. Is that how long she’s been a ghost? Or just because she chooses to look that way?”
“Neither,” Danny told him, deciding that the question was harmless—and the more information he could give Jack, the more likely the man would be to finally speak publicly against Maddie’s views, which would be beneficial for all ghosts. “Ember’s one of the ghosts who was once human. That’s how old she was when she died, which I think was sometime in the sixties or seventies. I say she’s 16 because that’s essentially where she’s at development-wise. She looks and acts like she’s 16 because she, for all intents and purposes, is 16; she can’t change that. She’ll be as though she’s that age forever, stuck at the same point of maturity as when she died.”
“Oh. I see,” Jack said, contemplative. He was quiet for a moment before following up with, “You said you started out thinking ghosts were evil, and it took you two years to get to this point from there. You’re a really recent ghost, aren’t you?”
Danny felt a bit uncomfortable with that line of questioning, realizing he had to be careful, lest this lead Jack to realizing certain things. This should be fine, but caution was needed. “Yes,” he admitted, “You’re right, I’ve only been a ghost for 2 years. Development-wise, I’m 14, for the record,” he said before his dad could ask.
“14…” Jack trailed sadly. “14, forever. I can’t imagine…” He sighed. “Your parents must have been devastated to lose you. I’m assuming they’re not from Amity Park, given there've been no reports of kids dying recently, so they probably didn’t see you flying around town… Do they know you’re a ghost?”
Danny shook his head. “No, they don’t know.” They didn’t even know he’d died.
“I see… If either of my kids… I just couldn’t imagine them being gone forever. Do you plan to tell them? I’m sure they’d want to see you again.”
Danny shook his head again. “I can’t. They’re not very fond of ghosts,” —a partial lie, given Jack definitely seemed to like ghosts now, or at least didn’t dislike them— “and I’m pretty sure telling them wouldn’t end well—I mean, how would you feel if you discovered one of your kids became a ghost?”
Jack looked contemplative before concluding. “I’m not sure. I suppose I would be conflicted. Part of me would be happy that I don’t have to say goodbye so soon, but to stick around as a ghost, there needs to be significant trauma, so knowing they had to go through something horrible to stay around would be painful… Although I suppose they already have gone through trauma,” he said, shoulders hunching in more, looking lost.
“You mean, all the ghost attacks?” Danny asked, although he knew that was only part of it (and Jack didn’t know that Danny had been more directly involved). One of the things his therapist/psychiatrist was looking at was the very likely possibility that Danny had C-PTSD, something common in those who had suffered long-time abuse (of any sort) throughout childhood; combine that with the bullying, portal accident, and all the ghost issues, and you had the perfect recipe for that sort of thing.
Jack shook his head and sighed. “No, but I wi—would prefer if that was all it was. They’re both staying at MU right now. My daughter says the home isn’t safe for my son right now. Maddie… Maddie did some things. She… I should have done more to stop her…” he trailed off, emotions a complete mix of confusion and pain, clearly not having processed that yet. It was good knowing his dad hadn’t approved of his mom’s punishments though. “It’s another reason why we were fighting…”
“If it’s too painful, you don’t have to talk about it,” Danny said, and sensed Jack’s relief. “Back to the previous subject then… if one of your kids became a ghost, would you accept them?”
“Of course!” Jack said immediately, almost affronted.
“You wouldn’t attack or anything?”
“Never,” Jack said adamantly. “I could never attack Jazz or Danny. Even if there were some sort of zombie apocalypse and they were turned, I’d rather let them turn me than harm them,” he said, completely serious.
Danny grinned. “Good to know.”
“Where’s this coming from?” Jack asked curiously.
Danny shifted slightly, contemplating what to say as he stared at the ground. “Just, been thinking about if I should tell my parents,” he said honestly. “My dad is similar to you; I’m pretty sure he’d accept me. But my mom… she’s a little less accepting. Thinks all ghosts are bad and need to die fully.”
Jack sighed. “Sounds like Maddie. If Jazz or Danny became a ghost… she wouldn’t hesitate to shoot, I’m sure of it. I hate how sure of that I am,” Jack said with a vibe of great sadness and some bitterness, and Danny’s heart sank. He’d pretty much known that already, but his dad confirming it snuffed any remaining hope lingering from the other timelines. Jack continued, “Is that why you were crying earlier?”
“Yeah,” Danny admitted. “One of the reasons… I just want things to be how they used to be. Even before I… even before I died, we weren’t much of a proper family. I just want things to be how I remember them from childhood, when we were all happy… You know, my… family,” he said, even though it had usually been just him and his dad, “used to stargaze on—on a hill like this one,” he reminisced, feeling like saying this specific hill would be too suspicious; he was already toeing the line. “That’s why I like it here. It’s a good place to think about things.”
Jack chuckled. “That it is. You know, my son and I used to do that, too, on this very hill in fact. This actually feels a little nostalgic, although I don’t think we’ve been here in a few years…” Jack trailed off, seeming concerned. “Why did we stop?” he asked quietly, more to himself than anything.
Danny took a moment to consider how to address that. “Well, my dad often got caught up in his work,” he eventually said. “He kept saying we’d do things together, then get caught up in a project and just forget about me. Eventually, we stopped coming to our hill, too. He said he’d go, but he had this really huge project, and it just never happened. By the time the project had finished, I’d… Well, it was too late.”
“That’s so sad,” Jack said, then with an air of guilt admitted, “I think the same thing happened to us, I just kept getting caught up in work…” Then he gained a slight air of resolution. “You know what? When Danny returns home, I’m taking him to this hill again. I won’t let him continue slipping away until it’s too late.”
Danny felt his heart warm at that sentiment. “I think he’d probably like that,” he said with a soft smile. “I know I would.”
Jack smiled too, then looked contemplative as he rested a hand on his chin. “You know, this conversation makes me realize I probably should make sure Danny knows that I’ll love and support him no matter what.”
“Oh. I’m sure he’d like to know that too,” Danny said, trying not to blush. “Why, though? Is there something he doesn’t think you’d support him in?” he asked, fishing for info. Did his Dad, impossibly, suspect he was Phantom?
“Well, I’m actually not sure,” Jack said looking slightly embarrassed too now. “You see, he’s dated girls in the past, but I found some books in his room from the library”—Danny froze as he realized what books his dad meant, the only ones he had checked out recently—“and they were about… Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t say, in case he doesn’t want people to know or I have the wrong idea. But he needs to know that it doesn’t matter to me!” He declared with great confidence, causing Danny to relax, then muttered more to himself, “Just gotta find a way to let him know that without him panicking…”
“Maybe just tell him exactly that?” Danny suggested, trying to keep his voice level despite his mind racing about what his dad had discovered. “I would have liked to know that my dad supported me that unconditionally before…” Before what? Before he fled to the dorms? Before he ran away into the Ghost Zone? Before he realized his sexuality? Before he died?
Jack didn’t ask Danny to elaborate; instead he said gently, “I’m sure he did.”
Before Danny could reply, tears already budding in his eyes again, Jack’s phone rang, and he scrambled to get it out of his pocket. He glanced at the caller ID and immediately answered with, “Jazzipants! Is everything okay? What’s going on? How’s Danny?”
…
“No, I’m not at home right now.”
…
“Jazz, Danny comes home late most of the time. I’m sure he’ll meet you at the dorms soon.”
…
Jack winced at whatever Jazz said. “I guess that’s fair…”
…
“I’m actually, er… well, I’m not at home tonight. I can go back though if you need me to check. Could you call me if he’s not back in an hour?”
Danny suddenly felt guilty, realizing Jazz was so worried about him coming back late that she’d called her dad, who was now just as worried as her, if not more so judging by his vibes. Danny turned invisible, not wanting to interrupt the phone call, and silently flew back to the dorms.
“Danny? May we talk to you?” Paulina asked as she approached their outside lunch table with Star. She glanced at Sam and Tucker. “In private?”
Sam resisted groaning, and instead said politely, “Whatever you have to say to Danny, you can say to us. What can we help you with?”
The two girls looked at each other, silently communicating something, before sitting down on either side of Danny; Sam regretted letting him sit alone on the side of the table opposite her and Tucker—he’d insisted upon it because it was a little chilly out and he tended to give off an additional chill, but Sam could’ve handled it.
Paulina put a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “So, there’s something we want to ask you, but it may be a little sensitive.”
Danny frowned. “Sensitive how?” he asked.
“Sensitive as in, like… related to your… big secret,” Paulina said.
Sam narrowed her eyes at the girl. She knew! How did she know? Did she guess? Had Danny told her? No, he wouldn’t do that. Then how? Did he know she knew? He had to, he didn’t seem surprised. If so, why didn’t he tell Sam she knew?!
Danny grinned. “You’re going to have to be more specific,” he said teasingly, to Sam’s incredulity.
“You know, your… other persona,” Paulina clarified.
Danny raised an eyebrow at her. “‘Other persona’?” he quoted back as a question.
“Oh, you know what we mean,” Star said casually.
“Do I?” Danny smiled at her, eyes flashing green and showing fangs.
Star simply giggled. Sam frowned; Danny showed her his eyes? Did Star know his secret too? How? When?
“Okay, what the hell,” Sam said, glaring at Danny.
“What?” Danny asked, looking surprised at Sam’s outburst.
“What do you mean, ‘what’?!” Sam hissed. “Unless I am wildly misinterpreting things, Paulina and Star know your biggest secret. How did this happen and why didn’t I know about it?” They were in the category of ‘people Danny would never willingly tell his secret to’, so obviously they figured it out somehow—and Sam would bet a substantial amount that Danny had been too embarrassed to let his two best friends know. That, or he simply forgot to say anything, honestly either was valid.
“Yeah, I’d actually like to know that too,” Tucker interjected.
“Oh,” Danny said. “Uh. That’s… um.”
Star answered for him. “He was threatening us in the janitor’s closet and his eyes glowed.”
Paulina nodded. “I’d recognize my Ghost Boy’s eyes anywhere!” she asserted, and Sam bristled slightly at the usage of ‘my’.
“I wasn’t threatening you!” Danny argued.
“Uh, yeah, you kinda were,” Star said, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms. “Unless baring your fangs and literally hissing like a cat with glowing eyes was somehow not meant as a threat.”
“I wasn’t hissing!” Danny protested.
“It was actually kinda cute,” Paulina said with a contemplative look. “Especially with those eyes… if you were a vampire, I’d totally let you bite me.”
Danny laughed slightly. “Watch out, or I just might,” he joked with a flirtatious wink. The fuck was going on here? Did Sam enter the Twilight Zone? Did Nocturne trap her in some strange dream?
“Okay, so this opens up a whole new pile of questions,” Tucker said, looking lost, “and I’m not sure I want all of them answered…”
“Danny,” Sam said in a no-nonsense tone. “Full story. Now.”
“Fine, fine. Basically, they figured it out,” Danny said with a sigh. “But they know to keep it a secret, and, surprisingly, I actually trust that they will.”
“Hey, what do you mean, surprisingly?!” Star protested.
“When did this even happen??” Sam wondered, trying to continue following the conversation despite her mind still reeling at Paulina’s vampire comment and Danny’s response.
“Last Friday, before class,” Danny told her. “I know I should have let you know they know, but it kinda slipped my mind… Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Anyway—Paulina, Star, what is it you want?”
“Oh, right,” Paulina said, suddenly looking more somber for some reason. “How familiar are you with el Día de Los Muertos?”
“El what?” Tucker said blankly.
“The Day of the Dead,” Star supplied.
“I don’t know much about it,” Danny replied. “All I know is it takes place the day after Halloween and involves decorated skulls.”
“Oh! We made those in art class in elementary school,” Tucker recalled.
Sam rolled her eyes. Did those two ever pay attention? “Yeah, and we learned about the holiday in class then, too—it’s a day meant to honor one’s ancestors. Some cultures believe that if they give proper offerings, their ancestors will visit. They build shrines with candles, photos, favorite foods, favorite objects, religious objects, and decorations like sugar skulls and flowers, meant to make them feel welcome if they visit.”
“Wow, you know a surprising amount!” Paulina said, but Sam wasn’t sure if she was actually impressed or just mocking her. Paulina continued, “Yes, the shrines are called ofrendas. The flowers are specifically marigolds. The holiday actually crosses two days, the first, called Dia de los Angelitos honors departed children, and the second day, Dia de los Difuntos, honors the adults. Where my family is from in Mexico they have town-wide celebrations that go all through the night, with everyone off from school and work, and the graveyards and churches are all decorated and everything; I don’t remember it that much since I was young when I lived there, but I’ve seen pictures, and it’s really impressive. Unfortunately around here all we do is a small celebration at the church with family and a graveyard visit, since it’s not a national holiday and most of us can’t get out of school or work for it.”
“Huh. Interesting,” Danny said, looking uncertain. “But, er, why are you telling me about it?”
“Right, well…” Paulina looked a little uncomfortable. “So, the Phantom Phan Club had the idea that they should make an ofrenda for Phantom this year, since, well, all they know is he’s a teenage ghost…” she trailed off, seeming unsure.
Star chimed in, “We figured maybe we should ask you if that’s okay first, since you’re still partly alive. If you don’t want it, we can make an excuse as to why they shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, we don’t want to, like, offend you or anything,” Paulina said.
“Oh,” Danny said, looking pale—or, slightly translucent, actually. “Um. I guess it’s okay? I mean, I’m not offended or anything. It’s meant to honor people, so… yeah, I guess it’s okay.” He seemed to be struggling with something, although thankfully noticed his invisibility was acting up and became fully visible again.
“You okay, man?” Tucker asked, noticing too.
“If you’re not okay with it, you can say that,” Sam told Danny. “You don’t have to say yes to be nice.”
Danny shook his head. “No, it really is okay. I just… the seriousness of it all just kinda hit me. Like, I may have a human form too, but… I’m also a ghost. I died, even if it didn’t fully take. Part ghost means part dead. With the amount I joke about it, I guess I tend to forget the gravity of that sometimes…”
Sam tried not to react at how Paulina was now rubbing Danny’s shoulder in a comforting gesture, which became more difficult when Star joined in too on the other shoulder. But, the heaviness in the air reminded Sam that now was not the time to say anything, especially as Danny seemed almost on the edge of tears.
Tucker, however, apparently was less sensitive. “Dude, if you cry, we are not going to help you explain to people why your tears are glowing.”
This actually got a chuckle out of Danny. “I’m not going to cry, don’t worry,” he said, wiping his eyes with his hands. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to bring the mood down so much…”
“It’s okay,” Paulina said, gentler than Sam would have expected. “Death is a somber topic.”
“Yeah,” Danny quietly agreed. “Yeah, it is.”
Sam couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed; she’d been trying to get Danny to take the impact of the portal accident more seriously for years, and yet Paulina of all people manages to finally imprint the gravity of what happened on him?
“So,” Danny continued slightly awkwardly. “What, er, what kind of things do they plan to put on the… ofrenda?”
“Well, that’s something we want to ask, too!” Star said, returning to her usual much-too-happy demeanor. “The ones for kids usually include some favorite snacks, candies, and toys. But we don’t know what those are for you.”
“Oh. Um. That’s… a good question,” Danny said.
Paulina raised an eyebrow. “Really? You don’t know what your favorite candies are?”
“Not when you put me on the spot about it!” Danny defended. “And technically my favorite candy can only be found in the Ghost Zone, but you probably can’t easily get ghost stuff, right?” he confirmed, and Sam wondered what candy Danny was talking about.
“Yeah, probably not,” Star said. “Well, then, what was your favorite candy before you… before you were able to get Ghost Zone candy?”
“You can say the word ‘died’, you know,” Danny said with a small eye roll.
“You’re a big fan of peanut butter cups, right?” Tucker said. “And caramel?”
“Sure, those work,” Danny decided. “I like mint, too.” Ectoplasm was minty.
“Great! Now, favorite snack?” Paulina asked.
Danny shrugged. “Potato chips?”
“Any specific flavor?” Star asked, and Sam realized she had a notebook out.
“Ectoplasm,” Danny said with a fanged grin.
Star started to write that, then paused. “Wait a second. That’s not a chip flavor!”
“Sure it is, and it’s delicious. But if you want a flavor that won’t kill humans, then, I dunno, maybe ranch or cheese?”
“Got it,” Star said, diligently writing it down. “Anything else? Do you want a cake, bread, cookies?”
“Uh. Cookies are nice,” Danny said. “Flavors don’t really matter.”
“Great,” Star said, again writing it. “What about toys?”
“I’m 16, I don’t really play with toys anymore.”
“Collectibles and books and videogames and whatnot count too. It’s just gotta be things you like.”
“Um. My favorite video game is Doomed? And I guess my favorite comic is Spider-man.”
Tucker chimed in, “He’s always liked space stuff too! He used to build model rocket ships, and his entire room used to be space themed!” Danny blushed at that; it wasn’t to the same extent as it used to be, as he’d grown up (and might have had a small bout of frustration where he tore down and shoved into a box anything NASA-themed, not wanting the reminder he’d never get there), but he was still a pretty big space nerd and did still have those glow stars on his ceiling.
“That works!” Star said happily.
“That’s probably enough,” Paulina said. “Next, where should we set it up?”
“What do you mean?” Danny asked, and Sam did not like where this was going—ofrendas were usually set up at the house, at the gravesite, or sometimes where the person died.
“Well, we know we obviously can’t put it at your house, and you don’t have a grave, so is there like a special place or something? They were just going to put it at the school but pretty sure you don’t like it here much.”
“Oh,” Danny said. “Let me think…” After a pause of contemplation, Danny concluded, “There’s this hill my dad and I used to stargaze at, and sometimes I go there to clear my mind. Maybe there? It’s a little out of the way though.”
Sam frowned at that; Danny never told her about a secret retreat. Was that yet another secret he was willing to tell Paulina but not her?
“That’s fine!” Star said. “Just, send us the GPS coordinates, m’kay?”
“Oh wait; you can do it at the edge of the park instead,” Danny suggested. “I play with Cujo there a lot—that’s the ghost dog that Valerie hates,” he said with a small chuckle. “People have seen Phantom there plenty so it makes more sense for you to suggest that than an obscure hill.”
Paulina grinned. “Perfect! We’ll hold you to that. For now though, we have to get back to the A-list, but thanks so much for your approval and help!” she said, giving Danny a kiss on the cheek before standing up. Star mirrored her actions.
“Yeah, no problem,” Danny told them as the two walked away.
“Finally,” Sam muttered under her breath.
To Sam’s surprise, Danny rounded on her, green eyes glowing and looking pissed. “What the hell is your problem?” he hissed.
“What?” Sam asked, too stunned to react. She thought she’d handled the situation pretty well.
“The moment they got here you were seething at them, that’s what!” Danny said. “You were the same way at first with the ghosts. Is it that bad that maybe I’m making some new friends? I expected Tucker to be the more jealous one, not you!”
“Hey!” Tucker protested; Danny ignored him.
Sam opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, unsure what to say to that. Had she been that obvious about her dislike of the girls? But, “I’m not jealous,” she insisted, as calmly as she could despite anger at the accusation. “I just don’t like those two. They gave us hell for years, and now you expect to just be friends? They’ve clearly got different motives.”
“No, Sam, they don’t! The other stuff’s in the past.”
“Oh, come on, you can’t be that naïve. Or do you think it’s a coincidence that they’ve suddenly started liking you only after knowing you’re also Phantom? That’s who they want to be friends with, not you!”
“Okay, for one, we actually started being friendlier before they found out, believe it or not,” Danny told her, an edge to his voice that seemed to echo slightly. “Secondly, I am Phantom. It’s not ‘also’. They know that; I thought you did too!”
“I do know that!” Sam argued back, hurt that Danny could possibly think that she didn’t think of his two sides as the same person. “I was literally there when you were changed!”
“‘Died’, Sam. The term is ‘died’. How many times do I have to tell you that? Sure, I came back partly, but I still died! Painfully! I still have nightmares about it, more than two years later!”
Sam wasn’t sure how to respond to that, at a total loss for words. She knew all that. She knew that the portal had… done that. She knew he still had nightmares…
“Dude, calm down,” Tucker awkwardly interjected. “You’re, er, making our lunch float…”
Sure enough, their lunches were slightly glowing, hovering a few inches off the table, and moving around slightly.
Danny looked at the objects, taking a moment to process it, paled, then the lunches abruptly dropped. “Sorry,” he said, anger falling too, looking ashamed now.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Tucker said with a gentle smile. “Just figured you’d want to avoid a Carrie situation, you know?”
“Carrie situation?” Danny asked in confusion.
“Yeah, the movie about the girl with telekinesis, she makes things float when she’s angry, and eventually—”
“Tucker, stop,” Sam said forcefully. They did not need Danny worried that he’d end up murdering someone, especially because he already sometimes had nightmares about exactly that, thanks to that alternative future self of his.
“Eventually, her bullies discover it,” Tucker finished instead.
“Yeah, you don’t want Dash learning about you,” Sam pointed out.
Danny paled. “Yeah, good point. I’ll be more careful,” he said, seeming genuinely frightened for a moment, then looked contemplative and grinned. “But you know what this means? I can use telekinesis after all!”
“Still by accident though,” Tucker said.
Danny frowned, then stared hard at Tucker’s sandwich in concentration. It lifted very slightly, then fell, and Danny sighed. “Dammit. Why?”
“Maybe try using your hand,” Tucker suggested. “Usually in comic books superheroes that have it need to hold their hand out and move it with the object.” He waved his own hand a bit.
“Worth a shot I guess,” Danny muttered, holding his hand out towards the sandwich as he concentrated again.
Instead of telekinesis, an ectoblast shot out of the hand, destroying the sandwich.
“Aww, man. That was my lunch, dude!” Tucker complained.
Danny winced. “Sorry. Um… I’m not that hungry, you can have the rest of mine,” he decided, handing his partially-eaten sandwich to Tucker. “It’s egg salad though, hope that’s enough meat for you.”
Tucker looked at it skeptically as he accepted it from Danny. “It’s not contaminated, right?”
Danny shook his head. “No, not today. I got it from MU, not home.”
“Wait,” Sam said. “You have to eat something, Danny.” She knew he was at MU now so missing dinner wouldn’t be an issue, but she was still a bit shaken by the previous week’s incident.
Danny sighed and reached into his backpack, not bothering to open it, and pulled out some sort of bottled drink with the label written in strange symbols. “This will be fine.”
“What’s that?” Tucker asked.
“It’s a fruit drink with ectoplasm and radium,” Danny said.
Sam gave Danny a flat look. “You brought a drink spiked with a radioactive element to school?”
“It adds a nice zing, like carbonation…” Danny trailed, then paused, eyes widening. “Shit, I forgot humans can’t be around it.” He shoved it back in his backpack. “Should be fine as long as I don’t open it,” he said, though looked unsure. “I’ll just eat something later.”
Sam frowned. A glance at Tucker showed the sandwich was now mostly gone. “Well, guess it’s too late,” she concluded, glancing at her watch. “Just, be sure to eat, okay?”
“Of course,” Danny said. “I’ll get something from the vending machine later.”
“Do you have money for that?” Sam asked, narrowing her eyes. “Or will you intangibly snatch something?” She’d seen him do that before, although she thought he didn’t know.
Danny looked guilty. “I’ll pay it back later,” he said, and Sam could only sigh in response.
Notes:
Paulina and Star have joined the crew! Kinda. They're Danny's friends now, at least.
Also, Valerie does eventually improve, don't worry!
Next weekend: Lots of Jack!
--Jack finds a school assignment Jazz wrote about halfas and how they're created; unsure if it's meant to be fictional or not, and having some laboratory mice on hand, Jack lets his curiosity get the best of him. This leads to some other realizations, and Jack decides he needs to have a chat with his children.
--Jack realizes that his relationship with Maddie likely won't ever recover, leaving him with only one choice.
--(may or may not be posted next weekend) Danny learns that he doesn't just sense emotions, but he's been feeding on them too; he has mixed feelings on this. Then, the A-list has a request for the band, and Paulina and Star become closer friends with Danny. After that, Danny and Ember are hanging out in the GZ, and nearly give Vlad a heart attack when he discovers Danny flying around in human form and drinking an ecto-smoothie.
Chapter 12: Of Mice and Halfas
Summary:
Jazz leaves a school report about halfas in the ops center. Jack sees it, and decides to test the theories in it with some lab mice. This leads him to some other realizations, and he has a chat with his children.
Notes:
Note that there has been a new tag added. I realized that it was poor narrative practice to have multiple people express their worries about Danny taking prescription painkillers so often, and then show him taking them, only to have zero follow-through on that, so now that's explored more later on. Don't worry, Danny gets help! It might affect how I organize the chapters though, which might increase the chapter count, I'll adjust the count once I figure that out.
Now without further ado, here's the first of 3 chapters this weekend! It's one of my favorites, and the start of where Jack becomes much more involved in the fic.
CW: non-graphic animal experimentation, discussion of portal accident, discussion of child neglect/abuse.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
A week after his encounter with Phantom in the park, Jack found himself pacing back and forth in the Ops Center, fresh from yet another fight with Maddie, unsure what to do. His cheek stung where Maddie had punched him… She never used to target the face; Jack wondered what changed.
The fight had been similar to the previous week’s, after which Jack had opted to stay at a hotel, the first time he’s ever done that—he just couldn’t stay in the house with Maddie that night, though.
Their kids had left eight days prior, and it was all Jack’s fault, of that he was certain. He knew that withholding food wasn’t a good punishment. When they first decided to have kids, Maddie swore she would never inflict the same kind of hurt on her kids as her mother had to her, including such extreme punishments. She’d made Jack promise not to let her if she ever tried. Yet when it happened, when Maddie told Danny to go up to his room without dinner for the first time… Jack had said nothing. He just let it happen. The second night he did have the courage to fight with Maddie about it, but it had been too late by then—now, both his kids were gone.
At least he knew they were safe; Jazz had sent him a few text messages that assured him of such, although they were all very short and to the point. Still, that initial phone call had ended with a promise to talk once Danny was ready… Jack had expected that to be a few days’ time, not a week.
Jack itched to call the kids right now, but he knew they needed time, Jazz had made that clear. Jack needed time, too. He just couldn’t understand what had happened to Maddie. She was so different now than he remembered. Harsher. She’d always been headstrong, adamant about getting her way, driven… But now there was a cold edge to it that Jack didn’t understand. Her words to Danny had been so cruel the evening he ran away to the Ghost Zone that Jack had simply frozen. Yet still when his wife was yelling at Danny after he returned, Jack had simply let her control the conversation.
Jack had never been very good about defending himself when it came to his wife; most of their arguments simply ended with Jack conceding she was right, even if he didn’t believe it. But he knew that it had reached a breaking point the moment Maddie had hit Danny. Any hope that things could go back to how they had been had then been shattered the moment Jazz had taken Danny away for his safety. Jack simply couldn’t sit idly by anymore.
Jack personally thought what Danny talked about was fascinating; he didn’t understand why Maddie was so opposed. True, Danny getting involved with ghosts to the point of being friends with them had initially been concerning, but the more Jack thought about it the more he began to consider that maybe Danny was onto something, with not all ghosts being bad—he’d been in the Ghost Zone for five days, after all, and come back unhurt… Actually, even after all the yelling he seemed much more relaxed, like the time with them had healed rather than hurt. So maybe they didn’t need to dissect ghosts to learn more about them; maybe some would simply be willing to talk. First, though, Jack would have to somehow convince Maddie that they weren’t all liars.
Jazz’s theories about ghost emotions were fascinating as well. Hell, she was even planning to further her research on such at college! Miskatonic University tended to have fairly far-out opinions compared to other paranormal research institutions, pushing some wild theories, but they were one of the top paranormal research institutions for a reason. If they were allowing her to research it, there must be some validity.
Maybe the issue was that a lot of what their children said seemed to counteract a lot of Jack and Maddie’s research? Perhaps Maddie was feeling like all those years of research and all those papers published went to waste if it all ended up wrong. Yet, wasn’t that the very nature of science? Old theories were replaced by new ones all the time. Science changed as new information came to light, and the Ghost Portal had opened a huge wealth of new data opportunities. They could be revolutionizing the field of ectoölogy! All it took was an open mind.
Speaking of…
Jack picked up the folder that had been left on the Ops Center table. It contained a copy of a graded paper Jazz had written for class. Jack felt that perhaps it was meant for him specifically to read, considering Maddie rarely came up here yet Jazz was well aware that Jack often came here to think. The assignment had been on human-hybrid paranormal creatures, and instead of writing about something more typical, such as a werewolf, centaur, or mermaid, Jazz had chosen to write about something she called a ‘liminal’.
Jack was a little concerned that Jazz’s class apparently was learning about such cryptids as though they were real, as the assignment definitely appeared to be serious rather than a creative writing assignment, but hey, ghosts were definitely real, despite what so many people told Jack before the portal worked, so maybe the other things were real too. Jack didn’t really want to think of the implications of that though, content to stick with ghosts and only ghosts.
Like the ‘liminal’ that Jazz wrote about, also known colloquially as a ‘halfa’, though that was originally a slur that had been reclaimed by these ‘liminals’. A ghost-human hybrid, allegedly created when a dying human is infused with enough ectoplasm to bond with their very DNA and keep them partially alive, something Jack had never considered the possibility of—after all, life and death were diametrically opposed, or so current philosophical reasoning said… Then again, that was just it, wasn’t it? Philosophy wasn’t fact; it was constantly changing, and just like scientific theories philosophical theories could be disproven (Plato’s chicken came to mind). Just because the idea had been around for centuries didn’t mean it was correct.
According to Jazz, there were different levels of these ‘liminals’, depending on the circumstance and amount of ectoplasm initially infused. The levels of ectoplasm, though, had to be exceedingly high, and raw—basically, the only way that could happen is if a portal was involved. Minor exposure would create one that was more or less human overall, ghost powers largely only easily usable when they switch from a human-form to a ghost-form, but more extreme circumstances could create one that was as high as 90% ghost and only 10% human. However, in all circumstances the mind is retained, complete with all memories.
Jack could understand why liminals would be so rare—after all, a natural portal opening on someone as they’re dying would be rarer than lightning striking them! Of course, the other method would be intentional creation, but it would take an especially cruel scientist to either open a portal on someone or blast them with an equivalently high level of ectoplasm while dying. Besides, there was no guarantee that it would create a liminal every time—even Jazz’s paper admitted that the odds and even the exact conditions were unknown. There simply wasn’t enough evidence.
Of course, that was assuming they existed. How did Jazz even know about them? She got an A on the paper, so clearly at least the professor believed in their existence. Did she have a book on the creature? Jack decided that he needed to question Jazz more on this matter, though considering she wasn’t talking to him…
Jack then got a brilliant, or possibly idiotic, idea: he could test it. In fact, he could test it right now! A box of lab mice had been delivered that very day—the plan for them had been to test exactly how much ecto-contamination it took to be detected on ghost scanners, like Danny sometimes was, but this was close enough to that, right?
Jack had made a mistake, he decided, as he looked down at the tiny hellions he had created.
When he rushed downstairs, excited to talk about his plan, Maddie had simply ignored him and left with a packed bag, saying she was going to go to her sister’s for a week. Though slightly disappointed, Jack knew that Maddie tended to do that when she was especially stressed, and the whole situation with the kids certainly was stressful! Plus, Jack was well aware that she likely would dismiss his idea outright anyway, so it was probably best that he work on his experiment alone for now.
The experiment was simple enough: spawn ghost portals on the mice as they died and see what happened. He used some of the prototype portal guns to create a smaller version of their large portal, just the size of a shoebox.
The experiment worked better than Jack had expected. Out of a total of 30 mice, 7 had become what Jack was calling ‘true’ liminals, proven by them switching between their ghost halves, in which their white fur inverted to black, and mice halves, the ghost detectors only registering them as ghosts when they either used powers or went into full ghost form, but as non-ghosts or slightly-contaminated if they were in regular mouse form doing regular mouse things. Another 8 of them, which Jack was calling ‘partial liminals’, had survived with ghost powers but no ghost form, all registering as non-ghost on the basic trackers (which they gave out or used in the field) or partly-contaminated on the more specific scanners (which, although they used this type at first, at this point they only used in the GAV and OP-Center due to cost as the simpler ones, created later, were much cheaper to produce). The three mice that had become full ghosts hadn’t been contained quickly enough and were now roaming Amity Park.
From Jack’s observations, the moment of death and the blast had to happen almost simultaneously: too early, and the ectoplasm would kill the mouse; too late, and the mouse would stay dead (or become a full ghost). Electrocution had been the easiest to achieve this with, as the portal itself could be rigged to shoot it off while activating; for someone to be hit by lightning at the exact same time a portal opened on them would be astronomically rare though!
What was most interesting was the percent of the DNA. Jack had observed anywhere from 10% to 90% depending on the power output; however, only ones that were 50% or more became the ‘true liminals’ with a ghost form, with the one 83% and two 90% ones seeming to have unrestricted ghost powers even in their regular mouse form that would be used instinctually. The ‘partial liminals’ appeared to have a smaller selection of ghost powers that they had to activate, or at least Jack assumed they had to; these mice, and the 50%-80% ones while in regular mouse form, would sometimes go intangible when knocking into objects Jack put in their path but more often would bump into them, or first bump them and then think to phase through, whereas the three with the highest percent didn’t even think twice, just as it was when any of the mice were in ghost form. Those three, if it weren’t for the DNA and vitals saying otherwise, along with the two forms, were almost indistinguishable from actual ghosts.
What Jack didn’t test, however, was if infusions over time worked. If a mouse was dying of a long-term illness, and they got regular infusions of ectoplasm just under the lethal threshold, would that create a liminal too? And what percentage would it be? Jack would need to order more mice to test it.
Wait, no, probably a bad idea. Jack looked at the liminal-mice again, in the cage that was surrounded by a small ghost shield. Now that he created them, he had no idea what to do with them. Maddie wouldn’t hesitate to vivisect (well, she called it dissect) some of them of course, but Jack had always been a softie on that front. These weren’t unfeeling ghosts—if ghosts even were unfeeling, which Jack honestly didn’t believe anymore. Regardless though, these were a blend of living and ghost. So how could—
Oh. Oh no. Not good. A 61% liminal-mouse had figured out that it could get through the cage bars in ghost form, change back to mouse form, and then go through the ghost shield. The 83% liminal-mouse noticed and did the same thing, though without first shifting into ghost form to go through the cage bars.
Jack lunged for the mice, thankfully managing to catch them both and toss them back into the cage before either remembered to go intangible. Before any of the other mice could get the same idea, Jack hurriedly wrapped a ghost net around the cage, which would prevent both ghostly and material mice from getting through.
As he did this, a thought crossed Jack’s mind. Wasn’t there a certain ghost that somehow always seemed to slip past ghost shields, too? A ghost that had been puzzling them by how they would be tracking him in the field, then the signal would suddenly vanish entirely? A ghost that exhibited more traits of humanity than others, such as being able to, apparently, sleep? Was it possible…?
By happenstance, Jack’s eyes fell on a small photograph on his work desk, one taken of their family from a few years ago. The four of them were all in their spandex hazmat suits, a particular black-haired boy’s being white with black accents. Jack scrunched his brow as he stared at the boy in the photo. If the colors of the suit and hair were inverted, like the liminal-mice’s white fur had changed to black when they entered ghost form…
Jack’s eyes widened in realization. No. No way. Impossible. Just, no.
It didn’t make sense and yet made too much sense at the same time.
But if so, when did…
Last week, the ghost with white hair and a black jumpsuit had told Jack that he’d died just over two years ago. When asked about age, he said he died at 14.
Jack’s eyes fell onto the full-sized portal, which had been opened just over two years ago, when Danny was 14. Now they knew of less dangerous methods to activate portals, discovered by studying the nature of the full portal, which is what the weapons and mini-portals used. That first portal, however, required a tremendous burst of electricity colliding with massive amounts of ectoplasm in order to open.
Enough of an electricity-ectoplasm infusion to create a 90% human-based liminal, based on the data collected from the mice.
Neither Jack nor Maddie knew exactly how the portal had first turned on. Danny and his friends had said they had been messing around nearby it, and it turning on had given Danny a small shock. But if Danny were actually inside, and received the full force of it…
Jack’s heart fell. He was at fault for that, wasn’t he? He’d left the lab unattended. He’d left the portal plugged in. And now Danny… Danny was…
Danny was a liminal.
Phrases from the song Danny had sung filtered through Jack’s brain again: it hurts when you disapprove all along… never gonna be good enough for you… you can’t change me… just want to make you proud… you don’t understand…
Jack thought back to the conversation he had with Phantom—no, Danny—the week before. The family he had described, who didn’t know who he was and he didn’t know would accept him. The family—no, father and son—who used to stargaze on a hill like that—no, that hill specifically. The story had been slightly changed but was close enough for Jack to now recognize that he had been talking about their family specifically.
Jack took a deep breath. Danny was his son, first and foremost, liminal or not. Jack had to somehow let his son know that he accepted him for who he was, that Danny was good enough for him, that Jack didn’t disapprove or want to change him. He had to make it known that he wanted to listen, wanted to understand… That he was proud of him, proud that Danny was using his powers to do all he could to protect everyone despite all the hate he got—because Jack was certain now that that was what Phantom, what Danny, was doing. He was a Hero protecting the town. Honestly, Jack had more or less known for months now, despite Maddie constantly telling him otherwise and making him doubt it. Jack would never doubt such again.
No wonder Danny and Jazz—who he was certain knew, given the report she’d done—had been so adamant that ghosts had feelings, and were such advocates for Phantom’s safety!
Jack wondered if the reason Danny was crying alone on that familiar hill the previous night had anything to do with him and Maddie, then concluded that it likely did. He had said as much, hadn’t he? Danny wanted his family back. He wanted to be at home with parents who accepted him for him. Wanted to tell them who he was, wanted to know they’d still love him. When he asked about what Jack would do if his kid were a ghost, it had not been hypothetical.
Then Jack thought back to Monday, when he’d found Phantom sleeping in an abandoned roadside shack. How often did he do that? Why had he skipped school to sleep there? Had Danny slept there before? He hadn’t been in his bed that morning; Jack assumed he’d left for school early, as Maddie had claimed Danny stormed to his room the previous night after another argument… Oh. If he were Phantom, he could have simply flown out the window, couldn’t he? And then… slept in a shack? No, he must have stayed with a friend, it was likely Sam or Tucker knew… Jack made a mental note to talk to Danny about that. His son shouldn’t feel so unsafe in his home that he felt he couldn’t sleep there.
But, those discussions were for the future; what should Jack do right now?
He could call Jazz; he probably should call anyway, to let her know that Maddie had left. So, Jack pulled out his phone, and called her.
“Why are you calling at 11pm?” Jazz asked blearily.
“Is it really that late already?” Jack asked, glancing at the wall clock. “Ah. It is. I was, er, distracted by an experiment… Ah, anyway, I saw your school report, the one on liminals.”
“Okay…” Jazz trailed, now sounding slightly wary. “And again, you’re calling at 11pm why?”
“I… Okay, so your mother doesn’t know about this, she left for her sister’s earlier today. So it’s safe if you and Danny want to stop by tomorrow to talk,” he told her.
“Oh, so you’re finally ready to listen?” Jazz said rather aggressively.
“I’ve been ready to listen!” Jack protested, then took a deep breath. “Sorry. That came out wrong. Um. Your mother and I actually disagree on a lot more ghost-related things than you think,” he told her. “Including yours and Danny’s thoughts on ghosts. She refuses to believe any of it, but I’m open to it, promise. Especially after something I realized tonight…”
“And that would be?”
“Er, well, not sure I should say it over the phone? But, well, it relates to the report you wrote? I read it this afternoon and got some ideas. And we had some mice on hand.”
Jack could almost see Jazz’s eyes widen and then narrow before she said sternly, “This better not be going where I think it’s going.”
Jack winced. “Er. Well. If liminal-mice is where you think it’s going, then… Yes.”
“You made halfa-mice,” Jazz said flatly.
“Yup! There are 7 of them that are what I’m calling ‘true liminals’, with separate human and ghost forms, and 8 that I’m calling ‘partial liminals’, which have some weaker powers but no ghost form,” Jack told her, then in a rush blurted out, “And they’re really rather cute and I don’t want Maddie to come home to find the ‘true liminal’ mice and have the same realization I did before she stops being so rigid in her views, since I can practically hear her trying to claim they’re just shapeshifting ghosts or something, but I know they’re not, so, maybe you and Danny want some pets while you’re at MU? Just the 7 true ones, the 8 partial ones I can pass off as experimenting with giving living mice ghost powers, like what happened at that hospital, I think she—”
“Hold up,” Jazz interjected, which Jack was actually thankful for as he’d begun to ramble, then stated in a neutral tone, “You made halfa-mice, and you want me and Danny to keep them as pets at MU.”
“Yes! Thanks, Jazzikins!”
“I didn’t say—okay, fine, whatever.”
“Great! And you’ll be here tomorrow? To talk?”
“Only if Danny’s okay with it,” Jazz warned. “And just to clarify, the realization you had is just that halfas are possible, or…?”
“I know what really happened when the portal opened,” Jack told her, and from Jazz’s sharp inhale she understood what he meant. “Tell Danny that he is my son no matter what. I love him no matter what. I understand if he still wants to stay away, but I want to be a better father, one who listens and makes him feel safe, regardless of form, if he’ll let me.”
Jazz took a moment to respond. “Okay, I’ll let him know,” she said. “He’s asleep at the moment, for once, but we’ll discuss it in the morning and I’ll call you with what we decide.”
“Okay. Thanks, Jazzerincess!”
“Uh-huh. Now if you excuse me, I need to sleep too,” she said. “Goodnight, Dad.”
“Goodnight. Love you, and Danny too,” Jack said, but the phone had already disconnected.
Jack hung up the phone too and took a deep breath. He should probably sleep too, but he wasn’t sure if he could. Not with his whole world being flipped on its head…
Wait.
If Danny was a liminal, caused by the portal, then… could Vlad be a liminal too? He had the smaller portal accident, which had given him the ecto-acne, which theoretically should have been fatal but maybe instead infused him with ectoplasm over time… Jack wasn’t sure what to think about that, frankly. If Plasmius had not killed Vlad and taken over his life, rather the two were indeed the same being, that meant Vlad was still alive, just in hiding—but it also meant he was definitely a villain. Jack would much rather believe his friend was dead than that he was a ghost as horrible as Plasmius… Well, maybe the kids would know more about that, so he would put off thinking about that until tomorrow.
Then there was the issue of Maddie. She absolutely could not find out about this, Jack was certain. Not now. Jack had said to Jazz that he wanted to wait to tell Maddie until she was less rigid in her views about ghosts, implying that he’d be trying to change her mind about ghosts, but… Well, he already had been trying to do that, and truthfully, Jack wasn’t sure if her mind could be changed. She was stubborn to a fault, and ghosts were a major thing they argued about. Jack, Danny, and Jazz had all been trying to tell her for a while that not all ghosts were bad, but she only doubled-down.
But what could be done? If the kids moved back, Danny was in danger as long as Maddie was in the house. Assuming she returned…
A question suddenly crossed Jack’s mind: Did he even want Maddie to return?
Jack, concerningly, found himself conflicted.
“Dad made halfa-mice.”
Danny blinked sleepily at Jazz, who had greeted him with that as he exited his dorm room. “What?” was all he could muster, not yet processing the words.
“Dad called me last night. He saw a school assignment I wrote about halfas, and decided to try to make some,” Jazz explained.
Danny took a moment to contemplate that as they began to head to the cafeteria for breakfast, as they’d done every day together for the past week; Jazz was adamant about Danny eating three solid meals a day. “You’re not pulling my leg, are you?” he finally asked skeptically.
“Nope. He’s been using the more formal term ‘liminal’,” Jazz explained. “There’s 7 of what he’s calling ‘true liminals’ that have ghost forms, and 8 ‘partial liminals’ that are just mice with weak ghost powers, like what happened during Spectra’s hospital incident.”
“Holy shit,” Danny said. That… Danny wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing, honestly. His dad was definitely more open-minded, and since he knew about halfas now, maybe he’d be more receptive of Danny being one, or at least would believe him? He had a feeling his mom wouldn’t believe it, unless… “Does mom know?”
Jazz shook her head. “Not yet. Dad wants to talk to us today—without Mom, who apparently went to her sister’s,” Jazz revealed, which Danny didn’t find surprising, if they’d fought again like they had the previous week, which had been bad enough for Jack to stay at a hotel. “He prefaced it with assurances that he loves you and you’re his son no matter what, that you’re safe with him, and said he wants to be a better father if you’ll let him.”
Danny took a moment to process those words, then realized what it likely meant and asked in a strangled voice, “Dad knows about me, doesn’t he?” He wondered if the conversation in the park a week prior had anything to do with it, or if the halfa-mice had been all it took.
“He said he didn’t want to say over the phone, probably worried that the GIW were tapping it again, which we know they aren’t due to Tucker’s alerts he set up, but he said enough that yeah, almost certain he knows that you’re a halfa, maybe even Phantom.”
“Oh,” Danny said, in mild shock. He had been hoping that this time around, he’d have a choice of when to tell his parents, but the universe seemed to be conspiring against him. “Well, at least it wasn’t broadcast on international TV this time,” he tried joking. “Um. Does mom know?” he asked, then realized that, duh, if she didn’t know about the mice she certainly didn’t know about his father’s suspicions about him.
“No,” Jazz said without judgement. “He said he isn’t even telling her about the halfa-mice yet, not until she’s relaxed her views on ghosts. He wants us to keep the ‘true’ ones here, as pets.”
“Pet halfa-mice,” Danny said flatly. “Why do I have a feeling that won’t end well?”
“Yeah, same, honestly,” Jazz said, then sighed. “So, do you want to talk to him? Honestly, I think it may be for the best. He sounds like he really is already accepting of things. He’s always been much more open-minded than Mom, even if he outwardly appears rather one-track-minded.”
“Yeah, pretty sure when I got back from the Ghost Zone he was more interested in learning about the place rather than scolding me,” Danny recalled, slightly amused at that. “And I swear when I mentioned being friends with ghosts he was faking the disappointment—honestly it felt like below the surface he was excited at the idea. He believed your paper, too—I think the only reason he isn’t trying to befriend ghosts himself is because Mom is so insistent on them being evil.” Of course, Danny knew this for certain, but he didn’t want to tell Jazz about that encounter on the hill for some reason. It felt too personal.
“Yeah, it does seem like he just parrots her a lot rather than believing it,” Jazz said with a thoughtful look. “I wonder if that’s why he always misses with the more dangerous weapons?”
“You think that’s intentional?” Danny asked, surprised. Or, maybe not so surprised, given what he now knew thanks to being able to sense feelings.
“We’ve seen him hit the practice targets in the lab when testing the weapons,” Jazz pointed out. “There’s no reason he’d be that much worse out in the field, and getting worse over time. His shots just go too wide to be his best efforts.”
“Huh. I never thought about it like that,” Danny said. “You know, I’ve seen him hit the more feral animal ghosts before, especially when protecting us—so yeah, I think you’re right. The more human ones like Phantom he’s been intentionally avoiding for a long time now.”
“Exactly.” Jazz smiled. “You know, little brother, I think this is going to go really well!”
“I hope so too,” Danny said as the two reached the cafeteria, which was attached to the main foyer, which looked more like the entrance to a haunted manor than a school. The cafeteria itself, despite being a little eerie thanks to being painted the school colors of deep violet and black and lit with rows of imitation gas lamps on the walls, the light of which had a faint green tinge due to being ecto-powered, was more typical of a school, smaller than his high-school one and a little more well-maintained but still recognizably a cafeteria.
Breakfast—well, more like brunch, given Jazz had let him sleep in until 1030—for Danny consisted of eggs, bacon, and peanut butter on toast with ectoplasm jelly, which Jazz made a face at but didn’t say anything about as she added a glass of ecto-milk to his tray. She herself opted for a vegetable omelette (though whether or not the vegetables involved came from Earth or some other planet/dimension was debatable) and home fries seasoned with something bright blue (thankfully all foods here had signs specifying if a food wasn’t safe for a particular species, so whatever it was Jazz was probably fine eating it as the sign only had the symbol indicating a danger to fish-based lifeforms).
Danny reflected on the past week. It had been… more stable than Danny imagined a week could be: he knew there would be food ready for him when needed, even the ecto kind; he slept better than usual—he had never realized how much banging from the basement had affected his sleep along with the late nights from ghost fighting; the less distracting environment meant it was easier to focus on actually getting homework done; and most importantly, there was no need to hide what he was or worry about weapons targeting him. He could go to the Ghost Zone whenever he wanted, no sneaking required. His ghost friends could even visit him! Ember was plenty happy to meet in the common areas of the dorm to practice (getting attention to her delight), and no one batted an eye. There was no curfew to worry about. Danny felt so much less stressed than he had in years.
School itself was still a mess, though. Dash’s bullying had been getting concerningly worse, emotions laced with a darkness that Danny had not expected to find, particularly as Dash caught onto Paulina and Star being friendlier with Danny than they used to be. The wounds were more painful, too, it seemed; Danny wasn’t quite sure why, as Dash didn’t seem to be hitting that much harder overall. Maybe the theory Sam had about ghosts’ wounds being affected by emotions was true. Thankfully the painkillers Sam got for him worked really well—he just had to keep them a secret from Jazz.
There had also been another incident in that stupid Ghost Defense class, or whatever they called it; Tucker and Sam had convinced the teacher that Danny collapsing had been due to stress, not due to the weird sonic weapon that had been brought in by GIW agents as an example of ways to subdue large groups of ghosts; the downside was humans got headaches from it so thankfully it wasn’t used much (it wasn’t even supposed to be activated, but apparently it was glitchy).
Danny was glad that he would finally learn what was going on with his parents today; he’d noticed during the past week of patrols that they’d been going out separately. Usually Maddie responded to everything, even reports of him, but Jack had been conspicuously absent or, to Danny’s surprise, would observe some ghosts before walking away. He still fought any causing mischief, but he’d even left alone Johnny and Kitty one day upon seeing they were only having ice cream, despite them being on the Most Wanted Ghosts list. He’d waved at Phantom every time they crossed paths, too, and Danny had awkwardly waved back; his nerves subsided some, recalling that. Things would go well.
Danny finished his food before Jazz, so he excused himself to the foyer to start a group call with Sam and Tucker.
“Hey, Danny!” Sam greeted.
“Let me guess: wanna hang out?” Tucker asked.
“No, not today,” Danny told them. “Actually, I’m going home.”
Danny could practically feel their surprise.
“Uh, come again?” Tucker asked.
“Didn’t we establish that it’s probably better for you to stay away from there?” Sam asked, sounding far from amused.
“Well, I dunno if I’m gonna stay there, but my dad called Jazz last night while I was asleep. He said he wants to talk today—without my mom, who apparently left for her sister’s, which is a whole ‘nother can of worms but works out for this. Anyway, Jazz and I are pretty sure he knows; he didn’t explicitly say it, pretty sure he’s still concerned about the GIW listening in, but I dunno what else it can be about. Jazz thinks he’ll be accepting of it given the amount he told her to assure me that I’m safe there and that he loves me no matter what and stuff, and how he specifically told her that mom does not know anything about all this and that he won’t tell her.”
“Wow,” Tucker said, seeming at a loss for words.
“How did your dad figure it out before your mom did?” Sam asked with incredulity.
“Well, for one, he’s a lot more open-minded than Mom,” Danny pointed out. “She’s more likely to dismiss things that go against her beliefs, but he isn’t. But the main thing that clued him in, apparently, was that he did some experiments yesterday that led him to creating halfa-mice. I guess once he learned that was possible, he was able to connect some things he couldn’t before.”
“Whoa whoa whoa, hold up, dude,” Tucker said. “Halfa-mice? Did you say Halfa-MICE?!”
“Uh, yeah. I’m still kinda processing it too,” Danny told them.
“Excuse me,” Sam said, sounding angry. “I thought your folks only experimented on ghosts, not living animals!?”
Danny winced; that had been something he had been keeping from Sam, letting her assume it was ghosts only. He couldn’t lie to her though, so he said, “Well, they are scientists…”
“How long has this been going on?” Sam demanded. “How many lives have they killed? There must be other ways to do these things, computer simulations and stuff!”
Danny grimaced. “This is why I didn’t tell you…” he mumbled.
“Sam,” Tucker interjected. “I think you’re skipping over the point that apparently there are HALFA-MICE in existence! What’s next, halfa-spiders? Halfa-cats? Halfa-elephants?!”
Danny rolled his eyes. “Tucker, my parents do not experiment on any living things larger than mice, not since the mutant warthog incident. And spiders are always out, my dad’s afraid of them.”
“The what incident?” Tucker asked, sounding concerned.
“Nevermind. Anyway, I just wanted to let you two know that I’m talking to my dad today—before you ask, no, I don’t think I need backup, Jazz and I can handle it.”
“Okay, but we’ll be on standby, just in case,” Sam told him, thankfully dropping the topic of animal experimentation.
“Thanks,” Danny said, then saw who was exiting the cafeteria. “Jazz just finished eating, so I gotta hang up, but I’ll talk to you later!”
Both said their goodbyes too and Danny snapped his phone closed, wordlessly joining his sister so the two could head back home to meet their father.
As Danny and Jazz entered Fentonworks, Danny heard a shout and was practically crushed in what turned out to be a hug from his father—surprised, and slightly panicked, Danny immediately phased out of it.
Once Danny processed what had happened, he looked at his father, who was looking back and forth between his still-closed arms and Danny, clearly surprised. Well, if he hadn’t known before, he sure did now. Interestingly, Jack was not dressed in his usual hazmat suit, rather had on khaki pants and a Hawaiian shirt, his go-to non-hazmat outfit.
“S-sorry, didn’t mean to do that,” Danny stuttered out, blushing and looking down as he rubbed the back of his neck with a hand. “You, er, surprised me.”
Jack looked embarrassed too, rubbing the back of his neck in the same nervous gesture. “No, no, it’s my mistake,” he said. “I shouldn’t have rushed at you like that.”
Danny took a deep breath, then smiled gently at his dad. “Guess this, er, confirms some things for you, huh?” he asked nervously.
Jack relaxed a little. “That it does, Danno, that it does… Come on, why don’t we all sit down in the kitchen, I’ll make you lunch.”
“No need; we just came from a late breakfast,” Danny told him.
Jack nodded. “Got it. I’ll get out some fudge then.”
Danny and Jazz followed Jack to the kitchen. As Jack was raiding the cabinets looking for fudge, Danny noticed an open container of delicious-smelling green-colored cookies on the counter, and helped himself to one. It tasted of mint and lime, but in a way that blended very pleasantly.
Jack finally found the box of fudge, and as he placed it on the table noticed Danny munching on the cookie. His eyes widened. “Danny, no!” He called in a slight panic, snatching it away.
“Hey! What gives?” Danny complained.
“They’re not safe,” Jack said, worry radiating off him. “They’re made with ect—oh,” he said, calming. “Nevermind, they’re safe for you,” he said sheepishly, handing the cookie back.
Danny looked back and forth between Jack and the cookie, confused.
“They’re made with a large amount of ectoplasm,” Jack explained. “More than a human can consume without causing indigestion. Maddie made them just before she left yesterday, she wants to use them to try to lure ghosts into traps…”
“Oh,” Danny said. “I, er, guess they work, then,” he said awkwardly, moving to sit at the table next to Jazz, and his dad sat down across from them. He continued to nibble at the cookie. “So… halfa-mice, huh?” Danny prodded, when all Jack did was stare at him. Clearly Jack was having trouble initiating the discussion about Danny’s ghostliness; talking about his exciting experiment would likely ease the tension.
“Hm? Oh, yeah,” Jack said, eyes lighting up. “Jazz, that paper of yours was super informative! It basically laid out the groundwork. I’ll show you them later; 7 of them became true liminals, with 50% or more ghost DNA, giving them separate mice and ghost forms, and another 8 became what I’m calling partial-liminals, which have enough to give them some powers but not enough to give them the form.”
“And that led you to some other conclusions?” Jazz guided, apparently wanting to get right to the core of why they were here.
Jack nodded. He opened his mouth, then closed it, apparently again unsure what to say so he instead grabbed a piece of fudge and tossed it in his mouth.
“How much do you know?” Danny asked. “About me, I mean. And how’d you figure it out?”
Jack swallowed his fudge, took a deep breath, and finally slowly explained. “When making the liminal-mice—or, halfa-mice? Is ‘halfa’ the word you prefer?” When Danny nodded, Jack continued, “So when making the halfa-mice, I noticed different levels of electricity plus ectoplasm was the most consistent method of creating them, the stronger the electricity the larger the ghost portion. Then I saw a mouse cross through the bars in ghost form, which is inverted in color, and shield in mouse form; it occurred to me that if there were actual human-based halfas around, they could do that too, and we do know of one ghost that’s always been able to somehow get through our shields but we could never figure out how. I realized that the only way that such a being could be created, other than a freak accident with a lightning strike and natural portal, the odds of which would be ridiculously small, would be to use a manmade portal, and we’re the only ones who have that around here. Then I noticed a picture on my desk of the family in our hazmat suits, and I realized that if yours were inverted like the mice…” he trailed off.
“For the record, the newest model of ghost shield, the one installed at the school, annoyingly does work on me, regardless of form,” Danny informed him.
“So it’s true, then?” Jack asked, seeming largely sad but with an underlying hint of excited anticipation. “You’re…” he trailed off again, apparently too nervous to voice it.
“Yeah, it’s true,” Danny confirmed softly. “I’m not just a halfa; I’m Danny Phantom.”
Jack nodded, heavy guilt blending with the sadness. “I’m sorry, son; if I hadn’t left the portal plugged in that day—”
“Stop, dad,” Danny interjected, realizing what his dad was thinking. “It’s not your fault. If anything, it’s mine, for being stupid enough to go inside of an unstable invention without checking if it was fully shut down first.”
“But, still,” Jack said. “If I weren’t so negligent… You… the amount of electricity and ectoplasm that it blasted you with… that’s enough to make a 90% halfa. 90%... dead… And if the blasts didn’t happen to be fully synchronous, it would’ve been fully…”
Something flipped in Danny’s stomach at the confirmation that he was 90% ghost, even if he’d figured as much given the blood-ectoplasm percentage. “But, it didn’t fully kill me,” Danny reminded his father. “Even if… even if it’s as high as 90% ghost... that’s still 10% human.”
“Of course, Danny!” Jack said immediately. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you aren’t human! You’re still my son, Danny. Always! Human parts and ghost parts. This doesn’t change that. It doesn’t change that I love you. I’ll support you in this. I’ll even help you sabotage the weapons and trackers!”
Danny winced. “You, er, realized that was me, too, huh?”
Jack nodded. “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble. It only makes sense; you had to protect yourself.”
“You’re not mad?” Danny asked, even though he could sense his dad wasn’t. Verbal confirmation still helped sometimes though.
“Nah. I’m surprised you’re not mad at me, actually.”
Danny quickly shook his head. “No, I’m not mad at you. Never was. I was mad at myself a lot at first for being stupid enough to get into an accident like that, I mean who wouldn’t be upset about becoming part ghost after being told their whole life ghosts were evil, but eventually I made peace with it. I don’t regret what happened anymore,” he assured his dad. “In fact, I really like all the ghost stuff now! I wouldn’t give up my powers for anything. I can’t imagine not being able to fly, and the more I learn about ghost culture the more I love it, I used to feel like such an outsider among the ghosts but now I really feel like I belong, like the Ghost Zone is such a fascinating place to explore and I’d never have discovered that without these powers! And, hey, I get to be a real-life superhero! Even if I’m kinda a wanted criminal for it.”
“And I’m so proud of you for that,” Jack said resolutely, then corrected, “The superhero part, I mean. Not the being-a-criminal thing. Which I do have some questions about, actually.”
Danny was ready for this. “All those have legit explanations, I promise! Let’s see, what were the big ones again… The mayor was overshadowed by a ghost that wanted to make my life hell by framing me—that’s why I shot at you, I thought you were overshadowed too, half the town was overshadowed by his goons. The burglary spree was because I was hypnotized by that Freakshow guy, he had some staff that could control ghosts, took a while for me to break through it. The Christmas thing was a spell the Ghost Writer put me under. The thing where it seemed like Phantom was chasing after Fenton was actually me chasing after a shapeshifter ghost called Amorpho that pretended to be me, he knows not to mess with me anymore. Disasteroid was only caused by Vlad, not all ghosts, it was a plot of his that backfired.”
“Oh, right. Vladdie…” Jack frowned. “So, he wasn’t killed by the Wisconsin Ghost—the ghost actually is him? He’s a halfa too? It was him all along?” The vibes gave Danny the feeling that Jack had already realized that but was struggling to accept it.
Danny sighed. He’d hoped talking about Vlad would come later. “Yeah, he is. The proto-portal accident caused it, although it wasn’t as immediate as with me.”
Jack nodded. “I thought as much; the ecto-acne likely infused him with ectoplasm while slowly killing him. I guess the theory about that being possible is right, so I won’t have to test that on more mice… Wait, getting off track, sorry. So is he the same as you, the 90%, or…?”
“Oh. No, I think he’s probably closer to an even 50%,” Danny explained. “I dunno how much, but he still bleeds red in human form; I did at first, but now it’s dark green, in both forms. Figure if he still bleeds red and his forms are that distinct after more than two decades, it’s safe to say he’s closer to an even split.”
“Fascinating,” Jack said. “Makes sense, if the body’s creating blood and ectoplasm at the same halfa percentage; that initial amount was probably whatever you had left…”
“Yeah, that’s my theory too,” Danny said. “And as to why mine’s now identical in both forms and his shifts, I suspect that has to do with me embracing my ghost part more than he has, since ghosts’ perceptions of themselves can affect things, and he really tries hard to keep the two separate.”
“So, er, do you know what happened to Vlad?” Jack asked. “I mean, judging by how much Phantom fights the Wisconsin Ghost—”
“Plasmius,” Danny corrected.
“Right, given how much Phantom fights Plasmius, clearly you two don’t get along, and based on what he did…” Jack sighed. “As much as I don’t want to believe Vladdie did all that, I can’t deny the evidence. Is he plotting somewhere? Should we worry?”
Danny shook his head. “No, you don’t need to worry about him anymore,” he assured his dad, surprised at how calmly Jack was reacting; it’d probably hit him harder later. “He did some self-reflection after the whole Disasteroid disaster. I’m pretty sure he’s done with the evil plots now—we, er, got into a time-travel incident together and he helped save the day. I mean, he kinda started it too, but for once it was actually an accident. Well, kinda. It did start as some evil plot, but he didn’t mean for the plot to trigger something worse. Anyway, he had some sort of revelation along the way and changed. I can tell you all about that some other time, it involves a lot of other background information to understand. It definitely doesn’t make up for everything he did, I’ll probably never forgive him for all of it, but I do believe he’s serious about being finished with the evil plotting, at least for the time being.”
“Okay, then, I’ll take your word for it,” Jack said. Then, he looked like he remembered something as his eyes fell on a newspaper on the table, which he grabbed. “Oh, right! Almost forgot. There’s something else I want to ask—is this true?”
Danny looked at the headline of the local paper’s morning edition from the week prior, October 21. It was the same headline as the one Sam had shown him from the evening paper the day prior to that one. “Ah, that,” he said awkwardly, not expecting that to be addressed so soon.
“So it’s true? You’re dating a ghost? No judgement if you are!” Jack added hurriedly. “Remember, I love you, no matter what. Who you date doesn’t change that.”
Danny considered that. Should he go with the paper’s story, or tell the truth? Would his dad actually be accepting, like he said he would be during their conversation on the hill? His dad did seem honest during that, and Danny hadn’t ever heard him say anything homophobic that he could remember. It should be fine.
Jazz put a hand on Danny’s arm. “It’s okay, Danny; you can tell him the truth about this too, I’m positive of it.”
Danny nodded; he trusted Jazz’s opinion on this, especially as it coincided with his own. He took a deep breath and looked at his dad, who was simply waiting expectantly. “No, I’m not dating Ember. She’s just my friend. I made out with her publicly, with her permission, to intentionally create that rumor before the press got wind of a different rumor, which was actually true. We kissed at the concert for a similar reason, not just for the show.”
“Different rumor?” Jack asked, looking contemplative. “I don’t remember any other recent rumors…”
“Well, we quashed it really fast,” Danny said with a chuckle, though his heart was fluttering around with his nerves. “Maybe it was still just spreading around school at that point, first I heard it was that morning. Anyway, basically, I’m fake-dating Ember to hide the fact that… I, er… that I don’t like girls in general,” he said, the last part in a mumble.
“Come again?” Jack asked, seeming slightly puzzled amidst mild concern, then clarified. “It was too quiet to hear.”
Danny took a deep breath and said more calmly, “I don’t like girls in general. I’m…” his heart raced, feeling more pressure now than he had earlier, this secret feeling even more difficult to tell. “I’m gay,” Danny managed to voice.
Jack appeared to relax, and laughed slightly. “That’s it? Phew! I thought you were going to say something bad! Son, like I said before, nothing will change the fact that you’re my son, and I will always love and support you.”
Danny relaxed too. “Thanks, dad,” was all he could think to say.
Jack nodded, then frowned, slight worry coming over him. “Er. Just maybe don’t tell your mother that,” he warned.
Danny wilted slightly. “Yeah, kinda suspected that,” he revealed. She’d yelled some not-very-nice slurs at him a few times, during her angry attacks.
“Yeah…” Jack trailed, lost in thought for a moment, then shook his head and said with a conspiratorial smile, “So, is there anyone you have your eye on?”
“Dad!” Danny said, blushing in embarrassment. “No, there isn’t, I swear… Dad? Why are you looking at me like that?” he wondered.
Jack turned away, apparently embarrassed about the fascination he was looking at Danny with. “Sorry. It’s just, you’re blushing,” he said, gesturing to Danny. “I, er, I don’t want it to come across as insensitive or something, um, it’s just… it’s red?”
“Oh,” Danny said, realizing what Jack was talking about. “Yeah, it’s weird; I dunno why I blush red or my skin is pinker than it should be for my blood color.”
Jazz looked thoughtful. “You know, I’ve been wondering that too,” she said. “Maybe ectoplasm doesn’t show through your skin? You still have 10% human blood, so maybe it’s only that showing. It would also explain why your skin itself is still pink and not greenish like other ghosts.”
Danny shrugged. “Makes as much sense as anything,” he said, then turned to his dad. “So, anything else you want to ask about halfas?” he wondered. “I don’t mind, ask what you want.” He wanted to distract Jack from any discussions about sexuality, before the man decided to give him ‘the talk’ or something.
Jack abruptly stood up. “First, let me show you the halfa-mice!” he declared.
As he and Jazz stood too, Danny realized something. “Wait. Don’t you want to see me transform?”
Jack’s eyes practically lit up. “Oh! Right! Let’s see it, Danny-boy!”
Danny grinned. “I haven’t said it in a while, but when I first started, I kinda had a catchphrase when I changed. Really cheesy, I know, but—Going Ghost!” he called, pumping his fist in the air and giving his core a slight tug before feeling the change come over him.
Jack gasped, and was smiling like a kid on Christmas.
Danny frowned. He looked down at himself. Yes, there was the jumpsuit. White hair flittered at the edge of his vision.
“Why wasn’t there light?” Jazz asked.
Danny looked at her, baffled. “I don’t know,” he said, then shifted back to his human form. Again, no light.
“What’s going on? Is something wrong?” Jack asked.
Danny looked at his father. “Oh. Um, not really anything wrong, I guess? Just, weird. There’s usually a ring of light that appears around my waist, and it splits and goes up and down, triggering the change. It isn’t really a bad thing to not have it, if anything it’s good since it’s pretty flashy so this is better for stealth, it’s just weird.”
“Hmm. Come to think of it, the halfa-mice did have rings around them when they changed. Different colors, though.”
“Yeah, Vlad’s was black,” Danny said. “I dunno what determines color, or lack of it I guess.”
Jazz looked contemplative. “If ghosts’ appearances and abilities can be affected by their psyche, maybe it’s never actually been necessary for the transformation to occur, and it was more of a psychosomatic thing—like, your mind wanted a representation of transforming. But now that you’ve finally fully accepted yourself you don’t need that,” Jazz suggested.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I know you used to struggle with your halfa status. Tried to keep the ghost and human parts as separate as possible,” Jazz further explained. “But lately, you’ve been trying to be more accepting of your ghost parts, and befriending those ghosts and spending time with them really helped with that, right? You’ve been using your powers a lot more in human form, too. So, maybe because you’ve accepted that the separation was mostly in your mind, that all of it is 100% you rather than a separate human you and separate ghost you, the transformation is reflecting that. Ghosts are highly influenced by their own perceptions of themselves, after all.”
“Maybe,” Danny acknowledged, unsure what he thought of that analysis. “I wonder if I focus on it…” He concentrated on creating the rings as he transformed, and this time they appeared.
“Whoa, neat!” Jack said, eyes practically sparkling, to Danny’s amusement.
Danny shifted back, and the rings were there again. “I’ll play around with the transformation later, see if I can figure out exactly what’s going on,” he decided. “Anyway, dad, you were going to show us the mice?” he asked, wanting to change the subject.
“Yes! To the lab!” Jack declared, and was down the lab stairs before Danny could blink.
“So,” Danny said, stopping Jazz to talk before the two of them followed. He shifted nervously. “I know that went well, and dad probably wants us to come back here, but…” he trailed off, considering his thoughts.
“But you don’t want to?” Jazz guessed.
“Well, I do want to, kinda,” Danny told her. “But…” he grimaced. “But Mom’s going to come back eventually. I… I don’t want to be here when she’s here,” he said, feeling sad as he admitted that. She was his mom; he should want to be with her, right? He felt so guilty that he didn’t. She was so supportive in that other timeline, or at least he thought she was; now he wasn’t so sure that she wasn’t just pretending to support him as a way to bide time…
Jazz was quiet for a moment before saying, “I know. I think, though, we should talk to Dad about this, decide what to do—I have a feeling he and mom are at odds a lot more than we realized… And have been for a while, not just in the current timeline, but in our original one, too.”
“Well, yeah, probably,” Danny said. “But what’s that have to do with—oh,” he said, realizing. Their mom had gone to her sister’s. They’d been getting into more fights lately. “You think… you think they might… you think Mom might not come back?”
Jazz pursed her lips. “I don’t want to speculate yet. Let’s… let’s just see the mice first, okay?”
“Okay,” Danny agreed, heading down to the lab with Jazz.
Jack excitedly explained to them all about the halfa-mice, every detail he could think of and how he managed to create them. It took hours, but Danny found himself actually enjoying it; it had been a while since he could excitedly discuss ghost-related experiments with his dad without being worried that a weapon would hurt him.
Once Jack finished discussing the mice, he shifted slightly, a nervous scent to him.
“So, er, kids… I don’t want to assume anything, but you’re going to come back home, right?” Jack asked, slightly strained.
Danny opened his mouth to reply, though paused, not quite sure what to say; he wanted to, but how could he say that he only wanted to be there when his mom wasn’t? So Jazz spoke up instead. “That depends on you and mom,” she said sternly.
“What about us?”
Jazz took a deep breath. “We’ve been skirting around this, but this isn’t a good home environment. Frankly, you’re incredibly lucky no one called CPS on you years ago; I’m certain people have considered it.”
“CPS?” Jack asked blankly.
“Child Protective Services,” Jazz clarified.
“Yeah, I know what it means. But, why? Maddie’s only gotten forceful recently… right?”
“This isn’t about the physical abuse, it’s about the neglect.”
“Oh,” Jack said meekly, guilt wafting off of him. “Yeah, the teacher used that word too…”
Jazz, apparently not hearing Jack, continued ranting as she made a sweeping gesture at the lab in general, which was a total mess. “See this lab? Danny and I have had near unrestrained access since we were in diapers, whether you’re home or not. That alone would get you charges. Half the food you feed us is contaminated with ectoplasm and you don’t even notice! I learned to cook when I was in kindergarten because I knew that Danny and I wouldn’t get food otherwise, since you and mom were holed up in the lab working on some project. Sometimes, we wouldn’t see you for days, you were so focused on your work. Children should not know how to be self-sufficient before they’re even in school! Honestly, you’re lucky that neither of us were killed—or rather, fully killed. Danny may not blame you for it, but it was your invention being carelessly left unattended and in a dangerous state that allowed your son to walk into it as human and walk out of it as a halfa. And you didn’t even notice. For two years you didn’t notice that your own son had died.”
“Jazz, you’re being a bit harsh,” Danny said, feeling the immense pressure of Jack’s guilt, shame, and regret. Their father was on the verge of tears. “Besides, I came back.”
“Am I truly being too harsh?” Jazz asked, ignoring the second part. “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that if they had been better with lab safety, you still would have walked into that portal and been electrocuted.”
Danny opened his mouth, then closed it, knowing Jazz’s words were true.
“Danny, Jazz is right,” Jack said quietly. “Jazz is right. I haven’t been a good father, and because of that… you died. You partly came back, true, but you still died. My negligence—”
“And mom’s,” Jazz interjected.
“Fine, my and Maddie’s negligence killed you. We killed our son. That’s something I’ll never forgive myself for. And you’re right, Jazz. When all those facts are laid out like that, it’s hard to deny the evidence. If CPS had ever been called, you two would have been removed from here. But! I do want to do better,” Jack said resolutely. “If you’ll let me—and I fully understand if you’d rather just leave and be done with me—I would like to try to be an actual father to you. I know you’re both teenagers now, and I can never make up for your childhood years, but please, let me try for the few years you’re still at home.”
“I’d like that,” Danny said immediately. He wondered if he should tell his dad yet that Jack had a lot longer to make up for such than he realized, given Danny would effectively be 14 forever. That might be a bit too much at once though; he could tell him that later.
Jazz sighed. “I would too, but… Well, forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical.”
“Jazzikins, if I ever start to do anything neglectful again, call me out on it, and I will do my best to immediately correct it, I swear.”
“I believe him,” Danny supplied. “His resolve is so strong I can literally taste it. He’s definitely serious about this.”
Jack rapidly nodded in agreement. “I even started working on it, after the teacher said something! I’ve been making an effort to keep things cleaner, and no weapons on the kitchen table. Look, there’s even a dedicated lab fridge now, which gets locked up!” Jack said proudly, gesturing to it. Danny would have to talk to him about that; though admirable that he was trying to be safer, Danny actually needed access to the ectoplasm in there… Well, maybe not, if he got portal access to go buy those energy drinks.
Jazz sighed. “Okay, fine.”
“So, you’ll come back?” Jack asked hopefully.
“Yes,” Danny said immediately.
“For now,” Jazz said, a warning tone in her voice, clearly less sure this was a good idea, as vibes of protectiveness and wariness surrounded her. “We’re going to have to have a conversation with Mom, first, whenever she gets back, but for now, yes.”
“But we can’t tell her about me,” Danny reminded them.
“No one’s saying you have to,” Jazz said gently.
“Right,” Jack agreed. “You only have to tell her what you’re comfortable with.”
Danny smiled, relieved to hear that. Maybe… Well, maybe he could dare to hope that things would work out, after all.
Notes:
Next up: A home is found for the halfa-mice. Jazz talks with her dad in private about Danny and helps him decide what to do about Maddie. Danny also has a private talk with his father, and Jack meets Ember and Cujo.
Chapter 13: Divorce
Summary:
First, Lancer gets some new pets. Then, Jack has a conversation with Jazz, during which he solidifies a decision he never thought he would ever make. Then, he has a chat with his son, and meets Ember and Cujo.
Notes:
We're officially halfway through the fic! Whoo!
CW: discussion of child neglect/abuse, discussion of spousal abuse.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sunday morning, Lancer sat at his kitchen table grading papers when his doorbell rang; he glanced at the clock to find that those he’d expected were right on time. He went to the door to let in Jasmine and her brother Daniel, each holding a large cage covered in a blanket, the latter also having a large tote bag dangling off his arm.
“Just put them on the dining table,” Lancer instructed. Living alone, he usually ate at the small kitchen table, so had cleared off the dining one to hold their new friends.
The two teenagers followed Lancer’s instructions, then removed the blankets, revealing cages of unusual mice.
“Thank you so much for taking them in,” Jasmine said with clear relief. “Dad doesn’t want mom learning about them, and we can’t really trust many people with them.”
“Yes, it’s my pleasure; I was considering getting a class pet anyway. But, can you tell me now why these mice are special? You never specified,” Lancer reminded them. They had been very vague on the phone, saying the mice were experiments that needed a home; one set were okay to use as class pets, but the others would have to be kept entirely secret, for some reason.
“Watch them and see,” Daniel said with a mischievous grin, somehow already with a purring Shadow in his arms (the other two cats were, as expected, hiding). “This cage first,” he said as he gestured to the one on the right, labelled ‘TOP SECRET’. Daniel’s eyes glowed as well, and combined with the smile Lancer took it as a sign that he was incredibly amused; Lancer now felt a little worried. Just what had he agreed to?
Lancer cautiously observed the mice, whose cages seemed to be made of panels of a slightly glowing glass, presumably ghost-proof. Some of the mice were white, while others were black with a slight glow to them and glowing ectoplasmic-green eyes… A few of the black ones were floating. Ghost mice? But the white ones were definitely regular mice; why would they be mixed together? A ring appeared around one of the white ones, changing it.
“Atlas Shrugged,” Lancer whispered. “These mice… are halfas?!”
Daniel nodded. “Yup. Dad created them. You, er, see why we can’t just leave them in anyone’s care.”
Lancer nodded. “Yes, if people found out about this… Well, it could easily lead to your secret being uncovered.”
“Yup. It already led to my dad figuring me out—which went well, actually! I told him everything, and he accepts me—actually, he was a little too enthusiastic, if you ask me,” Danny said with a chuckle, then sighed and said. “But Mom still doesn’t know, which is why we can’t keep them.”
Jasmine added, “Dad thinks it’s not safe for Mom to learn Danny’s secret just yet, and I agree.”
“I see… So you two are back at home now, I take it?” Lancer surmised, very glad to hear that at least one parent Daniel didn’t have to be afraid of anymore.
“For now,” Jasmine replied. “Mom’s currently at her sister’s place, so it’s safe there for now, but when she comes back we’ll probably leave again.”
“If she comes back,” Daniel muttered.
Jasmine winced. “Right. If.”
Lancer raised an eyebrow at that. He figured it would be best not to pry at the moment, so asked, “So, what about the classroom mice? They’ll all still white, so I guess they’re extras or something, normal mice?” As soon as he asked that, though, one mouse began to float, belying that assumption.
“Oh, no, they’re experiments too,” Daniel revealed, now trying to prevent Shadow from wriggling out of his arms as the cat had noticed the contents of the cage. “My dad’s calling them ‘partial-halfas’. They don’t have a high enough percent of ghost DNA to give them transformations or anything advanced like ectoplasmic manipulation, but they have the three most basic ghost powers—flight, invisibility, and intangibility. It’s a similar situation to the ghost illness epidemic at the school two years ago.”
“Ah, yes, how can I forget that,” Lancer said as he watched a mouse disappear. “I suppose that ‘the experiment gave them ghost powers like that illness did’ is going to be the cover story?”
“That’s what we were thinking,” Daniel confirmed. “Anyway, the classroom ones can just eat regular mouse food we’re pretty sure, but some of the halfa ones might need ectoplasm to supplement it, just put some in a dish and leave it in there—some seem to like it, others don’t, we think it scales by what percent ghost they are. There’s some bottles of it in the bag, just let us know when you run out and we’ll get you some more. There’s some ecto-netting in the bag too, the cages are made of special ghost-proof glass but if you plan to get them bigger cages or expand them with the tunnels and stuff you’ll need to make sure they’re wrapped in it so they don’t phase through. There’s also a butterfly net using similar netting so you can catch them if they escape.”
“But you need to be extra sure they don’t escape if possible!” Jasmine asserted. “We don’t know what would happen if the halfa-mice breed with wild mice; we don’t want the town ending up with a ghost-mice or halfa-mice problem.”
“Understood,” Lancer said. He didn’t plan to get bigger cages—these things were each two and a half feet cubed, which seemed to be more than plenty of room for the mice, well over the size of the typical tanks found at pet stores—but perhaps some internal tunnels and climbing items would be good. He’d have to take a shopping trip later.
“Good. I think that’s all,” Jasmine said. “Again, thank you so much for taking them in!”
“Of course,” Lancer said, although he was aware he was essentially the only one who could, with so few people knowing about halfas existing and the kids who knew all having parents who didn’t. “Now, just to be certain, your father knows everything now, Daniel?”
Daniel nodded as he lost the battle with Shadow, who leapt from his arms to the table, inspecting the cages. “Yup, every—wait.” He frowned. “I think I forgot to mention the immortality… But that’s part of the ghost stuff, he’ll be fine with that,” Daniel said with confidence. “Otherwise there’s no more secrets.”
“Not even…?” Lancer trailed as he shooed Shadow off the table.
Daniel smiled. “He knows I’m gay, too,” he said, catching on. “And is perfectly accepting of it!” Then, he frowned and shifted nervously, looking at the ground. “But he warned me not to tell my mom. Apparently, she’s very homophobic; I’ve heard her make comments before, but I guess it’s worse than I thought… I actually, ah, kinda hope my mom doesn’t come back. Is that bad?” he asked, seeming slightly distressed.
Lancer shook his head. “Not at all, Daniel. She hurts you; it is perfectly understandable to want to get away from someone who hurts you, even a parent.”
Daniel looked relieved to hear that, then he gasped, a chilly puff of air slipping between his lips.
“A ghost attack? Now?” Jasmine said with a sigh.
Daniel tilted his head and squinted his eyes, looking somewhere in the distance. “I think it’s just Boxy,” he determined.
“You’re getting better at telling who it is!” Jasmine said encouragingly.
Daniel shrugged, blushing slightly. “Only because he appears too often… I better go see what he’s doing, though, just in case—last week he captured a shipping truck that contained boxes of cooking knives, really lucky no humans were hurt from that… Oh, I wasn’t either, don’t worry!” he assured, glancing at Lancer, who had in fact been worried but didn’t think he showed it.
Jasmine chuckled upon seeing Lancer’s surprised expression. “Yeah, ghosts sensing emotions can be a little awkward at first, but you get used to it.”
“Anyway, I’m just gonna go now, thanks for taking care of the mice!” Daniel hopped into the air as though gravity didn’t matter and turned to fly off.
Jasmine grabbed Daniel’s foot, causing him to shout in surprise. “Ghost form,” she reminded him.
“Right,” Daniel said, blushing harder, then intangibly broke from her hold while shifting forms—strangely, there was no bright light this time. He then flew off through the wall.
“Yeah, he learned how to shift without the light,” Jasmine told Lancer, anticipating the question. “He’s been working on defaulting to that, since it’s stealthier. I doubt the mice ever will figure it out because it defaults to the rings and they have no reason to try to change that.”
“You’re proud of him,” Lancer commented, the emotion in her voice clear even to a human.
“Of course,” Jasmine said with a soft smile. “He’s my brother, and he’s doing his best to be a good person. What he does is dangerous, sure, and I worry a lot, but yes, I am proud of him.”
Lancer nodded in agreement. “Yes. I am too. He’s the reason our town is still standing, and he’s just 16.” Well, on paper, at least—Lancer was still getting used to the concept of an immortal 14-year-old.
With that, Jasmine bid Lancer farewell, and he prepared to head to the pet store—these mice were going to have the best cage accessories that his meager teacher’s salary (and bonus ghost-attack hazard pay) could afford!
Sunday evening, Jack knocked on Jazz’s door slightly after Danny went out on an evening patrol—his son had actually asked Jack if he wanted to go too, but Jack needed to talk to his daughter. He had a feeling that Danny had been able to sense that Jack had some heavy thoughts on his mind.
When Jazz opened the door, her brow was scrunched. “Dad? Everything okay?” she queried.
“Do you have some time to talk now?” Jack asked, fiddling with his fingers, well aware of how nervous he was.
Jazz opened the door further, inviting him into her room. Jack took the bed while Jazz sat at her desk, where it appeared she’d been doing homework—interesting homework involving ritual diagrams that Jack wanted to ask about, but he knew he was here for something else.
“What’s on your mind?” Jazz wondered.
“It’s about Danny, and his… ghostliness,” Jack told her.
Jazz frowned. “Did we not answer all your questions? Or are you second-guessing things?” she asked with suspicion, then more to herself muttered, “Danny said you definitely were radiating positive vibes though…”
“Oh! Yes, you two were very thorough,” Jack assured her. “And I still am serious that I love and support him! It’s all rather exciting, actually! Well, barring the dying part.”
“Then, what is it about him you want to talk about?” Jazz asked, clearly confused.
Jack took a deep breath. “I don’t think Maddie is going to see things the same way as me,” he said bluntly. “She has a one-track mind when it comes to her beliefs about ghosts. I… I don’t think we can change it, not as fast as needed,” he told her.
“What do you mean?” Jazz asked cautiously. “I mean, I know she tends to have tunnel vision, and Danny has definitely picked up how rigid she is, but even if it does take time to change her mind, it can still be changed, right?”
Jack sighed. “Not soon enough, I fear. I took a lot of data on those halfa mice, and today I ran the calculations on projected lifespan, since ghosts don’t age whereas living creatures do. It appears that each percentage of ghost DNA increases it exponentially. At 50%, aging happens at about a quarter of the usual rate, meaning a lifespan four times what’s usual for the species. By 90%, it’s… it’s essentially halted entirely. Danny’s 90%.” They’d done some tests confirming such. Danny, in Phantom form in that meadow, telling Jack he was essentially 14 had been the truth.
Jazz sighed. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “Both Danny and I recently realized that he hadn’t been aging; guess with everything we forgot to mention it.”
“That’s okay; there was a lot to go over,” Jack said with understanding, then, curious, asked, “How’d you two know?”
“I compared photographs; he hasn’t changed, not even his hair, since the accident. Danny’s had his suspicions for a while, and when he took his little ‘vacation’ in the Ghost Zone he confirmed it with that time ghost we told you about.”
Jack nodded. “So he’ll look 14 forever,” he said grimly. He couldn’t imagine a worse fate, trapped in a 14 year old body for eternity, no matter how much he matured.
Jazz immediately proved him wrong. “It’s not just that; maturity is halted too. He’s literally frozen at 14; his brain won’t even mature beyond that.”
“Oh,” Jack said. Right, Phantom had actually said that too that night in the meadow. Forever trapped in puberty was much worse. “Oh, no,” he realized. “I’m going to be raising a teenager until I die?”
Jazz winced. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary; he’s pretty capable of living on his own, honestly,” she said, and Jack realized that was his fault, that his… neglect… had made his 16-year-old son so self-sufficient by 14. Jazz continued, “Eventually he’ll be 18 on paper, so legally he can move out at that point. You won’t have to have him as a dependent forever.”
“I will as long as he needs me,” Jack said resolutely. “I’m serious when I say I want to make up for all my past mistakes regarding you two! But, that does bring me back to my original point: Maddie is going to notice eventually that he still looks and acts 14, and will surely investigate. Maybe it’ll be soon—you noticed, after all—or maybe it’ll be a year or two, but she will notice.”
“Yeah, she will,” Jazz said quietly. “You really think we can’t change her mind by then?”
Jack shook his head. “It’ll take nothing short of a miracle. I’ve actually been trying to get her to take some different approaches to studying ghosts, but she just won’t budge, especially on Phantom. We’ve had a lot of arguments about where to focus our research lately, with her wanting to build mainly offensive things that can kill ghosts, or capture for dissection, and me wanting to build more defensive things that don’t hurt ghosts and study their behavior. Your psychology stuff about ghosts is actually really fascinating! But whenever I try to talk to her about it, she just shuts me down. She refuses to listen to anything against her view that ghosts are evil.”
“Confirmation bias,” Jazz noted.
“Yup. Last week I tried suggesting Phantom might actually be helpful, and her reaction, whew, she was so mad she threw a book at me!” Jack told his daughter.
“Holy shit,” Jazz said, eyes wide. “I didn’t know it was quite that bad…”
“Yup; she’s really stubborn about her view on ghosts!”
Jazz sighed in slight frustration. “I meant the fact that mom threw a fucking book at you.”
“Oh, no, it was a paperback book, no harm done,” Jack assured his daughter, choosing not to reprimand her for her language.
“Right,” Jazz said, though seemed skeptical of that. “Okay, setting that aside for now, if we know Mom won’t accept Danny anytime soon, what should we do? Should I take him back to the dorm?”
Jack shook his head. “No need. That’s… actually something else I want to talk to you about,” he said, even more nervous now. “The direction of our ghost research isn’t only what your mother and I have been fighting about. Our child-raising strategies are also at odds. In the past I’ve always let her take the lead on that front, but lately… Well, sending Danny to bed without dinner was one of her tamer ideas. I should have done more to stop her, I tried to bring him some food later but she caught me. She’s obsessed with control; she wanted to remove his doors and put cameras in his room! I put a stop to that immediately of course, along with any suggestion of corporal punishment, but the fact that she even suggested those things… It makes me sick.”
Jazz looked horrified. “It makes me sick too! Mom really suggested that? How is it so much worse than I’d thought?” she said the last sentence more to herself.
“She did,” Jack confirmed. “Look, Jazz, we try to hide the fights from you kids, but they just keep getting worse and worse. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this until you were both 18, but…” Jack trailed off, unable to say it. Though he’d come to the decision, he had yet to say the word out loud.
“You want a divorce,” Jazz said, coming to the correct conclusion.
Jack bit his bottom lip and nodded, feeling tears form in his eyes. “Y-yeah,” he stuttered out. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while now.”
“You’re sure?” Jazz asked pointedly, eyes narrowed as she examined Jack. “This will change things.” Jack knew his daughter’s words weren’t meant to convince Jack to change his mind; they were meant to confirm his resolve.
“Yes,” Jack said resolutely, pushing through the aching of his heart. “I still love your mother, I don’t think that will go away, but we just aren’t compatible anymore, and now she’s an active danger to Danny—in both human and ghost form. I can’t just stand by and let her hurt him anymore.”
Jazz took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll go with you to see a lawyer tomorrow,” Jazz told him. “We’ll need one to handle custody, too. I can confirm her abuse towards both you and Danny, to hopefully get you full custody of Danny.”
Abuse? Why did she use that word? Towards Danny, yes, but him? “But she wasn’t—” Jack began to protest, but his daughter cut him off.
“I’ve heard the things she’s been saying, to both you and Danny lately. Verbal abuse is still abuse,” Jazz pointed out. “And her rage is bad enough that both you and Danny flinch as though she might hit you, even before she started actually hitting Danny. You just admitted that she threw a book at you the other day, and I’ve seen you both with unexplained bruises. She intentionally grabbed Danny hard enough to bruise, on multiple occasions, not to mention slapping him in front of everyone after the concert,” Jazz said. “Pretty sure she’s been doing more, too, but Danny refuses to give any detail about that.”
Jack felt his eyes widen. “She has?” he asked quietly. “I didn’t realize that… I thought it was just the slaps, and those didn’t bruise…” Then again, she did punch Jack; it wasn’t a far stretch that she’d do that to Danny, too… Plus, the ghost healing factor would make it easier to hide, or pass it off as less severe…
“Just because they didn’t bruise doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt,” Jazz pointed out. “But yes, she has left bruises after grabbing his wrist and arm. Danny said he could sense an actual desire to cause pain; in my opinion, it’s only a matter of time before she snaps and goes further than just slaps and wrist grabs, if she hasn’t already—and I seriously suspect that it already has gone further.”
“I see,” Jack said quietly. “I didn’t realize it was that bad…” Or, maybe he subconsciously had started to realize that; the way Danny flinched away from her lately definitely hinted at something worse than slaps…
“Well, it is,” Jazz said bluntly. “Which is why, as I said, I’ll testify to it to get you full custody—providing you really are serious about your promise to do better by him. I haven’t forgotten that you were often as neglectful as mom when it came to choosing your work over your kids!”
Jack winced at the accusation, although it was true. “That’s fair,” he said. “I’ll do better, I promise.”
Jazz nodded in acknowledgement. “That’s all I ask,” she said. “Now, our custody isn’t the only thing that will need discussing—this place will, as well.”
“Oh, that’s not an issue,” Jack told her. “The title’s fully in my name. It’s actually an old family property!”
“And the company? Fentonworks?” Jazz reminded him. “All the things in the lab? The portal?”
Jack frowned. “That… might be a bit more complicated,” he said. “Especially the portal.” They likely would split the company, and the corresponding finances, but the portal was not moveable and necessary for both their research. “Well, guess that’ll be what the lawyer’s for,” Jack concluded.
Danny came home from patrol through the front door rather than his bedroom window, a refreshing change of pace, and casually headed towards the lab to deposit the Box Ghost and a wooly mammoth ghost back into the Ghost Zone; now that his dad knew, he’d dismantled the extra security around the portal and made sure Danny’s ecto-signature was programmed in as an exception in all devices that could target ghosts, so they would avoid him.
In the lab Danny discovered his dad on the phone, in the middle of a loud argument with someone; he paused, not sure if he should interrupt.
“Maddie, be reasonable!” Jack yelled into the phone.
The reply came in the form of a loud screech that barely sounded like words, which Danny would’ve been able to hear even if he didn’t have enhanced hearing: “There is no way in Hell I am giving up custody of my children! IF we go the divorce route, YOU will be the one leaving, and I will be filing for full custody!”
Divorce? Danny’s parents were actually getting divorced? He knew it was bad, possibly on the edge of it, but he didn’t think it’d actually ever happen. Danny had mixed feelings about that; on one hand, thanks to Jazz and Dr. Warren Danny was aware that the situation was not ideal, for either himself or his dad, so escaping Maddie ought to be good; however, a part of him still hoped things could eventually be resolved peacefully, that Maddie would come around and treat them nicely again. But if divorce was actually on the table…
“Maddie,” Jack said, voice now deathly calm despite the complex swirl of emotions emanating off him, staring into the portal, still unaware that Danny had silently flown into the lab. “This house was passed onto me by my great-uncle Elihu Whipple. It is fully in my name. You will be the one leaving. The kids are old enough to choose which parent to live with, and even if they weren’t, the instant the courts hear about what you’ve done, what you’ve threatened to do, they will side with me. It’s best to settle outside of court.”
“Tch. You just want to do that because the courts always side with the mother! You know you won’t get them if it comes to that.”
Jack practically growled. “Maddie, that is not the case anymore and you know it. Honestly, we are both damn lucky that CPS never showed up at our door to take them away; we’ve been neglectful their whole lives, and you know it. Physical abuse charges on top of that are not something you want—which is what it will come down to if it goes to court.”
“It’s not abuse!” Maddie hissed back.
“Yeah? Then what do you call hitting and starving your child?”
“That's discipline, not—”
“It is abuse!” Jack cut off the protest. “By all definitions it is! And that wasn’t even the worst punishment you wanted to give!”
Danny frowned. His mom had something worse in mind? Or was he referring to things Maddie actually had done, but hid, like the cage?
“Oh, please, it’s nothing I didn’t go through when I was a kid, you’re acting like it’s a big deal when it’s not!”
“It IS a big deal! Danny is visibly afraid of you,” Jack told her. “He flinches every time you enter the room! Surely you’ve noticed that. Didn’t you say when we decided to have kids that you never wanted to turn out like your parents? Well, guess what: you have. And just like you did with your parents, your kids will end up largely cutting you out of their life, seeing you only on holidays, too—or not seeing you at all—if you don’t improve.”
Danny blinked, not having expected that; his maternal grandparents had been abusive? That was the reason they only ever showed up on Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and sometimes July 4th, despite only living a couple hours’ drive away (until they passed, that is)?
“It’s not the same!” Maddie still insisted.
“Argue all you want; that doesn’t change things. Now, do you want to take the custody battle to family court, or would you rather just let the kids decide?”
“Fine,” Maddie hissed. “Fine. We’ll let the kids decide, then—and they’ll choose their mother, you’ll see.”
“Oh yeah?” Jack said, voice raising again. “You really think they’d choose to go back to an abuser? Then why did Jazz flee with Danny after YOUR punishment, and only came back once they knew you were gone?”
“They’re back?” Maddie asked, seeming surprised.
“For now,” Jack said, tone heavy.
“Okay, then ask them right now, I dare you!” Maddie said. “They’ll choose me, you’ll see!”
“It’s 11 at night! I’m not going to—Danny!” Jack shouted, as Danny flew forward and grabbed the phone, shifting to human form as he did so; the echo of ghost voices didn’t work well through regular phones.
“Hi, mom,” Danny said, flying high enough that Jack couldn’t grab the phone back.
“Danny!” Maddie said with relief; Danny wished he could sense through the phone if it was genuine. “Did you hear all that?” she asked in her fake-sounding sickly-sweet voice.
“I heard enough,” Danny said, voice cold. “You’re wrong, Mom—I would never choose you over Dad,” he said, now fully confident about that. “Not in this timeline. You are a cold-hearted, abusive, self-centered, narcissistic, hateful bitch who is stuck in her ways. All you care about is murdering ghosts, don’t try to pretend otherwise. You never listen to me or Jazz, only ever interrupting us to tell us we’re wrong. You hurt me! Multiple times! You wanted to cause me pain! Last week, you beat me up so badly that I had to escape for the night once you shoved me into my room because I thought you were going to come back and kill me! I had a fractured rib after that, you know. Do you know how often I’ve broken down in tears because of you?” Danny knew he was being extremely harsh and laying it on too thick, but he honestly didn’t care at this point; he wanted his words to hurt her just as she had hurt him.
“Danny, how can you say those things?” his mom replied, sounding hurt. “I love—”
“No, you don’t love me,” Danny interjected. “You haven’t for a while, not really. I’m certain of it. And you probably never will at this point, not if you keep acting so bullheaded and stubborn—what you love is the idea of who I was, not who I am now. Now, goodbye.” He hung up the phone, belatedly realizing that maybe his dad wanted to say something more, then realizing it was probably best that the argument be resumed a different day anyway.
He also felt slightly guilty for saying that out of anger, as she… no, actually. The more he thought about it the more true it seemed—he had felt flashes of love for him, true, but it wasn’t for him. It was for the little boy she remembered, and as soon as she remembered he wasn’t, that love was gone. And even if it were still for him, it wouldn’t be the instant she learned about his true self.
Danny flew back down and handed his dad the phone. “Sorry about that,” he said sheepishly, noting his dad seemed rather confused, still processing what had happened. “I came to empty the thermos, and heard you arguing…”
Jack shook himself out of the stupor and accepted the phone back. “Sorry you had to hear that, Danny-boy,” he said apologetically. “And sorry you had to find out about things that way… I was going to talk to you with Jazz when you got back, then your mother called about planning to come home, and I told her not to, and the fight just escalated…”
“You really plan to get a divorce?” Danny asked, still uncertain how he felt about that.
Jack nodded, vibes of devastation, guilt, pain, and even some relief and resolution poignant in the air. “It’s the best thing for the family. I still love your mother, I don’t think that will ever change, but it’s not the same as it used to be. We just can’t keep living like this; the fights are only escalating, and it’s not safe for you here while she’s here.”
“I didn’t realize you two fought that much,” Danny said, wondering how new it was, or if it was only in this timeline… No, Clockwork said all previous interactions, except for small things, were the same. Years of fighting would be in both timelines, original and new cobbled-together one.
“Well, we hid it from you two as best we could,” Jack pointed out.
Danny thought back to his childhood; there were a lot of times when there was heavy tension in the air between the two, so maybe it had always been going on under his nose; he’d ask Jazz later, as she was more perceptive of that.
“Danny, what you said on the phone… Did she… she’s really been beating you up like that?” His vibe was a resigned pain, like he didn’t want to believe it but already knew in his heart it was true. “She really fractured a rib?”
“That was the worst injury I got,” Danny assured him. “Really. Besides, I heal fast, and was able to get away!”
“And if you didn’t have ghost abilities?” Jack asked quietly. “If you didn’t heal fast, if you couldn’t leave through the wall?”
Danny looked at the floor. “I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “I don’t know. It… hospital, maybe. Well, probably. It was bad.”
“I see… was that Sunday night, after I left?” Jack asked, guilty vibes swirling around him.
“It’s not your fault!” Danny assured him. “If you hadn’t left, bet she’d have attacked you instead.”
“Maybe… she told me you had closed yourself in your room, nothing about a fight. I didn’t even know you’d left that night… and you ended up sleeping in that shack, didn’t you?”
Danny froze, not expecting that. “What? How do you…?”
“So it’s true?”
“Y-yeah,” Danny stuttered out, completely floored by the fact that his dad somehow knew that. He thought he kept that a secret from everyone! “I didn’t want to be at home, and didn’t want to risk staying with friends. But how’d you even guess? I don’t understand…”
“I saw Phantom sleeping in there while I was patrolling on Monday. Skipping class, come to think of it… Looked like you needed the sleep, though, so I didn’t wake you.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Danny mumbled, then decided to change the subject slightly to avoid discussing skipping class just to sleep. “Does Jazz know?” he wondered, “About the divorce.”
Jack tiredly nodded again, thankfully not pursuing the sleeping-in-a-shack line of questioning. “I talked to her while you were on patrol, she actually helped me work through some of it and finalize the decision… She’s going with me to see a lawyer tomorrow.”
“So she agrees it’s for the best,” Danny muttered, wilting slightly. If Jazz thought it was best for them to divorce instead of trying to talk through things, things must be really serious. He wondered if his parents had been this close to divorce in the original timeline, too… Then again, Clockwork had said interactions were the same, even if the thoughts weren’t necessarily so, and his dad had said they’d be fighting for a while, meaning the fights surely had happened in both timelines. Retrospectively, Danny had had to tune out many arguments the past few years, even though he wasn’t home much.
Jack sighed. “Yeah, it is. It’s going to be messy, but it’s for the best. I can’t stand by and watch her hurt you, Danny, not again.”
“I understand,” Danny said quietly. “It’s, um, really not as bad as it seems, though. I heal fast,” he reminded his dad, trying to ease the guilt he felt coming from him.
Somehow, that just made Jack feel worse, to Danny’s confusion. “Danno,” Jack said sadly. “How fast you heal doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s been hurting you.”
“I guess,” Danny muttered.
After an awkward pause, Jack asked nervously. “Just how bad is it? You said she broke a rib, and if you were human, it might have needed the hospital… What exactly did she…?”
Danny shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, looking at the floor, unable to meet his dad’s eyes. “Just, please, not now.” He’d start crying again.
Jack sighed, though radiated sympathy, understanding, and acceptance. “Okay. I understand,” he said. “We don’t have to talk about it now. So, what are you doing down here so late, anyway?”
Danny, appreciative of the subject change, sheepishly held up the thermos. “A wooly mammoth ghost was causing a rampage…”
Jack’s eyes practically lit up. “A mammoth ghost? That’s amazing! Oooh, can I see it before you send it back?”
Danny eyed the ‘large’ containment chamber, which was constructed of ecto-proof glass and stood at ten feet tall, twelve feet wide, and eight feet deep. “Uh, sorry, but I actually don’t think the chamber is big enough,” he decided. “I think there was a news chopper around though, there will probably be pictures in the paper.” He walked over to the thermos deposit device attached to the portal.
“Aww,” Jack said in disappointment. “Was that the only ghost, or are there others? Any we can talk to?”
“Just the Box Ghost, as usual,” Danny said as he inserted the thermos into the device. “Unless you want to ask him about boxes, there’s no point talking to him.” There was a sucking noise followed by a pop, and with that the two ghosts were back in the Ghost Zone. He turned back to his dad. “You know, it’s really weird not being chewed out for sneaking out and getting home so late,” he commented.
“Why would you be in trouble for doing a Hero’s work?” Jack asked, grinning. “I’m proud of you, son,” he said, and Danny couldn’t help but grin back, sensing it was genuine.
“Thank you,” Danny said, embarrassed that his eyes were actually watering at the praise.
“I’m always proud of you, son,” Jack said as he noticed Danny’s reaction. “I’m sorry I’ve never said that to you enough, and I understand if you don’t believe me—”
“I do believe you, Dad,” Danny told him, now wiping tears from his eyes. “I do believe you. I can, er, sense it’s sincere. It’s just… That’s just the first time I’ve heard you say it since… since the portal. Since the accident. Since I… changed. I thought… I thought you would hate me after learning that I was… well, you know, so you saying that…”
Jack put an arm around Danny’s shoulder. “You know, it’s not just that I’m proud of you for,” Jack said. “I’ve noticed you’ve been improving on your schoolwork, too.”
Danny scrunched his brow, now mildly confused. “But I still get C’s.”
“Your last report card had some B’s, too,” Jack pointed out. “And those C’s all had pluses next to them; they used to be minuses.”
“But Jazz—”
“Isn’t you,” Jack completed. “I know Mom compares you to her a lot, but she’s not you. I see how hard you try, and you’ve improved! That does mean something. And now knowing what you go through outside of school, it’s impressive you managed that! Don’t be so hard on yourself, Danno!”
Danny smiled at Jack. “I’ll try.”
“Good,” Jack said. “Oh, and also…” He grinned. “I should have said so that day, but great job on the concert, really! You should keep that up.”
Danny looked incredulously at his father. “Even with the ghosts in the band?”
“Well, they behaved themselves, right? And they’re your friends, so I’ll try to trust them… Seriously, Danny, your sound was amazing! I never knew you could sing like that!”
Danny couldn’t help but chuckle slightly. “I didn’t either,” he admitted. “Ember insisted, though, when I asked her to be in a band for the show. Did you know ghost hearing is better than human hearing? Well, apparently it was good enough for some of the ghosts to hear me singing in the shower on their way out of the portal! Ember gave me some lessons to fine-tune it; ghosts being musically inclined in general helped too, music being the language of emotion and all. Honestly I was a bit skeptical at first, but I suppose it worked out.”
“It more than worked out! Danno, you could be a star, seriously! Music could be a great career path for you! The show felt professional. Not just the voice, but the entire vibe—I haven’t seen you so happy since before the accident, and the air of confidence you were singing with made it almost contagious! Plus all those special effects too…”
“Oh, those were actually all ghost abilities,” Danny said a little sheepishly.
Jack grinned. “Really? I knew it! Ugh, wis—really want it to be that I could rub that in Maddie’s face, she was so insistent they weren’t…”
Danny chuckled. “I have a feeling she was in denial.”
Jack considered that a moment, then concluded, “Yeah, that makes sense… You know, that one song you sang really got to me, it felt like your heart was really in it and it resonated with me. It was part of what made me realize how much I wanted to change and do better by you.”
“What song?” Danny asked. There were a few songs that Danny had really felt the lyrics resonate with him as he sang along.
“The one that talked to a father about a strained relationship,” Jack explained. “It just really vibed with me. Uh, let’s see, the lyrics included things like, “‘sorry I can’t be perfect’, and ‘nothing’s all right’, and ‘I just want you to understand’... Is that enough to go on?”
Danny thought about the song lineup and realized which song Jack meant. “Oh, yeah. The song is ‘Perfect’ by the band Simple Plan. Those lyrics get to me too; I actually almost cried while singing them,” he quietly admitted. Which thankfully he didn’t, given his tears literally glowed now.
Jack suddenly pulled Danny into a tight hug. Danny, for the first time in a long while, hugged him back, then when it started to become a bit too uncomfortably tight, phased out of the hug, to Jack’s clear surprise.
“Sorry, just got a bit overwhelming,” Danny said, then joked, “You know, you are really lucky I don’t need to breathe.”
Jack looked confused for a moment, then realization dawned. “Er, sorry. Don’t know my own strength, I guess,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment, just like Danny often did.
Danny laughed. “It’s fine. Hey, want me to play the song?”
Jack scrunched his brow in confusion. “Now? But you don’t have your guitar.”
Danny grinned. “Sure I do,” he said, then pulled a guitar pick from his pocket as he stepped back, moved his hands into position, and summoned the guitar right as he strummed a note, wincing slightly as he realized he’d technically used a small attack, though it was just one meant to push things away and the guitar wasn’t facing anything. He’d have to make sure to keep the attack setting to ‘off’ before dismissing it if he wanted to play as he summoned it.
Jack gasped, excited again. “It’s a ghost guitar!”
“Yup,” Danny said, twisting the knob to just regular music instead of attacks. “Ember gave me her old one. I’ll explain how it works later… But for now…” He strummed the first chord for the song, then paused. “Actually, I have a better song to play.” Danny said. “I only just started learning it, so I might get some notes wrong, but…” He began to sing as he played a much more positive song about a dad:
🎵What's a dad for, Dad? / Tell me why I'm here, Dad / Whisper in my ear that I’m growing up to be a better man, Dad / Everything is fine, Dad / Proud that you are my dad / 'Cause I know I'm growing up to be a better man…🎵
When Danny finished singing ‘Life of a Salesman’ by the band Yellowcard, Jack was actually in tears. He rushed forwards to tackle Danny in another hug, Danny recalling the guitar at the last second; he didn’t need his dad getting injured because of it!
“Hey, come on, dad, you’re crushing me again,” Danny said, pushing away with a laugh, though not phasing through.
Jack eased up on the tightness of the hug, but didn’t release Danny. He laughed wetly. “Sorry, Danno. I just… I’m just so happy right now,” he said.
“I can tell,” Danny told his dad. The emotion was definitely giving his core a charge.
Jack released Danny and evidently decided to slightly change the topic. “So, er, back to the band—which ghost was doing the ice thing? That was really cool!”
Danny blushed and stepped away from his dad. “That, er, was actually me,” he admitted, then held out his palm and created a few ice crystals above it. “It’s rare, but some ghosts have elemental cores; mine’s ice. Ember has one too, hers is fire. I don’t use it super often since I only recently learned about it and am still figuring out everything I can do with the ice powers, but a Yeti in the Far Frozen—that’s part of the Ghost Zone—has been helping me learn.”
“There’s Yeti in the Ghozt Zone?” Jack asked, eyes practically sparkling.
“A whole tribe of them!” Danny replied, grinning. “They call me the ‘Great One’ because I defeated Pariah Dark—that’s the self-proclaimed ‘Ghost King’ that brought Amity Park into the Ghost Zone that one time.”
“Neat! Ooh, wait, does that mean the Ghost Zone has politics? Who’s the King now?”
Danny shook his head. “There isn’t one. I mean, not for the whole place. There’s some regions and kingdoms with their own governments, like the Yeti one and one based on medieval times, but no one rules the whole thing. Pariah Dark tried a long time ago, and he almost succeeded because he was so powerful, but then a bunch of ancient ghosts sealed him away in basically a coma. Then Vlad un-sealed him thinking somehow he could take his power, which completely failed. So that’s why he tried to take over Amity Park, and why I had to borrow the suit thing. It was the only way to get enough power to put him back in his coffin and seal him again—I’m sorry about that, by the way.”
“Sorry? For what?” Jack asked. “You toppled an evil king-wannabe!”
“Yeah but I stole your suit and it got destroyed in the process.”
“Better than you getting destroyed,” Jack pointed out. “Plus, like you said, without it you would have been toast! I saw the condition you were in afterwards—if that was with the suit, well…”
Danny winced. “Yeah, that was a close call. I really don’t want to find out what happens if a halfa dies.” Most likely, he’d reform as a full ghost, as long as his core wasn’t destroyed, but he preferred having at least some human in him, even if it was as little as 10%.
“Well, mice have short lifespans, so I’m sure we’ll find out in a few years!” Jack said. “For the 50% ones, that is,” he clarified. “Which if they’re four times longer, I guess that’s more than a decade… Well, still, a decade isn’t that long, especially for you!”
“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Danny said with a wince. “Really am not looking forward to being a teenager for eternity…” He then sensed a small flare of ghostly energy from the portal’s direction, indicating someone was coming through it, but his ghost sense didn’t go off, meaning it was someone he knew… someone he was close enough to to immediately recognize their presence. “Speaking of immortal teens,” he muttered as he turned to the portal.
“Babypop!” Ember shouted happily as she emerged from the portal and immediately tackled Danny in a hug. “You got it open again! Rockin’!” she withdrew from him and floated back a little. “Oh, and fair warning: Youngblood saw the mammoth ghost and I’m pretty sure his new fixation is being a caveman so he’s probably gonna try to tame it, so—Oh, crap,” she said, noticing Danny’s dad there. “Your dad is here—sorry, I shouldn’t—Crap.”
Danny grinned and shook his head. “No, you’re fine. He knows. About everything. Found out yesterday. And, as you can probably tell, responded extremely well! He’s actually been wanting to meet you.”
Ember squinted at Jack, who was practically vibrating with excitement, then her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, whoa, sweet!” She turned to Danny. “Didn’t expect to be meeting the ‘rents so soon. So, gonna formally introduce us?”
Danny laughed. “Sure. Ember, this is my dad, Jack Fenton. Dad, this is Ember McLain, famous rockstar and my pretend girlfriend.”
“Ooh, so he knows about that too?” Ember asked with curiosity.
Danny nodded. “Yup. Well, the entire town knows about the girlfriend part, they put it in the paper; only he and our friends know it’s fake though.”
“Your mom doesn’t?”
“My mom doesn’t know I’m Phantom, and I’m definitely not planning on telling her,” Danny explained. “Dad only knows because he figured it out after creating halfa-mice—yeah, you heard me right,” he said at Ember’s incredulous gaze. “The number of halfas in existence is now in the double-digits, most of them rodents.”
Jack rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment again. “Ah, yeah, I only realized how bad an idea that was afterwards,” he admitted. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan on making more.”
Ember looked around the lab with a slight frown.
“Mister Lancer adopted them,” Danny explained, realizing what she was wondering. “He’s the teacher I told you about who knows about me. The true halfa-mice, with ghost forms and stuff, are staying at his house; he’ll keep them secret. The was also a group that got weak ghost powers but are still regular mice otherwise, which apparently will be class pets.” Danny was looking forward to what his classmates thought of that.
“Seems like a lot happened in the past few days,” Ember commented, then frowned. “It has only been a few days, right? I didn’t end up flying through some wormhole or something?”
“Don’t worry; a lot really did happen in just a few days.”
Ember seemed relieved at that. “Good—now, why is Mister Hawaiian Vacation so full of excitement and anticipation?” Ember wondered, and Dany was momentarily confused until he realized she meant his dad, who was again wearing a Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts, a stark contrast to Danny’s all-black assemblage. It seemed that Jack’s attempt at being a better father included less hazmat-suit wearing.
“Well, this is the first time I’m talking to a friendly ghost, other than Danny!” Jack announced.
“‘Friendly’?” Ember quoted with a playful sneer.
“Well, one who isn’t trying to flee or attack me,” Jack amended. “I want to learn more about ghosts! Properly, this time!”
“He means he wants to do interviews and other less invasive and entirely consensual ways of studying ghosts,” Danny clarified, amused at Jack’s childlike enthusiasm. The emotion had a nice taste to it too, made his core happy.
“Well color me surprised,” Ember muttered. “Your wife gonna do the same, or should we still watch out for her?”
Jack visibly wilted at that, mood clearly dropping.
Ember winced. “Oh, sorry, didn’t realize it was a sensitive subject,” she apologized.
Jack shook his head. “No, no, you asked an honest question, not your fault you didn’t know…”
“Did something happen to her?” Ember asked nervously, eyes wide, probably sensing the grief in Jack—Ember didn’t realize it was towards the loss of the relationship, not the death of someone.
“Uh, no, not really, not like you’re thinking,” Danny said. “Dad and her got into a big fight about how they should approach ghost research, and now she, er, probably won’t be living here anymore.”
“It wasn’t just about the research,” Jack reminded Danny, and a wave of guilt wafted off the man.
“Dad, stop blaming yourself,” Danny said, and at Jack’s surprised reaction reminded him, “We can sense emotion, remember? What mom did is not your fault.”
“But I should have protected you better,” Jack said quietly.
“Whoa, whoa, hold up,” Ember interjected, frowning. She glared at Danny. “Protected from what? What did your mom do to you?!”
Danny winced. He had hid the abuse to his human form from Ember because he didn’t want her trying to get revenge or something, which she was likely to do, which would lead to her getting hurt. “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” he muttered. “Besides, it’s done now. And you are protecting me, Dad; it’s literally one of the reasons you’re divorcing her… Oh, hey, Ember, while you’re here, I was thinking it’d be cool to make the band more of an official thing? Like, do shows and stuff, maybe an album, apparently people really liked us!”
“Whereas that’s awesome, Babypop, and I’m totally game for it, I know when you’re trying to change the subject,” Ember said, tone both casual yet challenging.
Danny winced. “Just, promise you won’t try to attack her for it?” he asked, and at Ember’s nod, told her a brief overview of what had happened, omitting some of the worst incidents.
“That bitch,” Ember hissed, rage evident. “I have half a mind to find her and—”
“Ember, you said you won’t try to attack her,” Danny reminded her.
Ember crossed her arms. “Fine, but if she ever hurts you again, all bets are off.”
Jack chuckled, though with more of a wry amusement if anything. “If she does, you’ll have to get in line.”
There was sudden barking, and before Danny knew it he had been knocked to the ground by a glowing green puppy.
“Danny!” Jack shouted, moving to help, then stopping as he noticed there was no threat.
Danny laughed as the little dog licked his face, standing up with the dog in his arms. “Dad, this is Cujo,” he introduced. “He’s kinda my dog now, I guess? I don’t really need to do anything to care for him, but he seeks me out and comes here to play sometimes. You probably remember him causing trouble in the past since he can shift to get really big, but I think I’ve managed to teach him to behave while in our world, unless he thinks I’m under attack.”
“Oooh, yeah, I’ve seen him with Phantom—I mean, you, before!” Jack said. “If Cujo wants to stay in the house he can.”
Danny grinned, then looked at the dog in his arms. “You hear that, Cujo? You don’t have to hide when here anymore!”
The dog barked in what Danny hoped was understanding; he suspected the Axiom dogs had been genetically modified in some way to be more intelligent or something, or maybe it was just a ghost dog thing.
Jack then began asking more questions about both Cujo and Ember, and the group continued chatting until it was well past 2am and Jazz came down to remind them that Danny did actually have to attend school the next day and needed sleep.
Notes:
Yup; the divorce arc is officially here. Things are looking up... for now.
Next up: The class meets the mice. Sam deals with some jealousy when Paulina, Star, and Ember sit at their lunch table, during which some more things about ghosts are learned, particularly related to what determines the emotions they feed on and their drives, causing some speculation about what drives some of the other ghosts and what emotions they feed on. Then, Danny and Ember go to the commercial district of the Ghost Zone, where they run into Vlad!
Chapter 14: Even More Revelations
Summary:
Sam deals with jealousy when Paulina, Star, and Ember sit with them at lunch. During this, Danny and his friends learn more about how ghosts' drives and feeding on emotions work. Then, Ember and Danny encounter Vlad in the commercial district of the Ghost Zone.
Notes:
This is one of the more fun chapters--call it the eye of the storm, because chapters 15 is another doozy. This chapter actually only has two scenes; the first is super long and all from Sam's POV, then we're back to Danny's POV.
Vlad makes an appearance in the second scene. I don't have him tagged in the character field because he only has this and one other small scene. It was one of my favorite scenes to write though; Danny's just such a little shit.
CW: mentions of child abuse in the 2nd scene.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Danny was not at his locker before class on Monday, which worried Sam immensely. She hadn’t heard from her best friend since Saturday morning; partly her fault, as she’d been hanging out with Lurker all day Saturday and on Sunday she had to go to a stupid baby shower for one of her snooty second cousins on her mom’s side that Sam would prefer to never associate with, but Danny hadn’t even sent one message to her, nor replied to anything in their group chat with Tucker—of which there was a lot, given Sam had plenty of complaints about that baby shower.
Normally a weekend being busy with other things wasn’t concerning, and Danny wasn’t the best with replying to messages to begin with, but given that the last thing Sam had heard was that he was going to talk with his dad about his secret identity… Well, it was easy to tell why Sam was worried.
“You think he’s okay?” Sam asked as she eyed Danny’s empty desk as she sat down in their first-period class, English with Mr. Lancer.
Tucker, beside her, shrugged. “Probably got distracted. Pretty sure he’s okay, given that he was out as Phantom last night.”
“He was?” Sam asked. “Were you there?” She felt hurt that Danny hadn’t contacted her about it; she’d told him many times that she was always ready to help him fight ghosts regardless of what time of day it was.
Tucker shook his head. “It was pretty late; he probably was concerned about waking us, you know how he is. But I was awake anyway, and got a phone alert, someone had a live feed. It was a huge wooly mammoth ghost, pretty cool! He seemed fine after he got it in the thermos and flew off, no injuries that I could see… Oh, speaking of…” he nodded to the window as a familiar black-and-white ghost flew past just as the bell rang.
A couple minutes later, Danny Fenton came racing into the classroom, apologizing about being late before taking his seat, backpack clanking as it was tossed to the floor beside the desk. Sam hoped that wasn’t the thermos, or if it was that it didn’t release any ghosts accidentally; they’d been there before. Sam vaguely wondered where the backpack had been when he passed by them as Phantom; could he do the storage thing with it like he did with the guitar?
“Smooth,” Paulina snickered, and winked at Danny, who just rolled his eyes at her. Sam narrowed her eyes in suspicion of the atypical interaction. Was Paulina trying to make a move on Danny now that she knew he was Phantom?
Lancer just sighed and said, “Well, now that everyone’s here, let’s begin the lesson—yes, Star, what is it?”
Star, who had raised her hand as high as possible, pointed at a large glass cage near the window by Lancer’s desk and asked, “What's with the floating mice?”
The inner portion of the cage, which Sam recognized as being made of ecto-glass, was extremely elaborate, complete with tunnels and a wheel and plenty of climbing places for the mice inhabiting the cage, but instead of climbing most of the mice were indeed floating.
“Ah, yes, I ought to have mentioned that first,” Lancer said calmly. “These are the new class pets. Do you remember the ghost virus that went around a couple years ago? These mice have something similar, albeit more permanent.”
“What! It’s not, like, contagious, is it?” Kwan asked, looking at them warily; other students seemed concerned as well.
“Heavens no!” Lancer immediately corrected. “If they were, they wouldn’t be here.”
“Are you sure?” Mikey asked skeptically.
“Yes, I am sure.”
“My dad was experimenting,” Danny added. “They’re the leftovers.”
“Okay, that’s actually less reassuring,” Valerie claimed with apprehension.
Sam gave Danny a questioning look; were these the halfa-mice? If so, wasn’t that dangerous to have around? If someone saw them transform…
Danny scribbled something in his notebook and tilted it so Sam and Tucker could see: partials, only invis./intan./flight
Sam relaxed, now knowing these were not the incriminating mice.
“So are they living mice or ghost mice?” Star wondered.
“Still living mice,” Danny said. “Just with a few powers—pretty much exactly like that weird ghost illness, like Lancer said.”
“Please don’t tell me that your parents are experimenting with that virus,” Kwan begged.
“Oh God, they’re going to trigger a pandemic!” Dale exclaimed, and the class began whispering worriedly.
“Students!” Lancer shouted, and they quieted. “They are not experimenting with any viruses… Right, Mister Fenton?” he asked Danny, not looking as confident as he sounded.
Danny nodded. “Right. The experiment didn’t involve any viruses. It was meant to create a spray that gives immunity to ghostly abilities, not cause them,” he lied. “Like a ghost version of bug spray.”
“Obviously, that means it was a failure,” Tucker unnecessarily pointed out, subtly putting a hand on Danny’s arm to push him back to his chair; Sam really hoped no one else noticed he’d been very slightly floating.
The class calmed, and Lancer started on the English lesson while Sam and Tucker made sure Danny didn’t fall asleep in class again.
Somehow, they made it to lunch.
When they sat down at their usual slightly remote picnic table outside, Sam noticed that, surprisingly, Danny had packed a lunch, though it was in a paper bag with the MU logo. Had he been living there again? Did things not go well with his dad?
Danny noticed the question in Sam’s eyes and told her, “I’m back home, don’t worry. Dad took it really well. Jazz has a meal plan that lets her either swipe into the cafeteria or use the to-go option three times a day, but she doesn’t use it that much since she lives at home so she said I can get my lunches from there. That’s why I was late today, I misjudged the time it would take.”
“Ooh, nice,” Tucker said. “Bet it’s loads better than the food here! What did—uh.” Tucker’s expression rapidly shifted from excited curiosity to disgust. “What the hell is that, dude?”
“A ham and cheese sandwich,” Danny said defensively, and took a bite out of it.
“The bread is green!”
“Well, yeah, it’s got ectoplasm in it,” Danny said, as though that should be obvious.
“Won’t people notice that?” Sam wondered.
“If someone asks, I’ll just say it has spinach in it, that’s a thing, right?”
“It is now, I guess,” Sam muttered. Even though spinach was definitely not that bright.
“It’s also gross,” Tucker said.
Danny glared at Tucker, green eyes flashing. “Is not,” he said through a mouthful of sandwich.
Sam sighed. “Whatever you say…” She reached into her backpack to grab her own lunch bag, her hand brushing against something else as she did. “Oh, right, before I forget, you said you needed some more, right? Here,” Sam said, handing Danny the bottle of pills.
Danny grinned as he took the bottle and quickly shoved it in his own backpack. “Thanks, Sam; I was almost out.”
“Didn’t you just get a new bottle like two weeks ago?” Tucker asked warily. “Should you really be taking that much?”
“I only take it when I get injured, which just happens to be a lot,” Danny argued. “It’s fine.”
“Yeah, Tuck; it’s not like he takes it when he doesn’t need it,” Sam agreed. Not like her mom.
“Alright, just… be careful, dude,” Tucker enjoined. “I don’t want to have to explain to your sister that you’re addicted.”
Danny rolled his eyes. “I’m not gonna get addicted. Like I said, I only use them when I need them.”
“Yeah, Tuck, I think Jazz’s worries are rubbing off on you,” Sam said, then frowned and narrowed her eyes at the girl approaching them. “What do you want, Paulina?”
Paulina had the gall to sit down next to Danny and put her arm around his shoulder, and Danny shockingly let her. Sam just didn’t understand it; Paulina had given them all hell for years, been such a bitch to them, and now suddenly Danny was acting like she was a good friend!
“Relax, I’m not gonna hurt him,” Paulina said, giving Sam an eye roll.
“Babypop!” came a shout, and suddenly Ember was hugging Danny from behind.
“Uh. Hi, Ember,” Danny said, blushing; he still wasn’t used to heavy physical contact, after over two years of avoiding such, whereas Ember loved affection. “What are you doing here?”
“What, can’t I visit you on lunch break?” Ember asked with a laugh, then noticed the sandwich. “Ooh, is that ecto-bread? Slammin!” She reached forward to grab Danny’s sandwich.
“Hey, that’s my lunch!” Danny complained, snatching it back after Ember took a bite.
“Relax, I’ll buy you an ecto-smoothie later,” Ember chuckled, then looked at Paulina as though evaluating her for a moment before saying, “Hmm. Did you get a human beard? She’s pretty hot.”
Sam resisted facepalming; real subtle, Ember, just go reveal in front of Paulina that she’s his beard, that’s not suspicious at all. The last thing Danny needed was for an A-lister to learn that he was gay.
Paulina was the one who blushed now as she withdrew her arm. “N-no!” she stuttered, then amended, “No to the beard part, I’m not denying I’m hot.”
Sam blinked in surprise. Why wasn’t Paulina surprised at Ember’s words? Did Paulina… Did Paulina actually know about Danny’s sexuality?
“Hey! Isn’t that the chick who’s dating Phantom?” came a loud voice, and Sam, Tucker, and Danny all groaned as Dash approached. “Dude! Wait until I tell him you’re trying to snatch his girlfriend! Bet he’ll do something reaaaaaal bad to you,” he grinned.
“Oh, like what, turn me into a ghost?” Danny said, facing away from Dash as he couldn’t turn too well with Ember still glommed onto him, hiding his fanged grin.
“Watch it, Dash,” Paulina told him, grinning too, looking as though she actually was in on the joke—which she was, of course. Sam was still not used to Paulina, of all people, knowing that Danny was half-ghost. Paulina continued, “Remember, we’re not here to cause trouble.”
“Then why are you here?” Sam asked, aware of the tension in her voice; she was getting more and more frustrated by the minute, not just at the A-listers but at Danny and Ember too.
“It’s about the band!” Paulina said. “So it’s good that four of you are here!”
“Oooh, do you have a gig for us?” Ember asked excitedly, still wrapped around Danny.
“Yup!” Paulina said happily. “We’re planning a big outdoor barbeque for the Saturday of Thanksgiving Break—that’s November 25—and want live music.” Fall break was three days, five if you counted the weekend after, encompassing the day before Thanksgiving, the holiday itself, and the day after. Paulina continued, “We’re also having one at the end of December for the Winter Holiday, though the date is undecided. You were so amazing at the Fall Festival that we want you to play for both! I know it’s short notice for that first one so the same set list is perfectly okay, trimmed to just the songs that fit teenage tastes of course—it’ll be shorter, since you’d be opening for the main act, Dumpty Humpty, both times. We’ll pay you for your efforts, of course.”
“You’ve got it!” Ember said.
“Whoa, hey, don’t you have to ask us first?” Sam said, glaring at the ghost girl. Although, if Dumpty Humpty were there it was really the only option, even though Sam had heard them play a whole lot (as the members were native to Amity Park, they tended to play concerts there whenever they came back to visit family, well aware that most other nationally-famous bands avoided the small city at all costs).
“Opening for Dumpty Humpty? I’m game,” Danny said easily, as expected. “Tucker, you in?”
“Um, duh!” Tucker said. “Access to two A-list parties and free Dumpty Humpty concerts? No brainer, even if it is as staff.”
Sam sighed tiredly and decided, “Fine, guess I’m in too. We’ll confirm with the other members, but pretty sure they’ll be in, too.”
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Ember said. “You know, we should go on tour or something!”
“Can I graduate school first?” Danny asked, laughing. “Though seriously, I think I might like to do music as a career, or at least a side thing.” Sam raised her eyebrows and looked at Tucker, who seemed surprised as well. This must be a really new thing, then, if even Tucker didn’t know, since Sam doubted Danny would hide that from them. Although it did make sense, as Danny seemed to be taking an interest in music that rivaled his interest in space, and he needed an alternative potential career as he couldn’t do NASA. If he was serious about it, then opening twice for a major band was an opportunity that couldn’t be missed.
“You totally should,” Paulina practically purred, ruffling Danny’s hair.
Sam felt a small wave of jealousy come over her. Dammit; she was over him! He was gay, and she was dating Lurker! She bit her lip in an effort to calm the feeling.
“Yo, Paulina!” Dash shouted. “What the hell are you doing?! He already agreed to the show, no need to butter him up more.”
Paulina raised an eyebrow at Dash. “Didn’t you have another request?”
“Oh, right.”
Danny sighed with exasperation. “Okay, fine, what’s your other request?”
Dash scoffed. “We want Phantom at our Halloween party tomorrow night. Paulina seems to think you have some sort of an in with him and could ask him for us. I told her that’s whack, no way a twink like you would know a hero like Phantom, but she wanted to ask anyway.”
Sam narrowed her eyes in suspicion at Dash’s use of the word ‘twink’, then concluded that he was likely using it simply as a generic insult; if he’d actually been aware of Danny’s sexuality, it’d be all over the school.
“Please?” Paulina asked.
“He’ll be there!” Ember announced.
“What! Ember, no!” Danny protested.
“Why not? Don’t you like parties?”
“I don’t mind them, but we’re talking about Phantom, not me. And Phantom doesn’t really do parties.”
“Oooh, got it.”
“Come on,” Paulina said, nearly whining.
“He has other plans,” Danny said, to Sam’s relief; so he hadn’t forgotten that he, Sam, and Tucker had a Halloween movie marathon planned.
“Come on,” Ember said, finally backing off of Danny. “Parties are fun!” She turned to Paulina. “Don’t worry, I’ll drag him there.”
“No, you won’t, because he has other plans,” Danny said again through gritted teeth.
“Party starts at 6, and goes to 11,” Paulina said. “Surely y—Phantom isn’t going to be busy for all of that!”
“Maybe if you invite us, too, Phantom will consider going,” Tucker suggested, gesturing to him, Sam, and Danny. “Since his plans are with us.”
“Psh. Like Phantom would have plans with you losers,” Dash scoffed.
“Dash, we’ve talked about this,” Paulina warned. “If you antagonize them, they’ll be less willing to help us.”
“Dude, she’s right,” came a new voice, and Sam turned to see Kwan had joined them, along with Star. Kwan continued, “You gotta be nice if you want people to help you!”
Dash practically growled. “Or, I can just threaten them, how about that?”
Star laughed at that. “Dash, hon, hate to break this to you, but pretty sure these nerds could, like, make you disappear and never find the body, if they wanted to,” she said with a casual wave of her hand. “Fenton especially.”
“What!” Dash declared. “No way would they ever. You’re whack, Star. How could a shrimp like Fenton do anything to me?”
“I dunno, have you seen the fangs? Like, what’s with them?”
“Star,” Danny growled, flashing his green eyes and fangs at her very intentionally, out of view of Dash and Kwan.
“Yeah, he’s got fangs, so what?” Dash said. “Probably fake or something.”
“Oh, no, they’re totally real,” Paulina said, a mischievous look in her eye. “Totally saw him bite someone the other day!”
“What? I don’t bite people!” Danny protested.
Ember then joined in, laughing. “Oh yeah, Babypop, sure you don’t!”
“See? Total vampire,” Star said with a nod, expression serious. “If you don’t want him draining you dry, I’d lay off him, Dash.”
Dash looked genuinely worried. “Y-you’re lying!” he stuttered out.
“I dunno; his expression right now is kinda scary,” Kwan said, looking nervously at Danny, who was now literally snarling at Star, who was still holding back laughter. Sam wasn’t sure if Danny was serious or not, though she was leaning towards ‘not’ considering his eyes weren’t glowing this time.
“Plus he’s always, like, ice cold,” Paulina pointed out. “Surely you’ve grabbed him enough times to notice that?”
“W-well, yeah, but he was like that even before the fangs!” Dash argued. “There’s no—why are you licking your lips?!” he practically squeaked out, and sure enough, Danny had apparently decided to join in the fun, and was now running his tongue around his lips in between showing off the fangs as he gazed at Dash.
“Probably because your blood smells good,” Star said. “Right, Danny?”
“Mhmm,” Danny contently hummed, and if Sam didn’t know any better she’d think he was actually thinking that.
“Dude, let’s get out of here,” Kwan suggested.
“R-right,” Dash said. “I, er, got some other stuff to do, see you losers later!” he told them before abruptly turning and speed-walking away with Kwan.
The whole table started laughing once the two boys were far enough away, though Danny still looked a little off.
“Danny? Something wrong?” Tucker asked.
“Nope, nothing wrong at all,” Danny said, sounding very content—was he purring?
“He’s just getting a bit of a charge,” Ember said with amusement, to everyone’s confusion except Danny, who was still a little spaced out.
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
“Well, you’re all laughing and happy; that’s what he feeds on.”
“What do you mean, ’feeds on’?” Tucker demanded.
“Oh, thought you knew,” Ember said with slight surprise, then casually explained, “Ghosts feed on whatever emotion they lacked most in life—like a magnet, drawing in whatever’s needed to balance their spirit or whatever. They can also get a smaller charge from adjacent emotions, too. Like, I felt abandoned and ignored most of my life, so I feed mainly on receiving attention, and to a lesser extent things like worship and admiration. Totally expected he’d be something similar to me, given his home life, but apparently Babypop feeds on joy, which… Well, guess that’s actually more tragic, come to think of it.”
“Wait, what?” Danny asked, swerving to look at her.
“What, didn’t you know?”
“Uh. No? Yes. Kinda? I dunno, I just know I feel good when others feel good!”
“Yeah, like your core vibrates and feels charged, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s called feeding, dipstick.”
“Oh,” Danny said meekly. “I, er, knew ghosts usually can get extra energy via ambient emotions, but I didn’t realize they were specifically based on… something like that.”
“But, wait, don’t most younger ghosts feed on positive emotions?” Tucker pointed out. “Maybe it’s just a kid or teen ghost thing. Doesn’t mean Danny was depressed or something.”
Ember gave Tucker a look of disbelief. “Dude. You DO realize that kids who are well cared for, adjusted, and happy typically don’t end up dying tragically with enough emotional turmoil that they become ghosts, right?”
“Uh… Now that I think about it…”
“Ugh. Way to bring the mood down, Tuck,” Danny moaned, stretching across the table in an obvious fake display of despair. “Are you trying to starve me or something?”
Tucker laughed and patted Danny on the head. “Don’t worry, dude, there’s plenty of happiness to go around,” he said; Danny closed his eyes as Tucker shifted to scratching behind Danny’s ear and… yup, that was basically purring.
“He’s like a cat!” Star commented with a giggle, as she started rubbing Danny’s back. Paulina and Ember took the opportunity too, each rubbing one of Danny’s shoulders.
“Okay, that’s enough of that!” Sam said, shooing the three girls and Tucker off of Danny and pulling Danny back up to sitting; the boy had the gall to fake-pout.
“What gives?” Paulina complained.
“Yeah, can’t we feed him?” Star asked innocently.
“Okay, first, pretty sure massages aren’t ‘feeding’ him,” Sam pointed out. “Ghosts feed on ambient emotion, meaning what other people give off. So unless you’re weirdly getting ridiculously happy by rubbing his back, it’s not going to do anything.”
“It’ll make me happy,” Danny pointed out. “But, er, she’s right, Star. It’s other peoples’ emotions that matter when it comes to energizing my ghost core, not my own.”
“Ooooh, okay,” Star said, then looked contemplative. “But wait, Danny, if ghosts are driven by emotions, why does the Anti-Ghost Training Guidebook say they’re driven by obsessions?”
“Ugh,” Danny moaned. “Just, don’t listen to anything that stupid guide says. Some ghosts have deep obsessions, sure, but so do lots of humans. Most ghost ‘obsessions’ are just things they like, or are ways to get whatever emotion they feed on, not something they’re magically forced into.”
“Yeah!” Ember said. “Like, I love music, but, like, it’s not some weird instinctual drive thing. I just loved it when I was human, and it’s a good way to get attention!”
“But, don’t ghosts need, like, a reason to be here?” Star asked.
“Well, yeah, there’s always something that anchors us,” Ember explained. “Like, you don’t become a ghost after death if you went peacefully, you know? There has to be something that made enough of an impression to keep you around, and then some sort of purpose or drive to keep you from fading—but it’s not an obsession, not like your crappy literature says. Not for most ghosts, at least.”
“Yeah, ghosts aren’t just remnants with a one-track mind towards an obsession or whatever BS my parents and the GIW spew,” Danny added.
“So it’s, like, a raison d'être?” Star asked.
“Exactly!” Ember said.
“Ember, do you even know what that means?” Danny said with amusement.
Ember shrugged. “Not a clue.”
“So, then, what about the Box Ghost or Lunch Lady?” Paulina asked. “Are they just extra weird ghosts?”
“Yeah, and what emotions do they eat?” Star wondered.
“Uh. I’m actually not sure,” Danny said. Sam didn’t know either.
Ember answered, “Yeah those two are a bit out there, even as far as ghosts go. Guess maybe they were super obsessed with their jobs in real life? Although Lunch Lady feeds on stability, which is really why she reacted so badly to a menu change, especially since she designed that menu.”
“Hold up,” Tucker interjected. “SHE designed it? You’re saying the Lunch Lady ghost literally was Casper High’s lunch lady?”
“Duh,” Sam said. It was totally obvious, she thought. “If she weren’t, why would she care so much about the menu?”
“Oh. So what about the Box Ghost?” Tucker asked, looking at Ember. “Do you know his deal?”
“Don’t you already?” Star asked, confused. “He told us, right?”
“He told us about his death,” Danny amended. “Not the other stuff. Although we do know he delivered packages; maybe that’s related.”
Ember shrugged. “Like I said, work-obsessed, then it somehow became distorted, sometimes that happens. But as to feeding, shouldn’t it be dead obvious what he feeds on?” she asked, raising her eyebrow. “Or did him yelling ‘fear me!’ every ten seconds somehow not clue you in?”
“Fair point,” Tucker said sheepishly. “So he was, what, fearless in life or something then?”
“He did steal from Pandora,” Sam pointed out. That definitely took guts.
“So, fearless in life, feeds on fear in death?” Star confirmed.
Ember nodded. “Now you get it! Skulker’s the same, although unlike Boxy he actually manages to be fearsome.”
“That weird ghost therapist fed on misery or insecurity or something, right?” Paulina said. “Does that mean she was happy in life?”
“Dude, did you see how peppy she was?” Tucker pointed out.
“Right on the money,” Ember said with a nod.
Star then asked, “So, what about that electronics ghost? Techbro? Techguy? What was it again?”
“Technus,” Tucker corrected. “Um. Maybe fear as well? He wants people to fear him too, right?”
Ember scoffed at that. “No, dipstick. He feeds on…” the ghost seemed to struggle with finding the words. “People mutually finding things impressive and cool?”
“Like, admiration?” Sam asked.
“No, no. Like, I guess he was just really lonely in life or something? But like, specifically because he didn’t really know anyone who shared his interests? He was better friends with technology than humans. So, like, the emotion is like the feeling of bonding with someone specifically because of a shared interest?”
“So, connection?” Tucker tried. “Companionship?”
“Eh, close enough,” Ember said. “But gotta include a shared interest.”
Sam wondered if they could use that; if all Technus wanted was for people to bond with him over his love of electronics, well, one of her best friends was a tech nerd. Friendship between them could be the solution to preventing future attacks by the technology-loving ghost, just like Danny befriending Ember had shifted her direction.
“Wait, all that counts as an emotion?” Star asked in confusion. “It’s so specific.”
Surprisingly, Danny was the one who answered. “Yeah, emotions are weird sometimes,” he said. “Like, there’s so many that humans just don’t have names for? It’s annoying, because it’s like you sense them, know they’re there, know it’s an emotion, but then there’s just no word to actually describe it even though your core knows what it means.”
“Wait, wait, wait, hold up,” Sam interjected. “Danny, are you seriously saying you can sense emotions? Since when!?” Frustration flared at the fact that yet again Danny had hidden something from her.
“More of a taste, really,” Ember commented.
“I didn’t ask you,” Sam growled. “Danny. Is it true? How long?”
Danny winced. “Oh, um, yeah… Please don’t be angry! It’s been going on for a while now but I didn’t actually realize until recently that’s what I was doing? Sorry I forgot to tell you… again. It’s just so much was happening, you know? Especially after Dad found out my secret, which was kinda a much bigger deal than everything.”
“Your dad found out?” Paulina asked, looking worried.
Danny nodded. “Yeah, he figured it out himself; It actually went well,” he told her. “He’s a lot more open-minded than my mom, who still doesn’t know, and my dad thinks it’s best she doesn’t know.”
“Won’t that, like, be hard, though?” Star asked. “Like, hiding it from them both was probably easier, now it’ll be everyone there hiding it from just her.”
Danny winced. “It’s, ah, that’s not going to be relevant; Mom won’t be around anymore.”
The whole group, except for Danny and Ember, tensed. What did Danny mean by that? Did something happen to her, a ghost hunt gone wrong?
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean it like that!” Danny hurriedly said, and Sam realized he must have sensed their emotions just then. He continued, “Ancients, no. She isn’t dead. My parents are getting divorced, she’s moving out, Dad’s gonna have custody. No, I will not be explaining the details of why right now.”
Everyone visibly relaxed, and Tucker said with a nervous chuckle, “Hey, can you blame us for jumping to that conclusion, when it comes to your family?”
“Yeah, there’s, like, so many explosions at your house,” Star pointed out. “Kinda a wonder there hasn’t already been—oh, wait. Sorry.”
Danny laughed. “It’s fine, I’ve already made peace with it. I mean, have you heard how many death jokes I make?”
Sam growled with slight frustration and muttered, “You could stand to make a few less. And we will be discussing all of what you just said later.” Sam was honestly relieved that Maddie wouldn’t be anywhere near Danny anymore, regardless of reason.
“Yo! Fenton!” came a shout, and everyone at the table turned to see Valerie stomping towards them. When she got to the table, she demanded, “What in God’s name is going on here?! Why is Dash claiming you’re a freakin vampire, of all things?!”
Danny grinned at her, flashing his fangs.
Star giggled. “Oh my god, he’s really actually telling people that?”
Sam, ignoring that Valerie’s mere presence was definitely killing the overall vibe, couldn’t help but laugh. “Wow. Just, wow. First he concludes you’re a cat, now a vampire? Yeah, totally both the most logical conclusions, living in a ghost town.”
“Better than the truth,” Valerie said with a shrug, eyeing Ember, who was now seated on Danny’s lap, with suspicion.
Paulina gasped. “You know too?”
Valerie looked at Paulina incredulously. “You know!?”
“Yes, we all know!” Tucker said just loudly enough for them all to hear. “Now, Danny, ready for the best idea ever? You’re going to school tomorrow dressed as a vampire and scaring the shit out of Dash. Oh! You can do the same at the party, too—maybe that’ll get Dash to stop his hero-worship thing.”
Danny scrunched his nose at that. “Eww, reminds me too much of Vlad,” he said, and Sam had to agree. Danny then asked a question that Sam also had: “Besides, what about our movie night?”
Tucker shrugged. “We can reschedule for the weekend, do a full day instead of just the evening.”
Sam got flashbacks to the previous time when the two boys tried to blow her off after they made movie plans in order to attend one of Paulina’s parties. Why was this happening again? Well, at least Sam knew better this time than to wish she’d never met either of them.
“I dunno…” Danny trailed, looking towards Sam, then at Ember, and she got the sense that he really did want to go to the party with the ghost, but unlike Tucker actually was considering her feelings on the matter.
So, Sam considered that. True, she was looking forward to the movie night. However, that could be rescheduled, and Lurker actually had told her about a Halloween poetry slam at the cafe next to MU the same night, which he was attending, and unlike the movie night could not be rescheduled. “Okay, fine,” she agreed. “There’s something else I kinda wanted to do tomorrow night anyway, so we can change the movie night to Saturday.”
“Whoo hoo!” Tucker declared, pumping his first in the air. “A-list party, here I come!”
“It’s just a regular cool people party, not A-list exclusive,” Paulina said with an eye roll.
“And don’t forget, you’re only invited because Phantom requested it!” Star added.
Paulina turned to Valerie. “Oh, by the way, the Red Huntress is invited too,” she said to her with a wink.
“And you’re telling me this why?” Valerie asked nervously.
“Because you’re her, obviously,” Star said casually.
“What? No I’m not!” Valerie feverishly denied.
“Oh, please,” Paulina said in a bored voice. “You wear a skin tight suit, and expect no one to recognize your figure?”
Valerie looked at the girl with clear incredulity. “Yes, yes I do. Who the hell can identify people on figure alone?!”
“Paulina, apparently,” Sam muttered, still in disbelief as well. Maybe these girls were smarter than people gave them credit for.
“Can you do that with everyone?” Tucker wondered.
“If she could, she would have identified me long before my eyes glowed,” Danny pointed out.
“So it’s specifically my figure you can recognize?” Valerie asked, sounding understandably confused.
“Well, yours is very distinct,” Paulia claimed.
“Yeah, like, you’ve got perfect proportions,” Star said with awe. “Super impressive. You could, like, totally make tons of money from selling Red Huntress pinup posters or something.”
“Oh! School fundraising idea!” Paulina said, perking up. “Hear me out: ‘Sexy Ghost and Ghost Hunters’ themed calendars. Huh? Am I brilliant or what? We’ll get just the hottest ones—we can do Red Huntress, and Phantom, and you too, Ember!”
“Can I wear a bikini?” Ember asked. The ghost girl, still seated on Danny’s lap, was now petting Danny’s hair as though he were a cat; Sam desperately tried to ignore it, suspecting that the ghost was simply trying to get a rise out of her. Negative attention was still attention, after all, right? …Or, did only positive attention count? She did always try to get positive attention, rarely negative, so maybe not all kinds of attention counted.
“Sure! Summer can be a swimsuit theme!” Paulina declared. “Danny, you can wear—”
“No,” Danny said in a no-nonsense tone. “Phantom is not taking off his shirt, especially not for a swimsuit photo.”
“Aww, but why not?” Paulina whined.
Danny winced, and Ember paused, eyes wide. She whispered something in Danny’s ear, and he nodded, expression somewhat grim.
“Okay, what’s going on now?” Tucker asked.
“What’s a death scar?” Valerie asked; apparently she had been close enough to hear what Ember said to Danny.
“Oh, shit,” Sam said, putting her hand over her face. “I forgot that’s a thing.”
“Do we want to know…?” Star wondered.
Danny sighed. “Might as well. Ghosts that died violently sometimes keep any scars acquired from it. I was electrocuted, so my ghost form, under the suit, has some pretty nasty Lichtenberg scars, going from my left palm up my arm and onto my chest—and no, no one is going to see them.”
“You know…” Paulina began after a brief bout of silence, “Scars can be kinda—”
“Do not finish that sentence, Paulina,” Sam growled, knowing how sensitive Danny was about that scar. She, Tucker, and Jazz had all seen it when patching him up, and it was honestly pretty terrifying by the severity of it, anyone who saw it would realize that wasn’t something that could have been survived. “If Danny doesn’t want to show off his death scar for the sake of some calendar, he doesn’t have to. Put him in the December photo or something, so he can cover it.”
“Or, how about no calendar at all,” Danny said with a frown.
Paulina pouted.
“I’ll still do it,” Ember offered. “Hell, I’ll do the whole thing!”
“Really?” asked Paulina, eyes practically lighting up.
“Oh, I know!” Star chimed in. “We can just do a cheerleader one—and Ember, you can be in it too!”
“No, better idea,” Paulina said with an excited gasp. “Ember joins the squad! I bet we can do some sick ass aerial moves with her!”
Star gasped too. “A literally flying flyer? Ohmygosh, yes!! Come on Ember, let’s get you enrolled.”
“Wait, what?” Ember said as Star grabbed her hand and pulled her off of Danny before leading her back towards the school. Surprisingly, Ember didn’t protest; instead, once she realized what was happening, she grinned.
“Hey, wait for me!” Paulina shouted, hurrying after them.
Sam, Danny, Tucker, and Valerie all stared after the three girls in slight shock.
“So… that just happened,” Sam said, blinking.
“Dude, so jealous that you get to date a cheerleader now!” Tucker joked.
Danny just rolled his eyes. “Like the school will seriously let Ember join the team—she doesn’t even go here!”
“Speaking of school, I’m going to start heading back, lunch is nearly over,” Valerie pointed out, then walked off too. Sam glanced at her watch, noting there was still fifteen minutes left of the hour lunch period; they still had ten more minutes before they had to pack up and head back inside. Valerie likely just didn’t want to stay with the three of them alone.
“She’s still mad at me, isn’t she?” Danny asked with a sigh.
“You tell us, feelings-reader,” Sam said.
Danny sighed. “I was being rhetorical; I know for sure that she’s still mad at me—and I’m honestly not sure if she’ll ever not be.”
“Seriously?” Tucker asked. “I thought she took it pretty well in the G-Z.”
“Don’t call it that. And that was before she had time to process things—which I’m pretty sure she still hasn’t done fully, but in the meantime, she’s definitely bitter about it.”
“Stages of grief,” Sam said. “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. She was still in denial then. Now she’s on anger. Next she’ll probably try to separate you and Phantom in her mind.”
“Um, Sam, Danny’s not—ah, well, he’s still here, there’s no reason to mourn,” Tucker pointed out.
“It’s not only death that gets mourned, doofus,” Sam said, unable to resist rolling her eyes. “Valerie’s entire life has been upended. Everything she thought she knew about ghosts is being called into question. It’s common for people to mourn their past when things are suddenly changed. A lot was—”
The bell signalling the end of the period cut Sam off.
Sam looked at her watch. “Dammit!” she swore, jumping up along with Tucker and Danny. “Sorry, my watch must be slow.” She thought they had 5 more minutes left.
Tucker frowned. “My PDA has the same time yours—”
Danny cut him off with a chuckle and a wry smile. “You two are forgetting that in this timeline, homeroom is 5 minutes shorter.”
Sam nearly facepalmed. It was already the end of October; she should be used to that change already, but evidently not.
“Let’s just go,” Sam muttered, slightly embarrassed as they hurried off to class.
After school, Danny went to a specialty shop in the Ghost Zone with Ember to get a costume for the Halloween party. The shop sold costumes, accessories, and other such things, and Ember insisted on going there instead of a general one in Amity Park as the shop here could make costumes and accessories that were more compatible with ghostly abilities and traits (for example, hair accessories for Ember that wouldn’t be lit by her flaming ponytail).
After some discussion, Danny had decided against Tucker’s idea of a vampire, and had left only with a few accessories to add to his usual hazmat suit, as he still wanted them to recognize him as Phantom—he was hopeful that going to the party might cause any peers that still agreed with the media’s view of him being a ‘menace’ to decide to support him instead once they saw he was cool with the A-list. Said accessories were cat paw gloves and boots, and an attachable tail and ears (Danny wasn’t quite sure how they attached; they just magically did) that could somehow move by tapping into his natural ghost powers—which proved he had telekinesis, even though Danny still couldn’t ever get it to willingly work right. It could easily control the ears and tail somehow though, so maybe he just had to practice to get it to move things that weren’t attached to him.
Ember, who went for a matching outfit, complete with the hazmat suit, then reminded Danny that, being ghost objects, the accessories could be attuned to him. Once that was done she showed him how to manifest the accessories directly where they should be. Danny marveled at the convenience of it.
Now, the two were casually floating through the commercial district of the Ghost Zone sipping on ecto-smoothies. They were heading in the general direction of the portal, as Danny had promised his dad he’d be back for dinner, but there was no rush.
The two came across a small floating park, and sat beside each other on a large tree branch; Ember set her drink to the side and manifested her guitar, twisting a small dial on it to change it to an acoustic model. “Let’s figure out some stuff to play at that Thanksgiving concert,” she said. “Like, I know they said we can just do the other stuff, but we can surprise them! Come on, give me something we didn’t play last time that works well with this thing!”
“Um… Maybe something by Green Day?” Danny suggested, scrambling to think of a band that used less instruments than others, meaning a single tune could be more easily isolated.
“Word. You know this one, right?” She played the opening notes and a few chords before Danny caught on; she knew he knew it, as it had been one of the first songs Ember taught him. Noticing Danny’s expression of recognition, Ember grinned and said, “Okay, get your guitar out then, dipstick!”
“Right,” Danny said, putting his drink aside and manifesting his own guitar, twisting the dial on it to shift it to an acoustic model as well.
“Ready?” Ember prodded, and Danny nodded. “Okay, let’s go then—One, two, a-one two three four!”
She and Danny began playing and singing from the beginning.
🎵I want to be the minority / I don’t need your authority / Down with the moral majority / ‘cause I wanna be the minority!🎵
“Well, if it isn’t young Daniel Fenton,” a familiar voice said partway through, one that Danny hadn’t heard in a while.
Ember and Danny both continued strumming and singing, ignoring Vlad, who was in his ghost form and, to his credit, actually was waiting for them to finish, until they got to one specific part.
🎵A free-for-all, fuck ‘em all—🎵
“Language, Daniel!” Vlad interjected, looking scandalized.
Danny couldn’t help but stop the music and start laughing instead; Ember stopped too, doing the same.
“Seriously, Vlad?” Danny said as he tried to stop the laughter. “It’s just a song!”
“Well, still, it’s uncouth. Not just the lyrics, but to sing about actually wanting to be a minority is highly inappropriate.”
“Dude, I literally am a minority, in multiple ways,” Danny said flatly. “So it’s, like, actually self-acceptance or whatever. Anyway, what are you doing here?”
“Why, I live here, you know,” Vlad said.
“I know that,” Danny said. Vlad had erected a castle of his own in the Ghost Zone, given the human world wasn’t very amicable to him at the moment. This was the first time Danny had seen Vlad here though. “I meant, in the commercial district.”
“Again, young Daniel, I live here. I cannot simply go buy things in the Human Realm so easily, thus I get them here when possible. I think the better question is what are you doing here, in human form no less—and before you say something asinine like a date with your girlfriend, I know she’s just a cover for your Hero ghost persona.”
“You do?” Danny asked, surprised. He de-manifested his guitar, which got him an odd look from Vlad (did he not know halfas could do that?), and grabbed his drink.
“Yes,” Vlad replied. “James started laughing when he saw the newspaper article; he is part you, after all, albeit from another timeline.”
“James?” Danny knew Vlad was talking about his reformed future self, now residing with Vlad in a clone body, but hadn’t expected him to go by his middle name.
“Yes, that is what he has opted to use now, to avoid confusion,” Vlad explained. “In full, James Daniel Masters. Anyway, I ask again, just what are you doing here?”
“Are you actually curious, or are you just plotting?” Danny wondered. Despite Vlad being in ghost form, Danny could still slightly sense his emotions, but not very strongly, closer to how it was before he learned he needed ectoplasm to charge his core. Maybe it was a halfa thing? It was similar to Valerie, with her suit… protecting… her. Oh. Oh no. Her suit was made by Technus, partially out of ectoplasm, wasn’t it? …Danny decided to reflect on that later.
“Oh, I’m just—wait a minute,” Vlad said, eyes widening as he noticed Danny’s drink. “Daniel, is that drink laced?”
“Is it what?”
“He means, does it have the fun stuff in it, dipstick,” Ember said. “Which I mean, is kinda obvious, given it glows.”
Vlad looked pale for some reason. “Daniel. Why are you drinking a radioactive smoothie?”
“Because it’s nice?” Danny said, turning the phrase into a question, unsure why Vlad was so against it. “The uranium gives it a little tingle, kinda like carbonation? Which sounds weird to put in a smoothie I guess but it’s actually really great!”
“No, it isn’t ‘great’! You’re in human form! It can kill you!” Vlad said in horror. “The rest of the way, I mean!”
“No, it can’t,” Danny told him. “I drink these all the time. Radiation doesn’t affect me, Sam and Tucker and I even did tests on my blood, there’s more than enough ectoplasm to counteract it.”
“I’ve done the tests too; in ghost form, yes, the ectoplasm gives an immunity, but in human form we’re just as susceptible to the effects of radiation poisoning as any human!”
Danny looked at Vlad blankly. “They’re the same though?” he said, then remembered that Vlad actually did have his blood and ectoplasm separate, being only 50% ghost, a true halfa in that he still actually was a full half human with a more distinct human and ghost form, hence the confusion.
Now Vlad was the one who looked confused. “What do you mean, ‘they’re the same’?”
“I mean, form doesn’t matter. I’m immune regardless.”
“But… That can’t be,” Vlad said.
“Well, it’s really just a change in looks, isn’t it?” Danny explained, deciding to have some fun as he suspected Vlad, having only studied himself, didn’t know about the existence of different degrees of halfas; time to give Vlad a mild heart attack. “I bleed green in both, don’t you?”
Vlad looked stunned. “No, I don’t,” he said quietly.
“Really?” Danny said, trying to sound surprised. “Weird.”
“It’s not… Daniel, if you’re bleeding green… Wait. Do you have all your powers in human form, too? At full strength?” He looked… panicked? Good, it was working.
“Yeah, of course,” Danny said casually. “Wait, you don’t?”
“Not to the same degree, and it took years of practice to get them to blend over,” Vlad explained, clearly having some sort of internal crisis. “Did you… Did you have them from the start?”
“Yup,” Danny said. “It was a real bitch having to avoid accidentally using them in class, let me tell you! Still is sometimes; they react way too much to my emotions.”
Vlad opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again, before finally saying, “So you’re claiming, essentially, that you’re identical in human and ghost form in all but looks?”
“Yup.”
“No… No, wait, I saw you bleed red, at the reunion,” Vlad said, narrowing his eyes.
“Oh, at first I did, yeah, but whenever I lost any it only got replaced with ectoplasm,” Danny told him. “I can prove it to you, if you want. Got a knife?”
“No, no, no need, I believe you,” Vlad said, looking a little disturbed at the suggestion. “Ancients, next you’ll tell me you need to eat ectoplasm and can feed on emotions…”
“But I do,” Danny said. “If I don’t eat ectoplasm, I feel weak.”
“I see… And you feed on emotions, too?” Vlad asked weakly, sounding like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer. Danny was pretty sure Vlad actually did have an emotional craving, something along the lines of belonging, companionship, or connection, given how he kept trying so desperately to create a family, but he didn’t want to start an actual argument.
Danny nodded. “Yup. Specifically, joy… Don’t you have one you feed on?”
“No, no, that’s only… Wait, are you also not breathing? While in human form?”
“Never needed to.”
“Daniel,” Vlad said, looking lost and deeply worried; Danny found it a little frustrating how he could only get vague scents of the man’s emotions. “All that means… By gods, Daniel… y-you’re not a halfa, you’re a full ghost… And, feeding on joy, no less!” For some reason, Vlad seemed especially stressed about that.
“Babypop, at this rate I think you’re gonna give him an aneurism,” Ember said with a snicker. “Throw him a bone.”
Danny sighed and took another sip of his drink before saying to Vlad, “Sorry, I didn’t realize you’d get this upset. To clarify, I’m still not actually a full ghost, even though I know it seems that way and I’ve kinda started to identify more as one. I’m still part human; it’s just not 50%. In both forms my blood is 90% ectoplasm, 10% human, which is why it shows as green. I’ve got a heartbeat and still need to eat human food and sleep. But otherwise everything else is ghost.”
Vlad took a moment to process that. “But… that’s so different from me… How is that possible?”
Danny shrugged. “Different accidents, different types of halfas. Maybe that’s why all those clones failed—you were going for 50/50 human/ghost, but I’m 10/90.”
“I see… And you are certain of this, Little Badger?”
“Yeah, Dad created a bunch of halfa mice the other day,” Danny explained. “Got all different percentages based on how extreme the death was.”
“How extreme… I know your portal accident didn’t result in the ecto-acne, but I assumed it was a similar type of explosive blast. Was it because of the size difference?”
Danny stared at Vlad blankly, surprised he really didn’t know. “Okay, first, you should know by now that it’s seriously rude to ask about a ghost’s death. Second, yeah, way different. There was no explosion. I was literally inside of the portal chamber when it opened. The amount of power it used caused a citywide blackout. I got zapped with all of that, plus the ectoplasm. Any higher a voltage and I probably would’ve ended up a full ghost, if I came back at all.”
“By gods,” Vlad whispered, eyes wide. “Daniel, I… I had no idea… Wait,” He said, suddenly snapping out of his daze. “Did you say Jack made halfa-mice?”
Danny sighed. “Yup. He also figured out I’m Phantom and is divorcing my mom, who still doesn’t know about me or the mice.”
Vlad frowned. “You must be pulling my leg.”
“Nope,” Danny said. “Guess we’ve got some catching up to do…”
“I’mma gonna head out now, Babypop,” Ember told Danny. “I’ll meet you after school tomorrow so we can head to that party!”
“I have therapy after school,” Danny reminded her. “Dad and Jazz are both going with me this time.”
“Seriously? Isn’t he a ghost therapist? What’s he gonna do for humans?”
“Professor Warren does human therapy too!” Danny reminded her. “If it’s ghost related. He wants them there to address the situation with Mom.”
“Word. Then I’ll walk you there and just hang at MU while I wait,” Ember said. “Their cafeteria has some ballin’ ecto-cuisine! Jazz can get me in, right?”
Danny nodded. “Yup! See you there!” He said, and Ember gave a small salute before flying off.
“Excuse me?” Vlad said. “Ecto-cuisine? Ghost therapy? What is this MU and why does it have ecto-cuisine and ghost therapy?”
“Miskatonic University,” Danny explained. “They opened a branch in Amity Park; Jazz is going there, and they’ve already offered me a spot, too. Professor Warren is actually a paranormal psychologist, we just call it ghost therapy as a joke since he specializes in ghost-related things. The ecto-cuisine is one of the many non-human cuisines offered in their cafeteria.”
“Miskatonic… University…” Vlad said slowly, with a look of incredulity.
Danny looked at Vlad blankly. Did he really not know? “Yeah, you know, Miskatonic University? Main campus is in Arkham, Massachusetts, but has campuses across the country? The lead research institute for the paranormal, even though its positive stance on ghosts and willingness to accept non-human students is uber controversial?”
“The only place I have ever heard of a ‘Miskatonic University’ is in the fictional works of H.P. Lovecraft and literature inspired by such,” Vlad revealed. “Same for Arkham, Massachusetts.”
Danny took a moment to process this news. “You really… have no idea…” he trailed off, then realized what must have happened. Vlad studied the paranormal, and if he didn’t know about MU, then… “There was no Miskatonic University in our original timeline, was there?”
Vlad slowly shook his head.
“Dammit, Clockwork!” Danny swore. “So much for ‘minimal changes’. Well, whatever; it existing is a good thing, I think.” At least it allowed him to safely… get… therapy… Hm. Would Clockwork…? Yes, yes he would; Clockwork would totally insert a whole formerly-fictional university into the cobbled-together timeline just so that Danny could get therapy.
Then again, wasn’t MU the reason the Disasteroid was diverted? So maybe it had been a necessary addition regardless—or, maybe it was in the original, but kept itself fully secret? Either way, Danny was surprised they hadn’t gotten involved in anything before that, but MU did like to keep to itself for the most part, despite—or maybe because of—their research.
“Huh. How come I’ve never seen it in the paper?” Vlad wondered. “I still get the Amity Park Packet daily, even though half the news seems to be about you and your shenanigans lately.”
“Oh, the Packet never reports on MU stuff, except I guess for them being the ones who destroyed the Disasteroid in this timeline. Most humans stay away from the place unless they’re studying there or associated with non-humans.”
“They defeated the Disasteroid?” Vlad asked curiously.
“Uh, yeah,” Danny said. “Did you never bother to look up how it was beaten if it wasn’t you or ghosts?”
“I assumed NASA or some other country’s equivalent managed something,” Vlad revealed.
“Nah; it was MU. They sicced some weird bugs from another dimension on it—or, sorry, ‘nanobots’, as the media was told.”
“I see… Now, beg your pardon, but I couldn’t help but notice that earlier you used the word non-human on multiple occasions,” Vlad said. “What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what it sounds like?”
“So, ghosts and halfas?”
“Among other things.”
“...What other things?” Vlad looked incredibly disturbed.
Danny shrugged. “No one’s really sure. If you see them, you don’t ask. Like, one of our band members, Lurker, we think is some sort of tentacled cryptid but you can never really look at them long enough to tell, and if we think about asking, the thought immediately goes away. It’s weird.”
“...Right. Well, I suppose, then, it is a relief I am no longer Mayor of that town…” Vlad said faintly. “Speaking of, how is the dear mayor handling such a place as MU being in Amity Park?”
Danny shrugged. “No clue. Like I said, humans generally tend to just ignore it. It’s like they’re intrinsically afraid of it or something.”
“I see… Wait, once again we’re forgetting about the halfa-mice and Maddie divorcing Jack,” Vlad said.
“Other way around; my dad is divorcing my mom,” Danny clarified, figuring there was no harm in Vlad knowing this. “He decided it, not her.” Maybe it was the still-raw emotions from the whole situation affecting his thoughts, but at this point, Danny didn’t really care what happened to his mom; if Vlad wanted her, he could have her.
Vlad looked plain confused. “Jack did? What? But I thought… Huh…” Vlad then frowned. “This time, you’re definitely joking. This isn’t funny, Daniel.”
“No, it’s not funny. It’s actually true.”
“Then why do you seem so okay with it?” Vlad demanded. “You’ll spend the rest of your teenage years being shuffled between them; surely you don’t want that.”
“That’s not a problem; my dad will get full custody,” Danny said confidently. “They’re probably not even gonna go to court for it.”
“Hmph. Now I know you’re joking; there is no way Maddie would simply give up her children without a fight.”
“Well the alternative needs to involve the courts, which could result in her going to jail at the worst, becoming a social pariah at best, so yes, she would.”
Vlad stared at Danny for a while, then concluded, “You’re actually serious. What could she have possibly done…?”
“She’s a violent sociopath,” Danny said, then sighed. “Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but I’ve gotten better at sensing emotions since I learned that my ghost parts actually need me to eat ectoplasm, and just the general ambient stuff wasn’t enough—anyway, yeah. She started getting physically violent with me, and now I can tell that despite what she claims afterwards she is completely unrepentant about it, as well as what Jazz and my therapist claim is verbal abuse. Combined with the neglect—which is on both my parents, we’re really lucky CPS was never called—it definitely wouldn’t be good to go to court.”
“So it’s a cover-up; maybe I have taught you something, after all,” Vlad said, the arrogance he used to hide other emotions popping up.
“It was my dad’s idea, maybe Jazz’s too. Not mine. Honestly I’d really prefer it if this doesn’t happen, but realistically, if she’s in the house, I’m just not safe. Took me a while to accept it, but that’s the situation.”
Vlad looked disturbed. “I see… James never mentioned…”
Danny shrugged. “I mean, I was only recently able to accept what was happening, wouldn’t be surprised if it hadn’t even occurred to him that our home life was really messed up, and it actually didn’t fully set in until earlier today, when I learned what the implications of feeding on joy are—which he might not even do since his ghost is half yours. And the escalation to physical violence is more recent so he wouldn’t know.”
“I see,” Vlad said curtly.
“Hey, out of curiosity,” Danny said, remembering something else he’d learned, “Do you know if James has the same lifespan as you, since he’s in a clone body now, or is he still immortal? Or did it average?”
Vlad frowned. “Immortal? Well, I suppose as a full ghost he was… But now he’s a halfa again… Hmm. I shall look into that. Off of that, though, while we’re sharing information, you are aware that you won’t age at the same rate as a human, yes? From my calculations, we will live four times as long.”
“No, you will,” Danny corrected. “Unfortunately I’m stuck as a teen forever.”
“What?” Vlad said, paling in shock. Danny tried not to show his amusement; it was probably cruel to be dropping so many bombshells on Vlad all at once, but it was kinda fun too. The man deserved it though; call it revenge for the hell he’d put Danny through.
“Yup. Lifespan scales exponentially with percentage ghost. By 90%, it’s at the upper limit. So, you get to have a 14-year-old nemesis for your entire life!”
Vlad took a moment to process that, then said, “Oh, butter biscuits… Wait, I thought you were 16?”
“Calendar year, sure. But my time stopped at 14. So, no growing or maturing beyond that, like any teenage ghost.”
“I see,” Vlad said, then paused. “I believe I will need some time to process that… Now, don’t think I haven’t noticed you’ve once again derailed the conversation from the halfa-mice.”
Danny sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell you about the halfa-mice…”
Notes:
Next up: Maddie unexpectedly returns, and catches Danny leaving the portal. Then, Dash's bullying escalates; Lancer walks in on the scene, and realizes that a typical human may not have survived the encounter, deciding the incident needs to be reported this time... Wait, the school nurse isn't human?!
Chapter 15: Sticks and stones won't break my bones, but words (and emotions) definitely hurt me.
Summary:
Maddie returns, and catches Danny leaving the Ghost Zone.
Valerie learns some more about ghosts.
Lancer catches Dash bullying Danny, and recognizes that if Danny had been a regular human things would've ended much differently, so convinces him to formally report it.
The school nurse isn't human, but she finally has some concrete answers as to why Danny's healing factor seems so inconsistent.
Notes:
I have added a tag and updated the summary! I realized I have Valerie exhibiting ghost abilities earlier on but then dropped it, but that really deserves a follow-through. So I'm adding a few scenes later on to address that. It likely will increase the final chapter count by 1.
Warnings for this chapter: This is the worst chapter bullying-wise. The 4th scene depicts severe bullying, including strangulation and other physical damage; 5th scene is the aftermath of that and includes descriptions of injuries. Also, the 1st scene depicts child abuse again, as well as some homophobia. There's a fluffier scene between the two to give you a break, but overall this is a very brutal chapter, so be prepared going in. Danny does not have a good time here!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Jack came home from a quick grocery store run to find Maddie’s car in the driveway, meaning she had returned. The return would be temporary, Jack was sure, especially as earlier that day, with the help of another one of her professors, Jazz had managed to get a restraining order to keep Maddie away from Danny—apparently, paranormal law was a thing, and the lawyer and judge both knowing about halfas certainly made things much easier. As soon as the judge heard that Danny was terrified that his mom would shoot him if she ever learned what he was, and that Jack was fairly confident that was an actual possibility, he signed the paper.
Jack entered the house and hurriedly tossed the box of fudge and milk into the fridge, placing the bag of non-perishables on the table, trying to think what to say to Maddie, who didn’t seem to be on this floor.
As Jack moved to put the rest of the groceries away, he heard voices in the basement. Jazz was currently in class, so that must mean…
Oh no.
Danny had been visiting the Ghost Zone, and still hadn’t returned when Jack left about an hour ago. So there was a good chance Maddie had caught him returning. Jack really hoped Danny had gone in human form; he tended to do that when he went there, but if he hadn’t…
Jack abandoned the groceries and hurried down to the lab—or rather, tried to.
Maddie’s sister, Alicia, stood in front of him, arms crossed. “Well, look who showed up,” she said coldly. “Gotta say, I’m surprised you had the guts to make the first move—I’ve been telling Maddie to divorce your ass since she married you.”
“I know, Alicia—look, can we talk later? I gotta find Danny before—”
Alicia narrowed her eyes. “Before what? She told me about your ridiculous accusations. If you think proper punishment is—”
“I don’t have time for this,” Jack said, pushing past the woman and hurrying down the lab stairs.
The first thing Jack witnessed was Maddie shoving Danny (thankfully in human form) into a lab table, the boy crying out in pain as his back arched slightly with the momentum before he fell to the ground; Jack empathetically winced. It was an attestment to Danny’s willpower that he wasn’t using his ghost powers to escape, meaning Maddie thankfully didn’t know his secret yet.
Danny scrambled to his feet. “What the fuck, mom? Yeah, I was in the Ghost Zone, so what? Like I said, they’re my friends!”
“They are NOT! You can’t be friends with ghosts! How many times do I have to say it? They’re tricking you!”
“Yes, I can! They’re not tricking me!” Danny shouted back, then grumbled sullengly, “You know what, I can’t deal with this, I’m going to my room,” he said, turning to leave.
“Oh no you don’t!” Maddie said, reaching forward and grabbing Danny by the hair, pulling him to the ground as he gave another shout and grabbed at her hand to try to dislodge it.
“ENOUGH!” Jack bellowed, rushing forward and pushing Maddie away from Danny before helping him up. “What is wrong with you?!” he demanded, glaring at her and pulling Danny behind him so he could defend his son.
Danny held the back of Jack’s t-shirt (a grey one with the Fentonworks logo on front; Jack had a bunch made for the whole family!) and pressed his face into him, like he used to do when he’d been a small child and was trying to hide from something.
“Wrong with ME?! What’s wrong with YOU?!” Maddie screeched back. “Danny was in the Ghost Zone again! Clearly the punishments aren’t working!”
“I gave Danny permission to go into the Ghost Zone to visit his friends if he wants,” Jack explained, trying to keep his voice calm.
“What?!” Maddie hissed? “Are you possessed?!”
“No, I am not,” Jack said, heart pounding. “I simply changed my hypotheses when the data changed, like any good scientist does. The data now supports that ghosts are just as capable of independent thought and feeling as humans, with a similar range of good and evil. So if Danny wants to be friends with the nicer ghosts, that’s okay with me.”
Jack felt Danny smile a little against him. Then he let out an aborted squeak as he was pulled away from Jack.
Jack swerved around, seeing that Alicia had pulled Danny away by the thick chain choker necklace he wore as a fashion statement. “What are you doing?!” Jack demanded.
“Kid’s 16; he shouldn’t be cowering behind his father like a five year old,” Alicia asserted. “You coddle him too much; no wonder he’s so scrawny and dressing like some goth wannabe!” she frowned, lifting Danny up easily, still holding his necklace. “Damn, feels like he weighs less than a bushel of rhubarb.”
“Let me down!” Danny begged, clutching the chain to keep his airway clear and kicking his feet slightly, toes barely touching the ground.
As Jack raced over, Alicia tossed Danny to the ground with a small twist, and he landed hard on his back, crying out in pain; he’d been hit in the back earlier, Jack recalled, so it was probably bruised.
Danny rolled over and scrambled away to hide behind a desk.
“Tch. Kid’s a scardy-cat wimp, figures,” Alicia said with an eye roll. “He may dress like he’s some sort of vampire, but has no bite.”
“Alicia…” Maddie said in a slight warning tone.
“What? You know it’s true. I’m proud of you, sis, for finally trying to toughen him up. The road he was heading down, well, that wasn’t gonna end well. Honestly you’re lucky he ain’t a junkie,” Alicia asserted. That last part Jack actually had to agree with—Jazz had told Jack her worries about Danny’s potential overuse of painkillers, which thankfully she’d noticed and brought to a stop before it became an issue.
Maddie narrowed her eyes at her sister. “I’m not trying to ‘toughen him up’, I’m trying to get him to understand that ghosts are bad and follow the rules of this family—which means no associating with ghosts!”
“No,” Jack said firmly. “That is not a rule of this family. Not anymore.”
“Yes, it is. And apparently you need to learn it, too! Have you been going behind my back and telling the children ghosts are good? Is this why they’re like they are?”
“No, actually—the kids helped me see that not all ghosts are bad!”
Alicia crossed her arms and chimed in, “Maddie, I’m telling you, this is why you should’ve divorced him ages ago. Man’s got no backbone; instead of having his kids obey him, he’s the one submitting to them. This is what happens with lack of discipline; should have never agreed to ease up on it in the first place.”
Maddie sighed. “Yes, I suppose you’re right, Alicia. I’ve been much too lax.”
“Damn right you’ve been! Hell, you’re lucky having ghost friends is the only messed up thing the kid’s done—with this kind of coddling, he could’ve ended up a fairy or some shit.”
Jack’s stomach flipped. Oh no. He really hoped Danny had changed invisible and flown away, because otherwise—
Maddie scoffed. “Alicia, you know that I’d never allow that,” she said, entirely serious. “If he ever claimed to be, well, that’s what those camps are for, aren’t they?”
“Those don’t always work, you know,” Alicia pointed out.
“It doesn’t matter if they do or don’t!” Jack practically growled. “Danny will never be sent to some place like that, I swear. If you ever tried—”
“Jack, Danny’s not even gay, it’s a hypothetical,” Maddie interjected, waving her hand in dismissal. “And hypothetically, Alicia, if the camp didn’t work, he’d be told to leave until he sorted himself out, like our second-cousin Andy did.”
Jack frowned; wasn’t Andy the younger cousin who had ‘run away’ for a few months, and then barely two weeks after returning was found dead in a lake when Maddie was in college, heavily suspected to be suicide? That sounded like the opposite of ‘sorted things out’.
“Damn right,” Alicia said approvingly, then frowned. “Now, where did that boy go, anyway?” she asked, moving towards the desk.
Jack stepped in front of her, arms out. “No. Get out, both of you,” he told the sisters, completely done with the entire situation. He would do all he could to prevent Danny from becoming this family’s next Cousin Andy. “Take your things and leave. I want you out of this house within the next half hour. Do not approach Danny again.”
“He’s my son!” Maddie said, voice low with quiet outrage. “You can’t stop me from seeing him!”
“Yes, actually, I can,” Jack said, pulling the crumpled restraining order out of his pocket and slamming it down on the desk. “That’s a restraining order. Yes, an actual judge signed it. You legally cannot go near Danny anymore.”
Maddie, looking livid, snatched up the paper, eyes moving back and forth as she quickly read it, mouth twisting into a deep scowl as she did so. “This is ridiculous,” she concluded. “I’ll be filing a counter case.”
“Go ahead; but for now, you need to stay away from him, or I will be calling the cops to enforce that order,” Jack told her in a serious tone.
Maddie scoffed, and without another word swerved on her heel and stormed out of the lab, Alicia following.
When he was sure the two were gone, Jack released the heavy tension in his muscles and let out a sigh. He hurried behind the desk to try to find Danny, who didn’t seem to be there at first but quiet sniffles gave him away. Danny turned back to visible and Jack gave his son a hand up, after which Danny practically crashed into him, wrapping his arms around his father and bursting into tears.
“It’ll be okay, everything will be okay,” Jack gently told Danny, rubbing his back in soothing circles, until Danny winced slightly and Jack remembered Danny’s back was likely very bruised. He moved his hands to Danny’s shoulders instead.
When the sobs began to die down, Danny asked wetly through smaller sniffles, almost too quietly for Jack to hear, “Y-you won’t s-send me to one of th-those c-camps, right?”
“Never,” Jack said immediately, hoping Danny could sense how serious he was about that. “I’d never do that, Danny. Like I said, I accept you just the way you are, always will.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Jack assured Danny. “You’re my son, first and foremost, always. There’s nothing you could do that would ever change that.”
Danny began crying again, although Jack had a feeling they were more of the happy sort this time.
They were also of the glowing sort, Jack realized with surprise, when the tears finally subsided and Danny stepped back. He glanced down at his own shirt and realized that, unless the ectoplasmic residue in the tears dried up when they did, he’d need to change shirts—and come up with a story for Maddie.
“What?” Danny asked. “Something wrong?”
Jack quickly shook his head. “Nope! I just, er, didn’t expect… glowing.” He gestured with his hand.
Danny looked down, then blushed. “Oh. Forgot about that.” He then shifted nervously. “Hey, um… About mom… there’s something that’s kinda been confusing me…”
“What is it?” Jack asked when Danny trailed off and looked into the distance.
“Um… You know how ghosts can sense emotion?” Danny’s gaze shifted to the ground. “Well, I keep getting really mixed ones from her that seem opposite. Like, one minute she gives loving vibes, and the next it’s hate. It’ll be worry and concern, and then flip to rage and a desire to cause pain. I just don’t… I don’t know how that’s possible. At first I thought maybe that love was maybe just for a past me she remembered in her mind, but now I’m pretty sure it’s really for me? Maybe? But so is the hate. How can she both love me and hate me? I don’t understand.”
Jack considered how to answer that, feeling conflicted himself, wondering now if Maddie felt that way about him as well. “People are… complicated,” he settled upon. “I don’t know how someone can hate their own child, especially when love is still there. I do trust that you’re reading it right; it’s just so difficult to fathom. A parent is supposed to love and support their child, not… Not do what she does.” Abuse, is what it was, but it still was difficult for Jack to voice the term.
“Yeah…” Danny quietly trailed off, then took a deep breath and said more chipperly, apparently opting to change the subject, “So, want to see the Halloween costume the Ghost Zone tailor made me?”
Today was Halloween, and in true Casper High fashion, almost everyone had shown up in costume, likely encouraged by the fact that their ever-spirited Vice Principal had decided that the school’s Spirit Club would be handing out candy during lunch to anyone in costume, with an actual contest for best costume that would yield a gift certificate to Nasty Burger.
Valerie tried not to roll her eyes as she arrived at school and walked down the hallway to her locker; there were way too many people dressed as various ghosts, most popular being Phantom, of course. Valerie herself had opted with a simple black cat-ear headband, black fingerless gloves, eyeliner whiskers, and a black clip-on tail.
Valerie decided to make a slight detour as she saw the trio of Sam, Tucker, and Danny at Danny’s locker; her relationship with the three was still a little rocky, but yesterday she’d seen them at lunch and it hadn’t gone too badly, or at least she thought it hadn’t. She knew Danny did want to reconcile, so maybe Valerie could put in an effort too, albeit just a small one to start.
Sam was wearing some sort of Bride-of-Frankenstein getup, Tucker was dressed in some sort of jumpsuit and helmet with circuitry drawn all over it that Valerie was pretty sure came from that video-game movie she’d forgotten the name of, and Danny…
“Hey, we match!” Danny said in greeting. He indeed was a black cat as well. Unlike Valerie, however, who was still in her usual preferred clothes, Danny had tried to complete the black cat look, supplementing the ears, tail, and whiskers with black skinny jeans and a black t-shirt with some band logo Valerie didn’t recognize over what appeared to be fishnet sleeves that had thumbholes. He even wore a spiky collar with matching wrist cuffs, which Valerie suspected might get confiscated by the end of the day given how sharp those spikes looked. Finishing the look were pure black skate shoes, which must have been brand new as Valerie had never seen Danny wear anything other than his red and white ones.
“So we do,” Valerie said. “Honestly, I expected you to dress as Phantom for the irony of it.”
“Eh, considered that, but there’s too many Phantoms around today.”
“Good point,” Valerie said, noting at least three in the hallway at that moment. “Well, the cat is cute too; you certainly put more effort into it than I did!”
“Meow,” Danny said, showing fangs and lifting his hand and curling it downwards like one of those lucky cat statues, showing off pointy black obviously-fake nails as his ears twitched and tail swished.
Wait.
“Uh, Danny? Are those ears real?” Valerie asked. They looked like it, and ghosts could sometimes change their appearances…
Danny reached up and felt them. “Damn, they’re moving again?” he muttered, more to himself, then scrambled to give whatever excuse he’d prepared. “Oh, they’re… animatronic! Yeah, Tucker designed them. They clip into the hair and use a neural-link to shift based on mood.”
Valerie frowned, not buying it. Were animatronic ears like that possible? Probably, especially with Manson’s money. And it was easy to get them to look realistic, especially if using real fur—although Valerie doubted Sam would allow that, unless it were spare fur from a groomer or something. No, something else was going on—especially because they actually looked functional, despite him still having human ears… no, at closer look, there definitely was no ear canal going into his skull, but they still looked attached, like a part of his body. “Are you lying to me again, Danny?” Valerie asked, crossing her arms.
Danny winced; good, she’d hit a sore spot. He sighed. “Okay, fine,” he said, then revealed, “They’re from a costume shop in the Ghozt Zone. I attuned them to me—that’s the term for absorbing them so I can manifest them or dismiss them at will—and now they’re somehow linked to me. Like, they literally feel like a part of me, complete with movement—the costume shop says it uses a ghost’s innate telekinetic abilities to move them, and I can if I concentrate, but they also keep moving in tune with my emotions or some BS like that. Thankfully I can still dismiss them if I want, but it’s really weird… Oh, and for some reason they make me feel more cat-like, too, I think?”
Tucker interjected with a small snicker, “Danny, you were always kinda cat-like.”
“Yeah, yesterday at lunch you were pretty much purring,” Sam said with a shit-eating grin.
Danny blushed and crossed his arms, muttering something towards the floor that sounded like, “Not my fault my core buzzes when feeding.” Valerie wasn’t sure she wanted to know exactly what that meant, and didn’t ask. Frankly, Danny talking so flippantly about ghost abilities applicable to him bothered her immensely.
“Huh. Well, maybe stick with the animatronic story,” Valerie said.
“Yeah, that’s the plan…”
“Wait a second, did you say you have telekinesis?” Valerie said, realizing the explanation had involved that. “I’ve never seen Phantom use that…” Wait, no, she did see it once, with the drink in the Ghost Zone while Danny was in human form, but never in battle.
Danny sighed at that, seeming a little frustrated at the question, and told her, “I legit moved an object, like, twice, without thinking, but haven’t really done it since. I’ve tried, and got some stuff to hover a little, but it’s definitely not usable in battle.”
“Oh my gosh!” came a scream, and Valerie winced at that voice. Ugh, Star, again. The girl also had cat ears, fingerless gloves, and tail albeit in a glittering gold color that Valerie suspected used real gold in the strands of fake fur to shimmer in the light, and the base outfit was a shimmery gold pleated skirt with matching boots, collar, wrist bands, and tube-top. She rushed over and literally cooed at Danny. “You are SO adorable! Where did you get those ears and tail? I am so jealous! Paulina and I got animatronic ears too but yours are so much more realistic!”
“And we couldn’t find tails that moved at all,” Paulina lamented, appearing next to Star as if on cue. Sure enough, she too had ears, fingerless gloves, and a tail, shimmery like Star’s but in what appeared to be platinum, along with the identical base outfit in the same color; Valerie had a feeling that by the end of the day both girls would be wearing their gym shirts.
Both sets of ears moved, though the movements were stilted, clearly mechanical in nature, and looking closely one could see they were clipped into the hair with a couple diodes attached underneath.
“Ah, well…” Danny repeated his explanation to the two girls—the real one.
Valerie glared angrily at the two girls, something in her chest seeming to pulse as she did so. She still could not fathom how those two had ended up not only learning Danny’s secret but, from the looks of it, were becoming friends with him, if they weren’t already. Valerie didn’t trust it though; those two could be tricky. Hopefully Danny remembered that and was being careful.
“So, we’ll see you at the party tonight, right?” Paulina said, fluttering her eyebrows flirtatiously. “One of the games we always play is spin the bottle; maybe I’ll get lucky and land on Phantom…’”
Valerie almost choked on air. So that was her angle? Paulina was still infatuated with Phantom? Valerie still couldn’t understand that; Paulina did realize that Phantom was a ghost, right? That he was dead? Or, mostly dead, whatever he called it.
Danny just chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Paulina, you know I don’t swing that way; the best Phantom will give you is a kiss on the cheek, if he’s feeling generous.”
Paulina dramatically pouted. “Fine. I guess I’ll have to just settle for that…”
Valerie wondered if Danny realized that he’d just unknowingly come out to her, and why the hell did Paulina know that?
“Or,” Tucker piped up, “You could—”
Paulina put her hand out and cut him off. “Don’t even bother to dream it, Foley. Remember, you’re only invited because of Phantom.”
“Aaaaand there’s the Paulina we all know and love,” Sam said sarcastically.
“Hmph. See ya later, nerds,” Paulina told them, in her typical snooty tone, then added more gently, “and Danny,” sending him a playful wink and blew him a kiss before she and Star walked off.
“Okay, what the hell was that about?” Valerie wondered. “And, Danny, did you just imply you’re…?” she trailed off, hoping he caught on; outright saying the word could be dangerous if the wrong person overheard.
“Oh,” Danny said with a small frown, noting her expression and realizing what she meant. “Oops. Guess that’s another secret I forgot to tell you; sorry, Val.” He did seem apologetic, especially if the slight backwards shift of his cat ears was any indication.
“So, you’re not dating Ember?” Valerie asked, slightly confused. They sure had acted like it the previous day, and the papers were having a field day gossiping about the pair.
“Nah, we’re just friends,” Danny told her. “She actually helped me come to terms with it; but humans kinda aren’t as cool with that as ghosts are so she’s helping me hide it by, well, you know.”
“I see…” Valerie trailed, still having a little trouble comprehending that a ghost could help someone in such a way. Also, “Wait, ghosts are cool with it?”
Danny nodded. “Generally, yeah. Some aren’t approving, but much fewer than here, and they know to keep it to themselves.”
“But… why?” Valerie couldn’t help but wonder. If ghosts remembered their lives, and their personalities carried over when they formed like Danny and his friends claimed, she would have thought things like that mirrored their own world, maybe was worse since many ghosts had died a long time ago, back when things were even worse for gay people.
Danny shrugged. “The ones born in the Ghost Zone don’t really care about human affairs and haven’t been socialized to think it’s weird, and the rate of human-based ghosts that are not straight is higher than here.” He must have noticed Valerie scrunch her brow in confusion because he then added, “think about how human-based ghosts form and look up the stats and you’ll realize why.”
“Oh,” Valerie quietly realized, not needing to look anything up. Ghosts were more likely to be formed in nexuses of high emotion, which is why they were usually tied to violent deaths or suicides. It wasn’t brain science to realize that one of the minority groups with the highest rates of becoming victims of both would end up becoming ghosts at a higher rate too.
Valerie noticed the crowds in the hallways beginning to thin; before she could say something the others realized this too and they silently headed together to their classroom. Valerie was grateful the heavy conversation had ended; she usually didn’t think much about where the ghosts she fought came from, and the new realizations Danny’s words created were tilting her perspective much more than she was comfortable with.
When they got to class, Kwan grinned and told Dash, “See? I told you Fenton was a cat, not a vampire! Now pay up!”
Dash grumbled and handed Kwan a twenty, and when he looked at Danny, Danny couldn’t resist saying “meow” and curling his hand like a paw again... Which only seemed to make Dash angry as Paulina cooed about it being cute.
Thankfully class started at that moment, preventing any immediate retaliation, although it left Valerie wondering if Kwan and Dash were referring only to the costume or if they truly did think Danny was part-cat.
Once Lancer’s last class before lunch filed out, he closed the door, sat down at his desk in the classroom, and took out a stack of papers to grade along with his packed lunch.
“Cool lunchbox,” someone said from in front of the desk. “Or, bag, I guess.”
Lancer jumped, not having realized anyone was there, then identified who it was. “The Thing on the Doorstep, Daniel! When did you get there?” he asked in surprise as he also internally preened at the fact that a student found something about him cool, even if it was just his Spider-Man themed soft lunch bag—hard lunch boxes were no longer even sold in Amity Park thanks to a certain very persistent ghost.
“Um. I walked in?” Daniel tried, looking mildly confused.
“Of course. I guess I just didn’t hear the door,” Lancer concluded.
Daniel looked towards the door with a peculiar expression. “Oh. Oops. I guess I forgot to open it…” he trailed off, eyes still on the door, looking slightly worried now. Lancer wondered just how often Daniel did ghostly things without realizing, and how so few people had noticed. Lancer supposed that the human brain was just good at making up explanations when things didn’t make sense; he recalled that psychology experiment where people would engage in conversations with strangers who would then get switched with someone new after pretend construction workers carried a large board between them, wherein the subjects usually did not notice the switch, even with drastic differences. The conclusion was that when encountered with something the brain feels is impossible, there is an innate preference to assume it was mistaken and adapt rather than consider that maybe things didn’t happen as expected.
“You’re forgetting to breathe, too,” Lancer gently reminded Daniel. “So, what’s on your mind?”
Daniel sat on top of the student desk directly in front of Lancer’s desk and took a deep breath. “I thought you might like an update.”
“Update?” Lancer questioned.
“Yeah. Since you’re kinda involved in my life now, I figured you might want to stay informed of things. So, here it goes: my parents are officially getting divorced.”
“I see,” Lancer said, both surprised and entirely unsurprised at the same time. “Do—”
Daniel didn’t let Lancer say much before he said in a rush, “Also as vice principal you need to know that there is a restraining order in place that says my mom can’t approach me so if she tries to contact the school about me or comes saying she wants to take me out of class or something she’s not allowed.”
Lancer blinked, taking a moment to process that. A restraining order against a parent? The school had dealt with such on occasion before, but still, it was certainly unexpected. “What happened?” Lancer asked quietly; it must have been really bad to warrant such. “Did she physically hurt you again?”
Daniel took a moment to answer, likely debating whether or not to tell the truth, then slowly nodded slightly and quietly confirmed, “Yeah. It, ah, at first it wasn’t that bad, but it’s been escalating. It’s one of the reasons for the divorce. Last night she came home after being at her sister’s for a few days, and both her and her sister were trying to hurt me when thankfully dad came in—he stopped them, and had the restraining order with him that he’d gotten earlier in the day, which got them to leave. My back is pretty banged up though, I got pushed into a table.”
Lancer’s heart sank at that. How could a parent hurt their own child in such a manner? He was glad that the restraining order was in place, at the very least. Lancer had to ask, “It is only your mother, correct? Your father is safe?”
Daniel nodded, and grinned. “Yeah, Dad’s safe.” He seemed happy to be able to say that—and Lancer realized that the boy probably was, as up until a few days prior he had been terrified that that might not be the case after his dad found out his secrets.
“And just to confirm, she still doesn’t know about…?”
Daniel shook his head. “No. She doesn’t know I’m a halfa and doesn’t know I’m… well, you know. And I don’t plan to tell her. Dad and Jazz both don’t think I should.”
Lancer nodded. “Perfectly understandable, and at this point, I too would advise against revealing it to her.” Never had he thought he’d be advising a student to not to tell their parents something, but here he was. Lancer trusted Jasmine’s judgement; if she was now advising against it despite advocating for it previously, then it must be bad.
Daniel then gasped, a puff of cold air coming out of his mouth. “Ghost sense,” he explained, and hopped off the desk, looking around.
There was a wailing noise and the room chilled as a ghost flew into the room; Daniel spun around to face him, preparing an ecto-blast in his hands, then paused and laughed. “Oh, it’s just you,” he said, then frowned. “Why are you upset?”
“There are no boxes here!” the Box Ghost cried, apparently highly distressed over that fact. “Why are there no boxes here?”
“Boxes have been banned at Casper High,” Lancer calmly told the ghost. “You won’t even find a pencil box here.”
“But why? Why would you ban the delight that is cubed containers?”
“Because of you,” Daniel said flatly, crossing his arms and glaring at the ghost. “If you want boxes, try the warehouse district next time.” He flicked his hand, and the ghost was sucked into a Fenton Thermos; Lancer had no idea where the boy had even pulled it from. “I really should look into how he keeps getting free so quickly,” Daniel mused, then turned back to Lancer. “I should get to lunch now; see you later!”
Before Lancer could reply, Daniel vanished into thin air. Lancer resisted sighing at the antic and turned back to his own lunch.
He grabbed the stack of papers, and paused. On top of the stack was a different paper than had been there before—Daniel’s paper. Lancer was certain that Daniel had not turned it in earlier that day. He chuckled to himself; well, at least the boy had got it to him eventually. Lancer decided that he too would pretend it had been there the entire time.
In gym class later the same day, Danny found himself running slightly later to the locker room than he would have liked, thanks to one of the teachers stopping Danny in the hallway to confiscate the spiked collar and cuffs, citing the potential to weaponize them, even though Danny had made sure they were less spiky this time. The spiky press-on nails had to go too. Danny found some humor in that, seeing as his teeth alone were probably more dangerous, let alone all his ghost powers.
There was still plenty of time to change, but Danny usually preferred to get there as early as possible so he could be changed and out of there before the football team members, specifically Dash, had a chance to grab him—their rule was ‘the last nerd out was the one who gets wailed on’. Tucker, unfortunately, had a different period gym class because he insisted on taking some computer elective instead of doing what Danny thought was the sensible thing by taking a study hall (his grades had been improving because he could actually work on homework during that!). Thankfully, Danny did have gym class with Sam, but she couldn’t be in this locker room to protect him, so the only solution was to get out fast.
Unfortunately, this time the other nerds managed to get out before Danny, thanks to him not only having a more complicated outfit than usual, but also because his back was still sore from the previous night—Danny had taken a couple painkillers earlier, but they had apparently worn off already. Thus, as he closed his locker after changing he found himself surrounded by Dash, Kwan, Dale, and a pale-skinned jock with orange spiky hair that Danny couldn’t recall the name of. Only four; that wasn’t so bad.
“Well, well,” Dash said with a grin, punching his fist into his hand. “Looks like the best punching bag is here today! I’ve been trying to catch you all day!”
Danny gulped. “You have?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. We need to talk.”
Danny sighed. “Let me guess: by ‘talk’ you mean ‘wail on me’?”
Dash grinned. “You catch on fast, Fen-turd!” Dash grabbed Danny by the collar of his shirt, lifted him slightly, and slammed him into the locker, holding him there.
Danny tried not to call out in pain, but he was still bruised from the previous night, even with advanced healing. It came out as a squeak.
Dash laughed. “What was that, huh? You a mouse now, not a cat?”
Danny wiggled slightly to try to move to a position not directly on the bruise. Unable to resist, he opened his mouth, bearing fangs, and hissed.
Dash blinked, leaning back slightly, before his resolve returned tenfold. “You think this is funny?!” he demanded. “Huh!?” He slammed Danny into the locker again.
“Okay, fine, it’s not!” Danny eked out, grabbing at his shirt collar, which was constricting his throat the way Dash had twisted his fist in it.
“Damn straight it’s not! You think you can intimidate me by that pathetic vampire-cat ruse? Well, it ain’t going to work!”
“Okay, okay, now let me go already!” Danny said as he squirmed, just wanting to get away from the horrible violent vibe Dash was giving off, even if that meant having to plead—after all, he couldn’t fight back too hard, not without risking his identity.
Dash grinned, clearly finding Danny’s struggling amusing. “Not happening, nerd. Now, tell me what the hell Paulina and Star were doing at your loser lunch table yesterday. They were there way too long to just be asking about the parties.”
“W-we were just talking, that’s all!” Danny told him.
“Tch. You’re trying to steal my girl, aren’t you?”
“She’s not your girl,” Danny said without thinking. The two hadn’t dated since last year; Dash must want to get back with her.
That had been the wrong thing to say, Danny concluded, as Dash tightened his hold and practically growled, “Oh, so you are, are you? What, think because you’re in that band now she’ll actually like you?”
Danny shook his head. “It’s not like that,” he said, or rather squeaked as Dash’s grip tightened even more; that was going to leave a bruise. He’d bet anything that Dash was keeping his hand there to prevent the chance of being bitten again. Danny felt himself starting to panic a little, Dash’s emotions seeming to land some sort of psychic blow in addition to the physical ones; could emotions cause ghosts actual pain?
Dash pulled back a little and slammed Danny into the locker again; Danny cried out harder, and this time Dash frowned.
“Put him down,” Kwan said urgently, and Dash, clearly not having expected that, obliged.
Kwan roughly turned Danny around and pulled up his shirt; all four football players gasped in surprise. Danny hadn’t seen it in the mirror, but it must be really bad with those reactions.
“What the fuck, Fenton?” Dash asked, sounding angrier. “Who else has been wailing on you?!”
“No one, I fell,” Danny lied, hurriedly twisting out of Kwan’s grip and pulling his shirt down.
Before Danny could turn around, Dash slammed him chest-first into the lockers, holding him in place with an arm pressing the span of Danny’s shoulders and his fist pressing on the lower back bruise; Danny couldn’t help but whimper slightly from the pain. It must really be worse than he’d realized.
“Bull. I know wailing when I see it,” Dash said forcefully. “Who. Else. Has. Been. Wailing. On. You?” With each word the pressure on Danny’s lower back increased, Dash twisting his fist to increase the pain. Danny whimpered again. He reminded himself that he had to ignore the pain, that it wasn’t as bad as it felt, that doing anything now might compromise his identity…
“Dash, hey, maybe you should ease up,” Kwan said, worry wafting off him. The other two simply watched, seeming entertained.
“Tch, getting soft, Kwan?” Dale asked with a sneer in his voice. “He’s just putting the nerd in his place.”
“Yeah, he’s gotta know who’s the boss,” the fourth jock said with a snicker.
Danny winced at the almost possessive feeling Dash was giving off, and couldn’t help but ask, “Why do you even care?”
Dash quickly flipped Danny around again, returning to the grip on his shirt collar, so that he could narrow his eyes and stare into Danny’s. “Because I’m your bully,” he claimed. “Me and anyone I allow to bully you. There can’t be another, that’s just not how the bullying code works!”
“There’s a code?” Danny asked, mind slightly spinning, having trouble parsing the emotions coming off of Dash. Obsession? It was very disconcerting. Should he be worried? Danny felt he should probably be worried; this was definitely not normal. Maybe he was possessed? No, Danny would sense that.
“Yeah, and it says you’re mine!” Dash told Danny, pulling him forward slightly and slamming him back into the locker, twisting his shirt once again.
“Dash, stop!” Kwan shouted, grabbing Dash’s arm to try to pull him off.
“Back off, Kwan,” Dash growled, shoving the boy aside; Kwan stumbled into a bench and fell backwards. The other two looked at Kwan in confusion, frustration, and a vibe that screamed, ‘what the hell is wrong with you?’, clearly not approving of him trying to stop Dash.
Dash turned back to Danny. “Tell me who hurt you,” he again demanded.
“No. I told you, I just fell,” Danny lied again, barely able to speak through the pressure on his throat, realizing he actually felt a little frightened now as his heart rate sped up. Should he try to escape? How could he do so without using his powers or injuring anyone? Could he even?
“Liar!” Dash shouted, pulling him back slightly so he could shove him against the lockers once again, hand twisting the shirt to actually constrict his throat as Dash’s fist also pressed into it as he lifted Danny slightly off the ground; Danny made a strangled noise of pain as he did so. Yeah, that was definitely going to leave an incredibly hard-to-explain bruise that would take a while to recover from if Dash applied any more pressure. Or maybe break his neck, which would be even more frustrating to recover from.
Dale laughed. “Aw, man, listen to him whimper!” The redheaded jock laughed too; Danny’s traitorous core tried to absorb some of the pleasure the two were deriving from this, although then seemed to balk in disgust as the taste was slightly rancid due to the joy being derived from cruelty.
Danny decided it was easier to simply stop breathing rather than attempt to take any more painful breaths. He closed his eyes as he tried to calm down before he ended up accidentally phasing through the lockers or something. Honestly, he was somewhat proud of himself for his current amount of self-control.
The physical injuries weren’t that bad, honestly; Danny had had worse. No, the worst part was the emotions in the air. Danny hadn’t known that human teenagers could be so awful; obviously he knew some were bad, but Dash was definitely emitting what Danny could only describe as murderous desire. Dale and the remaining jock were amused, reveling in the display of sadism from their friend. The only one giving off any hint of caring about Danny’s safety was Kwan, whose vibes were those of horror, fear, and panic—which yeah, meant he was hopefully going to help, or at least didn’t want this to be happening, but they were all negative emotions, and mixed with the others just made things that much worse. Danny really hated the ability to sense emotions at that moment.
Dash adjusted his grip again, this time placing both hands directly on Danny’s throat to hold him in place, making it so Danny wouldn’t be able to breathe at all even if he tried. “Tell me who else is wailing on you or I’ll hang you from the flagpole by one of those chains you wear!” Danny didn’t respond to the obvious death threat, mostly because he couldn’t; maybe if he kept his eyes closed and went limp so Dash thought he’d fainted, he would stop? Dash didn’t notice though, and instead knocked Danny against the lockers again and squeezed even harder as he demanded, “Well? Say something!”
“Hey, Dash, ease up!” Kwan suddenly yelled with urgency, the direction of his voice indicating he was back on his feet.
“What?” Dash asked sharply, and Danny, eyes still closed, imagined he was probably glaring at the boy as his hands constricted more; if it got any worse Danny would probably be unable to further resist phasing away, as it felt like real damage was being done now, not just bruising.
“Dude, I think he passed out,” Dale said worriedly. Danny tried not to grin as he recalled Tucker’s suggestion of a few weeks ago—this was the perfect opportunity for such a prank, and a possible way to get Dash, or at least the others there, to ease up in the future. Or just for Dash to immediately release him, that would be a nice start; the vibes Dash was giving off were still horrifying.
“Tch. Clearly he’s faking,” Dash said, squeezing harder, definitely crushing something inside now; Danny again resisted the strong temptation to phase out of the grip. He had to keep his identity secret.
“Uh, no, I don’t think he is,” the fourth jock said, now sounding worried too.
“Oh my god, he isn’t even breathing!” Kwan said frantically. “Dash, let go! Now!”
Dash immediately let go, letting Danny drop to the floor; Danny managed to resist wincing or anything, letting himself simply lie where he fell. Getting up after that would be too suspicious, plus Dash did deserve a lesson. Danny honestly wished he would actually pass out at this point; everything felt so painful, and the emotions in the room just kept getting more and more cloying.
“Don’t just drop him!” Kwan chided, and hurried over to Danny, rolling him onto his back and putting an ear to his chest. He let in a sharp breath and withdrew. “He really isn’t breathing. Crap. What do we do?!”
“Shit,” Dash hissed, anger being replaced by fear. “Shit, shit, shit! I can’t go down for murder, I’ll lose any chance at a football scholarship!”
“Wait, check his pulse, maybe he’s not dead,” Dale suggested.
“Oh, right,” Kwan said, and Danny felt a hand on his wrist, more gentle than expected. “Shit, he’s ice cold,” Kwan said worriedly.
“He always is, just check it already!” Dash commanded.
Kwan, clearly panicking, checked the pulse; Danny felt a little bad about that, as Kwan wasn’t nearly as bad as Dash; he only wanted to scare the bullies, and clearly Kwan wasn’t as much of one anymore as he used to be. He actually tended to keep Dash in check, usually. “Shit, I can’t, I can’t find—oh, good, there is—oh my god, that’s really slow,” Kwan said, to Danny’s slight surprise—he was pretty sure his pulse was faster than usual at the moment. “We seriously need to, like, call an ambulance!”
Danny almost decided to ‘wake up’ then, not wanting an ambulance to actually be called, but then there was the sound of a slap, and Dash growled, “Idiot! If we do that, we’ll get in trouble! Let’s just, like, leave him here, someone will find him.”
“Dude, he’s not breathing, and barely has a pulse, if we leave him here by the time someone finds him it’ll be too late,” Kwan pointed out, his vibe one of disbelief at what Dash was suggesting.
As Danny listened, incredulous at the fact that apparently Dash was perfectly okay with letting someone die, he heard the sound of the locker room door opening, though the others seemed oblivious to it.
“So? Better than getting in trouble,” the orange-haired kid said.
“I gotta agree with Dash and Ben,” Dale interjected. Ah, so that’s what the fourth jock’s name was. “We’ll get in way too much trouble. We can, like, move him to the hallway or something, he’ll be easier to find there.”
“No, someone might see us,” Dash said. “Besides, some of those hallways have cameras.”
Danny internally frowned. What the hell? Were these three seriously arguing about whether or not to essentially let someone die? What if it had been another nerd Dash did this with, and they actually died? Which, come to think of it, an actual human likely would have, with the amount Dash had continued to strangle him after ‘fainting’. Would they be debating where to hide the body?! They totally would be debating to hide the body.
“Oh, I know!” Dale said. “We can move him out the back door.” Scratch that; they were already discussing where to hide the body.
“Oh, yeah, then we can go tell someone that a ghost grabbed him!” Ben said.
“Are you seriously planning to just let him die?!” Kwan asked frantically. “Look, Dash, if you don’t want to admit to strangling Fenton, you can just claim we found him like this, but I’m going to get a teacher.”
“No need,” came a quiet and deeply serious voice as what sounded like a paper bag was put down on one of the benches. Danny internally sighed in relief as he recognized it as Mr. Lancer, who continued, “I’ll bring Daniel to the nurse. You four will wait by my office and pray that you aren’t expelled for this.” Despite Lancer’s cold tone, Danny could tell that Lancer wasn’t as worried as he’d be if he were dealing with anyone else lying on the ground, meaning he’d likely guessed Danny was faking. “In fact, you better pray that he’s still alive, because if he isn’t, all four of you will find yourselves in juvie—or actual jail, if they try you as an adult.”
The four bullies hurried out the door. Danny kept his eyes closed, sensing he was potentially in trouble, too.
“Daniel, I know you’re faking. Get up,” Lancer said, voice firm.
Danny opened his eyes and shakily sat up. He didn’t bother to try breathing any more than needed to speak; his throat hurt something fierce, though he could already tell his ectoplasm was working on healing it. “How much trouble am I in?” he asked in a quiet, slightly strained voice, seeing Lancer standing above him with his arms crossed and a stern look on his face.
Lancer relaxed his posture, then sighed too. He sat down on the bench and put a hand over his face. “You’re not in trouble,” he muttered. His vibe was now one of exasperation mixed with worry and relief, currently dominating the undertone of anger.
“I’m not?” Danny asked, confused. He’d pulled a prank that he now felt rather guilty for given the others would get in serious trouble. Or, not quite a prank, as it was also to keep his identity secret, but he did let it go longer than necessary.
“Although I am mildly disappointed at you for deciding to heavily traumatize fellow students by pretending to be dead, my anger is mostly directed at them. There’s nothing in the school rules saying you can’t stop breathing to give bullies a scare—however, there are actual laws, not just school rules, about strangling people. Was what Kwan said true, or was that an exaggeration?”
Danny winced, and instead of a verbal answer he bared his neck and pulled his shirt collar down slightly, knowing the bruise was already showing.
“The Chocolate War!” Lancer swore; evidently he hadn’t expected it to actually be that serious. “Dash did this?”
Danny nodded and explained, voice in a near-whisper due to the pain, “He held me up by my shirt collar, and twisted it pretty tight. I couldn’t talk, and it hurt to try to breathe, especially when he pressed his fist to my throat too, so I just stopped since I don’t really need to do that. Then he switched to both his hands and I realized it was tight enough that I couldn’t breathe even if I wanted to, like he was literally crushing it, so I figured maybe pretending to pass out would get him to stop? Then I realized that might also scare them enough to ease up on the bullying altogether…
“I was just going to do it for like ten seconds or so after they noticed, just enough to slightly scare them so maybe they won’t go so far with anyone in the future, but then they started arguing about if they should even get help or try to cover it up!” Danny coughed a little and put his hand near his throat; was there internal damage?
“Daniel? Are you okay?” Mr. Lancer asked, clearly worried now.
Danny nodded his head. “Y-yeah, I’ll be fine. It just h-hurts. But it’s already feeling better, I can talk, don’t worry.” He put his hand over his mouth and coughed again, this time something sticky coming up; he withdrew his hand to find some drops of ectoplasm on it. Yup; definitely internal damage.
“Daniel? Is that ectoplasm?” Lancer asked worriedly.
Danny nodded. “I’ll be fine though,” he croaked out, wiping it on his jeans.
“Are you certain?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah. It looks w-worse than it is, I swear. W-what do you want to know?”
Lancer took a moment to think, clearly debating whether to believe Danny or not, then decided to trust Danny’s assessment that he was okay enough to continue the conversation. “I assume, from the small amount I heard, Kwan was the one arguing to get help while the other three wanted to cover it up?”
Danny nodded, then explained, “Dash thought I was actually dead at first, he said he can’t go down for murder because he’ll lose his chance at football scholarships. Thankfully Kwan thought to check for a pulse, honestly thought for a moment Dash was contemplating where to bury my body,” Danny joked. Lancer did not look amused.
Danny continued, “Seriously though, can you go easy on Kwan? He actually tried to stop Dash! And he’s the one who noticed I’d stopped breathing and got Dash to put me down, Dash had just kept yelling at me not even realizing. And Dale and Ben didn’t do much other than watch and laugh, and then scold Kwan for trying to help me, it was pretty much all Dash with the physical stuff.”
“Yes, well, I’ll have to do a more thorough investigation as per school policy, but I think it’s safe to say that at the bare minimum those three will be kicked off the football team, star players or not, and suspension as well.”
“But Kwan won’t get punished?” Danny asked hopefully, voice a little strained; it still hurt to talk.
Lancer frowned. “If it’s true that he tried to stop it, I suppose I could just give him detention for initially participating… Daniel, you do realize that if you were fully human, you actually might be dead or in critical condition right now?”
Danny winced. “Uh. The thought did cross my mind,” he admitted, putting his hand to his clavicle again. “Pretty sure there’s some internal damage.” Then, he frowned. “You know, it’s a little ridiculous that it took attempted manslaughter for Dash to actually get in trouble.”
Guilt wafted off of Lancer. “Yes, I suppose it is. I take responsibility; something should have been done sooner, but I was afraid of repercussions from the school board.”
“Oh. Dash’s mom is on that, isn’t she?” Danny recalled.
Lancer nodded. “Correct. However, she will not be able to argue against this; the evidence is too damning.” Lancer stood up, then held out a hand to help Danny up. “Let’s head to the nurse, so your injuries can be documented.”
“Documented?” Danny asked warily, as he accepted the hand, even though he mostly floated into a standing position; his back still painfully hurt too, not just his throat.
“Yes; it is necessary so we have evidence,” Lancer told him. “It just needs to be the bruises and throat damage looked at, we don’t need to do any tests or vitals or anything.”
Danny sighed. “Yeah, okay,” he said, sensing he couldn’t get out of it. He took a couple steps, stumbling slightly and wincing; the wounds were more painful than expected, even though he knew they weren’t relatively bad.
“Daniel?” Lancer asked with worry, catching him by the upper arm before he could actually fall, letting go when he was sure Danny was stable. “Are you injured elsewhere?”
Danny decided to float instead of stand. He looked away from Lancer and admitted, “Yeah, he hit me in the back a bunch too, slammed me against the lockers and stuff… I’m just gonna float since it hurts a little to walk right now…”
Lancer put a hand on Danny’s shoulder, likely an attempt to comfort combined with making sure Danny didn’t accidentally float too high, and the two left the locker room, Danny noting that the now-abandoned paper bag contained, again, spirit supplies.
Once they arrived at the Nurse’s office, Lancer sat Daniel down on the bed, noting the boy shaking slightly (from the back pain?), and explained to the school’s nurse, a younger redhead woman with freckles named Hazel West, what the situation was.
This would be the sixth nurse the school had in only three years. Nurse West had been hired fresh from getting her degree in paranormal physiology at MU; Lancer had hoped that her degree having that supernatural component meant she’d be less likely to bail due to a haunted school, although now it was actually relevant, if Daniel were willing to reveal his secret to her. This was in addition to about seven other degrees in various other subjects, all related to medicine and nursing, plus every related nursing certification possible; Lancer wouldn’t have believed it given how young she looked, but calling the schools she’d received them from confirmed they were all impossibly legitimate (Lancer had vowed to do his due diligence when it came to hiring after the disastrous Spectra fiasco).
Lancer then noticed Daniel was giving the nurse a strange look.
“Daniel? Is something the matter?” Lancer asked gently.
“What are you?” Daniel asked the nurse.
“Excuse me?” Nurse West said, blinking in confusion and smiling just slightly wider than a human probably should… Oh. Oh no. Another Spectra situation? Lancer thought he’d done his research properly this time!
“Well, you’re clearly not human, but you’re not a ghost either,” Daniel told her.
The nurse frowned. “How do you know that?” she asked with suspicion, and Lancer decided that maybe the school needed a better vetting process as clearly they had not improved it after the Spectra incident.
Daniel shrugged. “Can’t sense your emotions and you aren’t casting a shadow…” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Pretty sure you’re faking breathing too, and pretty sure I caught a glimpse of fangs.”
Lancer glanced behind the woman; sure enough, no shadow. What inhuman creatures had no shadows? Lancer couldn’t think of any; even ghosts usually cast them when in a visible solid form, unless emitting a stronger-than-usual glow, which the nurse was not doing.
Nurse West considered Daniel for a moment. “I’ll share what I am if you share what you are,” she decided.
Daniel froze. “How do—”
“You’re also faking breathing, and you have fangs too. Plus, humans generally can’t sense emotions,” the nurse pointed out. She scrunched her nose. “And your blood smells like battery acid mixed with citrus.”
Daniel considered that for a moment. “Fine. Human-ghost hybrid. You?”
“Vampire,” Nurse West said simply, smiling slightly, showing fangs. Lancer took only a brief moment to process that and came to the conclusion that if ghosts and those strange tentacled things from MU were real, why not vampires too; he’d take it in stride.
Daniel looked surprised too. “Oh.” Then, he frowned. “Wait. I thought vampires only had no reflection?”
“Not in older stories, like the original Dracula,” Lancer realized. “Newer stories ignore the lack of shadow, focusing on the mirror aspect, but older ones have light not affect them, which includes not just mirrors but also a lack of shadow.”
“Bingo!” Nurse West said, then sighed. “Now for the disclaimer, I guess? I promise you, I’m not going to attack anyone. I’ve been only drinking animal blood for over a century now, and have zero intent to drink human blood. If you want to fire me I understand, but please give me a chance?”
Lancer nodded. That certainly explained how she had so many degrees. “Yes, if I’ve learned anything in the past few years since ghosts began appearing in this town, it’s that everyone deserves a chance, even non-human creatures. Besides, this probably works out better, given Daniel’s circumstances—perhaps now he’ll be less reluctant to actually go to the nurse when he needs help. Right, Daniel?”
Daniel frowned. “I guess,” he muttered halfheartedly, and Lancer had a feeling that even a supernatural nurse who knew his secret wasn’t likely to change his reluctance to get medical help from an adult when needed.
“Thank you,” Nurse West said with clear relief. “And yes, you are correct—I have multiple degrees in the paranormal healthcare field, so am likely better equipped to handle a part-ghost patient than your average school nurse. Now, Daniel, let’s see what’s going on. Please take off your shirt.”
Daniel shifted nervously. “Do I have to?” he asked.
“We need to see the bruise,” Lancer told him gently, wondering if he was hiding something more. “Is there something else?”
Daniel was quiet; Lancer gave him a moment. “My back is worse than I’ve been admitting,” Daniel eventually revealed, and then it all came spilling out. “It was already bruised, from what I told you about last night. Apparently, it’s much worse than I thought. When Dash pushed me into the lockers, I accidentally shouted in pain, which I don’t usually do, so he got suspicious and took a look, and they all actually gasped. It’s… actually part of why he started beating me up worse I guess? He dug his fist into the bruise. He apparently wasn’t happy someone else was beating me up. Said he was my bully, that I couldn’t have another. It was actually really creepy, like the vibe he was giving off was possessive or obsessive or something, it’s not something I’ve felt a human give off before, not to that degree.” Danny’s voice shook slightly.
“I see,” Lancer said, a little unsure how to approach that. “That is… very concerning. You are certain that he’s—”
“He’s not possessed,” Danny said quickly, guessing partially correctly what Lancer was going to ask. “Or, anything supernatural, everything about him seems human. It was… scary though. Genuinely scary, even to me, even though I knew I could technically escape and was only enduring it to keep my secret. A really dangerous vibe, like I really think he needs counseling or something because if that’s left alone to grow…”
“Good to know,” Lancer said faintly; he was disturbed at this information, to say the least. He’d known Dash was a bully, and thought he was much less blind to it this past year than he’d admittedly been before, even given Dash detention a few times despite the school board’s protests (thank goodness for tenure!), but could he have been even more blind to the reality of it than he’d thought? This… would not look good on the school, certainly. The press would have a field day with the star quarterback ending up in juvie for attempted manslaughter. But not just the physical, but also the psychological damage to Daniel couldn’t be undone—despite his ghostly powers, Daniel seemed truly afraid. If Daniel were human, he’d be in the hospital, or likely worse, not the nurse’s office. They needed to file formal charges.
“Oh, right, my shirt,” Daniel realized, and… phased it off of himself. Right, ghost…
Nurse West managed to stay calm, but Lancer couldn’t help but gasp at the extent of the bruises.
Daniel winced. “That bad, huh?” He looked down at himself, then frowned. “Oh, the henna is fading; I’ll need to ask Jazz to redo it.”
“Ah, an anti-summoning charm, huh?” Nurse West said with a small chuckle. “Almost all the demons at MU have those too. I’d recommend a more permanent tattoo though.”
Demons existed too? The vampire school nurse was recommending a student get a tattoo? Lancer’s life got more unbelievable by the minute!
“Yeah, I plan to bring it up with my dad soon, he’ll need to sign for it since I’m under 18,” Daniel explained. “The last thing I need is to get summoned by another murder cult just because I forgot to redraw it.”
“Excuse me, did you say murder cult?” Lancer asked in slight disbelief.
“Yup. When you’re a notorious ghost, people want to summon you,” Danny said matter-of-factly, then told the story in full. “The first few were the weaker summons that can easily be ignored, just kids messing around with ouija boards and chicken bones during sleepovers, which was actually kinda fun; but then I got forcefully summoned by this cult…” Danny shivered slightly. “That kind of involuntary summons requires blood sacrifice, and there was a lot of blood. Like, much more than I think is normally needed to forcefully summon someone. And I’m pretty sure they slaughtered live humans for it, not animals. Anyway, then they had the gall to ask me to assassinate the Pope! Like, what? They tried some sort of spell or something to try to force me to do it, but I think they messed up because the smoke it created had no effect on me but killed all of them. And then I had to fly back here all the way from Utah!”
“That’s… quite the story,” Lancer said faintly. And one he remembered from the news, as well; the official story was that a cult of about 200 people had all been found dead in some sort of ritual murder-suicide, some via cut throats and others via an unknown substance that the FBI was calling a variation of mustard gas. Lancer preferred the media’s story compared to what he now knew was the true story, and his heart broke knowing his student had witnessed such a thing. Lancer was truly glad that the boy was now in therapy.
“Yes, it is,” Nurse West said, not unkindly. “Now, not to seem insensitive, but if you don’t mind, I really do need to take a look at those injuries now… Here, before the examination, let me get you something for the pain,” she told Daniel, moving to a nearby medicine cabinet while looking at the boy’s chart; the charts were updated by students’ parents at the start of every year thus should be accurate. “No prescriptions, makes sense if he hasn’t been to the doctor in years,” she muttered to herself, then asked more loudly, “just to confirm, you haven’t taken any over-the-counter drugs today, have you?”
Daniel shook his head and said, “Nope.”
“Alright, then, let’s give you—”
“Wait,” Lancer cut the nurse off, recalling something. “What about prescriptions?” Jasmine had been worried about her brother’s use of a prescription painkiller that hadn’t been prescribed to him, and it was possible he was still using it.
Daniel briefly froze, confirming Lancer’s suspicion, then chuckled nervously. “What do you mean? She just said I’m not prescribed anything…”
Lancer gave Daniel a Look. “You know very well what I mean.”
Daniel wilted. “Okay, fine. I took two of the strong painkillers when I woke up this morning, for my back. But I’m pretty sure it’s worn off by now!”
Nurse West sighed. “Danny, medical personnel ask what drugs you’re taking in order to avoid giving you anything that might interact. Hiding that can be dangerous. Before I give you anything, I need you to disclose all drugs you’re on, even illegally obtained ones—even if you think it’s worn off, since sometimes they linger in your system even after the effects are done. What did you take?”
“Um…”
“Daniel,” Lancer said firmly.
“I don’t know the name, okay!” Daniel proclaimed.
“Perks of Being a Wallflower, Daniel!” Lancer declared. “You’ve been taking something without knowing what it is?”
Daniel shrugged. “It works, and that’s what matters.”
“Well, do you have it on you?” Nurse West gently asked.
“Um. Not on me, no,” Daniel said cagily; Lancer had a feeling that meant it was in his locker, likely the gym one if it was usually kept in his backpack as Lancer suspected.
“Well, then, do you know anything about it that might clue us in?” Nurse West asked. “Maybe some letters in the name?”
Daniel thought for a moment, then answered, “Something with an ‘h-y’ in the front. Ends in an ‘e’, maybe ‘n-e’? I think there were a bunch of ‘o’s in there too.”
“Hydrocodone?” Nurse West suggested.
“Yeah, that!” Daniel said, and Lancer made a note to check Daniel’s locker and confiscate the drug—the last thing they needed was the Town Hero getting addicted to opioids! He’d also need to investigate where exactly Daniel got those, because if someone was selling them to students, or a student was selling them (it happened every few years), that had to be stopped.
Nurse West sighed. “Danny, that’s highly addictive. How frequently do you take it?”
Daniel shrugged. “Only when I need it,” he said cagily. “I can stop when I want,” he added, and wasn’t that a concerning statement?
Nurse West frowned, apparently thinking the same. “Right, we’ll get back to this later,” she decided, returning to Danny with a small tray with a pill and small paper cup of water. “First, I need to check you over; here, this one won’t interact with either your ectoplasm or opioids,” she stressed, and at Daniel’s shocked expression told him, “Yes, that’s what you took earlier. Next time, do your research.”
“Uh, right, I will,” Daniel said as he shook himself out of the shock. “Thanks,” he said, grabbing the pill and swallowing it dry before remembering he should drink the water too and proceeding to do so—proof of how often he took those pills, Lancer realized.
As the nurse returned the tray to a side table, the door opened, and Lancer turned to see Ishiyama, who gasped upon seeing Daniel’s state.
“Principal Ishiyama, what brings you here?” Lancer asked.
“I saw the four boys waiting outside your office. The other boys were unwilling to admit why they were there, but Kwan immediately admitted that Fenton was hurt, and you brought him here and told them to wait there. Judging by the looks his friends gave him, I had a gut feeling that things may be worse than he wanted to say, which it appears it was—are those strangulation marks?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Lancer said. “Dash Baxter strangled Daniel to the point he fell unconscious. I walked into the locker room to find that Daniel was not breathing while Dash, Kwan, Benjamin, and Dale were arguing over whether to get help or leave him. Thankfully Daniel began breathing again on his own, but as you can see, it was very close to becoming manslaughter.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Danny muttered, and Lancer knew that if Ishiyama weren’t there he’d be again trying to use his ghost aspect as the reason for why it was okay that Dash did that to him—that wasn’t the point, though. The way Lancer saw it, it was only luck that caused this incident to happen to a human-ghost hybrid instead of a full-human—after all, Dash bullied more students than just Daniel.
Lancer sighed. “Please don’t downplay this, Daniel.”
“Sorry. It’s just… I’m okay, it’s just bruises, so I don’t really see what the big deal is?”
“Just bruises? You were struggling to speak earlier!”
“Okay, but now it’s just bruises,” Daniel stressed—meaning, his healing factor had kicked in, Lancer realized. He wondered how exactly that worked, as it appeared that not all injuries healed at the same rate; internal damage shouldn’t heal so much faster than a bruise, especially that to a throat. Could it have an emotional factor? Lancer had been reading more about ghosts lately, so he could understand his student more, and one report from MU said that, due to ghosts being emotional beings, injuries induced via traumatic events could linger, and bruises from this incident and the night before’s incident certainly qualified as such, although anything too damaging would still heal extremely quickly for the ghost’s safety. The internal healing faster than the bruise aligned with that report.
Lancer frowned. “And if it were not you, rather Mikey, Lester, Nathan, or one of the other students Dash regularly bullies?”
“Well, it wasn’t.”
“And if it were?” Lancer pressed.
“...They’d probably be dead,” Daniel grumbled. “But, it was me, not them! So it’s different. I can survive.”
Ishiyama pursed her lips. “I feel like I am missing something here. Anyone care to fill me in?”
Lancer, Nurse West, and Daniel all looked between each other for a moment. Lancer did feel Ishiyama should know, and she was a big Phantom supporter so telling her should be safe, but it wasn’t his story to tell.
Daniel sighed in resignation. “How well can you keep a secret?” he asked the principal, staring intently at her, and apparently forgetting to breathe again.
“That depends on the secret,” Ishiyama said honestly. “As principal, I am a mandatory reporter if I feel you are in danger, or are a danger to someone.”
“If it helps,” Lancer chimed in, “I believe Principal Ishiyama would make the same decisions I did. You can trust her.”
Nurse West muttered to Daniel, “You should breathe.”
Daniel gave a start. “Oh, right,” he said, starting to breathe again. “Sorry, dunno why I keep forgetting to breathe so often lately,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck as he did when he was embarrassed.
“Let me guess; that is part of your big secret?” Ishiyama asked, looking unamused. Despite Nurse West’s efforts to keep it quiet, the fact that Daniel had not whispered his part of the conversation belied that effort.
“Uh, yeah,” Daniel said awkwardly, closing his eyes. “Okay. So, don’t freak out, but, well… I… I’m not exactly…” He opened his eyes, which were now a glowing ectoplasmic green, as he finished, “fully human.”
Daniel then shifted into his Phantom form—without the bright rings of light this time, in a blink-and-you’d-miss-it moment. Lancer resisted chuckling at the dramatics of it.
Ishiyama took a step back in surprise. “Holy—” she cut herself off and took a deep breath, quickly regaining her composure. “Okay. Tell me everything.”
Daniel shifted back to human, but before he could tell the story Nurse West interrupted. “Before that, I need to document the injuries before they start to heal too much; some can be done while you talk, but I really need to check the throat first, as it’ll heal faster.”
“What do you mean?” Daniel asked as the nurse instructed him to open his mouth so she could examine it with a small scope.
“Your healing factor focuses on the most dire wounds that can interrupt your ability to function first, and if you could hardly speak earlier, there might be—a, yep, internal damage, though it’s mostly already healed as suspected,” the nurse determined, removing the scope.
“Wait, it works that way?” Daniel asked, seeming confused, as the nurse wrote down her observations on a clipboard. “Huh. I didn’t realize that, but it makes sense now that I think about it…”
“Ah, so you’re a recent liminal,” Nurse West noted, using what Lancer recalled was the more technical term for it. “Yes, ghost healing factors, including that of liminals, prioritize function-related wounds; as using your vocal chords is something your psyche considers a necessity for you, your healing factor assigned that area priority. Another thing that affects the healing factor is one’s emotions,” she explained, just as Lancer had suspected was happening. “These bruises are from a traumatic highly-emotional event, thus will likely take longer to heal, perhaps even days, compared to the same degree of bruises if received during, say, a more playful fist fight, which might heal fully in ten minutes.”
Lancer wasn’t sure ‘playful’ and ‘fist fight’ went together, but ghosts allegedly had some sort of strange fighting culture, where it was used to socialize, so he supposed it made sense in that context.
“Speaking of emotions,” Nurse West continued, “I’m sure the incident was full of them. Given your state upon entering here, I take it they weren’t the kinds of emotions you feed on?”
Daniel shook his head. “I feed on joy, specifically the more lighthearted kind—at least, I’ve been describing it that way? I dunno how to explain the different flavors in English, but Clockwork’s been trying to teach me the ancient ghost language, which does have a word for it, which is—” the boy made a strange trilling noise that seemed to come from his chest area.
Nurse West seemed to understand what Daniel was saying, and for some reason looked slightly sad at that. “Ah, yes, you’re a child ghost, that makes sense,” she muttered, making a note on a separate clipboard—a second chart for Daniel, Lancer realized, perhaps for his more ghostly aspects. She said more loudly to Daniel, “So, I take it that there wasn’t much of that going on, in comparison to other emotions?”
Daniel shook his head. “The only joy there was some sort of twisted kind derived by causing pain, or in Ben and Dale’s case watching pain be caused. It tasted really bitter. From Dash it was mostly anger and rage and a really strong desire to cause pain, like ridiculously strong, near the end I’m pretty sure it literally was murderous intent, and I swear that’s not an exaggeration. It was terrifying, I honestly never thought that a human could have that level of it. Kwan’s emotions weren't helping either; he tried to stop Dash, but he was afraid and panicked and horrified, which proves he didn’t want to participate in how far it went, but those feelings were still super overwhelming. Like, all combined, it felt like I might faint just from the intensity of all those negative emotions.”
Lancer found himself surprised at that; he knew ghosts were emotional beings, but he had no idea Daniel could sense emotions to that degree, nor had he realized that the boy could actually feed on them or be so negatively affected by them. He decided to do some research into it; MU likely had some reports he could look at.
Nurse West sighed, making some notes. “Well, that’s good and bad news, I suppose; bad in that it means the bruises likely will take a while to heal, and may be more painful than usual, given the intensity of negative emotions involved in their creation, but the silver lining is that it means they’ll linger enough that they won’t disappear before the police can see them.”
“Police?” Daniel squeaked, looking like a deer in the headlights.
Lancer sighed. “Yes, police. Once again, if you were human, you would at the very least be in the hospital, if not the morgue. Given the severity of Dash’s actions, for the safety of all the students he bullies, he needs to face consequences; formal charges are the only option.” Lancer hoped Daniel’s penchant for protecting people would encourage him to willingly do so instead of being forced; manipulative, yes, but Daniel needed to understand how dire this was.
Daniel sighed. “Fine. I guess my dad has to be called, too?”
Lancer nodded. “He is your legal guardian, and you are a minor.”
“Forever a minor,” Daniel muttered with some bitterness; right, despite the calendar age, technically he was the same age mentally as when he… died. Lancer wondered how Daniel’s father would eventually approach that.
Ishiyama cleared her throat. “While we wait for them, I would like that explanation for how one of our students is apparently a ghost who moonlights as a superhero.”
Daniel sighed. “Okay, firstly, although I do tend to refer to myself as a ghost nowadays, I’m technically not a full ghost, I’m a human-ghost hybrid known formally as a liminal, colloquially as a halfa. In my case, the hybridization is 90% ghost, 10% human. As to what happened…”
Surprisingly, Daniel did tell the entire story. Lancer had heard it before, but it still caused him heartbreak to hear it all. Ishiyama made the same decisions Lancer had in regards to keeping the secret and withholding reporting, and agreed to stick to the preplanned story about the assault—which was largely the same as what happened, just leaving out that the lack of breathing was technically a non-issue and that the passing out was faked. She was a little wary about Daniel’s home life, eyeing the bruise on his back, but seemed mollified when Daniel reminded her about the restraining order already in place and about his parents’ pending divorce.
Not long after Daniel finished the story about his ghostliness—along with some additional explanations for certain events—Jack arrived, then a minute later so did the officers, who took their statements as well as photos of the bruises while Lancer tried to console Jack, quietly reminding him that it wasn’t technically as bad as it looked.
Lancer and Nurse West also pulled Jack aside to alert him in confidence to Daniel’s illegal use of an opioid, which was never a fun conversation to have with a parent. Nurse West suggested Daniel see one of the doctors at MU who specialized in ghosts to see about getting a different pain medicine that was more tailored to a liminal, as apparently Daniel’s unique biology metabolized the hydrocodone faster than a human did which had likely been causing him to take it more frequently—honestly, they were very lucky that he was not yet addicted to it… Well, at least according to Daniel he wasn’t. Lancer supposed they’d find out soon if that were true.
The interview finished shortly after the bell rang to start the final period, upon which Jack took Daniel home, carrying him in his arms as the poor sleep-deprived kid looked like he was about to actually pass out after the whole ordeal and all the talking (not unexpected, given the emotional strain and how ghosts could be physically affected by such), and Lancer and Ishiyama made their way back to the administrative wing of the building with the officers.
The next step was to figure out the three kids’ punishments. Daniel was very insistent that Kwan had tried to stop Dash and shouldn’t be punished too harshly, and from what Lancer had overheard Kwan was trying to do the right thing, but he wanted to hear what the boy said first. If he seemed repetent, the week of detention Daniel suggested had seemed reasonable. Dale and Benjamin seemed more complicit from what Lancer had overheard and Daniel said, but still clearly weren’t the ones most at fault, only having watched and then supported Dash in trying to cover it up; two weeks suspension and removal from the football team seemed reasonable. Dash, however…
Well, there was a reason the two officers were going with them.
Dash’s father was a criminal defense lawyer with a very solid success rate, so although Lancer hoped for juvie for attempted manslaughter there was a good chance a deal would be quickly reached to reduce that, but the officers definitely agreed that they would be arresting the boy and the charges would be filed. Even if it ultimately amounted to nothing but a slap on the wrist, hopefully the scare at least would halt the bullying, for Dash and any other bullies at the school once they got wind of it. As to Dash’s school punishment, removal from the football team was a given, but for expulsion there had to be a discussion at the school board meeting; Dash would be suspended pending that. Given his mother was on the school board that may not work out, but Lancer could at least hope it did; he did not want to teach such a violent student. Hopefully a psychologist was on the table too.
On the way, Ishiyama sighed. “I can’t believe that all this time, Danny Fenton was…” she trailed off. Lancer understood what she meant; it was harrowing to realize that one of your students was secretly a ghost, or rather part-ghost, let alone the local superhero! She continued, “How long have you known?”
“Just a couple weeks,” Lancer admitted. Had it really only been that little time? “I started to realize at the concert, but didn’t want to believe it at first. But then I noticed more and more clues… So I mentioned my suspicion to his sister, and she admitted it. Later I talked to him; he was terrified of anyone else finding out, especially his parents—thankfully his dad finding out last weekend went relatively well, but his mom is still unaware, at least as of this morning when he informed me of the restraining order.”
Ishiyama sighed again. “He really should have told one of us sooner… we’ve been inadvertently making school so much tougher on him.” She glanced back at the officers, who were trailing behind as to let them privately talk, and whispered, “I’m honestly surprised the ghost defense system didn’t pick anything up.”
Lancer chuckled. “Well, I'm pretty sure his sister and best friend have something to do with that,” he told her. Jasmine had been helping her parents set that up, and Tucker was dangerously skilled at manipulating technology. They’d definitely been sabotaging the weapons and trackers—at the concert, Jack mentioned that the new things would always activate around Danny at first before stopping, which at the time he thought was just a strange glitch.
Ishiyama smiled at that. “Well, at least he had them to support him all this time.” She then took a deep breath as they arrived at the doors to the main administration office suite, waiting a moment for the officers to catch up before heading inside, nodding a greeting to the secretary as he did so.
“About time!” came a shout as the four entered; in some of the seats next to Lancer’s door sat the four boys—well, Kwan, Benjamin, and Dale sat, but Dash, who had shouted, had just jumped up. He continued, “We’ve been waiting like an hour, what the fu—” he cut himself off mid-word, paling as he noticed the officers. “Oh no. Oh shit. He’s dead, isn’t he?” he asked, looking panicked as he put his hands on his head. “Crap, I killed Fenton, didn’t I? Oh no, no, no, this can’t be happening, I can’t—”
“Mister Baxter!” Lancer said loudly as he reached the boy. “Kindly, shut up. You did not kill Mister Fenton.” No, something else did, two years prior; Lancer suddenly understood why Daniel joked so much about death.
The teen was shocked into silence, and the other three had similar expressions of disbelief.
“Did Mister Lancer just say ‘shut up’?” Kwan whispered to Dale.
Dale nodded and whispered back, “We are so fucked.”
Lancer glared at them. “This is serious, boys. Although Mister Fenton is miraculously not dead, it still stands that as a result of your antics, he stopped breathing, albeit temporarily. You then followed up not with immediately getting help, but arguing over it, with three of you suggesting letting him die and hiding the body. You can see how this is a problem, yes?”
The four boys all looked shamefully at the ground.
Ishiyama ordered, “Lancer, go with them to the station. I’ll call their parents.”
“You’re arresting all of us?” Dash asked, looking like he didn’t believe it.
“No; as of now, you’re the only one being arrested,” Lancer said. “Kwan, Benjamin, Dale, you three will be interviewed as witnesses; we’ll discuss school punishments later. We have Daniel’s statement already.”
“So Fenton’s okay?” Kwan asked, looking anxious, though seemingly more for Daniel’s sake than his own. Perhaps Daniel’s assessment of the boy had been correct.
“I cannot divulge medical details, but I can tell you that he was conscious when he was picked up by his father,” Lancer told him. “Now, officers?”
The two officers read Dash his Miranda Rights and walked him out in cuffs, Lancer and the three other boys following.
Notes:
Well, at least the bullying will stop now, right? ...Right?
Next chapter: Halloween night! Danny, Ember, and Tucker go to the cool kid party, which has a surprising number of ghost party-crashers. And drugs and alcohol; clearly DARE did nothing for this school. Clockwork decides to intervene. Jack is faced with a not-so-fun part of parenting: what to do when your kid comes home drunk.
Chapter 16: Halloween Party!
Summary:
It's Halloween night! Danny, Ember, and Tucker go to the cool kid Halloween party, which has a surprising number of ghost party-crashers, along with conversations, karaoke, party games... and drugs and alcohol? Uh-oh, clearly DARE did nothing for this school. Clockwork decides to intervene. Jack is faced with a not-so-fun part of parenting: what to do when your kid comes home drunk.
Notes:
Happy Halloween! (Ignore that it's June). This was actually one of my favorite chapters to write. There's a lot of fun stuff, even among the worrisome stuff (Danny, why are you so intent to get wasted?). We finally get to see some more ghost interaction again, including parental Clockwork!
CW: Underage alcohol, drug, and tobacco use. Discussion of past abuse/bullying.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Whoo hoo! Let’s PARTY!” Ember greeted with a shout, shooting her hands up and almost spilling the disposable coffee cups in them, as Danny exited Miskatonic University, where he had had therapy.
His dad and Jazz were with him too; the session had actually gone better than expected, leaving Danny and both humans a little more at peace with the situation with Maddie (Danny just couldn’t call her ‘Mom’ anymore). They also discussed the earlier incident with Dash, which apparently Danny was feeling more conflicted about than he’d thought, so that was good too. He still couldn’t believe he’d been so tired after that that he let his dad carry him—Danny had had no idea that ambient negative emotions could cause such fatigue!
They’d also discussed Danny’s alleged overuse of that painkiller, hydro-whatever, which was apparently an opioid, but Danny didn’t think it was that big of a deal. He was not addicted! He’d obviously know if he were. Regardless, he now had an appointment with another MU doctor later that week to discuss such, and hopefully get him an actual prescription for something that was better for half-ghosts. Jazz was extremely happy about that.
Ember swooped over and gave Danny a quick peck on the lips, as she often did nowadays—it had become a casual greeting between the two.
“The party isn’t for another few hours,” Danny pointed out with amusement as he accepted the coffee cup Ember handed him, keeping the other for herself. The party technically started at 5pm, but people wouldn’t start arriving until at least 5:30 or so, according to Star, who had felt Danny might not be aware of the concept of flexible party start times. Which, to be fair, he hadn’t been.
“What, no drinks for us?” Jazz said jokingly.
Ember shrugged. “It’s got ecto in it, but if you want to poison yourself…”
Danny practically purred (honestly, his core probably vibrated enough to qualify as such) as he took a sip of the ectoplasm-infused coffee; MU’s cafe had the best ecto-coffee Danny had ever tasted. Well, other than that he’d only ever had the instant kind at Johnny’s and the one from the Ghost Zone’s version of Dunkin Donuts, so it wasn’t much of a comparison, but still.
“Good coffee?” Ember asked in amusement.
“The best,” Danny said, then realized something. “Oh, by the way, you might not want to kiss me in public when I’m in human form; we probably don’t want rumors that Phantom’s girlfriend is cheating on him.”
“Speak for yourself; a good scandal is a great way to get attention!” Ember said with a laugh. “But don’t worry, I’ll be good; positive attention’s better anyway. Oh, by the way, Johnny and Kitty wanna crash the party, you okay with that?” she asked.
Danny laughed. “I kinda expected that, actually,” he said. Ember had probably told them about the party in hopes they’d want to. “Sure, the cool kid party could use a little chaos.”
“Danny…” Jazz said in a warning tone.
Danny shrugged. “Call it revenge for all the years the A-listers tormented everyone they deemed ‘losers’. Johnny and Kitty know not to cause too much chaos; honestly, some of the crowd will probably be happy if more ghosts show up, being a Halloween party and all.” He could all but guarantee that Paulina would love it.
“So that means I can invite some others?” Ember asked excitedly.
Danny crossed his arms and scowled. “If you’re thinking of Spectra, the answer is no.” Ember was friends with the ghost, but she was one of the ones Danny did not want to play nice with—unlike the other ghosts, she legitimately tried to kill humans in cold blood, all for the sake of farming misery.
“Hey, chill, I know you have a major beef with her still!” Ember said, holding her hands up. “No, I was thinking maybe Youngblood or Dora! Or maybe even Piper!”
Danny considered that. “Youngblood is a little too young. Dora, you can invite, if she wants to. Piper I haven’t even met, but I’ve heard rumors, and she is definitely not the kind of ghost we want going to a party of people under 18.”
“Who’s Piper?” Jack interrupted.
“Another teenage ghost,” Danny explained. “You know the Pied Piper legend? That’s based on her. She can come into our realm at will, and leads stray child ghosts back to the Ghost Zone; she’ll help them find their lairs, and for the really young ones brings them to a realm specifically for child ghosts. Once she tried to take some humans too, thinking they’d be better off with her than their abusive families, hence the legends.”
“Oh, so kinda like Peter Pan!” Jack said excitedly.
“Yeah, he’s the one she brings them to,” Danny revealed.
Jack’s eyes widened. “He’s real!?”
Danny nodded, grinning. “A lot of legends are actually inspired by ghosts!”
“The two are siblings, actually,” Ember informed them. “Identical twins, died together.”
“You must mean fraternal,” Jazz corrected, almost like an instinct.
“Nope, identical,” Ember said. “One’s trans. Not gonna out who though.”
“Ghosts can be transgender?” Jack asked with surprise.
“Eh, yes and no,” Ember said, considering how to answer that. “A ghost’s appearance, with the exception of some things like age, is inspired in part by how they see themselves—usually this means that as a ghost they’ll have a body that properly matches their gender, even if they didn’t when human. So although they were trans in life, in death they technically aren’t.”
“Fascinating,” Jack said, clearly excited to learn something new about ghosts.
“You know, Babypop, I’m surprised you haven’t met Piper yet,” Ember said with a contemplative look. “Like, technically you’re a child ghost, even if you do still got a bit of human in you. Wonder why she hasn’t sought you out yet.”
“Probably because my home is in this world,” Danny reminded her. “I don’t actually have a lair in the Ghost Zone, so she’d have no reason to bring me there.”
“Oh, good point,” Ember said. She then looked at the two humans. “Sorry if that made you uncomfortable,” she told them, and Danny realized that Jack almost had tears in his eyes and was feeling a mix of guilt and sadness. Jazz was a little sad too, but not so much.
“What’s got you two so bothered?” Danny asked, unsure what part of the conversation made them feel that way. Surely not the discussion about trans ghosts?
Jazz blushed. “Ah, just, you talking about your home being here… Got me thinking about how we had to move out for a bit…”
When she seemed to be finished, Danny turned to Jack, who was wiping tears away with a non-gloved hand—today he was wearing jeans and a Ghost Busters t-shirt. “What about you?” Danny asked.
“Ch-child ghost,” Jack coughed out. “Child ghost. You’re… it’s my fault. My son’s a child ghost, and it’s my fault…”
“Hey, whoa, Dad, we’ve covered this!” Danny said, looking around to make sure no one overheard, given they were standing on the street. “It’s not your fault, okay? I’m not a full ghost. I’m still here with you. I’m the one who stupidly walked into that portal.”
“Dad, come on,” Jazz said gently. “Let’s go back inside and see if Professor Warren has any open sessions we can use specifically to help you with processing Danny’s accident, okay?”
“I d-don’t know why this is h-hitting me so hard a-all at once,” Jack stuttered out.
“It’s okay,” Jazz said gently, putting a hand on her father’s elbow, starting to lead him back to the building. “It’s a lot to process, I know.” She sent Danny a look that requested he let her handle this.
“I was wondering when it would finally fully sink in that his kid is dead,” Ember said casually, once Jazz and Jack disappeared into the building.
“I’m not,” Danny automatically corrected. “Not fully.”
“Tch. Thought you stopped being in denial.”
“I did! I’m well aware that I died, thank-you-very-much. But I also was partially revived, even if it was so little that for all intents and purposes I’m a ghost. Hell, even ghost shields work on me now, regardless of form! It’s just, you know, technically I’m still 10% alive.”
“Which means, 90% dead.”
Danny sighed in slight frustration. “Yeah, whatever, just try to focus on that 10% with my dad, okay? He feels guilty enough already. I don’t want him mourning me or something when I’m still here!”
Ember chuckled and ruffled Danny’s hair. “Chill out, I’m just messin with you.”
“I know,” Danny grumbled, crossing his arms and playfully pouting. He returned to a more neutral demeanor and ducked away from Ember, who had started stroking his hair as though he were a cat—and passersby had started to stare. “Come on, let’s go find Tucker,” Danny suggested.
“But I thought you said there’s a few hours until the party?” Ember pointed out, then frowned. “Wait. Are you implying we’re going to hang out with him until the party?”
Danny crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Sure. Got a problem with that?”
“Well, not really, but he kinda doesn’t like me very much,” Ember pointed out.
“Nah, he’s just jealous,” Danny told her. “He does like you overall, I swear. He was actually like this with Sam the first month or so that she started hanging out with me. He’ll get over it.”
“If you say so,” Ember said skeptically, though began floating beside Danny as he began walking towards his best human friend’s house.
Danny and Ember, both in costume, spent the first half hour of the Halloween party that they were there—arriving an hour fashionably late—being led around by Star, who seemed determined to introduce them to every single person there. It was tiring, as Danny had to actually pretend he didn’t know many of the people there, considering he was in Phantom form. He wished Tucker had stayed with them instead of fleeing to the snack table at the first opportunity.
It was fun seeing what everyone had dressed as though; most notable was that the entire cheer squad were cats, as they’d been at school, with the same boots, ears, gloves, belled collars, cuffs, and tails, but this time the base outfits were even more risqué than the ones they’d worn at school (which did result in them all wearing their gym shirts by the end of the day)—fur bikini tops and miniskirts that were well below the school’s minimum skirt length. One of them had helpfully explained that the reason they weren’t freezing cold even when going to the outside area was because the punch was heavily spiked.
The party was held in Paulina’s house, which, although not as spacious in size as Sam’s, was more than big enough to host a party with upwards of fifty people, including pretty much all the sports players in the school. The Halloween decorations gave an air of having clearly been professionally done, and to Danny’s surprise there were numerous ghost-themed ice sculptures around the outskirts of the main room, which was more like a small ballroom, that gave off a pleasant chill to whomever stood next to them, given that the little tables they were on had some sort of refrigerant blowing on the sculptures. Ember was super excited to see that one of the sculptures was herself whereas Danny was super embarrassed to see that one was himself. The rear door was left open, leading to a garden, where plenty of people also mingled about despite the chilly evening air.
“Why are there so many cats today?” Dash, in what appeared to be some sort of zombie inmate costume, asked, referring to Danny and Ember’s costumes, seeming very confused as Star ‘introduced’ Ember and Danny to him. Danny was both surprised and unsurprised to see him there; guess the officers earlier hadn’t done anything, other than file a restraining order that they’d faxed over, which technically Dash was violating even if he didn’t realize it.
“Meow,” Danny couldn’t help but say, moving his hand in a catty curl.
Dash stared at Danny with wide eyes—and not the usual hero-infatuation ones he usually gave Phantom.
“What?” Danny asked, pushing away the nervousness—he was in Phantom form, so if Dash attacked him, he really could fight back, and there’d be many witnesses. Plus, Dash seemed calm, no hint of the maliciousness from earlier. There was no reason to fear.
Dash shook his head. “Nothing, just a really weird flash of deja-vu,” he explained, then blushed. “Um. So, Phantom. Hi. I, er, honestly didn’t expect you to show up, especially after… Nevermind. Just, thanks for coming. Guess I owe Fenton one.”
Danny floated to be slightly higher than eye-level, crossed his arms, and raised an eyebrow at Dash. “Do you, now?” He decided not to mention that even though technically it was a party jointly sponsored by the A-list, he only went because it was at Paulina’s house with her and Star mainly hosting; those two were his friends now, so he felt obligated to go even with Dash there.
Dash, surprisingly, tasted intimidated. He looked everywhere but Danny and said, “So… I’m getting the feeling you know…?”
“About what happened in the locker room? Yup. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll lay off him from now on.”
“Yeah!” Ember chimed in; Danny had told her all about what happened. “Otherwise you’re going to be at odds with more than one very vengeful ghost!”
Dash winced. “S-sure thing. No more bullying Fenton, you have my word.” He said, then mumbled under his breath, Danny only barely catching it thanks to his ghost hearing, “Not like the stupid probation and restraining order will even let me.”
Oh, so the officers had done something more after all. Huh. Danny wondered if Dash’s dad being a big wig lawyer had anything to do with the lack of an actual trial; a plea deal, maybe? Danny wasn’t sure how that worked, but confessing to reduce a juvie sentence to monitored probation seemed like a deal that might be made. It did explain why the ankle monitor looked like it was actually real and working; he likely chose the costume as a way to hide it.
Star looked confused, but thankfully didn’t say anything and simply continued with them to the next group of people. Danny wondered if any of the A-list or football team members other than the participants in the incident were aware that the team would be down three players soon.
Surprisingly, there were a fair number of ghosts there, too. Ember had indeed invited Dora, who opted to bring her four closest ladies-in-waiting too because she wanted them to experience the human world. There was also a robot costume that suspiciously set off Danny’s ghost sense and he heavily suspected was actually Technus, but the ghost genuinely seemed to be actually making an effort to interact with people rather than doing anything malicious so Danny ignored the presence. Johnny and Kitty had crashed the party too, but subtly, to Danny’s relief, merely joining in instead of literally crashing into it with the motorcycle or something like that as he’d worried might happen. Poindexter had also appeared with a number of the students from his replica school.
After all introductions were done, Ember excitedly flew off to talk to one of Dora’s ladies-in-waiting, who she seemed to possibly have a slight crush on given how flirtatious she was with the girl—well, more flirtatious than her default, which was saying something.
Danny, however, floated towards the drink table, where Tucker was—Danny felt a little guilty about abandoning him when the whirlwind that was Star whisked him and Ember away.
However, before he got to the drinks, someone grabbed his elbow and effortlessly pulled him towards the gardens. Danny moved to pull away, then realized it was Paulina, so allowed it. The two eventually ended up in a secluded part in the gardens, Paulina sitting on a bench with Danny preferring to sit cross-legged while floating in the air beside the bench.
Paulina didn’t mention the sitting position. “So, what’s this I hear about some sort of incident earlier?” she asked in a serious tone.
Danny nearly fell out of the air. “Wh-what?”
“Star said you and Dash had a weird tension and mentioned something about a locker room,” Paulina explained, and Danny wondered exactly when that exchange between the girls took place. Maybe via text messages? “So, spill.”
Danny floated down to actually sit on the bench next to the girl. “You’re not going to like it,” he told her.
Paulina flipped her hair. “I think I’ll be the judge of that,” she said with confidence.
Danny frowned, then decided to just go for it; the info would probably be out by tomorrow anyway. “The bullying went too far, and Lancer walked in on it. Dash, Ben, and Dale were kicked off of the football team.” Thankfully Lancer and Ishiyama had listened to Danny advocate for Kwan, who simply got two weeks of detention. “Dale and Ben were suspended for two weeks in addition, and Dash is suspended pending an expulsion hearing.” At least, that’s what Lancer had said he’d decided upon; it may have changed after talking to them.
“You’re right, I don’t like it,” Paulina said flatly, then frowned. “How much is too far though? I’ve seen the school ignore quite a bit…”
Danny tugged down the high collar of his suit, revealing the bruises. “Attempted manslaughter, apparently, is where the line is. No, that’s not an exaggeration, unfortunately,” he said, letting go of the collar. “If I were human, I’d likely be in the morgue.”
Paulina’s eyes widened. “That is so not cool,” she told him. “Those three can consider themselves off the A-list permanently, parentage or not… You sure he wasn’t possessed?” She seemed to believe Danny but was hoping it wasn’t as it seemed.
Danny nodded. “Reasonably sure,” he said. “No ghosts were involved other than me, and I don’t know of anything else that can possess people.”
“Damn,” Paulina said, looking a little lost. “What… Why would he… It never used to be that bad, right?” she practically pleaded.
Danny shook his head. “No, that’s the first time he went that far. He was really upset.”
“About?” Paulina asked with a curious scent.
Danny winced. “Well… you. He apparently doesn’t like that you’ve been talking to me and like my band. He said something about me trying to steal his girl from him… And I may have told him that you weren’t his girl, which he really really really didn’t like.”
Paulina scoffed at that. “Seriously? Ugh. That possessiveness is why I broke up with him!”
“Yeah, it’s ridiculous,” Danny said. “Then he got more upset when he saw I had some bad bruises on my back and concluded that there’s some bully trying to steal me from him or something? He got even madder when I wouldn’t say who—and it’s not like I could tell the truth, you know? Most people don’t know I fight ghosts.” All true statements, though would lead to the wrong conclusion—but Danny didn’t want to reveal his mom had done that.
“Seriously?” Paulina said. “So his solution was to strangle you? Because he wants to be your exclusive bully or something? That’s so messed up.”
“Yeah, totally whack,” Danny agreed.
“You’re gonna press charges, right?” Paulina asked. “Like, police ones, not just school. I know you’re a bit of a bleeding heart, but this needs to be reported.”
How Paulina knew Danny hadn’t wanted to was beyond him, but, “The school already did file a police report, I didn’t have a choice—Lancer knows my secret, so realized that the only reason it wasn’t a whole lot worse was because I don’t need to breathe. He said that even though I’m okay, the fact that Dash even went that far puts everyone in danger.”
“Well, yeah,” Paulina said. “Next time it might be a human he does that to, if he’s not stopped now. And the last thing the school needs is a second Poindexter.”
“Hey, he’s not so bad,” Danny said with a chuckle.
“No, I didn’t mean it that way!” Paulina quickly corrected. “Just, one tragedy like that is all the school needs, you know?”
“Yeah, definitely true,” Danny said, surprised at how caring and empathetic Paulina seemed to be. He had always thought she was fairly shallow, until he became more in-tune with his ability to read emotions.
The two talked a tiny bit more about the incident, and to his surprise Danny found himself feeling a little better about it by the time they decided to go back inside—it was different talking to a peer about it versus an adult. Danny actually wouldn’t have minded talking more, maybe about some less heavy topics, but it was Paulina’s party, so she had to mingle with as many guests as she could, plus apparently had some games planned for later.
“Yo, Phantom!” came Kwan’s voice as Danny and Paulina made their way back to the house. Danny turned to see the boy waving at him. “I’ve been looking for you!” he said as he hurried over.
“You have?” Danny asked, confused.
“Yeah. I want to ask you about something… In private?” he asked, glancing at Paulina.
Paulina crossed her arms and scowled at Kwan. “No way are you talking to him alone.”
“Paulina, it’s okay,” Danny told her. “Kwan’s cool.”
“I’m cool?” Kwan asked, eyes lighting up.
Paulina gave Danny a flat look. “He’s Dash’s best friend.”
“I know,” Danny replied. “But it’s really okay, I swear. He actually keeps Dash in check a lot… Or so I hear,” he quickly added, so he didn’t let his secret slip.
Paulina gave Danny an evaluative look before deciding, “Well, okay. But if he does anything, you tell me, okay, Ghost Boy?”
“Sure thing, Paulina,” Danny told her.
Danny then moved to a different secluded section of the garden with Kwan, albeit one without a bench, which was good because Danny would prefer whatever conversation to be quick enough not to require sitting.
On the way, Kwan lit a cigarette, to Danny’s surprise—or, maybe not-so-surprise. There was a surprising amount of illegal activity at this party, and smoking a cigarette was tame compared to much of the other substances Danny had spotted around.
Danny floated up so that he was eye-to-eye with the larger boy and crossed his arms. “So, what do you want?” he asked testily.
Kwan blew smoke out of his mouth and frowned. “I thought you said I was cool.”
Danny blinked the smoke out of his eyes. “Cool as in, I’m pretty sure you don’t have plans to attack me,” he clarified. “Now, again, what do you want?”
Kwan shifted nervously and took another drag of his cigarette before saying, “So—oh, wait, I’m being rude,” he said in realization, then held out the cigarette pack.
Danny blinked. Was Kwan offering him…? Danny had never smoked before. Should he try it? Would it even affect him as a ghost? He was kinda curious… Plus, he might not get this opportunity again, at least not for a long while… Danny quickly grabbed one and then said “thanks,” as Kwan lit it for him.
Danny watched Kwan take a drag of the cigarette and then mimicked him, pulling it in and holding in his lungs before releasing it. It definitely burned! Danny tried not to show how new he was at this; he had a feeling that if he had needed to breathe, he’d be coughing.
“So,” Kwan said, clearing his throat. “I was hoping for some advice?” His vibes were that of concern, apprehension, and guilt. He was also slightly shivering.
Danny frowned, relaxing some, and letting up on the chill he hadn’t realized he was spreading. He reminded himself that Kwan didn’t know his identity, so wouldn’t know the reason for the upset. “Sorry, didn’t mean to come off as aggressive,” Danny said. “What do you need help with?” he asked more neutrally.
Kwan relaxed too, though the underlying concern and guilt were still heavy, along with nervousness. “You’re a hero, right? So you help people. How do you deal with it when you can’t get there in time and people get hurt?”
Danny tensed, not expecting the question. He took a drag of the cigarette to delay the conversation a moment as he thought. The answer was that he went somewhere and cried before shoving it away into a recess of his mind, at least until he started seeing Dr. Warren, who insisted he talk about it. But saying that probably wouldn’t help. “Where’s this coming from?” he asked.
Kwan sighed, guilt increasing. “So, you know Dash is a bully, right? Usually I try to keep him from hurting people too badly, but earlier today, I couldn’t stop him in time, and someone got hurt really badly. Bad enough that the kid had to be taken to the nurse’s office and sent home. I don’t know what to do. Should I apologize to the kid? And what should I even say? That feels like it wouldn’t be enough but I don’t know what to do. I was hoping you had some advice…”
Danny took a moment to consider that, again using the cigarette to buy a moment of time. The emotions were genuine; Kwan really felt guilty about what had happened. Danny told him, “I know the incident you’re talking about.”
“Fenton told you?” Kwan asked, clearly surprised. He lifted the cigarette to his lips.
“Yeah, something like that,” Danny said. “Generally, those that get hurt because of my failures don’t blame me, and if I confront them they tell me that without prompting. But there are some that do blame me.” The main one being, of course, the Red Huntress. “That’s especially difficult. I find that talking about it with someone helps, especially when they don’t want to listen to apologies. In those cases, I find that actions tend to speak louder. Show that you actually do mean it.”
Kwan blew out some smoke. “How can I do that?” he wondered.
“It’s unique to every situation,” Danny said, taking a drag of the cigarette again. He wasn’t sure what he was actually supposed to get out of the thing, and had a feeling that his ghostly nature neutralized it somehow, but just the motions of it were calming, made him slow down a little as it put pauses in the conversation.
“Oh. Well, you know Fenton, right? Do you know what will help him best? I really do want to make it up to him!”
Danny considered that. “Well, first of all, your association with Dash is not going to help things.”
Kwan winced. “Yeah… I guess it’s probably time I stopped associating with him, since despite my efforts he keeps getting worse, but… it’s difficult. I’ve known him since we were in diapers. Our families are friends. Even if I break off the friendship, I can’t avoid him entirely. And also…” Kwan shifted nervously, a slight fear coming off him. “Nevermind.”
Danny frowned. “Are you… afraid of him?” he asked. “Of what he’ll do if you end the friendship?”
Kwan looked surprised. “How did you—oh. Guess Paulina and Star are right, and ghosts actually can read emotions?”
Danny nodded. He took another drag and blew out the smoke as he considered the situation. “If… If you need a wingman for the friend-breakup, I can be there,” Danny said, unsure why he was offering that. “Like, invisible. So if he does try to hurt you, you’ll be protected.
Kwan seemed even more surprised. “You’ll do that for me?”
Danny thought what to say for a moment before deciding upon, “You’re… I can tell that at heart, you’re a good person, just misguided by letting Dash be in charge for so long.”
“Oh. Thank you?”
Danny simply nodded and hummed in acknowledgement. “Back to Fenton. If you promise to stop all bullying, and follow through, that’ll really get on his good side. Bonus points if you actually defend him, and other kids, against any bullies you see, not just stopping it from going too far.”
Kwan nodded eagerly and said with full sincerity, “Done!” Danny had a feeling Kwan actually would follow through on that, or at least planned to.
Danny’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of the small bag clipped to his belt.
“You have a phone?” Kwan asked in surprise.
Danny raised an eyebrow. “Yes? Why wouldn’t I?” he said, then flipped open the phone and checked the message. “Paulina wants us inside, says something big is happening.”
“You have her phone number?” Kwan asked.
“Er, yeah, I do,” Danny said. “We can exchange numbers too, so you can contact me if things get too dicy with Dash.”
“Okay,” Kwan said, and pulled his phone out too.
They swapped numbers, then headed back inside—putting the remains of the cigarettes in the ashtray outside the door, as inside was no-smoking—to find that Paulina was busy gathering people from the garden and other parts of the house. Kwan wandered off somewhere, and Danny ended up at the drink table, processing the mishmash of emotions from the conversations he’d just had. The swirls of emotions from everyone around him, mostly excitement and joy because it was a party, felt in stark contrast with his own.
Danny’s eyes fell on the nearby bowl of punch, which he was reasonably sure was spiked, at least according to the cheerleaders. He hadn’t ever been drunk before, but maybe it would help take the edge off of things.
Danny poured himself a red solo cup of the punch and took a sip. It was a mix of heavy fruit flavors that barely managed to conceal the fact that there was definitely something strong mixed in.
Danny watched the crowd as Paulina shuffled them in, refilling his cup when he quickly ran out, and eventually Ember joined Danny, looking amused. “Plan to get fucked up tonight, huh?” she said teasingly upon seeing the drink.
“Shut up,” Danny said with a blush and small smirk, before taking another sip, upon which he realized the drink was now done.
Ember sniffed Danny, to his confusion. “You smoke? Didn’t take you as one for that, Babypop,” she said with amusement.
Danny blushed at being called out on it. “It was my first time,” he muttered. “Didn’t really do much though.”
“Nah, smoked stuff doesn’t really affect ghosts enough to bother with,” Ember commented, then grinned. “But you know, I heard some rumors that there’s other stuff around too, stuff that does affect ghosts…”
“Yeah? Like what?” Danny asked curiously, something in him twitching at the thought; he honestly really could use a painkiller at the moment, or something equally—oh. Huh. Maybe he had become more dependent on that than he’d thought… Well, whatever; he’d think about that later. Now, they were here to party, and Danny planned to, as Ember so politely put it, ‘get fucked up’.
“Oh, you know, just stuff. Fun stuff,” Ember said mysteriously.
“Hmm…” Danny hummed as he moved to refill his cup, but then there was a buzz of a microphone, and he turned to see Paulina was standing on a small stage, holding an upside-down top hat. There was a microphone and a laptop set up facing it, as well as a projector set up, shining onto a screen behind it and projecting the laptop screen.
“Okay!” Paulina announced upon noticing they’d entered. “It’s time for Karaoke! There’s not enough time to do everyone, so we’re drawing names for who goes up. Everyone is in the running—and there will be no protests if you’re chosen! We’ll have a competition for the best!”
Some people groaned, some people looked excited, some seemed to have resigned acceptance.
“Star, come draw the first name,” Paulina instructed.
“Sure thing!” Star said, hurrying up and thrusting her hand into the hat, pulling out a piece of paper. “First up: Danny Phantom!” she said happily.
Everyone turned to look at Danny, who froze. Of course. Of course it would be him chosen. Was this a conspiracy? He had a small flashback to the last time he’d done karaoke, back in 6th grade, when everyone had laughed at him—he knew he was good at singing now, but a part of him still feared that happening again.
“Whoo! Let’s do a duet!” Ember cheered, possibly sensing Danny’s reluctance, grabbing him by the hand and flying over to the stage with him; Danny barely managed to toss his empty cup in a trash can as they passed by one.
“The songs are individual, not—” Paulina began.
“We’re doing a duet,” Ember told her firmly.
Paulina sighed. “Fine, but only because you’re hot,” the girl said, then tapped some buttons on the laptop to pull up the options. “Any of these good?”
“Ooh! This one!” Ember said, pointing at the screen.
“‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ by Elton John and Kiki Dee?” Paulina read. “Isn’t that song, like, really old?”
“It’s a classic!” Ember told her adamantly. “One of my favorites, in fact. I remember the first time I heard that on the radio… Rushed right to the record store and got the vinyl!”
“What? But that’s, like, one of the songs my parents play?” Star said in a questioning tone, mildly confused, and Danny could have face palmed. They must have forgotten that Ember was a ghost, which was honestly fairly easy to do with Ember.
“Yeah, well, I died in ‘78,” Ember said deadpan, then yelled, “Now, play the damn song!”
Paulina paled, quickly handed Ember and Danny each a microphone, and then hit ‘play’.
Danny sort of knew the lyrics, since his parents also liked the song, but was thankful for the fact that they were displayed on the screen. Ember, however, had no need for reading, and her joy was evident as she belted out the lyrics. Her attitude was contagious, and soon enough, Danny was grinning and singing along just as exuberantly.
At the end of the song, Ember grinned, and pulled Danny into an intense kiss, which he happily returned; he found that he enjoyed kissing her now, strangely enough, even though he was certain he was still gay and his body definitely still didn’t react further—when he’d told Jazz that, hoping she could help with the confusion, she told him that sexuality isn’t always contained in a tidy box, that romantic, aesthetic, sensual, and sexual orientation were actually all separate things that didn’t have to match, and intimacy didn’t always have to involve romantic or sexual feelings so platonic kissing could easily be part of Danny and Ember’s dynamic. She also said that he was likely touch-starved, craving affection as he’d largely avoided such over the past few years, though Danny wasn’t sure how he felt about that particular assessment. Regardless, Danny decided to just roll with it, leaning into the kiss to the point some kids started hollering and cheering.
“Dude, that was amazing! I didn’t know you could sing, Phantom!” Dash proclaimed in wonder when the kiss finished. Lots of others echoed the sentiment.
“Hey, Ember was great too!” Danny reminded them, trying to hide his uneasiness around the boy.
“Well, yeah, we already know she’s amazing,” Kwan pointed out, and Ember grinned and flipped her hair, preening at the attention.
“Okay, no one is going to top that, especially with that smoldering hot kiss at the end,” Paulina decided. “Contest is going to be for second place, I suppose. Phantom, you draw the next name,” she told him, holding out the hat.
Danny grabbed a name, opened his mouth to read it, then closed it again.
“Something wrong?” Paulina asked.
Danny tilted the paper so she could see the name, and she paled.
Ember snatched it, took one look, said “Nope,” and burned the paper with some ghost fire.
Danny drew another name, and confidently announced it was Kwan before heading off the stage back towards the drink table, feeling parched after the singing. Ember headed to chat with some fans who were curious about her musical tastes, clearly basking in the attention.
As Danny poured himself some more punch, Tucker sidled up to him. “It was my name, wasn’t it?” he asked, tone joking, although Danny could sense some hurt underneath.
Danny winced. “Sorry,” he said, and took a sip of the punch. This was Danny’s third glass of it that night, though he wasn’t yet feeling it as much as he would expect. He was getting more of a buzz from the excitement of the party itself, although he himself still felt pretty bad overall—apparently his core getting charged by an emotion did not mean his own emotions had to match.
Tucker shook his head. “Nah. It’s understandable. If they let me sing, I’d just embarrass myself,” he said with sullen resignation, which made Danny feel a little guilty. Tucker added a laugh to cover up showing the feeling. “Don’t try to deny it. Also, that punch is, like, super spiked,” Tucker told him.
“I know,” Danny said. He hadn’t gotten drunk from the first two, and was hoping a few more would do it.
“No, I mean, seriously,” Tucker said, mildly anxious. “I overheard one of the jocks say he put a whole bottle of vodka and a whole bottle of rum in! Each full cup is like four or five standard drinks worth.”
“Your point?”
“Well, you’re—do you even know how that affects you in ghost form?”
Danny considered that, then shrugged as he concluded, “Don’t really care.”
Tucker raised his eyebrows. “Dude. If you get drunk, I’m siccing Sam on you.”
“Aww, come on, kid, live a little,” Johnny, who had been mingling around pretending he was just another one of the teens rather than a ghost, said with a chuckle as he served himself some punch, then noticed Danny already needed some more and served him some too.
“Can ghosts even get drunk?” Dash wondered, apparently having drifted over to them too. Danny resisted scowling at the bully; he was Phantom at the moment, not Fenton.
“Not really,” Johnny said. “Alcohol doesn’t play well with ectoplasm. However…” he pulled out a small flask. “Like most things, there’s a ghost equivalent.”
Dash looked intrigued. “Can humans drink it?”
“Only if you want to become a ghost,” Johnny said with a chuckle.
Tucker winced. “Oof. Yeah, don’t want to even imagine Dash as a ghost.”
Dash glared at Tucker and said, “Shut it, Foley.”
“Johnny, no,” Kitty said as she walked over to join them, hands on her hips. “What’s in that flask is not the alcohol equivalent and you know it. Put that away, now.”
“What is it?” Danny wondered, as Dash was called away by someone on the football team.
“It’s called ichor. Gives you a slight buzz alone, which I guess actually is similar to alcohol, but combining it with actual alcohol will make you higher than a kite. Or have you forgotten the last time you tried that, Johnny?”
Johnny winced. “No. No, I have not forgotten.”
Danny snickered. “You totally did forget, didn’t you?”
Johnny scowled and shoved the flask back into his pocket.
“Does the amount matter?” Danny wondered.
Johnny considered that. “Probably,” he determined, then took it out again. “You wanna try? I’ll do it if you do it; we can start with a couple drops and see what happens.”
Danny opened his mouth to respond, but instead said with a groan, “Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” as he sensed the nearby core of another ghost he knew quite well who he definitely did not expect to see at the party and it probably did not bode well for him that he was here. Danny turned to see none other than Clockwork, in a teenage form Danny hadn’t seen before. Unlike usual, he had not stopped time, opting to mingle among the partygoers, no one suspecting he was a ghost and not a fellow teen in a costume. “What do you want?” Danny asked.
“I want Johnny here to hand me the flask of ichor, so you are not tempted to try it,” Clockwork said, holding his hand out towards the ghost, palm up.
Johnny, who along with Kitty seemed to be awed into stillness from the presence of the time ghost-god, awkwardly obliged, likely realizing he had no choice. Messing with an Ancient was generally not a good idea—not that Danny had ever paid that any attention.
“Thank you,” Clockwork said, putting the flask somewhere in his own robes. He turned to Danny. “Please do not do drugs.”
“I wasn’t gonna—” Danny cut himself off at the Look Clockwork was giving him. “Okay, fine. Was that all you came here for?”
Clockwork smiled. “No. I was informed of a party occurring tonight, so thought I might join in… Also, for the record, you do still have some blood, so you only have a strong tolerance to alcohol, not immunity.”
“Oh. Okay,” Danny said, wondering if he actually had taken something and was hallucinating as Clockwork then wandered over to a group of students and began casually chatting with them as though he belonged. Danny looked down at his cup, staring at the liquid in it as he wondered just how strong his tolerance was and if he should test it. This was his fourth cup of the evening, yet he barely felt any different; there was a small buzz, but at this rate he’d need to drink the whole vat of punch, or just drink right from the bottle, to get properly drunk.
He quickly chugged the cup and moved to get a fifth helping of punch, chugged that too, then moved to get a sixth.
“Nope,” Ember said from behind Danny, brushing against him as she moved around him and snatched the empty cup out of his hand. Johnny, Kitty, and Tucker had all wandered away, leaving just him near the end of the table. She set the cup down and gave Danny a mischievous smile. “I have something better…”
“What do you mean?” Danny asked, very aware how close she was.
“Kiss me, and you’ll find out,” Ember said teasingly, then slightly stuck out her tongue, showing some sort of tablet on it. Danny found himself intrigued.
Danny kissed Ember, during which the tablet was transferred from her to him. After Ember withdrew, but before Danny could close his mouth, the tablet got snatched right off his tongue by telekinetic power.
“Hey, what gives?” Danny complained as Ember said, “Oh, shit.”
Clockwork joined them again, hand clenched around the pill. “You are a bad influence,” he told Ember sternly.
Ember rolled her eyes, apparently sharing Danny’s careless attitude when it came to interacting with Ancients. “Come on, it’s not like I’m the only one here doing shit. I got it from the kids over there.” She pointed with her thumb to somewhere behind her.
Danny looked to where Ember was pointing, debating if he should ask himself, or if that would be a bad idea for the Town Hero to do.
“Danny, don’t even think about it,” Clockwork said in a stern warning tone.
Danny growled in slight frustration. “Come on, let me have some fun,” he complained, knowing denying he had been would be useless. “It’s not like it can kill me more,” he muttered, though he wasn’t actually sure.
“You doing drugs will not end well,” Clockwork said simply.
Danny scoffed at that. “Yeah? And how would you know, hm? It’s not like you can check anymore!”
Clockwork paused at that, and Danny got the feeling that maybe he had gone too far; but before he could apologize, Clockwork grabbed his arm, and the two vanished from the party.
Danny blinked, suddenly finding himself in Clockwork’s lair.
“Sit,” Clockwork, now in adult form, told Danny, gesturing to the couch.
Danny obliged, getting the sense that he was in trouble, and Clockwork sat down next to him. After a few minutes of silence, Clockwork looking at Danny and Danny looking at the floor, Clockwork asked, “Why do you seem so eager to… What do you humans say, ‘get wasted?’ tonight?”
“How’d you know I—”
“Because,” Clockwork interrupted, “It was pretty obvious by the amount you were drinking, even before you knew how it barely affected you, as well as the fact that you literally had that pill in your mouth.”
“Oh,” Danny said.
“Do you even know what it was?” Clockwork asked.
Danny thought for a moment. “Uh. Probably E?” he said. “That’s a common party drug, right?” It looked close to what he recalled from the lengthy descriptions and photos provided during the school’s DARE program.
“Hmm. So tell me, then, why would you do that?”
Danny looked towards a random point on the wall. “Because it’s fun,” he told the time ghost/god.
“Is it? You’ve tried such before?”
Danny shifted awkwardly, looking towards his knees. “Well, no,” he said.
“Then why are you so insistent upon drinking and doing drugs tonight?”
Danny tried to stay quiet, but Clockwork had that annoying air some adults had where they could just sit and wait and suddenly you’d start talking. So eventually he admitted, “Things are too much. I feel like crap. I just want to feel better.”
“You were feeding a lot tonight; did that not help?”
Danny shook his head. “It made my core feel good, but my own emotions feel worse. Everyone around me was having so much fun, and sometimes I felt that way too, like with the singing, but it mostly just made me conscious that inside it still hurts. Like, they’re all so happy, why can’t I be too?”
Clockwork nodded. “A common conundrum among human-born ghosts; some even call it a curse. Feeding on the emotion you’ve always reached for makes you that much more aware of it during times when others are emitting it yet it’s out of reach for you. The solution, however, is not self-destruction via drugs and alcohol.”
Danny sighed in frustration. “I know, I know. But I just want the hurt to go away! I thought maybe the drugs could help me escape it, at least for a little while.” He realized that maybe he was slurring a little, the alcohol he chugged finally starting to take effect; oh no, was he an angry drunk?
“Even if they do temporarily help, the fallout will likely be worse,” Clockwork explained gently. “Especially for the Town Hero. Even if you don’t do something you regret, if the press gets wind, they’ll have a field day. Plus your parents’ approval of Phantom will go down; aren’t you trying to boost that?”
Danny frowned, then realized that Clockwork must not know; Danny wasn’t used to him not knowing things. Fixing the timestream must be taking more out of him than Danny realized.
So, Danny explained what occurred over the past few days, about his dad knowing and the divorce and even what his mom and aunt did. He hesitated, however, when he started to consider talking about the incident with Dash.
“Danny?” Clockwork prodded. “I sense there’s more…”
Danny sighed. “Bullying got worse,” he muttered, clutching his arms around his sides and talking towards the ground again. “Lancer insisted the police get involved…” He then couldn’t help but ask, “I know you said thoughts and personalities could only be so much different from the original timeline in order to have the same events, but I have to know, just how different can they be? Is it at all possible for it to be really really different? I mean, some people just seem vastly different than I expected, now that I can sense feelings. But if it can’t change much, that means they always thought that way, or close to it, and I just couldn’t see it before…”
“You specifically are referring to your mother, correct?”
“And Dash; his bullying was always borderline bad I guess, but I didn’t expect it to go to that degree,” Danny explained. “Mom’s always been kinda strict, but she never physically hurt me before.” That didn’t mean she hadn’t been thinking it though, and just held back.
Clockwork sighed. “You are correct in that if the thoughts deviated too far the events would have been different. The recent actions of your mother and Dash, though not guaranteed, were also likely possibilities in your original timeline. As to your parents’ relationship…” Clockwork sighed again. “At risk of saying too much, from my observations, your parents did fight often behind closed doors, in both the years before and after the portal became active, and appropriate punishments for you and your sister were always a contentious matter. Your mother… was not a good person, in your original timeline nor this new one. I’m sorry.”
“And what about Dash?”
“Dash… In the post-Disasteroid timeline you first experienced, he channelled his violent tendencies into ghost hunting, much like your mother did these past two years before she reached her breaking point. I do not know if your original Dash would have kept to simply ghosts, or increased his violence towards humans as this one did; again, I cannot tell what the thoughts beneath the actions are—perhaps ghosts alone were enough to sate his disposition towards violence, perhaps not.”
“So they were always like that, or at least close enough to it,” Danny said, something twisting in his gut. His image of his caring, loving mom from childhood was a lie. The entire image of his parents being so perfectly in-love that they agreed on everything, were so in-sync that they never needed to fight (except for Christmas), was a lie.
“If it’s any comfort, this does mean that your father likely always did love you to the degree you imagined.”
“I guess,” Danny muttered. “But It also means my mom didn’t… Or, maybe at one point she did, but the kind of anger I felt, that doesn’t just appear. That has to have been simmering underneath for years.” He scrunched his brow in confusion. “I guess in the timelines where they found out she was able to keep holding back her abusive tendencies… But, even if she accepted my ghost part there, she wouldn’t have accepted all of me,” Danny suddenly realized with horror, recalling the homophobia. It didn’t matter if he was a ghost or not; even if he were pure human, once his sexuality got out… “I would have been dead to her regardless, once she found out everything.”
“It is best not to dwell on what could have been,” Clockwork said kindly, then considered something for a moment. “Here; let me show you a glimpse of the past,” he said, pulling up a time window.
Danny scrunched his brow. “I thought your powers were—”
“The future is where the issue lies. Views of the past are much easier,” Clockwork explained. “For now, just watch.”
The image that appeared in the window showed Danny’s mother and father looking much younger. Maddie was clearly angry, and Jack seemed to be cowering under her glare.
“What’s this?” Danny asked.
“Proof, and perhaps some closure,” Clockwork said. “You are still doubting that your parents’ relationship played out the same way in both timelines. You are also still, on some level, questioning just how complicit your father was in your mother’s abuse. These scenes, which were identical in both timelines, will hopefully quell those doubts.”
Danny wasn’t quite sure about this approach, but he watched anyway. They were arguments, sometimes mixed in with Maddie throwing something or threatening Jack. Emotional manipulation and gaslighting were tools she used, too. Threats of divorce, saying things like ‘if you loved me, you would…’, all used as tools to manipulate. Jack would often try to speak out, only to get immediately shut down. All of this occurred when the kids weren’t around, behind closed doors so to say.
“She… abused him, too.” Danny felt like he’d been dunked in icy water as the dreadful realization hit. He’d somewhat known already, even had saved his dad that one time, but it was so much more frequent and intense than Danny had thought.
It continued, now showing things post-accident. The portal had complicated things further. The arguments now included the nature of ghosts. Jack argued back more, became less willing to just concede to Maddie in the end, clearly began realizing that he wasn’t in a good situation. It showed Jack’s horrified reactions when Maddie suggested certain punishments—had she really suggested locking Danny in a shock collar to keep him from sneaking out? The cage had been bad enough! It showed Jack arguing with Maddie after Maddie sent Danny to his room without dinner, telling her it was cruel and her refusing to let Jack bring Danny dinner—and then Jack sneaking up with a plate anyway, although Maddie intercepted him.
“That’s enough,” Danny said. “I’ve seen enough.”
Clockwork dismissed the portal, then simply sat there, waiting for Danny.
“Why did you show me that?” Danny demanded.
“I told you; perhaps it might ease your doubts and provide closure. Did it not?”
Danny considered that. “It did,” he eventually decided. “It did. Now I know Dad truly cares about me, and that Mom—no, Maddie—is definitely not the person I thought she was. That that’s the case in both timelines. Seeing this… It’s painful, but I guess it does help.”
“Good; that’s what I was hoping for,” Clockwork said with a kind smile.
Danny felt slightly uncomfortable at that for some reason; he couldn’t help but wonder, “Why, though? Why do you even care about me? Why answer all my questions and comfort me? Why try to give me closure or whatever?”
Clockwork put a hand on Danny’s shoulder, and Danny looked up at him. “Because I find that I’ve grown to care about you,” the ghost said. “I worry about you. You are… like family,” he concluded.
Danny felt a sense of warmth at that acknowledgement, frustration vanishing for a moment. He chuckled. “So, then, what, I have a ghost dad now as well as a human one?”
“Father, brother, grandfather, take your pick,” Clockwork said with a smile as he shifted from middle-aged, to teenaged, to kid, to grandparent-age.
“I prefer father,” Danny said with a grin. “You’ve been more of one than…” He frowned, the weight of those words striking him. His human dad, though undoubtedly loved him, had historically not been a good parental figure at all. “He’s going to make up for it though,” Danny said, even though he was unsure. “He’s trying. At least for now. He seems serious. Do you think he’s serious?” he asked Clockwork.
Clockwork smiled gently. “Well, I suppose only time will tell… Also, please refrain from any more alcohol—don’t think I haven’t noticed that very slight slur to your voice.”
Danny winced. “Sorry. I’ll stop,” he said, definitely now feeling it. “Guess it was a delayed effect.” Well, he had chugged a whole fourth and fifth glass before Clockwork intervened.
“And you promise no drugs, either?”
Danny hesitated.
“Danny?”
Danny nodded and told him, “Yeah; I promise… Oh, wait,” he said, recalling one question that had been burning since he’d spoken to Vlad. “Before I forget, I have a question about the timeline—”
“Miskatonic University exists in every timeline,” Clockwork revealed, anticipating the question. “The only difference between this timeline and your original one is that here they are not quite as hidden, especially after they saved the world from the Disasteroid. In your original one, they kept a tight lid on their existence, with enrollment by invite only, whereas here they decided to become more public. Now, why don’t we get you back to that party, hm?”
Valerie watched the scene in front of her in horrified awe. She had come to the house after sensing a huge storm of ghostly activity at the place, only to discover that apparently it was fully consensual, the humans—mostly her schoolmates—and ghosts mingling together as though there were no difference, simply having a Halloween party.
Two ghosts, in fact, had just finished singing karaoke—Phantom and Ember. Valerie wanted to blame Phantom for this strange situation, but she recalled the other day at school, when Paulina and Star had been sidled up to Fenton; the two girls likely had convinced him and Ember to come, and knowing them asked the two to invite more ghosts.
Well, as long as the ghosts weren’t causing trouble, Valerie supposed she could overlook it just this once, especially since there were so many humans in ghost-inspired costumes, some which were so well done that she wasn’t sure if they were real or costumes—like a suspiciously realistic Fright Knight, but surely the Ghost of Halloween wouldn’t be at a teenager’s party instead of causing havoc on his favorite holiday.
Now Phantom was near the drink table. Valerie wondered if she should say something to him, but he seemed to be interacting with numerous other ghosts, some the same ones from the Ghost Zone she had rescued him from… no, not rescued, convinced him to come home after he willingly stayed with them. They were clearly friendly, despite some mild arguing going on about… wait, everything about that interaction looked suspicious. Was Phantom engaging in shady dealings?
“Cool costume! Red Huntress, right?” someone asked, and Valerie glared at the girl who had appeared next to her.
Valerie scowled at Paulina. “As if you don’t know.”
Paulina shrugged. “Look, I know I invited you as the Red Huntress, but I didn’t expect there to be this many ghosts,” she said, then instructed, “So it’d be great if you could take the hood and weapons off and call it a costume, like the other five or six here, okay? You’re making the ghosts nervous.”
“Why are ghosts even here in the first place?” Valerie wondered, though followed her instructions, feeling both pleased and creeped-out that people were dressing as her.
“Well, technically we only invited Danny and Ember, but I guess some others caught wind and decided to crash,” Paulina explained, unconcerned. “Which, you know, since they’re behaving, I’m definitely not opposed to—it makes it an even spookier Halloween party, doesn’t it?”
“I guess that’s technically not wrong,” Valerie reluctantly admitted.
“Of course it’s not wrong; I said it,” Paulina said snootily, flipping her hair, then casually added, “Cool hair, by the way; love the highlights.”
“Uh, thanks?” Valerie said, mildly confused given she didn’t have highlights, but she was too distracted to think much of it as she again observed Phantom, who was now talking to a teenage ghost with a purple cloak, who seemed to be scolding him about something. She frowned. Possible trouble? The ghost grabbed Phantom’s arm and the two vanished. Valerie gasped. “Did you see that?” she asked Paulina.
“See what?”
“That purple-cloaked ghost just grabbed Phantom and vanished!”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Tucker said; Valerie hadn’t even noticed him sneak over. He took a sip from his Solo cup.
“What do you mean ‘it’s fine’?” Valerie hissed. “A ghost just kidnapped your best friend!”
Tucker shrugged. “Clockwork’s basically Danny’s ghost dad. He’s probably scolding him about drinking or something. They’ll be back in—ah, there they are.”
The two appeared again in the same spot, Danny looking much more relaxed than he had before. Paulina smiled, looking slightly relieved, and moved on to talk to another group.
“Isn’t Clockwork basically the ghost god of time?” Valerie checked.
“Yup,” Tucker confirmed.
“I see. What do you mean, ‘basically his dad’?”
Tucker shrugged. “Stuff happened, and Clockwork more or less adopted him.”
“And that… doesn’t concern you?” Valerie questioned. Ghosts having family dynamics like that sounded pretty ridiculous a notion to her.
“Eh, I’ve made peace with it,” Tucker said. “It’s good for him, having a ghost that can help him with problems related to his ghost parts.”
“Guess that’s true,” Valerie said. Danny certainly couldn’t go to his own dad about that stuff. Though to say he had a ‘ghost dad’ was strange; she couldn’t imagine that a ghost would actually be able to be caring enough to create a parental connection like that. She hoped Danny was being careful. Valerie then decided, “Well, if there’s no issues here yet, I’m gonna get back to patrolling, seeing as he’s apparently not—he does realize it’s Halloween, right?”
Tucker frowned. “Look, just let him have a break, okay? He needs it. Besides, I’ve still got my PDA synced with the Fenton’s ghost surveillance system, so if there’s a major attack, I’ll let Danny know.”
“Oh, no, no need!” Valerie said hurriedly. “You’re right, he needs a break, I can handle anything.” Thinking about it, Phantom just tended to cause more destruction, so it was probably good that he wasn’t patrolling.
Tucker crossed his arms and frowned. “You’re still opposed to him helping.”
Valerie scoffed. “Right, helping. Phantom is a ghost, and ghosts—” she winced and cut herself off. Damn it. She was trying to do better! Why was her first reaction still to say something like that?!
Tucker raised an eyebrow. “Are evil?” he completed the thought. “That’s what you were gonna say, right? Or, something similar,” he said semi-bitterly. “Just as I thought—you still hate ghosts, and still see Phantom as separate from Danny. Well, newsflash: they’re not. And being part-ghost doesn’t mean he isn’t trying to help.”
“Key word: trying. Half the time Phantom only causes more destruction!” Valerie argued.
“No, he prevents destruction,” Tucker said. “If he didn’t interfere, there would be much more damage.”
“Whatever,” Valerie said with an eye roll, done with the conversation. “I gotta get back out there, given none of the other ghost hunters out there now are remotely competent. I’ll try to keep them away from here, though.” She turned to leave.
“Wait,” Tucker said, stopping her. “Who else is out there?”
“Just the usual: a small GIW team and the Fentons,” Valerie told him. “I think I saw that team with the tiger too…. Although…” she trailed, then frowned as she recalled something. “Only Maddie Fenton seemed to be working for some reason. I passed by the house, and Jack and Jazz were in Jedi outfits handing out candy. Do you know what’s up with that?”
Tucker grimaced. “Not sure it’s my place to tell you. Let’s just say there’s some family troubles and leave it at that, okay?”
“Tch. Guess it doesn’t really matter anyway,” Valerie decided. “Later, Foley.”
Valerie didn’t wait for Tucker to respond before she exited the party, put her hood back on, and flew off into the night.
Valerie found herself conflicted. If someone told her a year ago she’d be flying away from a party that had been heavily infected with ghosts, actively choosing to do nothing, she’d have laughed at them and tossed them in an asylum. Yet, she just had, and even said she’d keep the other ghost hunters away if needed.
Well, except for Phantom, who was partly responsible for the party. Or, Danny. Maybe Tucker was right and Valerie still hadn’t fully reconciled the fact that they were impossibly the same person.
Honestly, Valerie had more or less been actively trying not to think about that too hard, because thinking about that meant thinking of all the implications of that. It meant thinking about how Danny had died, even if he impossibly came back partially alive. It meant thinking about how she had shot at him on multiple occasions, wanted to end him, all over what had turned out to be misconceptions, conclusions she had jumped to without verifying them. Meant that everything wasn’t so black-and-white as she had thought, that ghosts truly weren’t all evil. Meant reevaluating everything she had known about ghosts, her worldview being entirely reconfigured, because if Danny Fenton, the sweet boy she had dated, was a ghost, even if not completely, then what he and his friends had been saying about ghosts had more than enough evidence to back it up.
It meant that, on some level, Valerie was a villain, if Phantom was truly the hero that he and many people in town claimed he was… So, the least she could do was be a hero now, she supposed, by keeping the other hunters away.
“This is so much fun!” Jack said to his daughter after handing out candy to a few more kids. It was getting close to the town’s trick-or-treating curfew, which was 9:30pm (a half hour before the town’s designated ‘quiet hours’, which people honestly never adhered to nor was enforced), so there were few enough that the two of them had decided to hang out inside and watch the cheesier Halloween movies together, as the living room was close to the door.
“Yeah, it is,” Jazz said with a smile. It had been her idea to do this, a way for them to bond that they’d never had when she was growing up, which Jack felt immensely guilty over. He and Maddie had always been so focused on ghosts during Halloween that they’d never handed out candy nor even taken the kids trick-or-treating; Jazz had always taken Danny, even when they were technically too young to go alone. It was something Jack had realized too late that he’d messed up on, another way in which he’d ruined his children’s childhoods.
The doorbell rang again and Jack rushed over; it was probably the last group of the night, being it was a minute past the curfew.
“Trick-or-Treat!” the group of kids said, holding out their candy bags. They were surrounded in a ghostly glow, and Jack was pretty sure he recognized the leader from the book of ghosts Jazz had created, which she’d shown him earlier.
“Aren’t you that kid that only kids can see?” Jack couldn’t help but ask.
The kid, dressed as a witch with a ghostly skeleton cat on his shoulder, holding a broom in one hand and a cauldron-shaped candy container in the other, puffed out his chest. “Name’s Youngblood!” he announced. “You’re right in that sometimes, only kids can see me! But I can actually choose when.”
“Cool!” Jack said. “Hey, aren’t you afraid to be here? You do know what this place is?”
Youngblood rolled his eyes. “Well, duh, we know what it is. The portal’s here, which we need to use to get home. Figured we’d get some candy out of it before then, since we heard this place is safe now. It is, right?” he asked with confidence that clearly hid some nervousness.
“He is giving off that vibe,” the cat drolly spoke, to Jack’s surprise.
“That it is!” Jack told him with a grin, “As long as Maddie’s not here—which she shouldn’t usually be—it’s safe.” He opened the door further, noticing Jazz had joined them, likely to supervise. “Come on in. You can use the door on your way there.”
“What about the candy?” another of the kids, dressed as a rock star in the style of KISS, asked.
“Oh, right!” Jack said, grabbing the bowl on the small table by the door. “Thanks for the reminder! Jazz, show them to the basement as I had out the candy.”
“Thanks, Mister Fenton,” Youngblood said with a grin, accepting the candy. “But, no need for the tour.” He hopped into the air and then flew downwards, right through the floor in the direction of the portal.
The rest of the child ghosts, of which Jack counted 8 of, did the same. The oldest appeared to be around 9 or 10 years old, and the youngest must have been only 4 or 5.
When Jack closed the door, he felt a wave of sadness come over him, causing him to grab a handful of candy (he’d chosen to give out fun-sized Snickers, his favorite sweet besides fudge) and head back to the couch.
“What’s wrong?” Jazz asked, clearly catching onto his suddenly sullen mood as she sat on the couch too.
“Nine of them,” Jack said quietly. “Nine child ghosts.”
“Oh,” Jazz said, sounding somewhat sad too. “Yeah. Child ghosts like that are always tragic.”
“Danny’s technically one too,” Jack pointed out. Professor Warren actually had some spare time to talk to Jack about that, work through the feeling some, but not fully; they’d scheduled a second appointment for later that week.
“...Yeah, he is,” Jazz nearly whispered.
“I’m gonna be a single dad raising a kid who will be 14 forever,” Jack said. “Because m-my invention k-killed him,” he stuttered out, tears forming as the guilt again hit him full force. “It brought him back, but it killed him first.”
Jazz stayed quiet for a moment before saying carefully, “Yes. But, you’re trying to make up for it now.”
Jack nodded. “I am. God knows I am. But that doesn’t change the situation.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Jazz said, and Jack could tell the conversation was over. He grabbed the remote and turned The Nightmare Before Christmas back on.
Jack wished he’d insisted Danny stay home to give out candy with them, especially after the earlier incident at the school, even though he knew Danny had been looking forward to the party. Jack had been terrified when he got the call saying Danny had been injured, especially knowing Danny had an advanced healing factor.
As it turned out, Danny would be fine, and it was just for the sake of keeping Danny’s halfa status secret and getting the bullies punished that Jack had been called. That whole situation gave Jack a whole big mix of feelings, though—he was relieved that Danny didn’t die, a little shaken since it apparently was only thanks to being mostly a ghost, highly disturbed that a bully had escalated that far while Danny let him, and pissed off that the kid was probably going to get off easy because his dad was a big shot lawyer and his mom was on the school board.
Jack took a deep breath, deciding to focus just on the movie in an attempt to calm down.
Roughly twenty minutes passed, and then suddenly Danny flew through the wall and into the room, holding Tucker via his armpits, before landing with a slight stumble and changing back to his human form, which retained the cat ears.
“Danny!” Jack and Jazz both declared, jumping up on instinct.
Jack glanced at the time and frowned. It was five minutes until 10pm. “I thought the party went until 11?”
Danny winced. “Um. Neighbors complained about the noise, so the police showed up, then they noticed that, er… Well, they started arresting people, and we got word that both the GIW and… and another hunter got wind of the number of ghosts there and were on their way too, so everyone started fleeing…” Something sounded a little off about him; was he slurring slightly?
The roar of a motorcycle echoed throughout the room as it flew through the wall too, skidding to a stop next to the two boys. Johnny and Kitty sat on the seat, with Ember on the handlebars.
“Dude!” Johnny said. “You know this thing can’t go as fast as you!”
“Sorry, I was panicking!” Danny told him. “They were trying to arrest Tucker, what was I supposed to do, wait?!” He stumbled over his words, again almost slurring them.
“Speaking of that, could you get these handcuffs off me?” Tucker asked, holding his arms up, which were indeed handcuffed.
“I’ll get the Fenton Bolt Cutter!” Jack offered.
Danny and Tucker both winced. “No need,” the former said quickly, grabbing the cuffs and phasing them off Tucker.
“Thanks, man,” Tucker said with relief, rubbing his wrists.
“Yo, we’re gonna head back to the Zone,” Ember told them. “The GIW showed up like two seconds after you saved your friend, so if they saw us they may be trying to track us, since apparently we’re all on their top ten list.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely go then,” Danny said, looking fairly harrowed. “And could you please check to make sure everyone got back okay? If someone got caught I’ll need to rescue them.” It was not Jack’s imagination; Danny was definitely slurring slightly.
“Um, we’ll need to rescue them,” Tucker amended. “Since you’ll need a hacker.”
“Right, yeah, we will,” Danny corrected.
The three ghosts said their goodbyes and flew through the floor towards the portal.
Jack then realized that he had to do some parenting.
Which apparently Jazz instinctually took upon herself to do. She crossed her arms and said, “So, Danny. What exactly did the police notice that led to arresting people instead of simply giving a warning?”
Danny winced. “Ummmm… I plead the fifth?”
Jazz simply stood there and stared at Danny with a raised eyebrow as he shifted nervously.
“Okay, fine,” Danny conceded. “There might have been, er… Some people may have snuck in… Well, it was a really large high school party, what do you expect?”
Jazz put a hand over her face. “Please tell me you didn’t have anything.”
“Um, well… Does it count if apparently the ectoplasm makes my tolerance reaaaaaaally high?”
“Just to clarify, we’re just talking about alcohol, right?” Jack asked nervously. His kid coming home drunk was way out of his wheelhouse. The bit about the ectoplasm was interesting though; would a full ghost have complete immunity? Wait, no, he needed to be in parenting mode, not scientist mode.
Jazz grabbed Danny’s chin and examined his eyes. “If your tolerance is so high, why are your eyes red and your face flushed?” she asked, letting go and crossing her arms again. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?””
“Not drunk, just a liiiitle tipsy,” Danny admitted. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not ‘fine’, Danny,” Jazz said, crossing her arms. “Underage drinking is not only dangerous, but also illegal.”
“Nuh-uh. Ghosts don’t have drinking laws, and I was only Phantom during it!” Danny said, seeming proud of coming up with that loophole. “Besides, like I said, high tolerance!”
Jazz sighed in frustration and looked at Tucker. “Did he intentionally test that ‘high tolerance’?”
Tucker winced. “Um. Maybe. And for the record, I only had one cup of the spiked punch, and tried to stop him from having so much. So did Clockwork, actually, and Danny actually did stop after their conver—why do you look guilty, Danny?”
“Yeah… Clocky ain’t gonna be happy…” Danny trailed, and Jack made a mental note to ask about Danny’s relationship with that ghost later.
“Dude! Do I even want to know? I was feeling it just from the one! You had, what, five? Six?” Tucker said incredulously, and Jack got the feeling that ‘one cup’ actually had multiple shots, each cup probably having the equivalent alcohol content of four or five standard drinks, if it were anything like the ‘jungle juice’ back during the college parties of his youth.
“Just to clarify, it was only alcohol, right?” Jazz asked. Jack sincerely hoped so; his teenage kid coming home drunk was one thing, but high?
“Don’ worry; we said ‘no’, just like the DARE program said,” Danny said with a nod and a grin.
Jazz narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that the truth?”
“Wha, don’ trust me?”
Jazz crossed her arms. “Frankly, no. Not after discovering you were abusing illegally-obtained prescription painkillers!”
“Was not!”
Jazz growled in frustration. “Whatever; not arguing this again. Did you take anything else tonight or not?”
“Don’t worry, Jazz, he didn’t take anything,” Tucker told her, then said under his breath, probably not meant to be heard, “not for lack of trying.” Jack had a feeling that Tucker had been the one to say ‘no’ for Danny, and if the boy weren’t there things would have gone very differently.
Jack frowned. “This is the not-fun part of parenting, isn’t it?” he asked Jazz, and at her exasperated look towards him he turned to Danny and said, “Danno, you’re grounded for the rest of this week.” He paused, realizing why grounding hadn’t worked well in the past, and added, “during which you’ll help me organize the lab.” That would prevent sneaking out via phasing—Jack wanted to avoid using a ghost shield, just in case Danny really did need to escape, such as in the case of ghost attacks. Speaking of, “But, if there’s ghost attacks, then you can take care of them if needed, I won’t stop you from doing that. Now, Tucker—”
“Please don’t tell my parents!” Tucker begged.
Jack sighed. “Well, I guess you did try to keep Danny in check, so I won’t this time,” he decided. “Jazz, drive Tucker home, would you?”
“Sure thing!” Jazz said, hurrying out the door as she grabbed her keys; Tucker shuffled out behind her, seeming reluctant to leave.
“Danny, kitchen, now,” Jack said ordered, heading there, Danny nervously following. Jack grabbed the bowl of Snickers on the way.
Jack grabbed a large glass from the cabinet and filled it up with water from a filtered pitcher, recently purchased after realizing their tap water was potentially dangerous. He placed it in front of Danny, who had sat at the table.
“I’m not really thirsty,” Danny said, simply staring at the glass.
“It’ll help sober you up and reduce the hangover,” Jack said tiredly, sitting at the table.
“If I get a hangover, I can just take—” Danny cut himself off. “Oh, right.”
“Right, no prescription painkillers,” Jack told him, a little worried about how quickly Danny had jumped to that thought. “Here, food will help too,” he said, sliding the bowl of candy towards his son, then reminded him, “You still have school tomorrow.”
Danny groaned. “Ugh, don’t remind me,” he said, taking a gulp of the water. He looked at the candy bowl. “Candy isn’t really food.”
“Nonsense!” Jack said. “It has peanuts in it! …But I’ll text Jazz and tell her to pick up something from Nasty Burger,” he said as he took his phone out and flipped it open, realizing Danny probably did need something more substantial, and he didn’t really feel like cooking that late at night. They had jerky and some similar emergency food around, but he knew Danny didn’t like those much. Maybe he should invest in some microwave meals. “For now, drink,” he told Danny as he finished the text.
Danny quietly drank the water, and when he was done Jack stood to get him more before realizing something else. If ectoplasm caused a partial immunity… He opened the fridge, grabbing one of Danny’s ecto-energy drinks, then hurried back to the table and handed it to the boy.
“Um. This will keep me up all night,” Danny said, pushing it away.
“But the ectoplasm will probably help neutralize some of the alcohol,” Jack pointed out.
Danny considered that. “How about I have it for breakfast?” he suggested. “Besides, I might not even get a hangover; I usually heal fast, so maybe it’ll burn out fast too.”
“Good point,” Jack said. “I suppose we can test that; actually Jazz will probably want to document it; do you know she has a binder with notes on all this ghost stuff?”
Danny laughed. “Yeah, I know. You should have seen her first version, it was like one of those medieval field guides with the drawings where they made so many assumptions instead of just asking the native population about them. She called Skulker ‘Ghost X’!”
Jack laughed. “Sounds like Jazzikins!” he said, then realized he hadn’t seen that ghost for a while. “What happened to that guy? Is he still hunting you?”
Danny grinned. “Actually, no! At least, not for now. Ember used to date him, and told him he has no chance of getting back together if he keeps attacking me. At first he got angry at me and we fought, but then he backed off. I don’t think Ember actually plans to take him back, but he’s still hopelessly in love with her, so he’s been holding back for now.”
“Good to know,” Jack said, relaxing. The ghost had worried him a lot; he’d heard him during fights with Phantom, and what he wanted to do with his son made him shiver.
Danny was quiet for a bit as he drank some water. Jack nibbled on some of the candy, as well; the best part of giving candy to trick-or-treaters was getting to eat the leftovers. Why hadn’t he ever done so before?
Jack then realized they had something else to address. “So, you were tempted by drugs?”
Danny froze, looking up at Jack with wide eyes. “Um. No?”
Jack sighed tiredly. “Don’t lie, Danny. I could tell that you were stopped by Tucker.”
Danny winced, then admitted, “Actually, Clockwork stopped me… he’s, er, an Ancient that kinda has sorta adopted me you could say? He helps me with ghost stuff since I don’t—didn’t—exactly have humans who can. He can control time and stuff and apparently saw I was about to try something and decided he had to intervene.”
“Oh. Well, it’s good that you have someone like that,” Jack decided, though had mixed feelings about that. On one hand it was good for Danny to have an adult(?) that he trusted, but Jack would have hoped he could be that adult.
“If it makes you feel better, there’s a lot of ghost-specific things that humans just don’t understand or know about, so even if you were in the picture I’d have gone to him for some things,” Danny informed Jack.
It actually didn’t make Jack feel that much better, as it only reminded him that he hadn’t been there at all, but he could tell Danny was only trying to help. It also opened up a lot more questions, but they had to get pushed to the side for now—he really had to address the fact that his son was so willing to try drugs, and figure out why.
Just then, the door opened, and Jazz announced, “I’m home!” from behind a large Nasty Burger bag. She entered the kitchen and set it on the table. “Oh, good, you have him drinking water,” she said with relief.
Suddenly, Ember flew into the room. “Everyone’s accounted for!” she told Danny as she gave a salute. Then frowned and clarified, “Well, except for the Fright Knight.”
“Wait, the Fright Knight was out?!” Danny asked, abruptly standing, apparently not realizing he had phased through the chair and was now standing in it instead of pushing it away. “I thought he was sealed away!”
Ember shrugged. “No clue honestly. People thought they saw him at the party, but I think it actually was just a kid in a really good costume, or maybe a different ghost in a costume. If he—”
There was a commotion outside that sounded like shooting, and the Fright Knight flew into the house, heading down to the portal. A car skidded to a stop outside, doors banging.
“Shit,” Ember said, flying in the same direction, as Jack and Jazz both stood. Jazz pulled Danny towards her so he wasn’t standing in the chair.
The door to the house crashed open. Four men dressed in white suits holding ecto-guns raced into the house.
“Where’s the ghost?!” one of the GIW agents demanded.
“Flew towards the portal,” Jazz told them. “Probably in the Ghost Zone by now.”
“Damn, it got away!” another agent said, then demanded, “You’re ghost hunters, why didn’t you do anything?!”
“We were about to,” Jazz smoothly lied, “but then you burst in, causing a distraction.”
“Yeah!” Jack said. “In fact, you owe us a new door now!” he said, pointing into the hallway; the door was on the ground, clearly splintered.
A third agent looked at the door and sighed. “I’ll go get the forms,” he said tiredly as he walked out the door frame.
“We, er, keep them in the car now,” the first, who seemed to be the lead agent, said, lowering his weapon; the other two did the same as the final one ran back into the house carrying a stack of forms, setting them on the table with a pen branded with the GIW logo.
Jack sat down again, feeling tired, and pulled the forms over. They had already been mostly pre-filled out, and were the type that created what looked to be four carbon copies; the GIW apparently had moved on from triplicate forms to quintuplet forms.
“I’m gonna go make sure the portal is secure,” Danny said, quickly slipping into the basement door, thankfully remembering to open it. Jack had a feeling he was actually just hiding from the agents.
The forms were quickly filled out, and as soon as the agents left Danny came back upstairs. He noticed the door still on the ground, so walked over and, to Jack’s surprise, easily picked up the door and put it back in the frame. Jazz hurried over with some duct tape to keep it closed.
“Looks like we’ll be using the backdoor tomorrow,” Jazz said as she and Danny returned to the kitchen.
“Yup; at least everyone is safe though,” Jack said; well, physically at least, probably not mentally. “Anyway, let’s eat!”
Notes:
Next up: Danny tells his friends about the previous day's incident with Dash. Someone else learns about Danny. Kwan's resolve to stop bullying is already tested. Then, an incident during anti-ghost training leads Danny to being put in the thermos again--but there's another ghost in there they can't release into the school! Lancer offers to stop by Fentonworks, but Maddie's at the house, so he's told to go to MU to release Danny! Yes, you get to finally see more of MU.
Chapter 17
Summary:
Danny tells his friends about the previous day's incident with Dash. Someone else learns about Danny. Kwan's resolve to stop bullying is already tested. Then, an incident during anti-ghost training leads Danny to being put in the thermos again--but there's another ghost in there they can't release into the school! Lancer goes to Fentonworks to release him, but Maddie's at the house, so is told to go to MU to release Danny...
Notes:
Overall this chapter is pretty lighthearted. I especially had fun with the last portion of this chapter, where we finally see more of the inside of MU.
CW: small bullying incident in 2nd scene, discussion of Halloween's incident with Dash in 2nd scene.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The following morning, Sam approached Danny and Tucker at Danny’s locker as Tucker said something awfully concerning: “Dude, how the hell do you not have a hangover after that?”
Danny, who for some reason was wearing a turtle-neck even though he usually hated that style, although the black color and skull design was in line with his usual attire, grinned slyly and said. “I’ve got a special hangover cure.”
“What? Dude! You gotta give me some!”
Danny’s grin turned more mischievous. “I would, but it’ll kill you.”
Tucker looked momentarily confused, then with slight amusement said, “Let me guess, ectoplasm?”
“Yup. Specifically, the ecto-energy drink.”
“Oh. Makes sense; I heard Gatorade helps, so a supercharged one must too, especially because ectoplasm neutralizes it.”
“Please tell me I’m mistaken, and you are not talking about engaging in underage drinking,” Sam said with exasperation.
The boys looked away from her, Danny fiddling at the thick chain necklace he was wearing in a nervous gesture—he’d really embraced the punk-emo look—and after a pause Tucker admitted, “The party… may have gotten out of hand… So, how was your date with Lurker?”
Sam crossed her arms. “It went well; we even kissed after. But I can tell you’re trying to change the subject.”
At Sam’s insistence, the two boys reluctantly told her the story, to her growing incredulity—and worry.
“Danny. Please don’t try to ‘test your tolerance’ like that ever again,” Sam said pleadingly. “It worked out this time, but if you tried that with something else…”
“Don’t worry; we actually did say no to the drugs,” Tucker informed her. “DARE would be proud!”
Danny nodded. “Clockwork made me promise I wouldn’t touch them.”
“So that’s what he was talking to you about,” Tucker muttered.
“The fact that Clockwork had to make you promise that instead of you choosing not to do it on your own is concerning too,” Sam pointed out with a frown. At this rate she’d start to get wrinkles from all the worrying she’d been doing about Danny just in the past couple months!
Danny sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’ll talk to my therapist about it, don’t worry… Oh, and speaking of drugs, those painkillers you got—”
“Dude!” Tucker said with incredulity. “You’re seriously not asking for more already?!”
“No! I was saying, those painkillers you got me, Sam, were confiscated by Lancer, and my dad knows I’ve been using them. I didn’t tell them I got them from you, but I don’t know how much Lancer plans to investigate. So, just be careful, okay?”
Sam nodded. “Sure thing,” she said. “I’ll get you some more, too, I can have them by—”
“No need,” Danny said. “Er. Probably. I have an appointment with a doctor at MU later this week, apparently they make things that work better for ghost hybrids. That are less addictive than opioids.”
Sam blinked. “Opioids…? Oh.” She had not realized that the painkillers her mom had been taking aggressively was a type of opioid, which was apparently highly addictive. Sam wondered if she should be worried about her mom, then decided that she honestly didn’t care at all—if her mom wanted to be a junkie she could be a junkie.
Tucker gave Sam an incredulous look. “Dude. Were you really giving him pills without even knowing what they were?”
Sam shrugged. “My mom takes them all the time, figured it was fine.”
“Your mom… You’ve been taking these from your mom,” Tucker realized, eyes wide. “Sam, I think—”
“Danny!” someone shouted, hurrying over, and Sam sighed in a mix of relief at the conversation about her mom ending as well as in mild irritation as she turned to see Paulina, who was wearing trendy sunglasses, tackle Danny in a hug. “I was so worried,” the girl told him.
“I’m fine,” Danny said, blushing slightly, then phasing out of the hug, to Paulina’s surprised disappointment. He winced. “Sorry. It’s not you, I just don’t like being surprised-hugged so tightly. Give me more of a heads up next time, and it’ll be fine.”
“Oh, okay,” Paulina said, looking relieved. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Me? You’re the one who got arrested!” Danny pointed out. “Sorry I couldn’t save you.”
“No, I understand,” Paulina said. “You had to get out before the ghost hunters got there. Besides, it was fine; Daddy got everyone out quickly and without any charges or record of it. Even the press didn’t report it! Are all the ghosts okay?” she asked, looking a little tense.
Danny smiled. “Yup. All the ghosts are accounted for.”
Paulina visibly relaxed. “Oh, good.” She then looked curiously at Danny. “Surprised you don’t have a hangover with how much you had.”
Danny blushed. “People noticed?”
Paulina grinned. “Oh, yeah, definitely. But you held it together really well; like, there was a little slurring, but by that time most people were. And you were a little crooked while flying away.”
“Oh,” Danny said, blushing in embarrassment. “Well, as to the amount I had and lack of hangover, apparently ectoplasm partially neutralizes it, so I needed a lot more to get any effect, and it wore off quicker.”
“Lucky,” Paulina said, then sighed. “I’m such a lightweight… Daddy was not pleased. Not only did he dock my allowance to make up for the drugs we took from his stash, but I’m grounded all week!”
Danny chuckled. “Yeah, same. My dad noticed me slurring when I got home.”
“Hold up,” Tucker interjected. “Did you say you got the drugs from your dad’s stash?!”
Paulina put a finger to her lips. “Shh, not so loud!” she chided.
“Yo, Fenton!” came a new shout, and Danny winced as Kwan approached, to Sam’s confusion. Further puzzling her was the fact that Paulina stepped in front of Danny.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Danny whispered to Paulina. “He talked to Phantom at the party last night, asked for advice on apologizing—yeah, I was surprised too.”
“Apologizing for what?” Sam asked warily.
“They don’t know?” Paulina asked, sounding surprised.
Danny grimaced. “No, not yet.”
“Know what?” Sam asked with a deep frown, frustrated that her best friend apparently was keeping more secrets from her.
“I’ll tell you two at lunch, I promise,” Danny said. “It’s why I was excused from the last two classes yesterday… Oh, Kwan,” he said as the boy finally reached them. “Uh, let’s go talk in private,” he said, then grabbed the boy’s wrist and dragged him over to the janitor’s closet.
Paulina sighed. “I’m gonna make sure Danny doesn’t end up accidentally revealing himself,” she said, heading over too.
Sam watched Paulina enter the closet. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she said, a horrified realization coming over her.
“Yeah, same,” Tucker said worriedly. “I assumed he was out ghost fighting, but if so he’d just say that…”
“And Dash, Kwan, Ben, and Dale were mysteriously not in gym either, or math,” Sam pointed out. Math followed gym for the four of them, as well as for her, Tucker, and Danny. “But Valerie was.” If it were a ghost attack, she’d be absent too.
“I haven’t seen Dash, Ben, or Dale today, either,” Tucker noted. “I mean, Kwan is usually attached to Dash…”
“Something big happened,” Sam concluded, feeling dread start to build up. “Something bad.”
The janitor’s closet opened, and the three rejoined Sam and Tucker. Kwan looked oddly excited, Paulina looked annoyed, and Danny looked a little sullen; it was almost comical.
“Kwan knows,” Danny said flatly.
“It was the eyes again,” Paulina told them.
“I already kinda suspected it after last night though,” Kwan admitted. “I noticed some similarities in mannerisms during our talk, and you knew a suspicious amount about the incident. Plus the whole way you were in-sync with Ember when doing karaoke, and that kiss at the end, was almost an exact replica of the concert!”
“Kiss?” Sam asked, eyebrow raised and crossing her arms. They’d left that out.
“Oh yeah, that happened,” Tucker said.
“It was soooooo hot!” Paulina cooed. “So disappointed I didn’t get you when we played spin-the-bottle…”
“Because I didn’t play,” Danny reminded her. “Besides, you still got to kiss a ghost during it.”
Paulina smiled and got a dreamy look in her eyes. “Oh yeah. Ember’s a good kisser…”
“Okay, moving on from Paulina’s ghost fetish,” Sam said quickly, “Kwan,” she said seriously. “You know you absolutely cannot tell anyone about Danny, right?”
“Don’t worry!” Kwan said, then commented much too casually, “I don’t want my throat ripped out.”
Danny facepalmed. “I told you, Paulina was joking about that…”
“But you said I’d regret it.”
“Well, yeah, because I’d be captured and experimented on by the GIW or my mom and you’ll end up feeling much guiltier about that than you were about yesterday—which, again, I’m sorry about too; I went too far.”
“No, you didn’t,” Paulina interjected angrily. “Stop saying you did. Dash is the one who went too far. It’s why he’s officially a loser and why Lancer made you report it. You know if you were human—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Danny interjected, moving his hands in a placating manner. “Just, quiet about that for now, okay? We’re in the middle of the hallway,” he reminded her.
Sam’s dread grew. Going too far? Lancer made him report it? If he were human, what? If Dash was involved, and whatever happened was at the start of gym… Everyone knew Dash and his crew picked on whichever lightweight kid was last in the locker room before class. Had the bullying escalated? Is that why Danny wore a turtleneck?
“Sam, don’t overthink it, I’m fine,” Danny told her, and Sam realized that, to her annoyance, Danny likely had read her emotions. She knew he couldn’t help it, but it still felt invasive. Danny continued, “Like I said, I’ll tell you at lunch, promise.”
“Oh, there’s Star!” Kwan said, waiving at the girl at the end of the hallway before heading over to her.
Paulina glanced that way, then grabbed Danny’s wrist and pulled her towards him to whisper something in his ear.
Danny scrunched his brow, looking at her with a skeptical expression as he crossed his arms. “...Why?” he simply asked.
Paulina blushed. “Daddy’s getting suspicious,” she said quietly, not looking at him, then she looked at Danny with her babydoll eyes and said, “Please?”
Danny gave her a hard stare, considering something for a moment, before sighing. “Fine. But not as Phantom, as Fenton only. And only at school, got it?”
Paulina looked a mix of happy and relieved. “Yay! Thanks, boyfriend!” she cheered, then pulled Danny into a quick kiss on the lips, Danny looking surprised, before she ran off.
“What the hell was—” Sam began to ask, then it clicked as she saw Paulina meet up with Star and Kwan and slinging her arm around the girl while they began to walk, a lovey-dovey expression on her face as Star stared at her happily. “Nevermind, I get it,” she finished.
“I don’t get it,” Tucker said. “Since when are you dating Paulina? And aren’t you, well, you know?”
“As of five seconds ago, and it’s an Ember situation,” Danny explained.
“Ember situation? What… oh,” Tucker realized, eyes falling on Paulina and Star as they vanished behind a corner. “Huh. That’s surprising.”
“Is it?” Sam asked. She herself wasn’t surprised; Paulina flirted with pretty much everyone she deemed not-a-loser, and Star had basically worshipped Paulina since they started high school.
“Wait, if you're ‘dating’ Paulina, does this mean you’re on the A-List now?” Tucker asked with clear awe.
Sam rolled her eyes. “Unless a new spot opened—wait,” she realized. “Did a new spot open up?” Paulina had mentioned demoting Dash to a loser.
Danny shrugged and said, “Dunno, don’t care. Got too much other crap in my life to worry about that.”
Valerie then joined them. Sam resisted impulsively saying some quip about all their enemies visiting before class that day, which was inaccurate given that impossibly Danny was somehow now friends with them. Well, maybe not Kwan; Sam was unclear on that one. And technically not Valerie, but Sam knew Danny did want to be friends with her again.
“Hey,” Valerie greeted. “I want to apologize—I tried to keep the other hunters away last night, told them it wasn’t the most urgent case, but once they heard the police were called and the GIW heard a rumor that some of the top ten most wanted ghosts were there, including, well, you know…”
“It’s fine,” Danny waved off. “No need to feel guilty. Actually, I should be thanking you—you kept them away for longer than expected!”
“Right. So…” Valerie shifted awkwardly, then asked in such a way that made it seem like it was more from obligation than actually caring about the answer, “Did all the ghosts get home okay?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah, but it was close; the last one the GIW was following, and they broke down our door when the ghost went through to get to the portal, but Jazz and Dad distracted them.”
Valerie scrunched her brow in confusion, then her eyes widened in realization. “Oh. Your dad knows your secret? That’s why he wasn’t hunting last night?”
Danny nodded. “Yeah, he found out last weekend… But he’s apparently been questioning his view on ghosts for a while. Mom, on the other hand, doesn’t know, and we don’t have plans to tell her—not going into details why, but she’s not living there anymore and we’re no-contact.”
“Oh… That sucks,” Valerie said sympathetically. “I know what it’s like living with a single dad, so if you need to talk…”
“You’re just saying that to be nice,” Danny said flatly. “You’re still angry at me.”
Valerie glared at Danny and shouted, “Stop reading my emotions! Okay, yes, I still have some residual anger, but believe it or not I actually am trying to get over it! I meant it when I said I want to be able to forgive you!”
“And if you can’t?” Danny challenged. “Look, Valerie, I do want to be friends again too, but it’s not going to work if you’re going to be a ticking time bomb whenever you’re around me. I know you still hate me.”
“I don’t hate—”
“You do. You still hate me in Phantom form, even though we’re the same person.” Danny intentionally flashed his green-eyed glow at her and showed his fangs. “Reconcile that, and figure out how to control the anger, then we can try being friends again, okay?”
“I have!” Valerie insisted, and Sam could have sworn the girl’s eyes flashed gold for a moment. “I know you’re the same! And logically I know you’re good and stuff. I just, I’ve been angry for so long that it’s hard to simply let go. I can’t help that my first instinct is still to get mad at you. I am working on it though, I swear!”
Danny scoffed. “Yeah? I’ll believe it when I see it—but so far all I’ve seen is that you’re still nice to Fenton but mean to Phantom. Whether you logically know the situation or not, you’re still subconsciously separating us. And it’s not even just that—your attitude towards ghosts is a problem regardless. You're still thinking in terms of ‘all ghosts are bad, with a couple exceptions’. If you want to be friends again, I can’t just be the exception. Like it or not, most ghosts are not bad. Get that into your head, then maybe we can talk more about reconciling.”
Valerie glared back, then opened her mouth as if to reply, then closed it again in a pout. “Fine, I see how it is,” she said, turning on her heel and stomping away.
The bell rang.
“Aaaand we’re late again, wonderful,” Sam said sarcastically, before hurrying to the classroom with Tucker and Danny, grabbing the latter’s arm so he didn’t try to skip, as he looked like he was thinking about doing after that argument.
Danny had just left study hall, where he’d gotten a nice start on his homework, and was on his way to lunch, thinking about the earlier interaction with Valerie. He felt extremely guilty about snapping at her like that; he knew she was trying! The thing with her suit was clearly messing up his interpretation of things—he was convinced more than ever that she was definitely projecting emotions, particularly anger, accidentally, and coupled with her regular emotions being muted to Danny’s senses it created the perception that things were worse and she wasn’t trying. But that wasn’t the truth. He had to try to believe—
WHAM.
Suddenly, something slammed into Danny! Danny stumbled, but was righted by the large football player before being pushed into the wall and held there by the older boy’s hand on his chest—he didn’t recall the name, but recognized him as one of the senior players.
“Hey, what gives?” Danny complained, trying to ignore the pain on his back; those bruises would never heal at this rate!
“What gives? What gives is because of you we’re down three of our best players!” the jock shouted in his face. He looked vaguely familiar, maybe someone who had been at the Halloween party. Well, if he were a football player, he likely had been there. What was his name again?
“Ah, that,” Danny said. “Well, it’s not like you’ve won any games this year anyway,” he couldn’t help but point out, feeling snarky. “Maybe a change in roster will be good.”
The football player growled and opened his mouth to reply, raising his fist as well, but didn’t get a chance to do anything as someone then tackled the large boy onto the ground. The culprit was another football star, this time a familiar one.
“What the fuck are you doing, Kwan?!” the boy declared, as the two scrambled to their feet.
“I could say the same to you, Ken!” Kwan replied, and Danny noticed a small crowd gathering.
“Seriously? I’m doing what we always do—wailing on a nerd!”
“No. That’s not what we do anymore. As long as I’m around, there will be no more bullying at Caspar High!” Kwan declared, and Danny made a note to introduce him to Poindexter; the two could make a nice teamup. Honestly, Danny hadn’t expected Kwan to follow through on it when he talked to him at the party, but it was a nice surprise.
Ken crossed his arms. “Yeah? I’m the senior here, you know. What right do you have to stop me?”
Kwan merely gave him a smug look. “Phantom told me to stop the bullying. So, I’m stopping the bullying.”
Ken scoffed. “No way Phantom told you that. If you’re gonna lie, make up a better story.”
Kwan shrugged. “You asked, I answered. Whether you believe me or not, I’m still not letting you touch Fenton.”
“You do realize he’s the reason our quarterback position’s currently empty, right? His lies got Dash arrested! By the police!”
“They weren’t lies.”
“Sure they were!”
Kwan raised an eyebrow. “You do realize I was there, right?”
“Then you know he lied! Shouldn’t you be angry at Fenton, too?!”
“He didn’t lie,” Kwan said with certainty. “I gave eyewitness testimony corroborating Fenton’s story.”
“What the fuck?! Why the hell would you do that!? We’re supposed to all be on the same team!”
“Being on the same sports team doesn’t mean I’m willing to help cover up attempted murder! Bullying should not go that far, ever!”
“Bullying shouldn’t happen at all,” Danny muttered, more to himself given everyone was focused on the two boys continuing to argue.
“Got that right, Buster,” Sidney Poindexter said as he leaned against the wall next to Danny, causing Danny to jump; right, Sidney didn’t set off Danny’s ghost sense anymore—maybe Danny should rename it to ‘malevolent/unknown ghost sense’. Sidney then asked worriedly, “Did I hear that right? Attempted murder?”
Danny shrugged, then quietly said to the ghost, “Attempted manslaughter, technically. I wasn’t really in danger, but Mr. Lancer saw and made me report it. Apparently if I were actually living, I might not have been after that, so that’s what it went down as.”
“Hmm. Well, it’s good that you reported it, then,” Sidney said matter-of-factly.
“Lord of the Flies! What is going on here?!” Lancer called as he rushed through the watching crowds to the scene of the two arguing, looking like they’d throw punches any moment. His eyes fell to Danny and Sidney before looking back at the two football players.
Kwan and Ken paused their arguing, Sidney disappeared, and Danny slid over to Lancer, who was angrily asking Kwan, “Was two weeks detention not enough? Do you desire more?”
“Kwan was defending me, I swear!” Danny told Lancer. “And Ken was only angry because he thought I lied to get Dash in trouble.”
Lancer merely asked Danny, “Did Kennith hurt you?”
Danny winced. “Um, not re—”
He was cut off by Sidney appearing next to him and answering, “Yes. I witnessed it. Kennith pushed Daniel, grabbed him, shoved him into the wall, held him against the wall, and was about to punch him when this brave young man tackled him,” the ghost said, gesturing to Kwan.
“Sidney, come on,” Danny said with a groan. “That makes it sound worse than it was.”
“No, that is in fact a purely objective recount of the event,” Sidney said levelly.
“But that’s nothing new. I’m used to worse,” Danny pointed out.
Lancer sighed. “That’s not…” he trailed off, noting the audience. “I need to get to class. Daniel, Kwan, you’re good to go. Kennith, you have detention today.” Lancer took a deep breath, then said much more loudly. “Everyone else, get to class!”
The students watching all scrambled away, Sidney vanished again, Ken angrily stomped away, and Kwan sighed and walked away with clear vibes of… Sadness? No, it tasted stronger… Was that depression? Uh-oh. Danny decided he should keep an eye on that; Kwan had just lost his best friend and clearly was having issues with the other football team members, and Danny wasn’t sure if Paulina and Star would be aware enough to see the signs if the depression progressed further given that Kwan seemed to be easily hiding it behind a smile.
Just like Danny tended to do. Just like he had done even more so back in eighth grade, before he… Yeah, Danny was not going to let it reach that point for Kwan.
Danny then realized only he and Lancer were left, so he hurried off too before Lancer could try following up on the earlier comment—after all, his friends were definitely waiting for him by now.
Tucker and Sam indeed were waiting for Danny at their usual picnic table spot. Danny sat down across from them, trying to remain calm and not break down from that earlier interaction. He took out his lunch, and his two friends winced.
“What?” Danny asked.
“Is that ectoplasm yogurt?” Tucker asked.
“Oh. Uh, yeah,” Danny said. “But it’s got toppings too!” He waved a bag of granola and chocolate chips.
Sam sighed. “Whatever. You gonna tell us what happened, now? Because there’s some not-so-nice rumors going around.”
Tucker frowned at his PDA. “Uh. Dude, someone took a video of what apparently just happened in the hallway on your way here.”
“Wait, WHAT?” Danny asked, grabbing the PDA to take a look. It had sound and everything, although it only caught Ken and Kwan’s voices. As usual, Danny’s and Sidney’s speech was garbled—there were special ghost filters that could fix that during recording, which the news stations had, but whoever’s handheld camcorder, or maybe cell phone based on how pixelated the video was, recorded this did not have those, thank the Ancients.
“Did he say ‘attempted murder’?” Sam asked in surprise.
“Shit,” Tucker said, eyes wide. “I thought Mikey was kidding when he said Dash got arrested for that.” He turned to Danny. “Please tell me that wasn’t what this mysterious incident was.”
Danny winced. “Um. Well. Technically it was attempted manslaughter?”
“What the hell, Danny?!” Sam proclaimed. “Please tell me that’s a joke.”
“What exactly did he do?” Tucker asked with wide eyes.
Danny grimaced. “Let’s just say not needing to breathe worked in my favor yesterday.”
“The turtleneck,” Sam realized, face white. “That’s why you’re wearing a turtleneck today. It’s bad enough that you’re still bruised, isn’t it?”
“Sam, I’m seriously okay,” Danny said. “There’s a bruise, yeah, but nothing’s seriously damaged. Lancer only had me report it to the cops because it would have been that bad if I were human; I might not need to breathe, but the other kids Dash bullies do need to. I mean, initially it was kinda a prank? Like, he squeezed so hard I couldn’t draw breath if I wanted to, then I remembered what Tucker had said the other week about pretending to pass out to maybe scare him into going easier in the future.” Or just to get him to stop, because Danny was certain Dash would have just kept squeezing if Danny kept fighting, causing him to have to use his ghost powers.
“Aww yeah, taking my suggestion!” Tucker cheered.
Sam gave Tucker a flat look. “Yeah I don’t think it worked out quite as you imagined it would.”
Danny winced. “Yeah. I dragged it out longer than needed, which, yeah. I mean, at first I was going to ‘wake up’ again soon after he noticed and dropped me, although I dunno if it would have even worked if I let up that soon anyway, with the intense murder vibes he gives off, but then his immediate idea was to try for a cover-up rather than actually get help so instead I kept pretending while they argued, just to see what they’d decide—that’s where Lancer came in and overheard some of the conversation before stepping in. Which, I’m lucky it was him, actually, as any other teacher might have called EMS instead of calling me out for faking.”
“Okay, I feel like you’re glossing over some of the more concerning parts of that,” Sam said, crossing her arms. Danny wasn’t sure what she meant.
“Wait, by ‘pass out’, do you mean you stopped breathing entirely?” Tucker asked. “For that long?”
“Well, yeah, of course,” Danny confirmed. “If it was just normal passing out, Dash probably wouldn’t have gotten freaked out—I do feel bad for traumatizing Kwan, though. He was trying to stop Dash and actually wanted to get help.”
Sam groaned. “Danny, that’s the kind of thing that leads people to finding things out—you’re lucky those guys are kinda stupid, and that Lancer found you, because others might realize that people don’t tend to escape that sort of thing with just a bruise. Oxygen matters to humans!”
“I know!” Danny shouted, feeling upset at those words. “I know, okay? I didn’t plan for it to go so far.”
“Yeah, but—”
Danny interrupted her with a growl, clutching the wooden picnic table tight enough to start denting it. “Look, I already feel guilty enough about this, you don’t need to rub it in.”
“Danny, chill, dude,” Tucker said, holding his palms facing Danny.
“I am chill,” Danny said tersely, as ice spread out from where his hands gripped the table.
“Uh, the ice spreading across the table might disagree with you there…”
Danny took some deep breaths and released the table, melting the ice as he did so. “Sorry about that. I’m good now,” he told them apologetically.
“So… Does this mean Dash is gone for good?” Tucker asked with clear hopeful vibes.
Danny shrugged. “His lawyer dad apparently already got him off with just probation and an ankle monitor. The school has him suspended until an expulsion trial, but his mom’s on the school board so I’m not very hopeful there.”
“Hold up a second, both of you,” Sam said, worried yet determined. “Back to your story, Danny: did you say Dash gave off ‘intense murder vibes’?”
“Uh. Yeah. I dunno if humans have a real word for it,” Danny explained, “But that’s the best I can come up with.”
“Wait, what?!” Tucker asked in shock. “You’re serious about that?! Dude. Dude, that’s so not good. You have to, like, report that!”
Danny scoffed. “Yeah? And how should I do that? I can’t just go up to the police and say, ‘Hi, I’m a ghost, and can sense emotions! This kid is definitely going to murder someone someday—hell, the only reason he didn’t already was because he happened to try to with a halfa—so you should totally keep a watch on him’, can I?”
“Point taken,” Tucker muttered.
Danny took a deep breath. “Sorry for losing my cool like that. Do, er, either of you have other questions?”
“Yeah, actually,” Sam realized. “You said the injuries aren’t that bad, just bruising, but if they’re not that bad then why aren’t they healed yet?”
“Ah. That.” Danny shifted awkwardly. “So according to the new nurse, the healing factor for ghosts, including halfas, is related to the emotions involved on both sides, after urgent wounds are healed. So that’s why bad cuts and broken bones tend to heal fast, but bruises seemed to be healing at random rates. So because yesterday’s incident was super traumatic or whatever, it’s healing more slowly.”
“Oh. That actually aligns with one of our theories,” Sam said, then realized something. “Wait. Why did the school nurse tell you this? Does she know your identity?! Also, how does she know that? Is she a ghost?”
“Oh, no, she’s a vampire,” Danny casually informed them, as though the fact that vampires apparently existed wasn’t a mind-blowing revelation. “So, pretty much immediately clocked me as non-human.”
“Hold up,” Tucker said. “The school hired a vampire nurse?!”
“Yeah she’s cool though. In addition to her nursing credentials she’s got a degree in paranormal medicine from MU, so if I do get hurt bad enough to go there again, it’ll be better since she’ll know what to do and I know she’ll keep my secret. Not that I plan to end up there again though!”
“Guess you’ve got a point there,” Sam acknowledged.
Danny then sighed and folded his arms on the table, resting his chin on them. “Man, I’m beat after all that. Think I can get away with skipping the rest of school to go chill in the Ghost Zone?”
“Probably not,” Sam said, then grinned. “Besides, I think you might like today’s ‘anti-ghost training’—there’s a guest speaker.”
“Guest speaker?” Danny asked warily. It couldn’t be his mom, could it? No, the restraining order was still in place. His dad? His dad wasn’t really anti-ghost anymore, though. That meant… “It’s someone from the GIW, isn’t it?” he asked with slight amusement; they were dangerous, sure, but their information was often questionable to the point of hilarity.
“Bingo. Not an agent though, one of their scientists. She’s teaching about ‘natural ghost repellents’. Apparently it includes a bunch of traditional stuff—you know, like salt and iron.”
Danny snickered. “Seriously?” He helped himself to a potato chip from Tucker’s lunch and bit into it. “Oh no, the salt has poisoned me!” he said dramatically.
“And I thought iron was for fairies,” Tucker said with a snicker. “Watch them mention silver or something too.”
“If silver hurt ghosts, Ember’s ears would be decayed by now,” Danny said matter-of-factly. Her preferred earrings were silver. “What’s next, garlic?”
Tucker laughed. “Come on, they can’t be that stupid, can they? Oh, but on the topic of silver, before I forget—Sam, how easy is it for someone to dye their hair?”
“You’re asking me?” Sam asked, surprised, though Danny wasn’t sure why. Confusion he’d understand more; Danny was certainly confused why Tucker would be asking that, and why silver brought that to mind.
“Well, yeah, you dye your hair, right?”
Sam narrowed her eyes at Tucker. “Don’t you dare mention that in public!”
Tucker put his hands up. “Okay, okay, sheesh!”
“Wait, you dye your hair?” Danny asked, surprised. She’d had black hair since Danny had met her back at the start of middle school.
Sam gave a frustrated sigh. “Yes, but no one was supposed to know that. How do you know that?” she demanded of Tucker.
“Um. Genetics?” Tucker said. “I mean, your parents both have light hair, so unless they dye theirs, which I doubt since in 7th grade your mom tried campaigning against stores being allowed to sell dye to minors… Oh, wait, that’s because you were using it, wasn’t it?”
“Ugh, yes, almost forgot about that,” Sam grumbled. “Okay, so I dye my hair black, but I am not telling you what it naturally is, and neither of you are going to tell anyone, got it?”
“Got it!” Tucker and Danny said simultaneously.
“Good. Now, why are you even asking about hair dye?”
“Oh, right,” Tucker said. “So, theoretically, could someone have put highlights in their hair after school, gone to a party, and then dyed them back before school this morning?”
“Well, yeah, but I don’t see why they would,” Sam said. “It’s a lot of work. Unless it’s just temporary ones with washout dye.”
“Hmm…” Tucker looked into the distance, seeming to think hard about that. “Do you think someone would if they didn’t expect people to see it?”
“Stop stringing us along; what’s this about, Tuck?” Danny asked.
“Okay, fine. So it could be nothing, but last night Valerie stopped by the party. Paulina had her take her hood off and pretend it was a costume so she didn’t spook the ghosts, and get this, Valerie had some silver and white streaks in her hair! Pretty cool looking, too. But they weren’t there earlier today. I dunno, it just seems weird that she’d only dye it for one night when she was patrolling with her hood up most of it? Like why—dude, come on, it’s too cold for that!”
“Oh, sorry,” Danny said, realizing he’d been emitting coldness as a growing horror dawned on him. “I just… Shit, I hope I’m mistaken, but I just realized that… Shit. This isn’t good.”
“Now who’s stringing us along?” Tucker said.
Danny took a deep breath. “Sorry. So, I’ve been suspecting for a while now that Valerie’s suit might be giving her slight ghost powers, not just the standard ghost-fighting things. Like, at first I assumed it was the suit doing things, like increasing her hearing and blocking me from sensing her emotions as strongly as usual, but now I’m pretty sure she’s been projecting her emotions sometimes? Which would be weird for her suit to be able to do, but is a standard ghost thing.”
“And, what, you think the hair is a sign of that too?” Sam asked with a raised eyebrow.
Danny shrugged. “I dunno, maybe. Or maybe I’m just being paranoid. But it’s suspicious, isn’t it? Hair color change when she transforms?”
“Well, it’s only a little bit; could just be a side-effect from her suit, right?” Sam suggested. “Besides, it’s only a recent development, right? She didn’t have that a few weeks ago.”
“True,” Danny said. “Hopefully it’s just a small side effect… Let’s keep an eye out though, just in case it gets worse.” He really hoped this was just paranoia talking, but Danny had a sinking feeling that this was not just a small side effect.
As it turned out, garlic was apparently an anti-ghost measure, according to the scientist, who was giving the lecture in the gym. Because there were ‘practical examples’ of how one could incorporate natural protections into their lives, everyone, including Danny, got to eat some very delicious garlic bread. As expected, Danny felt entirely fine afterwards.
Salt circles were created too, also ineffective. Silver was not mentioned, but iron was, and the sample iron piece passed around did not burn Danny. Crosses were no issue either, even the one allegedly blessed by an exorcist. All students were given an iron bracelet engraved with an alleged ghost-protection symbol carved upon it, which they could keep, and Danny tried not to laugh as he realized it was actually the anti-summoning charm Jazz had been henna-tattooing on his chest; well, at least his classmates were protected against being summoned!
What was, apparently, an issue was the sigil drawn in pig’s blood that was meant to trap ghosts, one Danny actually recognized from the time that murder cult tried to summon him, although it was very slightly different. Stupidly, he stepped into it; after all, the murder cult’s sigil hadn’t actually trapped him. Unfortunately that cult had apparently just been incompetent and got the symbol wrong, because this one actually worked. Sam saved the day by rioting over the usage of animal blood, grabbing the bucket of water meant to clean it up after, and throwing it over the circle, warping it enough to lose effectiveness so Danny could safely leave with no one any the wiser.
Unfortunately, this got Sam sent to the principal’s office—though Danny wasn’t worried, as Ishiyama would recognize it had been necessary, probably… oh. He hadn’t told Sam that the principal knew about him, had he? Sam was going to be angry again once she realized. Maybe they should keep a list somewhere of everyone who knew.
Next was light and fire, which was total BS considering ghosts literally glowed and most could create fire. Most of the students laughed at that one, with a number of them mentioning Ember. To her credit, the scientist didn’t react.
Next up was herbs and plants. Most were entirely harmless. One Danny recognized as the ghost equivalent to weed, which the scientist proudly said they were working into a gas bomb, under the impression it paralyzed ghosts; Danny decided not to correct that assumption, as it would be hilarious for the GIW to start blasting ghosts with mild recreational drugs.
But then. Then came the last one.
“And this,” the scientist announced, “This plant is a very special one! It was thought to be extinct, but we were able to find a dried sample of the flower and modify the genes of roses to create the closest approximation, effectively reviving the flower! Medieval ghost hunters used them extensively to protect themselves from ghosts—wearing a blossom will prevent overshadowing, and their scent is strong enough to act as a ghost shield in larger quantities!”
Oh no. Not good. Really not good, if she was talking about what Danny thought she was.
“Do the flowers have a name?” a girl named Brittney asked.
“The medieval ghost hunters called these flowers ‘Blood Blossoms’,” the woman told them, as she took out a bag with a few flowers. She removed one, handing it to the nearest student to pass around.
Danny immediately gasped, pain already pulsing across him; he was in the back of the group thankfully, just in case something happened, so for now it was tolerable, but as soon as it got to him… He’d be on the ground, he knew. He couldn’t try to run either because the exit was closer to the flower than he was.
Tucker grabbed Paulina and whispered to her, and she nodded resolutely before moving a little further away.
“Oh my goodness!” Paulina called with a gasp, pointing towards the opposite side of the room as Danny. “Is that a ghost!?”
Everyone turned to look, including the scientist, and Danny felt something cold press against his side before he heard the familiar whoosh of the thermos activating, his form twisting and pulling until he was crammed into the cylindrical-shaped silver-walled extradimensional space inside (which impressively adapted in size up to a point, proportional to the number of ghosts inside; it was the size of a small bathroom at the moment).
It was a good plan, Danny had to agree. Quick thinking on Tucker’s part, probably the only way he could’ve escaped that without getting hurt. Unfortunately, Danny was not the only one in this thermos, as evidenced by the glow coming from the other ghost which lit the thermos—Danny was in human form so only his eyes were glowing, as they naturally did in the dark.
“Child! What are you doing here?” Technus asked, seeming confused, although it was hard to tell because he was somehow in a robotic suit; he must have created an ecto one this time that could be souped with him.
“Me? What about you? Tucker didn’t tell me he’d caught you today! …He did catch you today, right? You haven’t been here longer?” Hopefully Tucker hadn’t forgotten the ghost in here. Either way though, when Tucker released him, he’d release Technus too, because the thermoses didn’t have an option to just release one ghost, it was all or nothing. Hopefully Tucker had the sense to take him to the portal instead.
“Oh. Do not worry, child. Your friend found me hiding in the computer science classroom earlier today; before I could attempt to do anything, I found myself in here. He probably did not get around to mentioning it yet,” Technus hypothesized, and Danny had to agree; Tucker finding the ghost in the computer science class was so commonplace it barely warranted a mention anymore.
Danny decided to take the opportunity to talk to Technus about something he’d been thinking about for a few days. “You want friends, don’t you?” he asked the ghost.
Technus looked confused. “Friends? Technus does not need friends!”
Danny crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Oh? So you don’t feed off of the companionship gained from shared interests?”
Technus paled, if that were possible. “Technus doesn’t share that information! Who told you that?” he asked angrily.
“I’m not going to reveal my source,” Danny said mischievously.
“Your ‘girlfriend’, the musical one, then,” Technus correctly guessed.
“If you say so.”
“Let me guess: you are going to mock me for it now?” Technus said sullenly.
Danny frowned. “Why would I mock you for feeding on that?”
“Because that means I did not have that in life!” Technus said. “I had no friends who shared my passion! That is sad and lonely. Pathetic. My life sucked, and my death only emphasizes that! You would never understand.”
Danny scoffed at that. “Dude, I feed on joy. Pretty sure that’s equally as damning.”
Technus quieted at that. “Oh,” he said, then shifted slightly and argued, “W-well, you are a child! People do not mock child ghosts for feeding on happy emotions. It is different for adult ghosts!”
“I’ll take your word on that,” Danny said flatly. “Well, I’m assuming you keep going to that classroom to try to find people to connect with, so if you want help—”
“Technus does not need YOUR help!” Technus yelled, and punched with his robotic arm, hitting Danny in the stomach and slamming him into the thermos wall. Yeah, his back never was going to heal at this rate.
“What the fuck?!” Danny yelled, emotions high after the day he had.
Technus gasped. “Child! Since when do you use such foul language?”
Danny laughed. “Seriously? We’re not in a fucking children’s show!”
“Insolence! You dare laugh?” Technus whipped a wire out from his suit, hitting Danny across the cheek.
Danny growled, showing fangs. “Okay, that’s it,” he said, forming ecto-blasts in his still-human hands. “You want a fight, you’ve got one!”
Sam was pissed as she left the principal’s office. Miraculously, she had gotten off scot-free—thanks to the fact that Ishiyama actually inferred that the reason she did what she did wasn’t because of animal rights but was actually because Danny was trapped there. She knew! She knew Danny was Phantom. Since when? Why didn’t he tell her that she knew? Maybe it was recent? If it happened in the past few days, maybe Sam could forgive Danny for not telling her, but longer…
She was also pissed at the principal for not anticipating this could be an issue and excusing Danny from the anti-ghost training. The mayor may have mandated it, but there were plenty of excuses they could use to get a single student out of it. The principal did acknowledge that she messed up, at least, and apologized, saying that Danny would be excused from the rest of those classes, maybe do a study hall instead on those days. Lancer should have thought of it first, though—he’d known for three weeks! Maybe they didn’t realize it was that bad for Danny? Even so, that wasn’t an excuse, in Sam’s mind. They should have at least asked him if there were issues. Although, knowing Danny, he’d have just brushed them off…
“Sam!” Tucker greeted her as she exited into the hallway.
“Tucker?” Sam asked. “What are you doing here?” Without Danny, Sam noted; that probably wasn’t a good sign.
“Told Tetslaff that I was going to ‘find Danny after he ran off when Paulina yelled about there being a ghost’,” Tucker explained.
“Danny’s off fighting?” Sam asked worriedly. She hoped it was just that, and not another issue with something that stupid GIW scientist brought in.
“Uh, not exactly,” Tucker said nervously, and Sam noticed the thermos in his hand that seemed to be making light banging noises and shaking slightly.
“Tucker…” Sam said slowly. “Please don’t tell me Danny is in there.”
“Well, um… he might be, yeah,” Tucker admitted. “But we had to! There were blood blossoms!”
Sam froze. “Wait, what? Those should be extinct!” How did the GIW get blood blossoms, of all things?
“Yeah, well, the GIW apparently genetically engineered some,” Tucker said with a shrug.
“Of course they did,” Sam said with a groan. “I’m guessing the thermos was the only way to help him?”
“Yup,” Tucker confirmed. “It was all my idea, too! Paulina distracted the class and I souped Danny.”
“Is he okay in there?” Sam wondered, worriedly looking at the shaking thermos. “He’s not convulsing from the blood blossoms or something, is he?”
Tucker winced. “Uh. No, he’s fine…”
“Then why aren’t you releasing him?” Sam asked tersely.
“Well, if someone sees him they’ll send him back to class, where—” the bell cut Tucker’s excuse off, who segued, “Nevermind. Still can’t release him though, not here.”
“And why not?”
Tucker winced. “There might, ah, be someone else in there with him…”
Sam tensed. “Who?” she demanded.
“Technus was in my computer class this morning,” Tucker revealed. “And yeah, I’m assuming they’re fighting, judging by all the banging.”
Sam sighed with resigned frustration. “Fine. Guess we’re missing the rest of school. Again.” She really wanted to release Danny now, but releasing Technus into the school was probably not the best idea with the GIW around, even if it was just a scientist—especially if the ghost was enraged, which he probably was given Danny was currently fighting with him.
The thermos banged some more. “Yeah, let’s get out of here before they extra-kill each other,” Tucker said, hurrying off through the now-crowded halls, Sam quickly following.
Unfortunately, as they exited the school they bumped into Lancer, who was coming back inside from presumably lunch or something.
“And just why are you two headed outside?” Lancer asked, hands on his hips. “All lunch periods are over, so don’t try to tell me you have that.”
“We need to go to Fentonworks,” Sam said. “For, um, ghost-related business.”
“And it can’t wait two more hours until school is finished?” Lancer asked skeptically.
Sam winced. “I mean, technically it can, but—”
“Then, you can wait,” Lancer said.
“Sam, Lancer knows about Danny,” Tucker reminded her.
Lancer now looked worried. “This is about Daniel? Did something happen?”
Tucker held up the thermos, which was now quiet and still, and said, “There was an issue during anti-ghost training. Danny’s in here, and we can’t release him here because Technus is also in here and these thermoses are all-or-nothing when it comes to releasing things.”
“The Beast in the Cave! Daniel is trapped in the thermos with one of the top ten most dangerous ghosts?!” Lancer asked with a horrified gasp.
Sam couldn’t help but laugh. “To be fair, that list is pretty bogus. Half the ghosts on it are friendly, and there’s tons of super dangerous ones that didn’t even make the list. Technus is antagonistic, yeah, but fairly harmless if you know how to handle him.”
“Which we do,” Tucker added. “Danny will be fine. But, he probably won’t appreciate being souped for hours, so we’d rather get him home now.”
Lancer considered that for a moment, then decided, “I’ll do it. You two should go to class; I’ll get you both late passes.”
“What? No, we can do it!” Sam protested.
“Yeah, we’re not leaving Danny!” Tucker declared.
Lancer sighed. “Whereas your loyalty is admirable, you still should attend class. I, however, have an administrative period now, which should be plenty of time to go to Fentonworks and return with him in time for the last class period. Daniel’s father knows, so there shouldn’t be any issues, correct?”
Sam frowned. It seemed she didn’t have much of a choice, but she still didn’t like it.
“Maybe Lancer’s right,” Tucker said to Sam. “Danny trusts him.” He handed the thermos to Lancer.
Sam scrunched her nose in distaste. “Fine, but I still didn’t like it,” she said in a near-growl.
“Noted,” Lancer said cooly. He began to walk towards his office with the other two following. “So, while I’m getting you those late slips, why don’t you tell me the full story, hm?”
Lancer sighed as he approached the Fentonworks property, noting a pair of people in white suits out front. Just what he needed, the GIW. What were they doing there? Lancer slipped the thermos into his messenger bag just in case and approached the front door, which the two agents seemed to be installing, to Lancer’s bafflement.
The agent closed the door. “Finally,” he grumbled. “Why they have us installing doors, I have no idea… It’s not like we busted it down without reason!”
“Well… we kinda did,” the other agent said awkwardly. “Pretty sure it was unlocked…”
“Not the point, ugh!” the first agent said, then stomped off, not giving Lancer one look.
The second agent grabbed a tool box and hurried after the first one to their white car.
Lancer knocked on the door, and Jack Fenton immediately answered. “Oh, good, you’re finally—wait, you’re not the Guys in White,” he said, clearly confused.
“Ah, no, they just left,” Lancer told him. “I don’t think they appreciated having to fix a door instead of breaking it,” he said with a chuckle, although noted that the door seemed to be unpainted; Lancer had a feeling the agents wouldn’t be returning to do that part.
“Well, that makes sense!” Jack said, laughing too. “Breaking doors is a lot more fun than fixing them… Oh! You can come in,” he said, moving so he wasn’t blocking the entrance, and Lancer complied. “So, what brings you here? Is Danny okay?”
“Ah, yes, I believe he is fine,” Lancer said, reaching into his bag as he did so. “However, there was an incident in class, and his friends felt it was best to put him in here.” He held up the thermos and said dryly, “They forgot that there’s that technology ghost in there too, which they assured me is fine for Daniel to be with but that specific ghost cannot be released into the school for obvious reasons. Thus, we have to use the portal release. I decided to come myself to ensure that Daniel returns to class afterwards.”
“What kind of incident?” Jack asked with concern.
Lancer sighed. “In that asinine ‘anti-ghost training’ class the mayor insisted upon, a GIW representative came to teach about natural ghost repellents, and provided examples. One appeared that they knew he reacted to and his friends felt it prudent to get him away as quickly and discreetly as possible, which apparently meant distracting the class and then using the thermos. Rest assured I will henceforth be giving Daniel an exemption to the class; that is a lapse on my part.”
“And Danno’s okay? He wasn’t affected before being put in there?”
“As far as I know, they captured him before any adverse effects occurred.”
Jack looked relieved. “That’s not so bad then,” he said. “Good thinking on the kids’ parts, really. Though it is a little worrisome having Danny in there with Technus; hopefully they can’t fight in there, I know he and Danny often antagonize each other and I can never figure out if it’s playful or serious.”
“His friends seem to think it should be fine—however, it is probably best we get him out now. It cannot be pleasant in there.”
Jack grimaced. “That… might be an issue, actually,” he said. “You see, Maddie is currently in the lab, with some lawyers; we’re trying to sort out who gets what, since a lot of the prototypes are unique and either not yet patented or are patented with both our names, which makes it tricky for things we’ve both been working on… Sorry, I’m rambling. Point is, if we try to use the portal, she’ll get suspicious.”
“Why would she be suspicious about you emptying the thermos into the portal?” Lancer wondered.
“Well, more like, she’ll want to know who’s in there, and if I don’t answer, that’ll be the suspicious part,” Jack explained. “And she’s definitely going to ask, because usually the only things we capture are blobs and ectopi and other less sentient ghosts, which get used for experiments, which we currently have none captured for, and when she notices that I’m emptying the thermos instead of storing it she’ll realize that’s not what’s in it, especially since she knows I sympathize with the humanoid ghosts. Then she’ll try to figure out who is in it, and it just so happens that the tech one is one she’s intent on studying ever since he took over our house that one time. Not to mention what she’ll try to do if she figures out Phantom is captured in it…”
“Actually, it’s Daniel,” Lancer corrected.
“Yes, I know they’re the same, but she doesn’t.”
“No, I mean I’m pretty sure his friends… what do they call it, ‘souped’ him while still in human form,” Lancer clarified.
“Souped?”
“Because it’s a thermos.”
Jack took a moment to process that, then laughed. “Oh, man, that’s good. I think I’ll start calling it that too!”
“Right. So you are certain the portal cannot be used? You couldn’t simply say the Box Ghost is in there?” Lancer knew that not even Maddie would want to study him; he was simply too annoying.
Jack considered that. “I suppose I—no, actually,” he said, seeming to realize something. “Danno wouldn’t be able to return right away, not without her seeing, and there would be no way to tell him why he’s in there and not being allowed back. You can see why that would be bad.”
Lancer winced. “Ah. Yes, I can,” he said. Daniel’s mental health was already shaky, and adding into the mix him possibly thinking he had been abandoned there wouldn't be good.
“Jack?” Maddie’s voice called from the direction of the basement stairs, “Who are you talking to?”
“Just getting things squared away with the door!” Jack called back.
“Well, hurry up! The lawyers have questions!”
Jack sighed. “I need to get back there… Can you take Danny to Jazz? She’s at MU right now, she’s in class but should be done soon, if you wait in the lobby you’ll catch her. They have a ghost portal at their Arkham location, both she and Danny have permission to use it.”
Lancer blinked. “Isn’t that in Massachusetts?” That would take far longer than to simply wait until Maddie left.
“Yes but the school has a wormhole that leads there,” Jack said casually, as though that were as commonplace as having salad with dinner. “Actually, wait, try room Z83Q first, that’s Professor Warren’s office, if he’s there he’ll help. Just say it’s about Danny. It’ll probably be faster than waiting for Jazz.”
“Jack! Hurry up!” Maddie again shouted impatiently.
“Right, coming!” Jack yelled back, then told Lancer, “Thank you for helping my son,” before rushing off, not giving Lancer a chance to reply.
Lancer stood there for a moment, slightly stunned, before resigning himself to the fact that he’d have to actually enter the enigmatic Miskatonic University.
Lancer cautiously climbed the stoop and entered through the ornate door of what appeared to be an old victorian-style mansion, but was actually the main entrance to Amity Park’s Miskatonic University location, impossibly squeezed between a row of townhouses it truly should not fit between.
The first thing Lancer noticed was that the place was larger on the inside, and he was not one bit surprised. The lobby looked like that of an old mansion or opera house with a large open area and a double staircase that spiraled around, going up much higher than the building should be; he couldn’t even see the ceiling! Hallways branched off to the sides, which is where Lancer assumed the rooms were. There was a small fountain in the lobby as well, and the walls had some bulletin boards advertising clubs. A sign pointed to the cafeteria being through a door to one side, and another towards a back hallway claiming the dorms were that way. The signs were written in English and a few languages Lancer was unsure about, one using runes and two using writing systems Lancer had never seen before.
Right near the entrance there was a board with what appeared to be some sort of interactive map, but Lancer found he couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at when he tried to use it. Which was unfortunate considering he had to figure out where room “Z83Q” was, and that was not part of any numbering system Lancer was familiar with. Perhaps he could ask one of the students milling about?
“May we help you?” came a high-pitched voice, which seemed to speak directly into Lancer’s mind, and Lancer gave a start as a wiffleball-sized mass of tentacles with an eye on each tip appeared floating in front of him. He blinked a few times, until he was certain that yes, that’s what he was looking at.
“Are you a student?” Lancer wondered, finding himself completely comfortable speaking with something that anyone outside of Amity Park would probably immediately run away from screaming.
“No. We are a Guide. We help people navigate here. A student created us though!” the creature—Guide?—answered chipperly. “How may we help?”
“I am looking for Professor Warren,” Lancer explained. “I was told his office is room Z83Q.”
“Oh! Yes, we know that place,” the Guide said. “Follow us!”
The guide zipped off, and Lancer hurried to follow.
Lancer quickly became appreciative of having the Guide leading him, because otherwise Lancer was certain he would have become extremely lost. The very geometry of the building seemed off, like it was impossibly non-Euclidian, difficult for a human mind to comprehend. Going up often went down and going sideways went up, and a few times Lancer swore they were walking vertically up walls, like they were in some sort of Escher-inspired maze. They even walked in directions Lancer wasn’t sure existed.
Lancer figured they must have been walking for a good twenty minutes, but a glance at his watch showed Lancer that it had only been two. Clearly time, not just space, worked strangely in this place. He counted to ten and checked the watch again, hoping to better discern the difference in time, but instead of only a second passing like Lancer had expected, it had been a whole minute since the first glance. Yes, time definitely worked differently here.
Finally the office was reached.
“We alerted him to your visit,” the Guide said. “He is expecting you.” It then vanished.
Lancer knocked at the door, unsure what to expect.
To Lancer’s surprise, someone very human answered, although he was dressed in an outfit that would be more common to a professor in the late-19th-century, complete with bowler hat, than early-21st-century. The man invited him in, and the office Lancer stepped into appeared similarly plucked right out of the same era, with the exception of a computer that looked fairly futuristic. Since when were monitors so flat? Even the new top-of-the-line LCD model screens were a few inches thick, yet this was clearly barely a quarter inch! …Maybe it actually was from the future; MU did have Ghost Zone access, and allegedly in that dimension there were portals that went through time as well as space.
“I am Harley Warren, Doctor of Paranormal Psychology,” the man introduced, and something uncanny creeped into Lancer’s mind; the name was familiar, from a group of allegedly fictional stories that used Miskatonic University as a setting, written roughly a hundred years prior—but, surely not. Perhaps the man’s name had been inspired by the character, or the character was based on someone real and this man was an ancestor who took the name. Warren continued, “You are William Lancer, teacher at Casper High, correct?”
“Y-yes,” Lancer stuttered out in surprise. “How did you—”
“Daniel has told me much about you,” Dr. Warren said with a kind smile, and Lancer felt that he could be trusted. “Please, sit down.”
Lancer did not sit. “Speaking of Daniel, that is why I am here,” Lancer told the professor. “It is rather urgent.” He held up the thermos. “Daniel’s friends trapped him in here, along with another ghost that needs to be put back into the Ghost Zone. However, Maddie is currently in the lab, negotiating divorce-ralated things with Jack, so using that portal is not currently feasible.”
“Ah, I see,” Dr. Warren said. “Yes, that would not be good. I suppose Jack directed you here?” he asked, and upon receiving a nod from Lancer continued, “Well, you are certainly welcome to use our portal! First, though—what is this second ghost in there?” he had an odd glint to his eyes, dangerous almost.
“Technus,” Lancer told him, seeing no reason to lie.
Dr. Warren smiled. “Wonderful! Dr. Whipple, chair of our technology department, has been hoping to meet him!”
“He has?” Lancer asked.
“Yes, yes,” Dr. Warren said. “Come, walk with me,” he instructed, talking while he exited the room and went down the hallway, Lancer following. “Dr. Whipple has been fascinated by that ghost ever since first hearing about him! He would make a great asset to this University.”
“Asset?” Lancer asked, wondering what that could mean. Did they want to control the ghost? Use him for experiments?
“Yes! The Technology Department has been looking for a new lab assistant, and someone who can control technology would be invaluable, able to save so many rogue projects—of course, it’s up to him if he wants the job, but hopefully he can be convinced.”
“Huh,” Lancer said. He honestly shouldn’t be so surprised that Miskatonic University’s sympathies for ghosts extended to hiring them. No wonder ghost hunters like the Fentons—well, Maddie Fenton—were so opposed to the school. “Well, in that case I would suggest releasing him into a ghost shield, because he tends to attack before talking, especially when stressed, as he will be after being released. Being a ghost psychologist I have no doubt you could talk him down, but as his attacks tend to involve controlling technology, any electronics might get heavily damaged before he’s calm enough to listen.”
“Hmm. That is a very good point,” Dr. Warren said, taking out one of those fancy new full-keyboard cell phones and shooting someone a text. “So, tell me, how are things lately at Casper High?”
The two chatted while again time felt strange, until they arrived at a large lab, glass windows along the side looking in. Inside were some people waiting around what appeared to be a large square glass tank, probably large enough to hold that Mammouth ghost that had recently ravaged downtown Amity Park.
When they reached the tank, Dr. Warren introduced Lancer to Dr. Elihu Whipple, chair of the MU Technology Department and professor of Paranormal Technology, along with his four research assistants, who were candidates for the PhD program of the same subject.
After explaining the situation, Lancer was instructed to plug the thermos into a small module on the containment unit, and with a swirl of color one ghost and a halfa manifested within. Technus was standing and in some sort of robotic suit constructed mostly of wires, and Daniel had landed sitting on the ground in human form. Both looked rather beat up.
Daniel immediately jumped to his feet. “What’s going on?” he demanded, then noticed who was outside the glass. “Dr. Warren? Mr. Lancer?!” He looked around. “Why am I in a cage?!”
“Relax, Danny,” Dr. Warren said. “Your mother was gathering things at home, so the thermos couldn’t be opened there.”
“So you caged me!?” Daniel shouted, eyes and fists glowing and fangs bared, the display of anger mildly concerning but not unexpected given the circumstances.
“No, the cage is for Technus,” Lancer explained as calmly as possible. “The plan was to use the Ghost Portal that MU has to release you, but Dr. Whipple wished to speak to Technus first.”
Technus, who had been surprisingly quiet until then, asked in his usual booming, egotistical voice, “And what do you want with the great Technus, Master of All Things Technological?”
“We have a proposition for you,” Dr. Whipple said. “Miskatonic University could use an assistant in our Technology Lab that can control electronics.”
Both Daniel and Technus appeared speechless at that.
After a few moments of quiet to let him think, the technology ghost asked, “You are serious?”
“I am,” Dr. Whipple said. “You will find that our noble institution does not harbor the prejudices towards humanoid ghosts that many outside of here do, to the point that we are perfectly willing to employ them. You will be appropriately compensated, of course; in fact, you will find that we proudly provide salaries much higher than the standard for academia.”
Daniel, who now seemed calmer and perhaps even excited, told the ghost, “That means you won’t have to steal stuff anymore, and won’t need to hack into games instead of buying them!”
Technus considered that. “Yes, that is a nice perk. And being here would be much preferable to the Ghost Zone—providing, of course, I will not be caged.”
“Of course,” Dr. Whipple said. He signalled to one of his assistants, who pressed a few buttons on a small stand next to the cage, and the glass on one side vanished. “Our apologies; we only held you because we were unsure what your reaction would be upon release, but it seems any worry was unwarranted.”
Daniel hurried over to Lancer and Dr. Warren as Dr. Whipple led Technus to his office to continue discussing terms of employment. The doctoral candidates moved to a table on the other side of the lab to continue working on some project.
“What happened?” Daniel asked, looking awfully beat up, a bruise evident on his cheek and red marks along his arm where his shirt sleeve had been mostly torn off, as if he’d been held by one of Technus’s cables, although both seemed to already be rapidly healing, meaning the two hadn’t been fighting that seriously if Lancer understood the emotional aspect of ghost healing correctly.
“I could ask the same thing,” Lancer said. “Why were you fighting?”
Daniel crossed his arms. “He started it,” he muttered angrily, then upon noticing Lancer and Dr. Warren’s slightly skeptical looks added, “Seriously! That’s the truth!”
Lancer sighed. Well, it was Technus, after all, so, “I believe you,” he told the boy, then handed him the thermos. “I believe this is yours.”
“Thanks,” Daniel said, seeming to calm, and grabbed the thermos, after which to Lancer’s surprise it disappeared in a small puff of smoke that seemed to absorb into Daniel’s body. At Lancer’s questioning look he explained, “Ghosts can store ecto-based things in them,” Daniel said. “The thermoses have just enough ecto-energy for that to work when empty.”
“I see,” Lancer said. “Well, since you’ve been freed, I suppose we must return to school.” He turned to the professor. “It was very nice to meet you, Dr. Warren.”
“As it was to meet you,” the man said. “However, first: Danny, I know being in the thermos for that long can be stressful, especially if it was sudden. Are you in a good enough mental state to return to school, or do you need some time to recover?”
Lancer internally kicked himself; he hadn’t thought of that.
“No, I’m okay,” Daniel said. “Really, it’s not that big a deal. The GIW brought in blood blossoms, so Tucker really had no choice.”
“Blood blossoms?” Dr. Warren said, stiffening slightly and looking slightly angry; Lancer wasn’t sure why, having never heard of such before. All Daniel’s friends had said was that there was something he had reacted to. Dr. Warren continued, “Those should be extinct!”
“They genetically engineered some,” Daniel flatly informed him.
“I see… Well, worry not, that shall be taken care of,” Dr. Warren said, then muttered under his breath, “again.”
“MU eradicated them?” Daniel asked curiously.
“Yes; they are dangerous invasive flowers from another dimension,” Dr. Warren explained, and Lancer had a feeling he did not mean the Ghost Zone. “We will get the Horticulture Department to take care of that; they have a spray that destroys them. Plus, MU has all sorts of patents on products related to the flowers as well as exclusive rights to blood blossom experimentation, just for cases like this, and our lawyers are the best in the business. Mark my words, the Ghost Investigation Ward will not be permitted to continue with this avenue of research.”
Lancer had a feeling that crossing Miskatonic University was not recommended under any circumstance; no wonder none of the ghost hunters, other paranormal creature hunters, or the government ever tried to mess with them. However…
“Although this conversation is most enlightening,” Lancer interjected, “Daniel and I do still need to get back to class.”
Notes:
So, Technus has a job now! Betcha didn't expect that!
Next up: Day of the Dead! The Phan Club has indeed made Danny an ofrenda, and to his surprise, his core reacts to it. A few days later, Jack answers the door to find someone who looks strikingly like a younger female version of Danny...
Chapter 18: More Ghost Than Human
Summary:
It's the Day of the Dead! Danny follows a trail of glowing marigolds to the ofrenda that the Phantom Phan Club created for him, and finds it oddly comforting.
Then, there's a knock at the door, and Jack opens it to find someone who looks an awful lot like a female Danny... Looks like Danny had one more secret he didn't tell his father!
Notes:
My parents left earlier than expected so you get the chapters today after all!
This was one of my other favorite chapters to write! It's overall more lighthearted. There's a somber feeling to some of it, since it involves Danny reflecting on his death, but overall it should be a nice respite from the heaviness of earlier chapters.
A large portion of this chapter focuses on The Day of the Dead. I don't celebrate it myself, but was watching the movie Coco and thought it would be cool to have Danny experience it. So I did some research into it for this fic, some books and articles and stuff; I think I got everything right for how it might be celebrated by people living in the Great Lakes region of the US, but if you do celebrate it and find anything is glaringly off please let me know and I'll fix it.
CW: discussions about death.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Later that day, Danny left school with Sam and Tucker, after Lancer had forced him to attend his final class period—how they’d actually managed to make it back in time, Danny had no idea. Cujo had been waiting outside of the school for Danny, so the three detoured to the park instead of Tucker’s house, where they had initially planned to go as Danny needed a place to be while Maddie was still at the house, which according to his dad’s text message might be pretty late—the three of them were going to get Nasty Burger after the park, to serve as dinner.
On the way to the park, Danny explained to Sam and Tucker about what had happened after they’d left the thermos with Lancer.
“Wait,” Tucker said when Danny had finished. “Does this mean that all we need to do to get some of the Amity-Park-obsessed ghosts to calm down is to get them jobs here?” A good clarification, Danny supposed, as plenty of ghosts were happy staying in the Ghost Zone and never ventured outside it; the small percentage that didn’t enjoy being in the Ghost Zone 24/7 tended to cause all the chaos, so with a purpose here maybe the chaos could be reduced.
“Well, for Technus, apparently yes,” Danny confirmed. “And I guess technically Ember, Kitty, and Johnny have a job with the band, if that counts? But I don’t know if that’s a large enough sample size.”
“Still, worth a shot, right?” Sam pointed out.
“I guess we can look into it,” Danny said, though wasn’t exactly sure how they’d find jobs for ghosts like Skulker or the Box Ghost—maybe MU had jobs for them too? Boxy could maybe guard their storage vault, and Skulker could maybe help them capture things that escaped from dimensions other than the Ghost Zone that mortals didn’t want to admit existed let alone deal with.
They continued walking in comfortable silence for a bit, then Sam spoke up. “Looks like it’s going to rain,” she said, looking up at the sky.
Danny looked, too; it definitely was overcast, sky grey and reminding him more like night than afternoon. He shivered, hoping there wouldn’t be a lightning storm. Rain he could deal with, lightning he couldn’t.
On the way to the park, they passed a small church with a graveyard, which gave Danny pause as his ghost sense went off. There were… an awful lot of child ghosts there today, although they were only the translucent shades, the weaker spirits that only other ghosts could usually see and who couldn’t interact much with humans except for cold spots. There were a fair amount of people visiting the graves, decorating them with bright colors and mini altars along with marigolds and decorated sugar skulls. The people were coming in and out of the church, looking happy and eating food.
“Something wrong?” Tucker asked urgently, no doubt having noticed the ghost sense.
“No, I don’t think so,” Danny said slowly. Those ghosts were harmless, although usually there weren’t that many at once.
“Oh, right. That church’s congregation is mainly Latin Americans,” Sam recalled. “They must be celebrating the Day of the Dead.”
That did explain it, Danny realized; ancestors visiting during the holiday must be true, then. “That’s… a lot of children,” Danny said quietly, feeling sad. Paulina had said the first day of the holiday was for the children, hadn’t she?
“What do you mean?” Tucker asked. “Looks like a regular amount of children to parents.”
“Not the humans,” Danny said, then shifted nervously as he realized that he hadn’t exactly told Sam and Tucker about the existence of shades, feeling it hit just a little too close to death for regular humans to learn about—usually shades were only visitors from wherever they went afterwards, not the type of ghosts that Amity Park was familiar with, who were fully capable of interacting with the material world.
“There’s ghosts there?” Tucker asked. “What, are they invisible? But wait, then how can you see them?”
Danny bit his lip slightly. Technically, humans weren’t supposed to know about the After; how much should he say? “They’re shades,” Danny explained. “They’re… closer to the more traditional ideas of ghosts, I guess. You know, fully translucent and unable to interact with anything, only visible to humans in very specific circumstances. Honestly, at first I thought I was hallucinating. Pandora explained them to me.”
“And they’re just around?” Sam asked curiously. “How common are they?”
“Not very common. Until now I’ve only seen somewhere between five or ten. Thermoses don’t work on them, but they don’t cause issues so that doesn’t matter.” Danny had tried it once, before realizing that the shade had only been attempting to attack but couldn’t actually do anything. “Honestly, I don’t think humans are supposed to know they actually exist? Some linger, usually just from death until their funeral, but most are just… visitors. From… other places. I guess the rituals during this holiday really do let them come back for the day.”
“Other places?” Sam asked.
“As in, Afters that aren’t the Ghost Zone. I’ll tell you as we walk,” Danny said, noting Cujo was getting impatient.
After a couple minutes of quiet, Tucker asked, “So, you going to tell us about these ‘Afters that aren’t the Ghost Zone’?”
Danny took a deep breath. Might as well; they’d only keep pressing. “The human-based ghosts in the Ghost Zone are ghosts who still have strong ties to Earth, you know how they’re formed and whatnot. Well, most people don’t become the type of ghosts we know. I don’t fully know the details, but Pandora says their souls go to wherever they believe in while waiting for reincarnation—which also happens to Ghost Zone ghosts if they fade. But sometimes the waiting souls can temporarily roam earth as shades, if they haven’t yet been reborn.”
“I knew reincarnation existed!” Sam said victoriously.
“As, apparently, does every single place people believe in,” Tucker said, then frowned. “Yeah, I have a feeling that’s probably something we really shouldn’t know.”
“It does feel like taboo information,” Sam mused.
“Yeah, so please don’t tell anyone,” Danny said, strongly getting that feeling too.
Tucker looked contemplative. “If where we go is based on what we believe in, and now that we know that everything apparently exists, what will happen to us?”
“Maybe we get a choice?” Sam hypothesized.
“Can we not talk about this?” Danny asked, feeling slightly stressed. “Or tell anyone else? I really do feel like it’s a major taboo to talk about this. I don’t think Pandora was even supposed to tell me. She said most ghosts don’t know, unless they’ve been around a very very long time like she has. There’s gotta be a reason it’s such a secret.” He didn’t want to end up creating another paradox by accidentally revealing to the entire earthly plane the secrets of what happens after death.
Sam nodded. “Got it,” she said, both her and Tucker’s vibes giving curiosity mixed with resignation to not getting further questions answered.
The three and the dog walked in comfortable quiet for a few more minutes, until they reached the entrance to the park, which gave Danny pause again. Starting from just outside the entrance there was a line of glowing orange marigolds.
“What’s wrong?” Tucker asked, then looked towards the ground. “Flowers?”
“They’re glowing,” Danny said.
“What? No they’re not,” Tucker said.
“No, they definitely are,” Danny argued. They were pretty bright, actually. He felt a slight pull, drawn to them, feeling like he should follow.
“Oh!” Sam said, sounding excited. “Day of the Dead uses marigolds to guide spirits.”
“There was a bunch at the graveyard, but those weren’t glowing,” Danny said. “And they didn’t give off a feeling that I should follow them, either…”
Sam grinned. “Then they must be for your ofrenda,” she concluded. “Remember? Paulina said the Phantom Phan Club was making one for you.”
“Oh, right. She did say that,” Danny said. He felt a little awkward about it, as though he didn’t really deserve one because he wasn’t fully dead, but… It was calling to him, so maybe he did? It was another thing that made him distinctly aware that he was more ghost than human now, even in human form. Would an ofrenda for Vlad call him, or was he still human enough that it wouldn’t? What about James or Dani? Did the form they were in matter for such?
Danny followed the marigolds, Sam and Tucker trailing after him.
The ofrenda wasn’t that far into the park, along a paved trail near the field where Danny often played with Cujo. The Phans were still there, putting the final touches on it, including some sort of canopy to protect it from the potential rain… and probably hoping for Phantom to show up.
“Danny!” Paulina called, noticing his approach. Other Phans turned excitedly, then their expressions fell, clearly having expected a ‘different’ Danny. She hurried over to him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek; right, they had to sell that they were ‘dating’ now—he felt a small flash of jealousy from both Sam and Star, though the latter’s quickly faded into understanding whereas the former’s shifted to mild annoyance. Cujo bounced over to Paulina, who flashed slight nervousness for a moment before softening and giving the dog the pets he demanded.
They stood far enough away from the club that no one else but Danny, Sam, and Tucker could hear when Paulina said, “I’m surprised you showed up so early.”
“Ah, well, I was coming here to play with Cujo, and then… I dunno, the glowing marigolds kinda just drew me here.”
Paulina gasped with clear wonder. “They glow? So it really does make a path for the person the ofrenda is for?”
“Seems like it,” Danny said. “We passed by the church on the way here,” he told her. “There are… visitors. Not strong enough for humans to see, not the kind of ghosts Amity Park usually has, but they’re there. Please don’t ask me to talk about where they’re from, I’m not allowed to, but they are visiting, so it does work.”
Paulina gave off a curious vibe but thankfully didn’t press. “I appreciate you letting me know that,” she said instead. “So, do you want to see your ofrenda? The club worked very hard on it.” She gave off a nervous vibe, as if hoping for approval.
“I’m in human form,” Danny pointed out. “And the club saw me already, so it’d be extra suspicious if I vanished and Phantom appeared…”
“Well, then, come see it in human form,” Paulina said. “Just don’t let them know.”
“They won’t get upset about us not bringing offerings?” Tucker asked.
“Here,” Sam said, swinging off her spider backpack and reaching into it, emerging with a few ecto-energy drinks. “We can put these there.”
“What are those?” Paulina asked curiously. “And what language is that?”
“Ghost energy drinks,” Danny explained. “Those are ghost runes on the cans… Oh, wait.” he fished through his bag until he withdrew a sandwich bag with green cookies. “Put these there too.”
“You shouldn’t be putting things on your own ofrenda,” Paulina said with a chuckle. “Let me guess, those are ectoplasm cookies?”
“Yes, and they’re delicious!” Danny said excitedly.
“They taste like motor oil,” Tucker said flatly.
“You tried one?!” Sam said incredulously. “Those could kill you!”
“It was just a small bite,” Tucker argued. “I have a stomach of steel!”
“They don’t taste like that,” Danny said with a frown. “They taste like a mix of mint and lime. It’s really good!”
“Anyway,” Paulina said, looking mildly disturbed—clearly she wasn’t used to all the ghost-related talk yet. “Come on, let’s put your offerings there.”
As they approached, Kwan noticed and waved at them. “Hey, Fenton!” he greeted. “What brings you here?” he asked with a wink.
“They have offerings for Phantom too,” Paulina said.
“Eww, why are those cookies radioactive green?” a girl with braces named Brittney asked.
“They’re made with ectoplasm, which ghosts eat,” Danny explained. “They’re some of Phantom’s favorites—er, so Ember told me.” People shouldn’t question that—everyone knew Danny and Ember were friends by now, and knew Phantom and Ember were ‘dating’, so her knowing that and telling him wasn’t a far stretch. “Same for the drinks. I know these things usually have favorite foods from when the person was alive, but we thought maybe he’d like some of his current favorites, since we know that too?”
“Oh, yeah, that makes sense!” an average-looking brown-haired boy, who was in Danny’s trig class but whom Danny forgot the name of, said.
Paulina helped Danny put the cookies on a plate filled with other cookies and handmade treats, many which appeared to include caramel or peanut-butter, as well as find a spot for the drinks. He examined the rest of the ofrenda; it looked like the group really outdid themselves on it. There were lit candles and marigolds throughout; Danny wondered vaguely if the school had paid for all of those, as it was an official school club, or if the students all donated, because that was a lot of flowers.
The top tier, of three, was traditionally used to hold religious symbols; it seemed that, since no one knew Phantom’s religion, they’d put objects from as many religions as they could think of (he didn’t really have any; given Jack’s family history as witch hunters he assumed his ancestors on that side must have been Puritans, and his extended family on both sides celebrated Christmas and whatnot so likely were some flavor of Christian, but his parents had been more agnostic than anything, taking a scientific approach to such as they did with everything—celebrating Christmas had always been more about tradition than religion in their family. Danny personally never gave thought to any of that until he, well, died, upon which he became glad that he’d never been any religion because if he had been then he’d be having even more existential crises).
The middle tier was for photographs; there were more framed photos of Phantom than Danny had expected, most taken from the newspaper but one looked almost professionally done to the point Danny wondered how and when it had been taken. There were also many drawings people had done of him, one being a small painted portrait that looked professional; the signature in the corner said that, to Danny’s surprise, Star had created that one. Danny never knew she was an artist.
The bottom, and largest, tier contained plenty of handmade sugar skulls, a larger skull which had the name ‘Danny’ on it; Danny was surprised they’d chosen to use his first name rather than just ‘Phantom’ or the full name. Food was the largest focus of this: in addition to the handmade sweets there was a basket of store-bought peanut-butter cups and caramels; some cans of soda in different flavors; and a pile of various brands of potato-chips, all ranch flavored (maybe he should have told them a few different chip flavors in retrospect). There was also a copy of the video game Doom, some Spider-man comics, a few model rocket ships, and various little space-themed things like stickers and keychains.
Oh, and there was a GameCube that Danny was pretty sure was from the Gaming Club—he’d have to talk to them about returning that because it was way too big an expense and Danny felt too awkward accepting that, even if he didn’t have one anymore after an incident with one of his parents’ rogue inventions.
“It’s beautiful,” Danny whispered to Paulina, willing the tears in his eyes to go away. His core buzzed happily. “I’ll make sure Phantom stops by later, after playing with Cujo.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek—just selling the relationship act!—as Cujo excitedly barked at him, and then moved to the field with Sam and Tucker to play with the dog, ignoring Sam and Tucker’s comments about Paulina and him.
After an hour of playing with Cujo, the dog raced off back in the direction of Fentonworks; Danny sent his dad a quick text letting him know the dog was on his way back, as he wasn’t sure if he told Maddie yet that the dog was staying there.
Danny then told Sam and Tucker to meet him at Nasty Burger, so he could stop by the ofrenda as Phantom this time; he also mildly shocked them by not having his rings manifest, which via experimentation Danny learned that he could choose whether or not to have yet apparently forgot to tell his friends about. Oops. He decided it would be better not to use them most of the time for secrecy’s sake, since the rings really were quite flashy and bright.
The sky had thankfully started to clear up, but the sun had started to set already, as it did at this time of year, causing the marigolds to glow even more as he followed them back to his ofrenda.
The group of people had grown, now not just including the club but also including general community members too, and it appeared people had added even more things to it, even adding a separate foldable table to extend the bottom tier to make room. For some reason there also seemed to be some armed guards around the outskirts, though they weren’t too obvious about it, dressed in suits, more like secret service.
Before anyone saw him, Danny noticed Paulina, Kwan, and Star at the edge of the crowd chatting with each other. He turned invisible and headed there, reappearing behind them. “Hey,” he said, and to their credit they didn’t scream, though definitely emitted vibes of surprise before turning to him. “What’s with the armed guards?” he asked.
“Oh, those are mercenaries I hired,” Paulina said casually, as though it were no big deal. “They’re here to protect you from any ghost hunters that try to intervene. A GIW agent was here earlier, investigating, but he left.”
“They wouldn’t really crash a religious thing, would they?” Danny asked. “Oh, who am I kidding, the GIW totally would…”
“Don’t worry; that’s what the mercenaries are for,” Paulina assured him. “Now, come see your ofrenda, Phantom!”
Paulina grabbed Danny by the hand and pulled him through the crowd (he floated to make it easier), who gasped and made excited exclamations as they realized who was there.
“Look who I found!” Paulina told the crowd. “He really showed up!”
“Uh, yeah, the flowers drew me in,” he told the crowd, blushing and rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment. He’d never taken admiration well, and that was the main vibe given off by the crowd. “I don’t really know what to say… no one’s ever done this for me before, so, thank you.” He didn’t even have a grave or memorial—not that he wanted one! Nope, didn’t want one, didn’t need one, if his core could please stop purring at the thought of finally getting one that’d be great.
“Come, look at what everyone gave you!” Star told him, tugging his shoulder to rotate him to face the ofrenda, lightly pushing Danny towards it.
“Do you like it?” Paulina asked.
Danny had seen it earlier, but in the darkness of the evening, lit by the candles and golden marigolds, it looked even more beautiful. There were so many foods there; Danny found himself hungry, reminded that he hadn’t had much of a lunch.
“It’s beautiful,” Danny said, though unlike earlier he said it loud enough for more people to hear. He found tears forming again, something full in his heart. He knew he had many supporters, despite the media claiming otherwise, but to see them do something like this for him… “Thank you,” he said again. “I’m honored.”
“Hey, no need to cry,” Paulina said, wiping a tear away with her thumb, which she then looked at with some fascination, probably surprised the tears glowed.
“I’m just so happy,” Danny said honestly. “I didn’t know it would feel so, well, nice. Like, my core itself feels content,” he admitted.
“Well, feel free to enjoy the foods,” Star told him, giving off a pleased vibe. “Everyone worked hard making them for you!”
A girl that Danny was pretty sure was named Sarah said, “Paulina told us that her boyfriend—the Fenton kid—told her that you especially like peanut butter, mint, and caramel sweets. Is that true?”
“Yeah, it is,” Danny said, casually picking up one of the ectoplasm cookies he’d left there earlier and nibbling on it.
“Dude, try some of the ones we made,” Kwan said.
“You made some cookies?” Danny asked through a mouthful of the ectoplasm one.
“Yeah! Mine are the bullseyes,” Kwan said proudly, pointing to a round golden cookie with a peanut butter cup pressed in the middle.
Danny ended up trying more sweets than he probably should have, but everyone there who made something wanted to see if he approved of what they’d made, and how could he say no to that? Eventually he realized he’d been there longer than intended and was supposed to meet Sam and Tucker, so told them he had to go patrol, upon which someone produced a sandwich bag and he was given a bunch to-go, as well as an assurance that the ofrenda would be up all night and through tomorrow if he wanted to grab more, because more people would surely be stopping by to add more things.
Sam and Tucker had been somewhat frustrated at how late he was, until he produced the bag of cookies to share with them.
Later that night, after his dad called to say it was safe to come home whenever he wanted—wasn’t he supposed to be grounded?—, Danny stopped by the park again; it was late enough that few people were there, all just passing through. He grabbed a few more cookies, smiling as there was a larger bag with a note from Paulina saying to take it to share with his family, along with any of the toys and other things he wanted.
“Oh, hey, Phantom!” someone called, and Danny turned to see Mikey heading over with Lester and Nathan.
“Oh, hey,” Danny greeted. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
“You have?” Mikey asked, mildly confused.
“Yeah. Are you guys the ones who left the GameCube?”
“Oh! Yes, the Gaming Club donated it,” Mikey said with a grin. “Do you like it?”
“Well, it’s a nice thought, but isn’t that rather expensive? You should use it for the club instead.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine!” Lester assured Danny. “That one actually is from the club! We had three, but we don’t really have enough members to ever need all three, and the Wii is coming out in a few weeks anyway so we’ll be switching to that, we raised enough to preorder two for the club.”
“Yeah, we figured since you can’t come to the club anymore, the least we could do was give you this, so you can keep up your skills until you can play with the club again,” Mikey explained.
“Oh. I guess that’s okay then,” Danny accepted, their vibes clearly indicating that there would be no arguing—Phantom was going to have a GameCube whether he wanted to or not.
“Here’s some games for it,” Nathan chimed in, handing Danny a GameStop bag. “We just stopped by GameStop to get them, they’re all used copies because we know you’re pretty humble about gifts, they were buy-one-get-one today.”
“Ah. Yeah, I don’t really like people spending money on me, so that was definitely good to do,” Danny said. “But, thank you. I really appreciate all the thought people have put into this… Just, thank you, really.”
The three grinned. “Glad you like it!” Mikey said cheerfully. “Seriously though, thank you for everything you do, Phantom. I know it can seem like everyone’s against you, but I think this here proves otherwise, right?”
“Yeah, I suppose it does,” Danny said, looking wistfully at the ofrenda. He tried not to cry again. “I think I’m the one that needs to thank you, again; I didn’t realize how much I needed this. Not, like, the gifts and whatnot, but the recognition. It does feel like everyone’s against me a lot of the time, especially with the media being how it is, and it’s a relief to see that people do appreciate me. Plus…” he shifted awkwardly, a little embarrassed to admit that, “Just, having an ofrenda itself is nice. It… it makes my core feel content. This is the first year my… my death has been acknowledged like this… It kinda feels, I dunno, peaceful, like it’s something my core’s been wanting,” He said, a little uneasy about admitting that and how this was only further evidence of his ghostliness—surely Vlad wouldn’t be reacting this way if he had been given one.
“Oh, right. You’ve only been a ghost for a short time,” Lester recalled. “Well, we’re glad you finally got some peace.”
“Does your gravestone give you peace like this too?” Nathan asked curiously.
Danny winced at the question. “Ah, well, actually…” he trailed off, his core feeling uneasy about the answer to that.
Mikey gasped. “Do you not have one?”
Danny nibbled his lip, unsure how to phrase things.
“Oh shit,” Lester said. “Are you a cold case?”
“Am I a what?” Danny asked, not following.
“You know, like, were you murdered and someone tried to cover it up, and the case was never solved, or something?”
“Okay, no, nope, please no speculating on my death,” Danny said, wanting to shut this train of thought down asap. “It wasn’t murder, and I don’t have an open unsolved case. Please just let this drop.”
“Sorry, that was rude of us,” Mikey apologized.
Danny shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I get it; not many people are used to interacting with ghosts, and it can be difficult to remember what not to discuss.”
“Still, Sorry,” Mikey said. He glanced at his watch and cringed.
“Do you have to get home or something?” Danny asked.
Mikey sighed. “Yeah, Mom wants us home by dinner, and at this rate we’re gonna get home after that. Sorry to end on a bit of a sour note there—just, know that we really appreciate all that you do for this town, okay, man?”
Danny smiled at the three. “I know. Again, thank you—I mean it.”
As the three left, Danny peeked into the GameStop bag, seeing copies of Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart Double Dash, Mario Party 4, and Kirby Air Ride—all games he’d played with them at either the house or their club. He placed the bag next to the game console, then looked at the other items.
Danny grabbed the Spider-man comics and sat on the ground, leaning against a table leg, reading them in the candlelight from the ofrenda while finishing the ecto-cookies and snacking on some chips, ignoring the mercenaries waiting in the shadows. More people stopped by occasionally, leaving more offerings, and he greeted them, though they mostly smiled and wished him well before leaving him to continue reading.
Surprisingly, a group of teachers from Casper High stopped by, possibly fresh from a visit to a bar if Danny read the giddy vibes right. To Danny’s slight embarrassment, Lancer and Ishiyama were both there; the former gave Danny a wink and the latter a knowing smile, but both they and Danny pretended to not personally know each other. The whole group assured Danny that the school was supportive of him and his efforts to help the town and that he’d always be welcome there, which actually caused a few glowing tears to trail down Danny’s cheeks as he gave a fanged smile. Coach Tetslaff, hilariously, suggested he join the football team, now that there was precedent (Ember had indeed joined cheerleading) but Danny politely declined—especially as he had a feeling the alcohol was what inspired the offer.
At one point, a little boy, around the age of six or seven, and his parents came over, and the boy proudly handed Danny his offering, a rocket ship sticker, while thanking Danny for saving his life when he had been caught in a ghost attack at the mall. Danny had cried silent tears and hugged the kid upon hearing that, and then pulled out the thermos and stuck the sticker right on it, which made the kid very happy.
Another notable thing was when an older woman and man, grandparent-age, asked if he really didn’t have a grave or memorial anywhere, correctly inferring that the ofrenda was at the park due to a lack of such and lack of a family residence (as far as they knew); Danny had confirmed it, unsure what more to do. The couple looked sad; the woman patted his head, and Danny was reminded of his own grandparents, who were not on the human plane anymore. The couple left without another word, leaving Danny to wonder if he should somehow address that to the community at large, because they had by far not been the only ones wondering, though most didn’t say anything to Danny specifically (but his hearing was better than a human’s, so he heard the whispers). The last thing he needed was to have the town get the idea that they needed to make something for him.
Soon, owls and crickets could be heard, and Danny realized it was getting awfully late; he should finish up and head home soon, he figured, but he was so comfortable there.
Someone sat down on the ground next to Danny, and he gave a start, having not sensed anyone approach… because they weren’t human, Danny realized, recognizing the presence—a ghost his core was familiar with, hence no ghost sense going off.
“Clockwork?” Danny acknowledged as he turned to the ghost, though it came out more like a question, indirectly asking why he was there.
“I have an offering,” Clockwork said, holding out a tray of green translucent cubes that seemed to be undulating on their own. They were decorated with glittery star sprinkles and had tiny bright glowing specks inside.
“What is that, jello?” Danny asked curiously. It was rather pretty.
“Warabimochi.”
“Gesundheit?”
Clockwork chuckled. “It is similar to jello, I suppose, but firmer. It’s a traditional confectionary from Japan. I used ectoplasm in this modified version. The glow is radium.”
“Oh,” Danny said, finding himself at a loss. Why would Clockwork make something for him? Why was he here at all? Was something—
“Nothing is cataclysmically wrong,” Clockwork said gently. “I am here for the same reason everyone else has come here tonight: to honor your death.”
“Oh,” Danny said again, unsure how he felt about that.
“You have finally accepted it.”
Danny shifted nervously. Had he? He’d been referring to himself as a ghost much more often lately, and had gotten angry at Sam a couple days ago about dodging around the term ‘died’. Plus he was about to eat something incredibly deadly to humans.
“If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have been drawn here,” Clockwork said gently, easily identifying where Danny’s thoughts were. “Yet it feels comforting, does it not?”
“I guess,” Danny muttered, fiddling with his gloved fingers.
“A grave or permanent memorial might be similarly soothing, as would be a funeral service.”
Danny shook his head. “No, this is enough,” he insisted, voice strained, even though his core perked up at the notion. Danny ignored it; yes, he was technically mostly dead, but he didn’t need an actual grave or funeral! Besides, there was no body, since he was still using it. He was still 10% human. He also really didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
Clockwork realized this. “Here, try one,” he suggested, holding the plate closer to change the subject.
Danny reached for one, but Clockwork moved it away. “Best to levitate it; it’s not really a hand food.”
“You didn’t bring forks?” Danny asked.
“Stabbing it with a fork would break it; chopsticks are the preferred utensil, which you do not know how to use well, correct?”
“Well, I can’t levitate stuff, either.”
“Sure you can.”
“Not intentionally. All I can do is make things float like an inch above the ground.”
Clockwork sighed. “Confidence is what you are lacking, then. Ghost powers react to emotion; if you do not believe you can intentionally use it, you won’t. Try.”
Danny frowned and focused on a piece of the treat. He concentrated, and the piece gained a slightly brighter glow as it rose off of the plate slightly. Danny tried to move it to him, but it faltered on the way, and fell to the ground—only briefly though, as Clockwork then used his time-reversal powers on just the warabimochi piece to make it return to the plate undamaged and clean.
“That was a good attempt. Keep trying,” the Time God-Ghost told Danny.
Danny tried a few more times, then finally hovered one over to his mouth, though it was slow and shaky.
“I did it!” Danny cheered, muffled as it was in his mouth.
“Swallow before you speak,” Clockwork chided with a smile. “Wonderful job, though! You’re making progress.”
Danny grinned and Clockwork cringed; oops, he still had food in his mouth. Danny chewed it and savored the flavor before smiling again. The radiation gave it a little zing, like pop rocks. Danny wasn’t sure of the flavor mixed with the ectoplasm; it was earthy, but tasty.
“The base flavor is matcha,” Clockwork said, predicting Danny’s impending question. “It’s a type of powdered green tea.”
“Also from Japan?” Danny guessed.
“Naturally.”
The two chatted for a bit, both munching on the snack until it was gone, and then Clockwork left, saying that he’d been away from his task for too long and didn’t want the Observants showing up here, which was fair.
Danny realized it was getting late, but picked up the comic book again, deciding there was probably enough time to finish it.
“Danny?” came a quiet voice after a while, and Danny looked up from the comic to see his sister standing in front of him. Oh; it must be later than he’d thought.
“Hey, Jazz,” Danny said, blushing. “Um. The Phantom Phan Club made this, and the flowers kinda drew me in… Not in a bad way! Just, like it was meant for me to follow them, so I did? They said all this was for me, a Day of the Dead thing… Paulina prepared a bag of cookies for me to share with the family. I didn’t mean to stay this long, I swear, but… I dunno, it’s nice. Comforting, like this place was meant for me. Homely, maybe the term is? And people keep stopping by, and saying they appreciate me, and giving the offerings… With the media and government still on a vendetta against me, sometimes it’s easy to forget that so many people still support me. It’s just nice to have people be nice for once, without worrying.”
Jazz gave Danny a gentle smile of understanding. “Perfectly understandable, little brother. But, Dad is getting worried, and you do have school tomorrow. It’s a two-day holiday, right? You can come back here tomorrow evening.” She held out her hand.
“Yeah, I think I’ll do that,” Danny said, accepting her help to stand up even though he could have floated; it struck Danny how tall his sister now was compared to him—she’d kept growing over the past two years and change yet Danny hadn’t. He put the comics back, then took the large bag of cookies, a handful of candies, the ecto-drinks, the gamecube and games (using the bag to hold some of the other things), and a small metal rocket ship that looked ancient, likely having belonged to someone’s parent or grandparent, handed down before they decided to give it as an offering—in fact, Danny could literally sense emotions around the object, as though the love for it had been imbued in the object itself. He also grabbed a small metal star-shaped zipper-pull for his backpack, along with a sheet of space-themed stickers, too.
“You know, you can take more, if you want; it’s for you, right?” Jazz pointed out.
“I know; Paulina said as much,” Danny said. “But it’ll be up tomorrow too, and I don’t want it to look destroyed. Besides, knowing her, she’ll pack it all up and give it to me anyway.”
“Makes sense,” Jazz said. “Come on, dad is waiting.”
As they walked off, Danny asked, “So, how much trouble am I in?”
“You’re not,” Jazz said. “The news reported on Phantom having an ofrenda, so we figured you’d probably be hanging out around it; they even got a photo of you crying when you saw it.”
Danny blushed. “Oh,” he said. “That, er, explains why so many people showed up, despite the holiday not being widely celebrated around here… I’m surprised none of the hunters appeared, though.”
“The news also reported the mercenaries,” Jazz explained with a chuckle. “The GIW and other teams must have been too intimidated to bother. Maddie was itching to go, but Jack convinced her that it would be a horrible idea due to public perception, and she’s logical about that stuff if anything.”
“Yeah,” Danny said, suddenly sad at the mention of his mom. His dad probably didn’t show up because he didn’t want his mom following him; Danny wondered if his dad wanted to see the ofrenda or if that would be too painful.
The two chatted about Danny’s day on the way home, during which he shifted back to human form when he was sure no one was looking, with him filling her in on what had happened earlier.
Jazz grinned when Danny told her about Technus. “I knew he’d be a great addition to the school!” she said proudly, and then at Danny’s questioning look said, “Dr. Tesla was complaining about some tech going awry again, and I joked about how at least it wasn’t haunted by Technus, and Dr. Whipple overheard. That’s when I had the idea and told him about him.”
“Dr. Tesla?” Danny asked. “Like that new car company?”
Jazz chuckled. “No, the car company is named after Nikola Tesla, a famous inventor in the late 19th and early 20th century. He did a lot of stuff with electricity. Dr. Tesla has the same name—looks uncannily similar, too; I can’t figure out if he’s just an ancestor named after him or the actual guy.”
Danny scoffed at that. “He can’t be the actual guy; that’d make him too old.”
“Well, yes, officially he died in 1943 at the age of 86,” Jazz said. “But that could have been faked.”
“That’s still, what, 63 years ago? So it’d make him, what, 149? Way too old for a human.”
Jazz glanced at Danny with a raised eyebrow. “Okay, you of all people should know that not everyone who looks human is human.”
“Point,” Danny conceded, as they arrived at the house. Maybe the guy was a ghost, or maybe another vampire, like the school nurse.
Danny walked through the door and then opened it for Jazz, who just rolled her eyes fondly at him, apparently amused at the ghostly display.
“Danno, you’re back!” Jack shouted, racing over from the kitchen.
Danny dodged Jack’s hug with the assistance of some intangibility and flight. “Sorry, Dad,” he said, sensing his dad’s disappointment and hurt as he landed in the kitchen. “Nothing against you; I’m just holding cookies and don’t want them crushed!”
“Cookies?” Jack asked, immediately perking back up.
“Yeah, from the ofrenda the Phan Club made. There’s some candies too. Paulina told me to take some to share with you and Jazz,” Danny explained, putting the things he was carrying on the table. “There will probably be a lot more tomorrow. I think they went a little overboard; I don’t think they’re used to the people being honored actually being there and able to eat the offerings, because I’m pretty sure there’s usually not that amount of food on them. Everyone seemed very excited for me to try everything,” he said with a chuckle.
“Ah, yeah, we saw that on the news,” Jack said, a somber air coming off him. “If you’re okay with it, I want to stop by tomorrow. They said they used the park because they don’t know who Phantom was in life, or where he’s… where his g-gravestone is…”
“Dad, no,” Danny said, anticipating where his thoughts were headed and resolutely ignoring the fact that his core buzzed pleasantly in response to the idea. “No, I don’t need one of those. I may be mostly ghost, but I’m still not fully dead!”
“I know, I know,” Jack said hurriedly. “Sorry. I’m just… still processing things, I guess.”
“Right,” Danny acknowledged. So much had happened in such a short time that Danny had forgotten that it had only been five days since Jack had learned about Danny’s secret. Then, he saw Jack’s face and frowned. “How’d you get a black eye?” he asked.
Jack winced. “It’s not important,” he muttered.
“Dad?” Danny asked warily, not used to his dad covering things up. Then he recalled what Clockwork had shown him, remembered the time he’d intervened when his mom tried to punch his dad, and the cheek bruise, and asked quietly, “Did… did mom do that?”
“Woof!” came a bark, and Cujo raced in. To Danny's surprise, there was a bandage around the dog’s waist. He knelt down to pet him and examine it. “What happened, boy?” he asked. “You didn't have this in the park earlier…”
Jack sighed and wilted. “Maddie happened. I’m sorry. He came into the lab while she was still there, and she had an ecto-gun near her. I didn’t act fast enough; by the time I pushed her away she’d already taken a shot, though thankfully it only grazed him.”
Jazz chimed in, “He probably didn’t need the bandage, but Dad wanted to just in case.”
Danny’s heart warmed at how much his dad already seemed to care for Cujo after only a few days. Then, he remembered the other issue. “So, the bruise?”
Jack winced. “Not getting out of this, huh? She got angry and hit me with the rear of the gun, right in the face…”
Jazz sighed. “The lawyers witnessing it helped us, actually. It gives witnesses for the eventual custody battle.”
“What?” Danny said, now on high alert. “I thought she said she’d agreed Dad would get full custody!”
Jazz sighed. “Seems seeing a pet ghost dog changed her mind; nothing was legally drawn up yet, except the restraining order, which she’s trying to get rescinded. But, I wouldn’t worry—”
“How can you not worry?!” Danny practically shouted. “If she gets custody, she… she…” he started to shake slightly as his thoughts spiraled. “She’s going to find out, and then, then she’ll kill me—well, the rest of the way. She’ll decide I’m not her son, that I’m tricking her, and then try to vivisect me or whatever, or worse…”
“Danny, hey, it’s okay,” Jazz said, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Breathe with me, okay? That’s not going to happen. Like I was saying, there’s no need to worry. We’ll get MU’s lawyers on it again, and they won’t let her get custody.”
Danny nodded listlessly as Jack came over to hug both his kids at once. Danny ended up crying again; the night had been going so well, too! Couldn’t he have a break, just once?
Saturday morning, Jack found himself attempting to make chocolate-chip pancakes for the kids, who were sleeping in, before they woke up. It wasn’t going so great, with the pancakes being far from round, but they tasted good. Well, the ones he made for him and Jazz definitely did—he’d tried the first one just to make sure he hadn’t messed up too badly. Unfortunately, he couldn’t taste Danny’s, but hopefully the boy would appreciate the attempt at making ecto-food. If not there were more than plenty of regular pancakes he could eat too—Jack had forgotten that Maddie’s recipe (Jack had been able to convince her to let him photocopy her binder of handwritten original recipes, including the pancakes) intentionally made extra, since she liked freezing them to reheat for easy breakfasts.
Jack was glad to have an easy day at home. Jazz and Danny both would be home today, too, as far as Jack knew—well, Danny had no choice, since his grounding had been moved from the week to the weekend, since Jack hadn’t wanted Danny around when he and Maddie were negotiating, which had taken the past few days and would resume Monday.
Divorce was not as simple as Jack had anticipated! Unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a choice at this point, for both Danny’s and his own sake—it was simply too dangerous having her around and risking an escalation. The one lawyer, after witnessing Maddie’s assault on him with the weapon, was even trying to convince him to press charges for spousal abuse. He claimed it would affect the divorce proceedings to be much more in his favor. Jack wasn’t sure though; he still loved Maddie, and didn’t want to see that kind of a mark against her, even if it was true.
As Jack was plating the last of the pancakes—making sure that the ecto ones were on a separate plate from the regular ones—, the doorbell rang.
Jack quickly washed his hands and took off the apron covering his Ghost Busters t-shirt and khaki pants (he was trying to do less jumpsuits at Jazz’s suggestion, as it would apparently help distinguish in his mind his new self from the old one, and help him remember to keep lab things and house things separate) so he could open the door, unsure who to expect at 9:30am.
Someone new, apparently. The black-haired girl, who looked middle-school aged and wore an open black zippered hoodie over a light blue shirt with Japanese text across the front (which unfortunately Jack couldn’t read), red shorts, a matching red beanie over her long ponytailed hair, and light blue skate shoes, stood looking up at Jack with wide blue eyes that looked uncannily like Danny’s.
“Hi! Nice to meet you; I’m Ellie!” the girl introduced, hopping inside before Jack could invite her in.
“Nice to meet you too,” Jack said, slightly baffled. “Er. Are you one of Danny or Jazz’s friends?” he asked, although he didn’t recall either mentioning any friends that were younger.
“What? No, I’m—oooh, you probably don’t know about the name change. I’m Danielle. Previously I was going by Dani, with an i, but I realized that was getting confusing since it sounds just like Danny, with a y, so figured I’d try something new out.”
Jack looked blankly at the girl, who had migrated to the kitchen, clearly familiar with the place. There was something about her, the way she moved and spoke—if it weren’t for her being female, Jack could have mistaken her for a younger Danny! …Wait. He didn’t have another kid that he’d forgotten about, did he?
“Oooh, pancakes!” Ellie said, hopping to the table and grabbing one of the ecto ones with her hand. “I’m so hungry!”
“Wait!” Jack yelled, hurrying over. “Those have ectoplasm!”
The girl had already taken a bite. “Ooh, that’s delicious!” she said. “Like, mint chocolate chip with a bit of lime.”
Jack froze. Mint and lime? To humans, ectoplasm tasted more like rancid oil; but to ghosts… “You’re a ghost?” Jack asked.
Ellie frowned. “I mean, kinda? …Wait,” she said, narrowing her eyes at Jack. “Danny didn’t tell you about me yet, did he? Dammit, he messaged me saying you knew about him, I thought he’d tell you about me as well… Aw, fuck.”
“I was getting around to it,” Danny, in the same spaceship-print pajamas he’d worn for years (another thing Jack hadn’t noticed—kids generally grew out of clothes quickly at his age!), said through a yawn from the doorway behind Jack; Jack jumped and turned, not having heard Danny, as often… happened… oh. Yes, that made sense, ghosts tended to move quietly. Danny continued, “I didn’t expect you to show up so soon; last I heard you were in Thailand.”
Ellie groaned. “Seriously? Ugh. Well, then, you should tell him now,” she said, taking another bite of the pancake.
Danny sighed. “Dad, meet Dani-with-an-i—”
“It’s Ellie, now,” Ellie interjected. “Figured it’d be easier.”
“Okay. Dad, meet Ellie,” Danny amended, then explained, “Long story short, Vlad tried to clone me, decided she was a failure, and then we saved her, and she’s been travelling around the world now… Hey, you sure you’re okay eating ecto stuff in human form?” he asked her, looking concerned. Human form? Oh. If Danny was a halfa, then his clone of course would be, too… Clone. Wow. Danny had a clone. Jack didn’t even know clones were possible! Well, not like this at least.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Ellie said. “Vlad said it causes stomach aches but it doesn’t for me. Or, it did at first, but not after that ecto-dejecto infusion. I dunno, maybe he’s just got some sort of intolerance that I had too and for some reason the ecto-dejecto fixed it? It changed from tasting bad to tasting delicious.”
“Oh, right, guess I didn’t tell you,” Danny said sheepishly. “So, we recently discovered there’s different types of halfas, based on how we—er, how severe the incident was that formed us. Different ghost-human percentages. Vlad is 50-50. I’m more like 90-10. I can tell you more about the differences later, but that’s likely why you weren’t holding together well at first—he assumed all halfas were 50-50. The ecto-dejecto probably shifted that closer to what you should be, but we should probably test that, maybe give you more to make sure you stay stabilized.”
Jack barely listened to what they were saying about all those technicalities, still processing this bombshell of a reveal. Danny, Jack’s son, had a clone. A legitimate clone created by Vlad, albeit female and younger for some reason. Did that mean Jack had another daughter? Or did Vlad count as her father? Or, no, would Danny count as her father, making Jack a—no, nope, Jack was way too young to be a grandfather, and Danny was way too young to be a father.
And what about Maddie? Should Maddie be told about this? How was Jack going to hide Ellie from Maddie? Maybe he could say she was a relative that needed a home, one he didn’t know about? It wasn’t that far of a stretch, as he wasn’t particularly close to his extended family—they didn’t even see each other on holidays anymore.
“Dad? You still with us?” Danny asked, waving his hand in front of him.
“Oh, uh, yes,” Jack said, pulling himself from his thoughts. “Sorry, this is just… a lot to take in.”
“Oh,” Ellie said, looking slightly sad. “If you don’t want me here—”
“No, no, it’s not that!” Jack hurriedly told her. “You’re definitely welcome to stay here! I’d love to have another daughter! It’s just, there’s a lot of things to sort out, you know? I don’t know how much Danno told you, but Maddie and I are going through a divorce, and it’s getting a bit nasty. Custody shouldn’t be an issue, I’ll just say you’re one of my cousin’s kids or something, but—”
“Just say it’s temporary,” Ellie said. “Courts don’t need to know it’ll eventually be permanent. Or, not permanent, but until I’m 18 I guess, or however long you’ll have me.”
Danny winced. “About that, Da—Ellie,” he said, “Strange question, but… Do you still look exactly how you did when you were formed?”
Ellie blinked, then scrunched her brow in confusion. “I changed my clothes?”
“No, I mean other things, like height, hair length, or, er, chest size?”
Ellie thought about that for a moment. “Uh, no, I don’t think so,” she concluded. “Was I supposed to?”
“Fuck,” Danny swore.
“Language!” Jack scolded instinctually, then realized what Danny had realized. “Fuck,” he echoed. “I’m going to be raising two immortal teenagers?”
Ellie tilted her head. “Immortal? But Vlad said—oh. Is that one of the differences between halfa types?” When Danny nodded, she grinned. “Sweet!” she pumped her fist in the air. “I can travel the entire world after all!”
Danny winced. “It, er, also means we won’t physically or mentally age,” he quietly pointed out.
Ellie froze, fist still up, then seemed to wilt. “Aww, man. I won’t ever get to drink,” she said.
Danny facepalmed. “That’s your first thought?” he asked, then paused. “Oh, right. You’re twelve, mentally.” Jack wondered how long Ellie had been actually around for; Vlad had been gone for a couple months already, and she said she’d been travelling. Could it have been a year or more?
“Hey! If I’m still twelve, then you’re what, still fourteen, right? That’s not much different!” Ellie protested.
“Different enough to know how serious this is, apparently,” Danny quipped back.
“Now, kids,” Jack interjected, sensing a fight coming on, possibly physical given the charge in the air, and given they were both halfas any escalation from arguing to physical fighting while in the house, even if only playful ghost-sibling fighting, would likely be highly destructive. “Why don’t you go see if Jazz is awake so we can all have breakfast?”
“Oh, sorry!” Ellie quickly said. “I should have waited to eat, that’s a thing, isn’t it?”
“It’s okay!” Danny said. “You’re still learning!”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Jack assured the girl, realizing that if Vlad cloned her and then rejected her, after which she’d apparently been travelling alone, that likely meant she had little concept of family norms and social etiquette. She must have retained some knowledge though, since she definitely spoke like a twelve-year-old; Jack wondered what dictated what she knew and didn’t know. “We’ll teach you!”
Ellie blushed. “Ah, thanks,” she said, then stood up—standing in her seat, so definitely a halfa—before hurrying up the stairs. Did she have the knowledge of their house from the start, or had she visited before, unbeknownst to Jack?
“She’s been here before,” Danny explained, apparently anticipating the question. “She hid in my room last time. We’ll explain the full story to you, don’t worry. Now, if you excuse me…” Danny grinned, leapt into the air, and flew through the ceiling to Jazz’s room.
Jack wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to that.
There was a high-pitched scream, followed by “Why are there two of—wait, Danielle?!”
The following conversation was too quiet for Jack to hear, but soon three sets of footsteps could be heard on the stairs before all… three?... of Jack’s children entered the kitchen. Yes, three. He had three children now, Jack supposed.
Thus, the family of four sat down at the kitchen table—weapon-free, as it would now always be—and discussed everything that had been going on since Ellie last was there as well as filled Jack in on everything about her.
Afterwards, as promised, they did some scans of the halfa girl, and determined one more injection of ecto-dejecto (which Jack should really rename) was all that was needed to boost her ghost portion to 90% like Danny and thus fully stabilize her.
Ellie, for her part, seemed most interested in Danny’s band, and insisted he teach her to play guitar, too—they kept it up for a few hours until Ellie discovered the guitar had attack modes, upon which Jazz decided they should all go to a movie, thus successfully distracting them.
In retrospect, letting Danny and Ellie choose whatever movie they wanted probably wasn’t that great an idea, because of course they’d go for the R-rated horror film, but hey, they’d seen much worse things in reality than anything in Saw III.
Jack didn’t remember until the end of the day that Danny was supposed to be grounded. Well, he supposed that Danny had had a stressful enough week, or rather weeks; Jack could let the grounding slide. Hopefully he’d learned his lesson about drinking and drugs.
Sam sighed in frustration as she brought the armful of pizza boxes that had just been delivered down to her movie theater. Tucker arrived right on time for their movie marathon, but Danny was already twenty minutes late! Just what was he doing? He already pushed their movie marathon from Halloween to Saturday due to that party, and then they had to push it to Sunday for some sort of emergency family thing that Danny wouldn’t explain, only giving them an ambiguous, “Everything is fine, and I promise I’ll bring an awesome surprise!”
“He better not cancel again,” Sam grumbled as she set the pizza boxes down a little more forcefully than necessary. “Especially after he requested that I get extra of that stupid anchovy-and-pickle pizza he loves.”
“Yeah, if he’s a no show, I am definitely not eating that,” Tucker said with a look of mild disgust.
“Did somebody say anchovy-and-pickle pizza?” came an excited feminine voice from behind Sam. She jumped and swerved around to see none other than Dani Phantom floating there.
“Damn, you got faster!” Danny told the girl as he zoomed in through the ceiling a second later.
“Is this your surprise?” Sam asked, amused. She found herself a little less annoyed; the return of Dani was definitely a good surprise.
“Yup! And the ‘emergency’ yesterday,” Danny explained, as both of them set down on the floor and changed back to human. “Took time to explain everything to Dad.”
“Understandable,” Tucker said with a nod. “Bet that was a shock, finding out he has another daughter!”
“Yeah, definitely,” Danny said with a small chuckle. “Anyway, sorry we’re late; Ellie wanted her hair braided but Jazz is out working on a school thing, and Dad and I… Well, we got it eventually, but it was a struggle.”
“Well, it looks pretty good,” Sam said. It could use improvement, but Sam was also unfamiliar with braiding so likely couldn’t have done any better.
“Wait, did you call her ‘Ellie’?” Tucker caught.
“That’s what I’m going by now, as of yesterday!” Dani—no, Ellie—told them. “I figured it would be less confusing, especially since I’m going to be living with Danny.”
“Nice!” Tucker said enthusiastically. “Does that mean you’re gonna do the whole teenage experience?”
“Teenage experience?” Ellie asked.
“Yeah, you know. School, hanging out at Nasty Burger after school, shirking curfew…”
“Curfew?”
“The time of day you’re supposed to be home by. Danny’s is usually 10, right? Barring if grounded…?” Tucker looked towards Danny for confirmation.
Danny shrugged. “Honestly, I have no clue anymore. Like, Dad will get worried if I’m out too late and call or send Jazz to look for me, but he hasn’t seemed to get too upset about it, no punishments or anything. Especially if it’s due to ghost fighting. His parenting style is way different than Mom’s; I think he’s got more of a ‘learning by experience’ mentality? Like technically I was supposed to be grounded for drinking but it got delayed first because Mo—Maddie was there and then because Ellie showed up, but today he just didn’t mention it and told us to have fun with you two.”
“Damn; I wish my parents were more like that,” Sam said. Instead, they were always looking for ways to punish her, likely just to get her to go to those stupid high-society events as that was their preferred method of torture.
“Yeah, same,” Tucker said.
“I mean, I don’t know how long it’ll last,” Danny said. “Jazz says that right now he’s probably nervous to rock the boat too much, maybe afraid we’ll leave again. He might get stricter once he realizes we won’t. But even if he does I’m positive it won’t be to the same degree as Maddie was.”
“If it is, I’ll kill him,” Sam said resolutely. She meant it, too.
Danny winced. “Um. Sam? Please don’t murder my dad.”
Ellie looked at Sam with incredulity. “Damn, you’re serious, aren’t you? That’s one hella a strong protective vibe!”
Sam paused at that. “Wait. You can sense emotions too, now?”
Ellie grinned. “Yup! Takes some getting used to though.”
“Oh, right,” Danny said. “Dad did some scans, and it turned out she needed another ecto-dejecto shot to fully stabilize, after which she became a 90% halfa like me, complete with all the related abilities, after she drank some ectoplasm drinks to charge her core.”
“All of them, huh? How’s your dad taking having two immortal teenagers now?” Sam wondered.
“Honestly? Not sure if it’s fully hit him yet,” Danny said with a chuckle, then frowned and added, “Not sure if it’s really even hit me, either, honestly.”
“You know? Same,” Tucker said, and Sam nodded her head in agreement.
“Well, it’s definitely hit me!” Ellie said with excitement. “I mean, all the time I now have to travel? Totally kakkoī!”
“Totally what?” Tucker asked, confused.
“Sorry. I mean ‘awesome’,” Ellie said sheepishly. “Japanese keeps slipping in.”
“Are you fluent?” Sam wondered. “You were there like six months, right?”
Ellie held her hand flat and rocked it back and forth a bit. “Eh, kinda, maybe? I’m not going to be doing any discussions on complex science or whatnot anytime soon, but I can usually hold an everyday conversation and most visual media is understandable, at least the kid stuff. Can’t do much reading though; I taught myself kana and got a kanji book, but I think I’m only at like a second grade level for that—I’m gonna keep learning though. Most of the characters I know are travel and food related.”
“Still, that’s pretty sweet,” Tucker said. “Did you talk to lots of people?”
Ellie shook her head. “No, mostly observed. I really like observing people. Er, not in a creepy way! Just like, hanging out at a park or store and watching what people do and stuff, not spying or whatever. So, like an anthropologist. It’s super neat how people are so different between different cultures!”
Sam chuckled. “I bet Jazz would love to talk to you about that; anthropology fits in nicely with psychology.”
“Really?” Ellie asked, eyes practically sparkling. “Oh! Since her specialty is ghost psychology I bet she’d love talking about the yōkai and kami—those are the spirit creatures native to Japan, they’re super neat and the people there are totally chill with them existing, it’s not at all like Amity Park’s relationship with ghosts.”
“Wait, I thought ‘kami’ meant ‘god’?” Tucker asked, confused.
“Uh, yes and no?” Ellie said, scrunching her brow. “They’re treated a bit like deities, but they’re not, like, these all-powerful things that Western religions have? And they’re more specialized, often stick to one region or element or whatever. Like Vortex or Undergrowth—but less evil, probably because they get shrines and stuff and people aren’t trying to destroy them. Yōkai are more like Box Ghost level, mildly annoying but if you know how to handle them it’s fine.”
“But they’re not actually ghosts?” Danny asked, looking confused.
Ellie shrugged. “I mean, yes and no? They’re, like, ghost-adjacent. Like, related but not quite the same, like how hyenas and cats are related.”
“I think you mean dogs, not cats,” Tucker said with a chuckle.
Ellie grinned and crossed her arms. “Nope. Hyenas are closer to cats. Look it up.”
Tucker pulled out his PDA and began typing.
“Hey, Danny,” Sam said, realizing something. “Doesn’t that sound like the type of thing you want to do with the ghosts around here? You know, improve relations between humans and them? Maybe you can look into the history of that, go meet some of these creatures. Could be useful.”
“Ooh, yeah!” Ellie said. “It can be, like, a summer trip! I can teach you the basics of Japanese, and translate any more complex stuff, if you need to.”
“What the fuck!?” Tucker exclaimed, and the three others turned in surprise to face him. He was looking at his PDA. “Ellie’s right! The Order Carnivora has two Suborders: Caniformia and Feliformia. Hyenas and cats are both in the Feliformia suborder, along with mongeese and civets. Dogs are in Caniformia, along with bears and raccoons and… seals? Okay, sure. Seals are closer to dogs than hyenas are, why not.”
“Wait wait wait,” Danny interjected. “Does this imply that ghosts have different species? Like, is there a taxonomic system?”
“Sounds like a question for Clockwork or MU,” Sam said, though she’d been wondering a bit about that for a while—even the Ghost Zone ghosts could be divided into different types: living-born, like many of the human and animal ghosts; zone-native species, like the yeti and ectopi; nature-based like Undergrowth or Vortex; Ancients, or basically pseudo-gods, like Clockwork or Pandora; and maybe others. “Anyway, come on; pizza’s getting cold.”
With that, everyone dug into the pizza and prepared for a full day of horror films.
Sam was glad she got more films than necessary from Blockbuster, because they’d had to stop a couple times to switch to different movies—trauma was a bitch, after all, and they’d been through a number of horrific incidents in the past few years. Sam eventually started writing down what to avoid: anything involving mummies was a no-go for Tucker, plant-related things freaked both Sam and Danny out way too much, Zombies reminded Sam too much of Undergrowth as well, mind-control was out for Danny after that whole Freak Show thing, Ellie couldn’t stand anything involving melting, regardless of reason… Eventually they’d switched to only older movies, like The Birds and Psycho, which was fine until they got to Frankenstein and Danny had a panic attack when the monster was revived via electrocution. The safest films all turned out to be slashers, which Sam hadn’t gotten many of as she personally didn’t really like those.
By the end of the day, they had instead switched to shamelessly watching animated Disney movies, the songs of which Sam and Danny sung along to (Ellie didn’t yet know the words, as they were all new to her; Tucker was banned after two lines, enforced by an ecto-gag courtesy of Danny).
In the process, they also learned that Ellie, just like Danny, fed on joy—given she’d technically never had a full human life to lack anything from, their only explanation for that was that it had copied over from Danny. Which was probably something they should address with him eventually.
Notes:
Yay, Ellie's finally here!
Next up: Casper High has some new students and a new teacher! ...Wait, they're all ghosts?! Then, Danny teams up with Valerie and, surprisingly, Maddie to take down an eldritch horror.
Chapter 19: The new students might be ghosts, but these new monster things definitely aren't.
Summary:
There's some new students at Casper High! And a new teacher! All which are ghosts, to Valerie's frustration. Then, Phantom, Maddie, and Valerie work together to take down a pair of tentacled things that Danny's pretty sure isn't a ghost, during which Dash appears, claiming he wants to talk to Phantom.
Notes:
This is the 2nd of 2 chapters posted today! If you haven't read chapter 18 yet, go do that first!
Previous summaries were slightly inaccurate as they said there would be one creature, but I changed the scene up a bit and now there's a second! (Which is why it took longer than expected to get this up)
The first half of this chapter is pretty light and fun comparatively, but this chapter gets heavy during the second half, particularly the conversation between Phantom and Dash. This chapter is also where we finally find out more about that incident that happened before the portal accident that has been mentioned a few times and had Clockwork so worried.
CW: mentions of opioid addiction, discussion of past suicide attempt, discussion of past bullying, references to past child abuse
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Early Monday morning, before classes, Lancer found himself in the main office getting coffee at the small counter in the corner when three people walked in: Jack Fenton, Daniel Fenton, and, holding Daniel’s hand, a girl Lancer hadn’t seen before who looked uncannily like Daniel albeit younger and female. Did he and Jasmine have a sister they’d never mentioned?
“And who’s this?” Lancer asked, heading over to them; the secretary had not arrived yet—Lancer wasn’t even sure if she would, honestly, but a secretary who only showed up half the time was better than none at all; finding people willing to work at the school was a difficult task.
“Her name’s Danielle, though goes by Ellie. We’re going with ‘second-cousin who needed a place to stay’,” Daniel said, and based on the phrasing Lancer concluded that that was a cover story. “She needs to enroll in school.”
“I see,” Lancer said, and gestured them towards his office, then paused before entering. “My apologies; Jack, would you like some coffee? I just brewed a full pot.”
“Oh, no, I’m good! We actually stopped at that place near MU on the way,” Jack said, gesturing to Danny and the girl, who both had disposable coffee cups with some logo in a language Lancer didn’t recognize. “Thanks though.”
Lancer nodded and entered the office, vaguely wondering if it was only coffee in those cups; he knew Danny enjoyed the ecto-infused drinks from that cafe. When everyone sat down, Lancer took a sip from his mug, then instructed, “So, tell me the real story.”
Jack laughed. “You catch on quickly!” he said.
Daniel explained. “The crazy fruitloop tried to clone me, then rejected her because she started to melt whenever she used her powers, but we fixed her; she was travelling the world for a while but she came back when she heard Dad knew about me and Dad unofficially adopted her.” He spoke casually, as though it were a common occurrence and didn’t open up a wormhole of questions, none the least being that cloning was apparently possible.
Lancer decided to take it in stride. “Okay. So, in that case, she’s a halfa like you, I assume?” he asked Daniel, who nodded. Lancer turned to the girl. “Have you been in school before?” He assumed not, given she’d apparently taken to world travelling shortly after being… Created? Grown? Born?
Ellie shook her head. “No, but I know pretty much all the things Danny learned in school up until Vlad made me.” Right, the one Daniel called ‘fruitloop’ was Vlad Masters, former mayor of Amity Park and a halfa too. Daniel had once told Lancer that Vlad wanted him as a son; the man must have gotten fed up with waiting and resorted to cloning Daniel instead. Lancer was relieved that the man was gone.
“And how long ago was that?” Lancer asked.
“Um. About a year and a half ago? I know everything Danny knows until halfway through his freshmen year, which is when Vlad first took DNA,” the girl said. “Not, like, memories, but concrete knowledge. Don’t know how Vlad was able to separate them but he did. I can take some tests if you want?”
“No need; I believe you,” Lancer said gently. “We will enroll you as a freshman, in that case, given that it’s only a few months into the school year so ought to be close to the point your school knowledge ends. If you excuse me for a moment, I’ll get the paperwork…”
Lancer exited his Vice Principal office back into the main office, where someone else was now waiting for him. “Ah, yes, Ember,” he said tiredly to the ghost. “You’re here for your schoolbooks, correct?”
“Yup,” Ember said, popping the ‘p’. “Not sure I’ll be the best student, but being a cheerleader means I gotta do school, so what can you do,” she said with a shrug. Paulina and Star had been so adamant about her becoming one, and Lancer had to agree that her being on the team would definitely give them an advantage, so he approved it. Then a few days later he realized that in order to do any of the official cheerleading competitions with the team, Ember needed to actually be enrolled as a student—thankfully, she had been surprisingly willing to accept that condition.
“Right. Well, if you’ll give me a moment, I just have to give the Fentons—oh, Daniel,” Lancer said, seeing the boy slip through the door. “Please remember to open doors before walking through them.” Now that was a sentence Lancer would have never expected to utter.
“Sorry; I sensed Ember,” Daniel said sheepishly.
“Well, in that case, you can give Miss McLain a tour of the school. Then, if you don’t mind, you can show her to her classes today, as she’s in all the same ones as you,” Lancer decided.
“Wait, what?” Daniel said, looking surprised.
Ember grinned. “Surprise, Babypop! I’m a student now!”
Daniel blinked, then frowned. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I wanted it to be a surprise, duh.”
“Huh. Well, guess you succeeded, then!” Daniel said with a small chuckle. “But… why? No offense, but you’re not really the scholarly type.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Ember said with a laugh, and Lancer had a feeling that he had another delinquent on his hands; well, enrollment and a ‘C’ average were the only things that mattered to stay on the team, he supposed, and surely she could manage that. “But this guy says cheerleaders gotta be students,” she informed Daniel, jabbing her thumb in Lancer’s direction. “Anyway, why am I sensing another ghost in that room?” she asked.
“Oh, my ‘cousin’ is gonna be enrolled here too,” Daniel told Ember.
“Dani’s here too? Sweet!” Ember declared.
“She’s going by ‘Ellie’ now,” Daniel corrected. “Less confusing. Dad decided to adopt her, which means she has to do school.”
“Isn’t she, like, twelve, though?” Ember asked.
“Eh, if you want to get technical, more like one and a half? But, she knows everything I knew school-wise as of when Vlad took my DNA, and I was 14 for that. We’re gonna fudge her birthdate, obviously, so on paper she’ll be fourteen, almost 15—she doesn’t remember the exact day she woke up, only that it was in Spring, so chose April 1 because she likes pranks.”
“Yeah that tracks; let me guess, she’s also a big fan of space, punk rock, video games, and pizza with pickles and anchovies?” Ember asked with a chuckle, and Lancer internally cringed at the pizza choice. He assumed the black band shirt Daniel wore was a punk band, though he couldn’t discern the name from the graffiti letters.
Daniel rubbed the back of his head. “Ah, yeah. Vlad tried copying my personality too—don’t mention that to her though, she’s a bit sensitive about that. But there’s some differences too! She absolutely loves travel and learning about different cultures, probably more than space. And she’s more of a J-pop fan than punk.”
Ember gasped. “Blasphemy!”
Daniel shrugged. “She spent like half a year in Japan, not surprising she became a fan of music from there.”
Lancer glanced at the wall clock, which showed twenty minutes until homeroom. “Okay you two, get moving; I need to take care of your ‘cousin’ before school starts, and you need to do a tour. Locker information is on the paper on top of the books.”
“Right!” Daniel said, hopping over to the pile of books. Ember opened a black backpack that looked to be filled with notebooks already labelled with each class and began putting the books in it; Lancer almost commented about how it might be too heavy, then recalled that that didn’t matter to ghosts (he’d asked Daniel about that; apparently, the ghosts’ untethered relationship with gravity was the reason they could easily lift and hold things that humans would get injured attempting to move). As to classes, she’d chosen all the ones Daniel was taking—Lancer allowed it, even though he was unsure how different the curriculum in the ‘70s had been; despite being a student back then he didn’t recall the details after so long.
That taken care of, Lancer collected the paperwork he needed and returned to his office to finish enrolling the third ghostly study attending Casper High (fourth, if you counted Sidney Poindexter, who tended to observe classes).
“Hey, Red,” someone greeted as Valerie sat down in her second-period Chemistry class.
Valerie swerved around, recognizing the voice. At the lab table next to the one she shared with Danny, Sam, and Tucker (chosen before she learned Danny’s secret, and thus was now ultra-awkward), which should only have Paulina, Star, and Kwan, sat none other than Ember, in the seat that usually belonged to Dash. “What the hell are you doing here?” Valerie spat.
“Uh, I’m a student, duh,” Ember said, making her textbook, notebook, and pencil briefly hover to emphasize. She couldn’t just point to them?
“A ghost can’t be a student!” Valerie protested, then upon hearing a quiet growl from the seat across from her glared at Danny next. “Don’t you start,” she warned, ignoring the glow to his eyes, then recalled that technically Phantom was dating Ember, or fake-dating, or whatever strange situation the two had, so he did have more of a right to protest someone arguing with her. Well, whatever; Valerie was going to anyway.
“Well, they registered me, so clearly we can,” Ember said smugly, crossing her arms as she did so.
“But why?” Valerie asked. Ghosts had no reason for school, unless they had to hide like Danny did. And how’d she even get registered? Did she overshadow someone? Threaten them?
“Because I can’t be on the cheerleading team if I’m not a student, duh,” Ember said with an eye roll. “Plus, I never go to finish school before the fire, so figured might as well, right?”
Valerie resisted the urge to pull out a weapon. Did the ghost really think she was that easy to manipulate? They all had sad stories. Didn’t mean they weren’t bad. Danny was the exception, only because he was partly human, and even that was debatable. Danielle, too. And maybe the dog, even if it had ruined her life—he was a puppy who wanted his toy. The human-based ghosts though? Definitely still malicious. They had to be. If they weren’t, that meant that Valerie, she’d been…
“Girl, you gotta work on your anger,” Ember said.
“Huh? I’m not angry,” Valerie quickly countered. Damn; she thought she hid it well!
“It’s literally palpable,” Danny said flatly, mouth slightly open to show the fangs and nose scrunched up, as though he were trying to recover from eating something nasty.
“Oh, ewe!” Valerie said, then glanced around, making sure everyone else other than the two tables in the know were distracted by their own conversations, and hissed, “Don’t eat my anger!”
“I’m not,” Danny said. “I feed on joy. But when the anger’s all in the air like this, it’s hard not to catch a taste, and it’s rancid.”
Valerie blinked at him. Wow, that was a lot to unpack. She’d been doing more research into ghosts lately, including reading some studies from MU, and although she didn’t believe everything the pro-ghost institution said, one of those papers had been related to ghosts feeding on emotions. If it was correct, they fed on whatever they lacked or desired most in life, so joy was… not unexpected for a teenage ghost, but definitely unexpected for Danny. The emotions they reacted negatively to tended to be ones they naturally had more of; did Danny, like Valerie, have anger issues? A ghost with anger issues was not a good thing at all, especially one as powerful as him—perhaps she ought to reevaluate her assessment of his threat level.
Danny blushed and looked away, rubbing the back of his head in that adorable nervous gesture he had. “Sorry, I know it’s weird and creepy,” he told her, then changed the subject. “Oh, in other news, Danielle is back; she’s going by Ellie now, and today’s her first day of school too, she’s a freshman, you might see her around. She’s living with me.”
“Oh,” Valerie said, processing that. “Right, she’s Ph—your…” she trailed off, realizing talking about him having a clone while in class probably wasn’t a great idea. She looked younger than freshman-aged though, but if she were a clone maybe she already knew what he knew.
“Yeah, my second cousin who looks uncannily like a younger female me,” Danny said in a slightly joking manner, adding a wink to emphasize.
Valerie bit back a blush and looked back to the full ghost in the room. “Your ‘girlfriends’ are getting awfully buddy-buddy,” she commented, looking back at Danny with a small grin in an attempt to lighten the mood. Danny in turn glanced over at them and chuckled. Paulina had her arm around Ember as the two chatted, and the ghost’s arm was around her waist… Well, it wasn’t suspicious if they both had a boyfriend, even if it was technically the same boyfriend.
“Yeah, maybe I’ll get extra lucky tonight,” Danny said with a salacious smirk.
Valerie tried to hide her blush, she really did, but from Danny’s knowing look she failed. Damn it! She was supposed to be getting over him, she was supposed to be mad at him, and then he goes and does adorable and sexy crap right in front of her? He was a ghost. No way could she fall for a ghost, not even a half-human one!
Tucker laughed. “Dude, save some girls for those of us who actually like them!”
“I mean, being a playboy is one way to stay stealth, I suppose,” Sam said with mild amusement and slight incredulity.
As to the other two members of that table, Star was looking lovey-dovey at both Paulina and Ember—and wow, wasn’t that something to unpack—while Kwan just looked slightly confused.
“I do not want to untangle whatever’s going on over there,” Valerie decided with dry amusement. “Danny, I don’t envy whatever romantic clusterfuck you’ve gotten yourself into this time.”
Danny shrugged. “I mean, the first time I ‘dated’ Paulina she turned out to be overshadowed by Kitty, who wanted to make Johnny jealous, so at least she’s aware of the situation this time?”
Valerie gave Danny an incredulous look. “Aren’t those the two whose place you crashed at? How are you friends with them after that!?” Not that Valerie believed ghosts could truly have friends, even after seeing them all interact and act like it. They were being tricky, that was all. Valerie totally was not in denial. The evidence was wrong, that was all; she was definitely not the one in the wrong.
Danny shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal in the long run, and they’re cool people.”
Valerie frowned. She would have never gotten over that so easily; Danny was much too forgiving. Or… Or maybe Valerie wasn’t forgiving enough…
Finally, the teacher came through the door, a full five minutes late.
Valerie’s suit beeped in her ear—only audible to her—warning her of a ghost. Danny let out a breath of icy air, which Valerie now recognized as his ghost sense. Ember’s fiery ponytail minutely flared and she paused in whatever she was saying to look to the front of the room; was that her ghost sense? …Ghosts had ghost senses, not just halfas?
That was not their usual teacher; that was a ghost, although none Valerie recognized.
“Hiya!” The teacher, a woman of Asian ethnicity dressed in a white lab coat decorated in random cartoon science equipment, curly blond hair pulled up into a high ponytail, with skin literally glowing slightly, greeted the class as she floated to the front of the classroom. “My name’s Mrs. Kagaku. Your usual teacher is on maternity leave now so I’ll be filling in. Any questions?”
“Isn’t ‘kagaku’ just ‘science’ in Japanese?” Paulina muttered to Star, who nodded. Huh; since when did those two know Japanese? That was suspicious though; a science teacher named Mrs. Science? Who was this ghost trying to fool?
Valerie leaned towards Danny. “Should we do something?” she asked him under her breath.
Kwan raised his hand, and Mrs. Kagaku nodded for him to ask. Much too bluntly he blurted, “Are you a ghost?”
“Oh, right!” the new teacher said. “Full disclosure: yes, I am a ghost! The school is completely aware of this; as there are ghost students here too, I assume this shouldn’t be a problem?”
Danny froze, and a few people whispered, “Students?” while looking around. Everyone knew about Ember, but as far as Valerie knew not everyone knew about Danny.
A voice from the back corner of the room said, “Oh, darn, I didn’t realize you knew I was here,” and Valerie swerved to see the black-and-white ghost of Sidney Poindexter appear out of thin air. Huh. How often did he sit in on classes? …And how had Valerie never noticed?
As though catching Valerie’s thought, Danny muttered to her, “Our ghost senses can recognize ghosts as non-hostiles once we’ve met them; it’s a good thing, trust me.”
“I don’t have a ghost sense, it’s my suit,” Valerie quietly grumbled back. “And I never programmed him in as an exception.” Nor had she done so for Ember, come to think of it, yet it hadn’t gone off for her either.
“Didn’t have to; the suit’s ghost tech, it adapts based on your emotions. You don’t see him as a potential threat, so your suit doesn’t either,” Danny explained, nearly inaudible, and Valerie realized that the conversation had been so quiet that no one around them could hear it; they could only hear each other thanks to the enhanced hearing they both had.
“Whatever,” Valerie replied, sending Danny a look that indicated the conversation was over; something flared in her, and Valerie had a strange thought that she had sent the emotion towards him. Danny looked surprised… Well, of course, he was probably just reading her emotions, maybe the flare was her suit noticing that or something.
While the two had their quiet conversation, Mrs. Kagaku told Sidney, “No need to be invisible; there’s some spare seats. I’ve been told you like to observe classes; it’s not a problem. You can even participate if you want!”
“Oh. Um, thank you,” Poindexter said, awkwardly moving to a free seat at a table with three nerds—Mikey, Nathan, and his twin brother Lester—who looked a little unnerved yet accepting about their newest tablemate.
Valerie wanted nothing more but to shove her face in her hands and groan; three ghost students and a ghost teacher, and she, a ghost hunter, was expected to just sit there and do nothing? Was the universe trying to test her or something?
Mrs. Kagaku explained the experiment they would be doing as she wrote the instructions on the board with floating chalk while performing an example. To Valerie’s incredulity, it was related to ectoplasm—which was actually a lesson plan left by their previous teacher! She supposed it made sense to have some sciency things related to ectoplasm in a town that was steeped in it, but wow. Basically it was just seeing how different materials reacted with it, and recording the related sciency stuff, which was somewhat boring but Valerie supposed it could be useful to know. She had personal experience from getting it in her bag after a ghost fight; it had corroded a leather notebook’s cover and left the paper lightly stained green while leaving a plastic ruler completely intact, so after that she’d opted for notebooks with paper or plastic covers.
The teacher instructed them to begin working, warning them not just to be careful to not touch the ectoplasm but also not to eat it for some reason.
The reason became clear when Sam retrieved their table’s box of supplies from the table in the front of the room and Valerie then removed the vial of ectoplasm from it—upon seeing it, Danny licked his lips and eyed it hungirly. Right, ghosts ate that stuff, even though they were made from it—or, because they were? She supposed it was like humans eating meat and plants and whatnot to replenish the nutrients that they were technically made of.
“Oh shit, this is the super pure stuff, nice!” Ember said with a grin.
“Remember, no eating it! It’s for science!” Mrs. Kagaku chided her.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Ember said with a lazy wave of her hand, though was eyeing it covetously.
“Oww!” Danny hissed, and Valerie turned to see Sam retracting her elbow from Danny’s side.
“You were drooling,” Sam dryly said with an eye roll.
“Not my fault it smells so good,” Danny muttered under his breath.
Valerie simply stared at Danny with incredulity. How had he managed to hide his identity for so long when he was just so obvious half the time? How hadn’t she noticed? The ability of the human mind to rationalize strange things was frightening.
Although… Valerie took a sniff of it, and blinked. “Peaches?” Usually ectoplasm smelled a little more rancid, like a lemon-mint smoothie that had been left in the sun too long. This smelled more like mint mixed with peach, albeit still slightly rancid.
“What?” Danny said, looking mildly disturbed at the comment.
“It smells like rotten peaches,” Valerie told him. “Usually it’s more like rotten lemons. Plus mint.”
“Well, the pure stuff is more peachy rather than citrusy, but…” Danny trailed off, looking conflicted.
Tucker then took a sniff. “Oof! Stop joking, Val; that’s, like pure battery acid… Maybe with, like, a slight fruity scent, but oof, yeah, not meant for sniffing.”
“We should get to work,” Valerie decided, staunchly ignoring the fact that to her the ectoplasm smelled more like what the ghosts described it as than what the humans described it as. It was a weird side-effect from her suit, and she’d known for a while about that, but she did not want it shoved in her face!
So, Valerie got to work on the experiment along with Sam, Tucker, and Danny, the last who at one point ‘accidentally’ spilled a drop of ectoplasm on his finger and sneakily licked it off. He got a raised eyebrow from the teacher but she didn’t call him out on it, so Valerie figured she must have been informed of what he was and that it was a secret. Valerie tried to ignore it; she hated all the reminders that Danny was any part ghost.
Valerie also hated how clumsy she’d become lately; what was that, the second time she dropped her pencil? Third? And she’d dropped a beaker too! Which Danny had caught with telekinesis; he was watching her awfully closely for some reason.
Before Valerie could ask Danny why he kept looking at her with a strange expression, there were voices in the hallway, arguing; the class quieted, listening in, and Danny tensed. Ember noticed and narrowed her eyes, looking like she was ready to throw hands with whoever was out there.
“Ma’am, you cannot go in there,” the voice of Lancer said.
“But there’s a high level of ectoplasmic activity in there!” a woman’s voice whose Valerie recognized as Maddie Fenton’s said.
“As I told you, it is nothing to worry about. They are merely doing an experiment involving ectoplasm.”
“That is not what the scanners are detecting and you know it! The students may be in danger. My son may be in danger, too, if he’s actually in class!”
Danny muttered under his breath, “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Please continue working,” Mrs. Kagaku (that was totally a fake name; what was her play?) told them; the class obliged as she circled the room to observe their work, though they were still quietly listening.
“Mrs. Fenton!” Lancer said loudly as the door knob turned, then stopped. “Please leave before I call security.”
“I am the security! I’m telling you, there are ghosts in there—now let me do my job and secure them!”
“Don’t forget that there is also a restraining order in place,” Lancer hissed, and from the looks of all the students but the ghosts it was too low for humans to hear—except for her thanks to her suit. Valerie wondered who that was for.
“Not a problem!” Maddie said in a falsely-chipper voice. “That has been lifted. A human judge saw reason,” she said, and Valerie was more confused. A ghost judge had issued it?
Danny tensed to the point he looked frozen and the temperature around them noticeably dropped. Ah, so that’s who it was for… Wait, what? Why would Danny have a restraining order against his own mother?
“Maddie, wait!” came a new voice, who Valerie recognized as Jack Fenton, along with footsteps running towards the classroom; oh, great, was he going to burst in?
Maddie sighed in clear frustration. “Jack, stay out of this,” she told him coldly.
“No. The students aren’t in danger,” Jack said.
“Excuse me? There’s enough ghost energy in there to contain anywhere from three to eight ghosts depending on power level!”
“Maddie, the science classes are experimenting with ectoplasm this week,” Jack said. “I know because I helped source it.”
“Oh, don’t you give me that BS too! There are ghosts in there and both of you know it!”
Lancer sighed with resignation. “Fine, yes. But they are students and teachers who have approval to be there.”
“What?!”
“It’s true,” Jack said. “They’re good ghosts; I helped vet them!”
“Mrs. Fenton, if you don’t leave now I am permanently banning you from the school,” Lancer said firmly.
Valerie was incredibly confused. Jack and Maddie Fenton, arguing about ghosts, with the former actively supporting them? Maybe he was overshadowed.
“There are no good ghosts,” Maddie insisted. “You are all being tricked!”
Valerie noticed that Sam had a hand on Danny’s shoulder, and he looked a mix of terrified and pissed, gripping the table hard enough to dent it. Was he even breathing? Sam whispered something in his ear, so low even Valerie couldn’t hear, and Danny took a deep breath and relaxed slightly as he let go of the table.
“Maddie, be reasonable,” Jack pleaded.
“I am being reasonable! You’re the one who’s blinded!” Maddie hissed.
“The Cats of Ulthar!!” Lancer called. “Are you two really going to fight in the middle of a school hallway, while classes are going on?”
Danny now looked like he wanted to melt into his seat; no, actually was, apparently; Sam had to pull him back up. Again, how hadn’t he been caught yet!?
“Mrs. Fenton! Please put the weapon away!” Lancer said sharply.
“Oh, relax, it’s an ecto-weapon, harmless to humans—if he’s not overshadowed, nothing will happen,” Maddie replied.
“Maddie, I promise you, I am not overshadowed,” Jack insisted. “I just followed the evidence—and the evidence shows that not all ghosts are bad!”
“I WILL call security if you do not leave immediately!” Lancer loudly warned.
“You don’t have anti-human security,” Maddie spat.
“Actually, we do! In light of some escalating bullying incidents, we hired an officer; he started last week. I’m sure he would be happy to finally get a chance to do his job,” Lancer said. Oh, right; the school had done that, after the incident with Dash. Even though he’d technically been around since the previous Thursday, he was useless in ghost attacks, so Valerie hadn’t paid much attention—although she was pretty sure he was not fully human, just as she suspected of the new school nurse, but neither were ghosts so Valerie didn’t particularly care.
There was a moment of quiet before Maddie said, “Fine,” in a hiss, then, “This isn’t over!” followed by the sound of feet stomping away.
Jack and Lancer then left too, talking to each other more quietly.
“You okay?” Valerie asked Danny after a moment.
“Like you care,” Danny replied venomously, to Valerie's surprise; she got that his emotions were high, but still.
“Hey, isn’t that a little harsh?” Tucker asked, eying Danny warily.
“No,” Danny replied tersely. “You can’t sense emotions.”
“Hey!” Valerie protested. “Don’t you dare do that!”
“I can’t help it,” Danny emphasized, whisper-shouting. “What about that don’t you understand? Besides, even if I didn’t do that, it’s dead obvious that you still hate ghosts. You still hate Phantom. Regardless of any concern you think you may have, or lingering affection, for Fenton, your hatred of Phantom always trumps it.”
“That’s not—”
“It is true! I can sense it! Even with your armor’s weird muting thing!”
“My armor’s what thing?” Valerie asked, mildly confused, then realized her suit must have some sort of protection from feelings being read. “Well, maybe you’re misinterpreting things!”
“I’m not! Especially since you keep literally projecting your anger and hatred!”
“I’m what?” Valerie asked, stunned. “No, that’s not true,” she asserted. Projecting emotions, typically fear and anger and whatnot, was something some ghosts used to send people away from their haunts and stuff. There was no way Valerie was doing that.
“Yeah, no, you’re definitely—”
“Hey, calm down, you two,” Sam warned.
“I am calm!” both Danny and Valerie growled at Sam with a glare, and she responded simply by crossing her arms and giving them a disappointed look.
“If you two are going to continue to fight in class instead of doing your work,” the teacher said calmly, and Valerie jumped slightly, not realizing Mrs. Kagaku had made her way to their table, “Then you’ll be the first two detentions I issue. Understood?”
“Understood,” both Valerie and Danny grumbled, before grudgingly resuming the experiment.
Ugh. Why was Danny being so difficult about this? They seemed to be getting along the other day! Progress was being made. Yet now that all seemed to have gone away… Maybe Danny was right; maybe her hatred for Phantom would always trump any affection for Fenton—they were the same person, after all, which she had to keep reminding herself of. She couldn’t simply hate or love half of him, it had to be all or nothing—and, she reluctantly acknowledged, the hatred and anger for his ghost half was currently winning.
But she definitely, absolutely was not ‘projecting’ that hatred and anger like some dirty ghost. Nope. That was a power that her suit definitely did not have. Danny was obviously mistaken about that.
Valerie growled in frustration as yet another pencil seemed to slip right out from between her fingers, as if it’d gone through her hand; maybe she should invest in a pencil grip.
After school, Danny found himself flying around alone; usually he’d hang out with people after school, but everyone he would do that with was busy: Tucker had a robotics team meet (Danny was happy that Tucker actually found a group that he could be tech-geeky with, but those meets just kept coming on the most inconvenient days); Sam had a date with Lurker; Ellie was hanging out with Valerie (which Danny was a little bitter about; why was Valerie perfectly okay with Ellie but not him?); Ember had cheerleading along with Paulina and Star; and Johnny and Kitty were on a date again, this time in Paris (they’d recently discovered a permanent natural portal leading to the catacombs there). Even Jazz was busy, studying for a test with some of her classmates.
Even Kwan was out, having football practice—not that Danny really wanted to hang out with him, but the boy had been friendlier, and seemed like he needed a friend given that half the football team was mad at him and the others were too afraid of crossing Dash when he returned (well, if he did, which all depended on the hearing during the next Board of Education meeting).
Sidney could be an option, Danny supposed, but he refused to leave the school, and Danny didn’t really want to spend more time there than necessary.
Danny couldn’t even go directly home, given that Maddie was there sorting things out again, this time general objects rather than lab stuff.
So, Danny left his things in his school locker and then casually patrolled the town alone as he thought about things, dour mood not helped by the overcast sky; Danny really hoped it didn’t start raining. He could always go intangible to dry off, but it was still annoying.
The first thing on his mind was Valerie. What was with that girl? After finding out about Danny being Phantom, she started trying to do better with her bias against ghosts and her anger issues, but then it had taken a turn for the worse again. Sam claimed she was going through the stages of grief, but if so she seemed to be going backwards through it. Ellie she was still somehow fine with (upon seeing her at the end of school she’d scooped her into a hug!), but other ghosts? Hatred still abounded, and she clearly still thought they were evil—including Phantom. Hell, sometimes it even seemed that she thought that even in human form Danny was evil! Then she had the gall to lie about it…
…Unless she wasn’t lying. It was true that Danny couldn’t sense Valerie’s emotions that well, except when she projected them, and the ones she tended to project were the anger and hatred. So perhaps he was just collecting skewed data, her more positive emotions hiding under the protection of her suit while her negative ones were magnified? It wasn’t the first time that thought had crossed his mind, and honestly was looking the most plausible given how much Valerie insisted she didn’t feel the way Danny claimed she did.
But that brought Danny to the other issue about Valerie, something he really needed to talk to her about but had no idea how to bring it up: Valerie very clearly had ghost powers, and not just things that could be explained by a high-tech suit… Well, technically the suit could explain it, Danny supposed, but only in that the ectoplasm in it must have been what caused the change. Would she be open to a scan being done to see what percent ghost she now was? Or would she reject the possibility so hard that she’d refuse?
Did Valerie even realize she had powers that weren’t part of the suit? She had to. Maybe the feeling-projecting went unnoticed, but she must have noticed the intangibility at the very least. Her pencil had phased through her fingers a total of 9 times that day, during the classes they had together; Danny counted. And there was no way that it didn’t strike her as odd that she was smelling ectoplasm differently than humans did. To her it still smelled rotten, so she wasn’t as far gone that she needed to consume ectoplasm like Danny did, but maybe it was closer to Vlad? She didn’t have a ghost form though… Or did she? Did the suit count? There were no rings, but she did apparently look different under the suit now, according to Tucker…
Then, there was also the matter of Danny’s dad. Jack was definitely trying to do better, for sure, but his eager support was starting to feel a little overwhelming. Danny felt bad for feeling that way, because his father’s emotions showed that he truly loved Danny and was dedicated to repairing the relationship, but over a week of increased attention when at home after so many years going without had Danny feeling suffocated, even though according to Sam and Tucker it was simply a normal level of parental attention. His therapist had suggested he tell Jack this, but Danny just knew his dad would feel disappointment, and Danny didn’t want to hurt his dad. Plus Danny did like that his dad was more involved overall, and didn’t want it to end up going back to how it was… Well, maybe he just needed to get used to it.
Another huge concern was the bottle of painkillers currently in Danny’s backpack, and the fact that he itched to take one. He’d gotten some prescription ones more appropriate for a halfa, but he still wanted the other ones, which he knew was highly concerning—which is why he hadn’t asked Sam for more, rather stolen a bottle from her mother’s suspiciously large stash when he visited the previous day (she couldn’t be using all of those herself; was she distributing them?). The twitchiness that had started up went away as soon as he took one, and instead of only killing the pain he felt a relief that he knew he shouldn’t. He’d taken multiple more since. He… he really needed to talk to someone about that. Guess Aunt Alicia had been wrong when she told Danny’s mom ‘at least he’s not a junkie’.
A sadness that had been growing the whole time he had been patrolling overwhelmed Danny at that thought, and he landed on the roof of a business building, stumbling to his knees as tears fell from his eyes. How had he let things get this bad?
Danny cried for a good ten minutes, though as quietly as he could so no one discovered him. He really wished there was something around that he could fight; the adrenaline would help with the mental pain. Feeling a little better once the tears subsided, but still not great, Danny resumed his patrol, hoping for a fight.
As if his wish had been granted (but NOT by Desiree), Danny’s ghost sense triggered, and he took a detour to the docks, where he unsurprisingly found the Box Ghost at a warehouse. He dragged the fight out a little more than necessary, but was feeling a fair amount better afterwards; he’d have to get the Box Ghost a nice box as a thank-you gift, even if the ghost would have no clue why he was being thanked.
After leaving the warehouse, Danny noted that it had started to lightly drizzle, then spotted on the wharf by the water what appeared to be a large tentacled ghost. The main body was roughly the size of a school bus, and it had a giant eyeball in the center and at least a dozen, if not more, long greyish-green tentacles flowing out of it; honestly it looked less like a ghost and more like it belonged in one of Lovecraft’s works (Danny had read some of the stories after learning that Miskatonic University was part of them; despite their label of ‘weird fiction’, Danny had a heavy suspicion that many of them were closer to nonfiction, perhaps slightly modified transcriptions of true accounts of actual incidents), especially given the uncanny lack of glow… Yeah, no, Danny was going to just assume it was a ghost for now. His ghost sense obviously hadn’t gone off because it was detecting both the Box Ghost and this thing earlier, even if they were technically too far apart for that.
Before he reached the ghost, which had left a long trail of destruction all along the dock area, a red blur zoomed past him. When Danny caught up to Valerie to help her fight the thing, she angrily yelled, “Move aside, Ghost Boy; I’ve got this.”
So he was back to ‘Ghost Boy’, huh. Well, at least she wasn’t attacking him instead of the ghost monster. Danny crossed his arms and floated off to the side, observing, as per her request. He had a feeling she would need help on this one, but he’d let her figure that out herself.
“Where’s Ellie?” Danny called, slightly concerned; she and Valerie were supposed to be hanging out.
“What, you think I’d hurt her?” Valerie asked snarkily.
“Uh. Now I do,” Danny said in response, alarm bells ringing.
“Relax, she’s fine,” Valerie shouted back.
“You sure?”
Valerie scoffed. “You can trust me, you know.”
Danny frowned, unsure of that statement. She still seemed very hateful of him, and he wouldn’t put it past her to try to do something to gain the advantage. Then again, she did genuinely seem to care about Ellie, so presumably wouldn’t have hurt her. Did Valerie send Ellie home when her ghost alert went off?
“Yo, you gonna help?!” Valerie called as she blocked a blow from a tentacle.
“Thought you didn’t want my help,” Danny said snarkily, staying where he was, even as the rain began to fall a little harder, enough to actually be a little annoying as it caused his hair to wilt.
“Yeah, well—whoa!” Valerie zipped backwards out of range; she’d landed a shot in its eye, which though seemingly blinded it also caused it to become more outraged and flail around violently. “You know what, you’re right,” she said, her own rage eclipsing all other emotion. “I don’t need your help.” She flew back in, shooting at it.
Danny watched for a few seconds more before deciding that 1) this was definitely not a ghost; and 2) Valerie was going to get hurt if she kept this up, so he had no choice but to help.
“Die, ectoplasmic scum!” came a new shout, and Danny swerved around, narrowly dodging a shot from the Fenton Bazooka. Shit; his mom—Maddie—was here. Guess Valerie had to wait on that help.
Danny dodged another shot, then his mom swapped weapons to what looked like a machine gun. She must have newly created it, because Danny hadn’t seen that in the lab and his dad hadn’t informed him about any new weapons. She pulled the trigger, and… yup, machine gun, rapidly shooting out tiny ectoplasmic blasts. One nicked Danny’s shoulder; it stung, but didn’t break skin, meaning it wasn’t too damaging—but although the bullets were weak, getting pelted by many at once would definitely hurt and likely would be enough to subdue him while she pulled something stronger out.
“Hey! Don’t hurt him!” someone else called, and Danny turned in confusion to see Dash, of all people, pushing the gun in Maddie’s hands to redirect it, a red-and-white CHS umbrella falling to the ground as he did so (how much school merch did the football players get? Danny hadn’t even known the school made umbrellas!).
“What are you doing?” Maddie spat, pulling the gun away from the boy. “Get out of here; it’s dangerous!”
“We need Phantom to help take that thing down!” Dash argued.
Maddie shook her head. “The Red—crap,” she said, looking to the battle, where the beast had just struck Valerie with a tentacle, sending her flying away; she stood up, but clearly needed help. Maddie raced over to the beast, shooting it.
The beast moved and flailed, a tentacle aimed right at Dash’s head.
“Look out!” Danny yelled, and without thinking flew towards Dash, grabbing him and using intangibility so he didn’t get hit; sure, he hated the guy, but that didn’t mean the bully deserved to die. Plus, knowing his luck, Dash would just return as a ghost.
Danny flew Dash intangibly into the nearby warehouse and set him down. “What were you thinking?” he shouted.
Dash looked scared for a moment, then gathered courage. “Well sorry for wanting to help!” he yelled back.
“You could have gotten hurt!”
“So could you!”
“Oh like you’ve cared about hurting people before,” Danny growled bitterly, and Dash seemed surprised and a little guilty. There was a bang from outside. “Ugh, just wait here, I’ll be back when the battle’s over.”
With that, Danny flew back out and into the fray. The rain was still borderline light, but the wind was picking up now.
“What did you do to that boy!?” Maddie shouted, swinging her gun back towards Danny.
Danny put his hands up. “Whoa, whoa, he’s fine, I was just making sure he didn’t get hurt by this freakin eldritch horror!” he yelled. “Which we probably should work together to beat considering it’s about to throw a boat!”
Maddie swerved to look to where the thing indeed had a small sailboat in one of its tentacles, which it had crushed to the point it had nearly snapped in half. She dodged it as the thing threw it at her; it broke clean in two when it landed.
Maddie swerved back to point the gun at Danny.
“Are you for real?! Do you not see that—oh, shit, there’s two now,” Danny realized, as a second one emerged from the water, this one slightly larger, about the size of a train car instead of a bus. It was a slight distance away, though locked its eye on the scene; Danny had an inexplicable sense that it was angry.
Maddie swerved back to face the creatures, then looked back at Danny, then to them again.
Danny growled, “Oh come on. You can’t seriously think I’m the bigger threat here?!”
The first creature threw another boat, which crashed into a warehouse, thankfully not the one Dash was in. Lightning crashed in the distance, and Danny resisted wincing; it was still plenty far away, judging by the quiet rumble of thunder that sounded on a substantial delay.
“Okay, fine,” Maddie spat, turning her bazooka back on the creature. “Truce, just until these ghosts are gone—then you’re mine!”
“Okay, okay, I get it, sheesh!” Danny said with an eyeroll, then told her, “Get back; I’m gonna try something,” as he summoned his guitar.
“Is that Ember’s guitar?!” Maddie shouted in disbelief as she hopped back and shot the bazooka at the first creature from a distance. It barely reacted; ecto things seemed to have little effect on it.
“Well, I am dating her!” Danny shouted back as he fiddled with the attack dial.
“Tch. Like ghosts could date,” Maddie said with clear disbelief.
Danny strummed the guitar, set to ‘attack enhancement’, and activated his own ice magic, creating a huge wave of ice that washed over the creature. Everything was silent as it momentarily froze, then it burst out, ice shards flying everywhere; Danny protected himself with an ecto-shield while Maddie ducked, letting her durable suit safely take the brunt of the ice, and Valerie tilted her hoverboard to use as a shield.
“Sorry, thought that would work!” Danny shouted as he dodged a tentacle; the thing, whose vision had clearly returned, was impossibly even more angry now as its partner finally got close enough to join in the fray. There was more lightning in the distance.
“Well, it didn’t!” Valerie hissed, briefly glancing towards the lightning. “I’ve got an idea, though!” She shot the second creature with a blast of electricity emanating from her hand, which the creature actually recoiled at slightly. Danny mentally noted that she had not actually drawn a weapon for it and it was definitely ghost lightning; was Valerie aware of that?
Valerie had the right idea though, Danny realized. The things were clearly aquatic, despite floating in the air. Electricity was a likely weakness, so in that case… He fiddled with his guitar dial again and told them, “Get back, I have another idea!”
“It better not be that ice attack again!” Valerie shouted, though moved back, as did Maddie, who was now pelting it mostly-uselessly with the machine gunfire.
“What? No, I’m not stupid,” Danny said with an eye roll, then grinned as he strummed the guitar.
The sound waves shifted into a large blast of electricity; as it slammed into the smaller creature, Danny continued strumming a chord progression, increasing the power in sync with it and sustaining the charge. It was a little nerve-wracking, given Danny did not have the best relationship with electricity, but he held firm. Thankfully the ghost electricity was controlled enough to only target the creature, and seemed to ignore the water covering the ground as the rain picked up even more; last thing Danny needed was to accidentally electrocute his mom!
The thing screeched, an otherworldly sound that made Danny want to cover his ears, but he held off, as did the two ghost hunters.
“Quick, hit it while I have it stunned!” Danny told the other two, realizing that the attack seemed to only be paralyzing it rather than doing any significant damage.
Maddie pulled out a small cylinder from a small bag on her hip, which elongated into a bo-staff with what looked like long knives attached to the ends. She rushed over to the creature and began hacking at its tentacles; despite appearing to be metal, the staff must be nonconductive as the electricity didn’t try to follow it. That, or maybe it was because ghost electricity only damaged what the user wanted it to, as ghost fire did; he’d have to ask Ember about that.
The guitar’s energy cut off as Danny felt winded and the guitar vanished. A downside of using the guitar to perform such powerful attacks was that it quickly drained him, much like his Ghostly Wail did; it would take a moment before he could do anything other than dodge.
“Oof!” Danny grunted—nevermind, apparently even dodging was out. Danny had forgotten about the second creature, only remembering it as one of its thicker tentacles barrelled towards him; his reflexes were too slow after the attack and it slammed into him, knocking him into a large metal bollard; oof, that was definitely gonna smart, maybe even cracked a rib.
Danny quickly collected his bearings; the second one was coming towards him, whereas the first still seemed partially stunned, not doing much as Maddie continued chopping at its limbs and Valerie threw ninja stars at it, also clearly having realized that ecto things weren’t working. The thing started to slow down once many of its tentacles had been detached, leaking blue blood.
Danny flew back towards the second creature, only for the first one to whack him in the stomach on the way, apparently recovered just enough to flail out in jagged motions with the few remaining tentacles, sending him flying towards the water at an angle. Before he could catch his balance, Danny found himself submerged. He gasped, then began to panic slightly as water filled his lungs, until he remembered that, right, breathing wasn’t actually necessary.
Danny quickly flew out of the water, using intangibility to increase his speed and remove the water from his lungs; as he did so he saw that the first creature was now on the ground, twitching slightly, the women still pummelling it; the second one was coming towards him again, more focused on attacking him than saving its companion. Danny hurriedly summoned the thermos, dodged the second creature, and landed in front of the first creature, pointing the beam directly at the dimming eye.
The beam did absolutely nothing to the creature, as Danny had anticipated, but it had been worth a shot.
The light in the creature’s eye faded fully, and it stilled. Dead, not destabilized and reduced to a core as a ghost might be.
All three stared at the dead thing, both humans out of breath and all three feeling the worse for wear. It smelled heavily of rotten fish, and was heavily bleeding blue blood where any tentacles had been blasted off. The giant eye stared blankly; it was definitely dead, but still extremely unsettling, as though it stared into the heart of the universe itself.
“That… isn’t a ghost, is it?” Valerie asked nervously.
“No. No it is not,” Danny said.
The second creature let out a loud wail unlike anything a ghost or earthly creature could be expected to make, reminding the three that they weren’t finished. They turned, ready to fight…
Only for the creature to turn and crash into the water in retreat, creating a wave of water that washed over the three. Well, at least they’d already been wet due to the rain.
Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, even closer than before.
Danny used intangibility to dry himself, not that it helped much given it was still raining, now at a level akin to a shower, then shouted at the other two over the wind, “I would suggest contacting Miskatonic University about this.” He flew off before Maddie could start shooting at him or Valerie could try continuing their earlier argument.
Danny then spotted Dash’s umbrella floating in the water and doubled back, realizing he’d forgotten the boy in the warehouse. He snuck in invisibly so neither of the girls would notice him, even though they likely wouldn’t given Valerie, under an umbrella that seemed to have manifested from her suit, was on the phone and Maddie was examining the carcass of the thing.
Danny became visible again in front of Dash, who jumped slightly. The warehouse was dark, lit only by Danny’s glow. Danny crossed his arms, noting there was some blue blood on him still; weird that the intangibility didn’t work on it. “So. Please explain why you would jump into a fight, especially with zero ghost defense equipment.” He’d let Dash assume it was a ghost; the public didn’t need to know that there were eldritch horrors in Lake Erie.
Dash looked lost but tepidly explained, “Well, I didn’t realize there would be a ghost. I just saw you flying this way, and I thought maybe I could talk to you so I followed.”
Danny took a deep breath and calmed down, detecting the boy was sincere—an emotion he’d never felt from the boy when in human form. “And just what was so important to talk about that you had to follow me?”
Dash shifted nervously. “Well, I… I’ve been thinking lately. Um. So, about a week ago something happened. You, um, probably know what it was. So I got in trouble, and they’ve been forcing me to see a counselor every day, one specifically for, er, troubled youth, to help with… well, I have some emotional issues. And I know it doesn’t excuse what I did but I realized that I do want to be better. I don’t want to be such a horrible person, and want to get rid of these horrible thoughts I keep having.”
“Okay… and you’re telling me this why?” Danny asked coldly. “Do you think that will make what you did go away?”
Dash winced. “You do know what happened, then,” he said, unsurprised.
“Yup. And I don’t really know what you expect to achieve by talking to me about it. I don’t like people who try to murder other people,” Danny said. Human or ghost. “That includes you. I only saved you because I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death when I could have prevented it, even a bully who’s hurt people so badly they’ve tried to kill themselves.”
“Wait, what?” Dash said, looking surprised. “Okay, the attempted manslaughter, that’s on me. But when have I ever caused—”
Danny cut Dash off, anticipating the ending of the question. “You’ve been brutally bullying Fenton since the sixth grade. That takes a toll. In eighth grade it got him so low that he literally wanted to die. Shortly after summer break started, he wrote a note, and—” Danny’s breath hitched. He didn’t even like thinking about this, let alone talking about it, and he wasn’t quite sure why he was telling Dash, of all people. “Well, let’s just say you’re lucky the bottle he grabbed was mislabeled.”
Danny had since burned the letter, and never wrote another nor tried anything after that, but still—there was a reason he fed on joy, after all, and a reason why Jazz invested so heavily in psychology (because his parents at the time definitely wouldn’t send him to therapy). Danny had snuck what he thought was a deadly substance from the lab and drank it, only to realize that the bottle had been repurposed to be used to store something that only gave him an upset stomach that he passed off as food poisoning.
“Oh,” Dash said, paling. “I didn’t know that.” He felt terrified and guilty.
“No one did,” Danny said. He hadn’t even told Sam and Tucker; his therapist did know now though, and Clockwork of course. Jazz knew about the letter, having found it before he could burn it, but as far as Danny knew she was unaware there had been an actual attempt (because even though it was the wrong substance, the intent was what mattered—he’d drank it fully expecting to die, which, ironically, he ended up doing accidentally later that very same summer). Her reaction to finding it was what made Danny not want to try again; he hadn’t been thinking about how his friends and family might react.
“Then why did he tell you?” Dash asked; from the vibe, he wasn’t suspicious, just curious, atop the still-present guilt and mild fear.
Danny shrugged. “Because I can relate,” he said casually.
Dash looked a little confused. “What do you mean, you can…” His eyes widened. “Oh, shit, is that why you’re dead?”
Danny winced. Crap; the last thing he needed was a rumor like that spreading. “Okay, firstly, it’s super rude to ask about a ghost’s death. But, no, that’s not why I died. It was an accident unrelated to the bullying—no, I’m not giving more details than that. But what I will say is that your degree of bullying is definitely going to get someone killed someday, either by your own hand or by theirs. It’s already come close to both. Let this be a lesson, and do better.”
Dash nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes, I’ll stop bullying,” he promised, and to Danny’s surprise he seemed honestly sincere. “I know I’ve been horrible in the past. I know my thoughts are bad. But trust me when I say that I don’t want to have those thoughts, I don’t want to have that urge to hurt people. I feel horrible that I let it go unrestrained for so long, and I do want to do better.”
Danny frowned. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said flatly; the sentiment may be there, but as Valerie proved, that didn’t necessarily mean he would change. It’d only been a week after all—if Dash did do better, and for a substantial amount of time, maybe Danny would believe he’d changed, but he couldn’t now, no matter how sincere he seemed—and Danny certainly would never forgive Dash.
Dash nodded. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you down.” Then he bit his lip, clearly looking like he was afraid to ask something else, then blurted out, “Is Fenton a ghost?”
“What?” Danny asked, taken aback.
“A ghost, like you.”
“I… was under the impression you thought he was some sort of vampire cat,” Danny said, mildly confused. “Besides, if he were a ghost, you wouldn’t have been able to hurt him.”
“Well yeah, duh,” Dash said. “Obviously he wasn’t one when I, well, you know. He clearly was a cat-vampire or something similar back then. But…” Dash seemed to feel dread as he said, “But one of the guys on the team told me a couple days ago that he thought he saw Fenton walk through a door, like through-through, when it was closed, but then he opened the door and Fenton was gone! Like a ghost. Which I was like ‘yeah right, clearly hallucinating’, but then I saw that video of Kwan fighting Ken, and in the background Fenton was talking to that teen ghost, Simon or whatever, and the voices were both staticky. Like ghosts. He’s a ghost now, isn’t he? I killed him?” Dash seemed awfully distressed by the end.
Danny sighed, doing his best to remain calm; stupid! So stupid of him; he’d gotten caught walking through a solid door? The last thing he needed was rumors that Fenton was a ghost! The vampire ones were bad enough (yes, they were still around). “If you’d killed him, you’d be arrested for actual manslaughter, not attempted.”
“Unless his ghost hid the body and took over his life,” Dash pointed out. “I mean, it’s something he would do, right? With his parents being, well, you know—imagine what they’d do if they found out their kid was a ghost?”
Danny couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “Oh, I can imagine… But, I wouldn’t worry. Cameras glitch all the time, maybe it just picked up interference.”
“I guess…”
“And, come on, if he were a ghost do you really think Fenton would be stupid enough to blatantly walk through a door in front of people?”
“Well, yeah.”
Danny gave pause to that. He had, after all. But still, “Look, I really wouldn’t worry about it, Dash. You didn’t kill him. Badly injured, yeah, but didn’t kill him.”
“You sure?”
Danny sighed in frustration. “Yes, I’m sure! Now, is this why you followed me? Or is there something else?”
Dash winced. “Sorry. Um. No, it wasn’t. Or, it kinda was? I didn’t mean to rant like that, or ask about, well, you know. I just followed you because… Well, you know Fenton.”
“Yes, that has been established,” Danny said slowly. “I also know that you tried to kill him,” he reminded Dash, slightly concerned—had he forgotten everything they’d just talked about? Or was it just the sudden nervousness? What was he nervous about now?
Dash winced. “Er. Right. Then, you probably know this too, but there’s a restraining order in place.”
Danny nodded. It had been insisted upon by Lancer; Danny had the opportunity at that moment to do something hilarious by changing to human and accusing him of breaking it, getting Dash arrested, but he didn’t want his secret revealed to Dash at all. “What about it?” Danny asked.
Dash reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “I, er, wrote an apology,” Dash said. “Since I can’t go near him, I was hoping you could give it to him? My counselor suggested it, and said I don’t need to send it, but I swear it is sincere and I want him to know that I really do feel bad.”
Danny frowned. That hadn’t been the vibe he’d gotten from Dash in the immediate aftermath of the incident, but maybe he’d just needed some processing time. Even if he felt bad now though, Danny was not feeling sympathetic at all. “Why should I?” he coldly challenged. “You feeling bad won’t change the years of abuse you put him through. Won’t change the fact that he’s had nightmares about you. Won’t change the fact that you’re part of the reason he attempted suicide. Won’t change the fact that you strangled him to the point he couldn’t breathe.” Danny’s anger flared slightly and the last part came out in a hiss.
Dash winced and stuttered out, “W-well, I’m not asking him to forgive me or anything; I know he probably never will! I just thought he’d like to know that I do regret it and that he doesn’t have to be afraid of me anymore. And I won’t hurt him or any other losers anymore! And if I try to, Kwan said he’ll call me out.”
“Kwan talked to you about this?” Danny asked curiously. He knew Kwan had wanted to do some sort of ‘friend break-up’, and offered to assist, but Kwan never took Danny up on that offer.
“Yeah. Our relationship’s a bit shaky right now, but he said as long as I stop bullying—which I decided to do before the convo with him by the way—we can stay friends. He told me he promised you he’d stick up for people, and apparently has been keeping that promise? I’d like to do the same.”
Danny considered that for a moment, eyeing Dash and focusing on the boy’s emotions. He truly did seem sincere, impossibly. He’d also spoken like those murderous thoughts were more along the lines of intrusive ones; Danny knew about those thanks to Jazz’s psychology obsession (last year, she’d spent over an hour one night as she and Danny ate dinner explaining that at length right after she first read about such). If that were the case, Dash couldn’t be blamed for those—though he could be blamed for actually acting on them. He didn’t need to follow through on that desire to cause pain. Danny himself hadn’t; there were many times he wanted to fight back against Dash after getting ghost powers, imagining ways he could really damage the boy in retaliation, even wanting to physically harm him, but of course he didn’t because he knew that was wrong to do and he wasn’t that type of person.
“Okay, but I’m going to hold you to that,” Danny warned. “If I catch you bullying again…” he left the threat hanging; honestly he didn’t know what he’d do, so he’d just let Dash imagine.
Dash gulped. “Understood,” he said. “So, will you give Fenton the letter?”
“Yeah, I’ll give him the letter,” Danny decided, more so because he was curious if it was any different from what Dash had just said to ‘Phantom’. “Don’t think it’s going to make him forgive you or anything though,” he warned.
“That’s fine,” Dash said with relief as Danny accepted the letter from him. “I’m not asking him to forgive me. I just want him to know he doesn’t have to be afraid.”
Both boys startled as a banging sounded on the warehouse door. “Come on out, Phantom!” Maddie’s voice called, and Danny flinched hard. Speaking of ‘afraid’... “I know you’re in there!”
“Shit,” Danny muttered, and Dash seemed surprised at the language usage.
“Go; I’ll distract her,” Dash said.
Danny hesitated, torn between escaping alone and helping Dash leave first, which would slow him down.
BAM.
The door burst open, a convenient crack of thunder ringing out at the same time, making Danny’s decision for him. He rapidly flew off and through the ceiling, ecto-machine-gun fire already on his tail as his mom again yelled, “Die, ectoplasmic scum!”
Jack had just started on making dinner—a roast that needed a whopping ninety minutes to cook—when Danny flew into the kitchen after phasing through the window, nearly crashing into the table as he landed. He was completely dry, which Jack momentarily found strange as it was really storming out there, then he realized that phasing into the kitchen must have also phased the water off.
Danny winced. “Sorry,” he said, shifting from leaning on the table where he caught himself to properly standing and revealing the table now had a large dent where he’d grabbed it. Lightning flashed outside, and Danny flinched; right, thunderstorms had started to really bother him sometime in the past few years, for some—oh. The portal incident involved electricity, so it would make sense for a fear of large amounts of electricity to follow.
“Forget about the table; what happened?” Jack asked as worry flared. Danny looked the worst for wear: his suit was torn in multiple places, where the skin showed there were what looked like small burns, and the white parts and his hair had blue splotches. For some reason, Jack thought of blood when he saw them, but blood wasn’t blue, so what was it?
“Fought a… strange eldritch not-ghost thing,” Danny told Jack as he tossed his backpack onto a chair, which explained the blue blood. “Two of them, actually. Valerie—I mean, the Red Huntress—showed up to help, then Mom—I mean, Maddie—showed up and shot at me, then she realized the things were more dangerous and helped fight, and then she went after me, again.”
Jack flashed slight anger and growled, “She told me she was picking up more bags!” Like most people in Amity Park, they now used bags to transport things rather than boxes due to a certain ghost. Today had been, with the exception of the school incident, mostly the two of them packing things of Maddie’s and sorting out who got what for contested items—the lawyers didn’t need to supervise it all, but would return tomorrow to help with any heavily contested items, like the TV… actually, wait, she can have that, Jack had been looking for an excuse to replace that clunky CRT one with one of those new cutting-edge flatscreen LCD ones—true, its use in TVs was newer technology, which was always uncertain, but Jack had a feeling LCD was going to end up fully replacing both CRT and plasma very soon.
“Well, I doubt she was, seeing as this was by the docks,” Danny said flatly, and Jack had to agree—maybe she went out at first for them, but then got a beep on a tracker? Danny continued, “She’ll probably be a while though, since I escaped she probably wants to try to study the thing before MU gets there.”
“MU?”
“Yeah, the Red Huntress called them since it’s probably some sort of eldritch entity from another dimension and we definitely all want to stick to only ghosts,” Danny explained. “We only killed one, so they’ll have to investigate.”
Jack nodded. “That makes sense…” Then, he noticed something through a large tear in Danny’s left sleeve, something larger under a small ecto-weapon burn mark. “Hey, what’s that?”
Danny looked down. “Oh. Mom’s new weapon is some sort of ecto-machine-gun, it’s a lot of weaker shots that sting, probably meant to subdue before using something else.”
Jack shook his head. “No, not that, underneath.”
Danny looked again, then froze. “Ah. That. Uh, yeah, forgot you haven’t seen that yet…”
Jack frowned. It was an older scar, definitely not from this fight, a branching feathery pattern with a slight greenish tinge. “That looks like…” He trailed off, realizing where Danny most likely had gotten a Lichtenberg scar that severe, given he hadn’t been aware of any electricity ghosts appearing recently and Danny definitely didn’t have that in human form earlier. Ghosts had one scar they could never shake, and it wouldn’t be surprising for Danny’s ghost form to share that trait.
“Yeah, it’s my death scar,” Danny confirmed, wincing slightly. He carefully removed his glove and pushed up his sleeve, revealing part of the scar branching out from his palm and up his arm. Jack suspected it likely extended across his chest as well, possibly down a leg, but he definitely wasn’t going to ask his son to disrobe or anything of the sort just to see it.
Jack found himself unable to speak. Death scar. A significant one, at that. No wonder Danny hadn’t changed his ghost costume yet; this one perfectly hid it. It made sense that it would be this kind of scar, given the nature of the portal, but it just hadn’t occurred to Jack that Danny would have one. One that Jack had—
“It’s not your fault,” Danny firmly insisted, and right, he could sense feelings. Jack wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to that.
“I know,” Jack said. “You, Jazz, and Dr. Warren all told me that. But still…”
Danny then noticed someone in the kitchen doorway, behind Jack, and turned fully to greet her. “Hey, Ellie! How long have you been there?”
“Since MU was mentioned,” Ellie said. “I heard a crash so came to investigate, but then you got all serious and I didn’t want to interrupt… So, you and Valerie fought something? Is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s fine,” Danny said. “Still hates me, but she still honored our truce, so that’s something at least.”
Ellie sighed. “You got hurt, though… Ugh, I should have been there! But Valerie was all worried I’d melt like last time, even though I told her I got fixed… She said her scanner said it was just a lower-level ghost!”
“Well, to be fair, Boxy was around there too; she probably only went for him at first seeing as the other thing wasn’t exactly a ghost.”
Ellie frowned. “Well, okay, I guess that makes sense,” she reluctantly conceded. “Still frustrating though… Oh, and for the record, she doesn’t actually hate you.”
Danny crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Sure about that?”
“Yup; I’m pretty sure it’s just her weird emotion-projecting thing that makes it seem that way,” Ellie said, and Jack scrunched his brow in slight confusion. Wasn’t that a ghost thing? The Red Huntress wasn’t a ghost.
Danny frowned. “Right. About that; I think she was using ecto-lightning today, but not generated from her suit.”
Ellie looked surprised. “You sure?”
Danny nodded. “I think she’s developing ghost powers. Like, her own—pretty sure she was phasing through some school supplies earlier too. Her suit’s ghost tech and fueled by ectoplasm, so…”
“So you think it might be changing her into a halfa,” Ellie finished. Jack resisted whistling; man, he couldn’t imagine how scary that must be for the girl, especially since she still hated ghosts so much—she was coming around, and knew of halfas, but it still must be stressful for her.
“Yeah,” Danny confirmed. “I don’t think she’s aware of it, and if she is then she might be in denial. She probably won’t listen to me, so could you maybe talk to her about that?”
“Sure thing!” Ellie agreed. “On Saturday we’re—”
Suddenly, keys sounded at the door; Jack, Danny, and Ellie all froze. Jazz had class, so that could only be…
“Quick, change!” Jack hissed at Danny, realizing his son was still in his Phantom form.
“Oh, right,” Danny said in a somewhat detached manner and shifted back to his human form. Luckily he had been wearing a zippered hoodie, as Jack had reminded him to wear that morning (the weather demanded at least that, if not a heavier coat; even though he didn’t technically need one Danny really should if he wanted to keep his cover), so none of the scars or bruises from the battle would be visible—luckily nothing was actively bleeding this time as far as Jack could see.
Adorably, Danny and Ellie were wearing extremely similar outfits, blue jeans with a t-shirt and simple black zipper hoodie, unzipped, but whereas Danny’s shirt was black with a Simple Plan logo, Ellie's was crimson red with some graffiti-like text in Japanese, which Jack couldn’t read, that she’d apparently gotten when she travelled around the Hokkaido region. Plus, Danny wore a chain necklace and his usual ear jewelry, whereas Ellie didn’t seem to like wearing accessories other than a simple hair tie, red today, as far as Jack could tell.
Jack then realized that maybe he should have just suggested that both halfas go invisible and flee to Danny’s room, or the former guest room that was now Ellie’s room, but neither of them had realized that either and now it was too late.
Jack also belatedly realized that Maddie did not know about Ellie yet.
Maddie, in her teal jumpsuit as usual, although it had some darker splotches on it presumably from the thing’s blood, stormed in, wind howling behind her; she was clearly angry, though to her credit she did have the promised bags, which she dumped on the table before sighing loudly and complaining, “That darn Phantom got away again, can you believe it?“ as she shook water off of an umbrella before tossing it into an umbrella basket. Jack suppressed a groan; of course she’d focus on Phantom even when there had apparently been two non-ghost eldritch abominations there.
“Actually, yes,” Jack said, trying to keep his tone light. “He’s a tricky one, isn’t he?” He threw Danny a wink, and Danny awkwardly grinned back.
Finally, Maddie looked towards them and froze, eyes settling on Ellie. She blinked, then smiled. “Oh, hello there! You must be one of Danny’s friends!” she said chipperly, demeanor shifting to the more pleasant one she defaulted to around non-family.
Danny and Ellie glanced at each other as Jack bit his lip, trying to think how to approach this; sooner than later Maddie was going to notice…
“Wait,” Maddie said, narrowing her eyes. Sooner it is. She looked between Danny and Ellie. “Jack… You wouldn’t happen to have an illegitimate daughter that I didn’t know about, would you?”
“Uh, no,” Jack said hurriedly, even though it kinda was the case—in fact, technically she was Maddie’s illegitimate daughter too. “She is related though! This is Danielle Fenton, she’s my… second cousin’s daughter. So Danny and Jazzy’s third cousin! She showed up over the weekend.” They’d told the school second cousin, but Jack needed something removed enough that Maddie wouldn’t question not knowing about them.
“I see,” Maddie said curtly. She looked between Danny and Ellie again. “It’s hard to believe she’s that far removed a relative, given how uncannily similar they are…”
Maddie clearly was suspicious. If she got suspicious enough to test DNA, trying to prove she was his daughter for divorce and custody negotiations, that would be pretty damning—halfa DNA was pretty distinct, after all. Plus, any maternity test would likely show a match to Maddie, but there was no way she could have a biological kid and not know about it; regardless, that would yield the possibility that Maddie could be granted some degree of custody, which could be dangerous for both Ellie and Danny (because she surely would connect Ellie to Danny and realize he was a halfa too). Jack had to be sure to sell this well.
Jack grinned. “I know! Super strong resemblance, right? They even kinda share a name, just gender-swapped! Isn’t that neat? She goes by Ellie.”
“I… wasn’t aware you were particularly close to your second cousin,” Maddie said.
“Oh, well, not really,” Jack said, quickly spinning a story. “We were when we were much younger, but then she moved to…” his eyes fell on Ellie’s shirt. “Japan, and we lost contact. But, she still remembered me enough to name me Ellie’s godfather! Though she forgot to tell me—you know my family, so forgetful.”
“I see… And she’s here why? Is your cousin here too?”
Jack pretended to look sad. “Unfortunately, no. She passed away. They held the funeral overseas, and I didn’t find out about it in time to go. And her father…”
Ellie began to pretend-cry. “Tocchan hates me! He said I’m not actually his daughter and told me to go away! So I came here.” Jack assumed the first word meant something akin to ‘father’, possibly in Japanese; she said she’d liked it there so much that she ended up spending half a year there, before she had to return to solve the destabilization problem (after which she continued on a general world tour before getting word that Jack knew and then returning), so it made sense that she’d learned some of the language.
“Oh, honey,” Maddie said as she removed her hood, revealing a look of concern on her face, her motherly instincts to comfort the crying girl seeming to come out. Jack was slightly distressed that he couldn’t tell if she was seriously sympathetic or if it was an act; how pathetic was that?
“Jack will be my new Tocchan now,” Ellie said, stepping over to hug Jack from the side.
“Uh, yes,” Jack said, patting Ellie’s head, wondering if she actually planned to call him that permanently. “I’m her godfather, so she’s my responsibility now.”
“And I get a new little sister!” Danny said happily, hugging Ellie, who giggled at becoming a sandwich.
“I like having siblings!” Ellie said cheerfully; hopefully the kids weren’t over-selling it.
“Aww, you two are so adorable,” Maddie squealed, stepping over to them.
Danny, with a panicked look on his face, stepped back a few steps, tugging Ellie with him. “Stay away from her,” he said protectively.
Maddie frowned and took a step forward. “Come now, Danny—”
“No! Stay away,” Danny ordered, shifting into what Jack recognized as a battle stance; Ellie, despite Danny’s arm protectively in front of her, looked ready to fight too, though it looked like she was a little confused as to why—Jack wondered how much Danny had told her about the abuse.
Jack stepped between his kids and his almost-ex-wife (the paperwork was still being drawn up, pending figuring out how everything would be divided); he had to mitigate this before one or both of the halfas ended up accidentally using any ghost powers. “Maddie, leave,” Jack told her firmly.
Maddie raised an eyebrow. “Leave? It’s not even 5. The agreement was that I could stay packing things up until 6:30.”
“Well, that was before the kids came home earlier than expected,” Jack told her. “Now that they’re here, you shouldn’t be. I’m not going to let you hurt Danny again.”
Maddie’s frown deepened and she crossed her arms. “Danny is my son too. You can’t keep him from me. What I did was just necessary punishment!”
“No. We’re not arguing this again,” Jack decided. “Look, if you want to stay packing things, fine,” he said, then looked towards the kids and signaled for them to move towards the door. “But we won’t be here while you do. Danny, Ellie, come on, we’ll go out to dinner tonight.” He planned on making that roast but he honestly didn’t feel like cooking anymore.
“Can we see a movie too?” Ellie asked hopefully, voice shaking slightly, clearly trying to keep her cool. Danny had his eyes closed and was taking slow, deliberate breaths, clearly trying to calm down.
“Sure thing,” Jack agreed, even though they’d already seen one over the weekend. “There’s that new DreamWorks one, right? About the rat?”
“No, I want to see that new Texas Chainsaw Massacre one!” Ellie declared. “I think it’s still in theaters.”
“Uh, no, pretty sure that’s rated R,” Jack said. He grabbed today’s newspaper from the table and handed it to her. “The entertainment section has the local listings, find one that’s age-appropriate,” he emphasized, giving her a wink. He didn’t mind if they saw another horror film but he didn’t want to provide any reasons for Maddie to try to challenge his fitness as a parent. “Now, let’s go; Maddie, we’ll be back in a few hours, you better be gone by that time,” he told her as he shuffled the kids out the door, first making sure they had umbrellas—they could just phase the water off but Maddie didn’t know that.
Conveniently, Jazz pulled into the driveway at that moment; Jack quickly explained the situation, and she instructed them to pile into her car instead, apparently not wanting to take the GAV, which… yeah, that was actually fair.
“So, where do you all want to go?” Jazz asked once they were loaded into the car; to his slight confusion, Danny had brought his backpack—maybe a precaution so Maddie didn’t try to search it or something? Jazz stipulated, “And don’t say Nasty Burger or Pizza or whatever; we’re going to a sit-down place. Right, Dad?”
Jack nodded; he wanted to spend some time with his kids and keep them away from Maddie until she left. “That was the idea. Maybe Friday’s or Cheeburger?”
“Can we get ramen?” Ellie asked. “I like ramen.”
“Um. Stores have the instant kind, but I don’t think there’s any authentic ramen places around here,” Jazz said.
“Really?” Ellie asked, surprised. “Why?”
“Because the US doesn’t have a lot of Japanese restaurants,” Jazz calmly explained. “Only one I can think of is Bennihana’s, but to my knowledge that doesn’t have ramen, and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t really approve if you’re imagining the more authentic stuff you ate over there.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense,” Ellie said sadly. “What about Pho, then?” she asked; Jack had no idea what that was. She then answered her own question: “let me guess, no Thai places either I’m guessing?”
“Nope,” Jazz said. “As far as Asian food goes around here, it’s pretty much all American Chinese.”
Ellie scrunched her nose in distaste. “Eww, no, don’t want that,” she said, sounding like the twelve-year-old she’d forever be.
“If you want fish, we can go to—”
“No fish,” Danny interjected. “Not after the thing I fought earlier.”
“How about just the local diner, then?” Jack suggested. “They have lots of options.”
The others all agreed, so that’s where they headed.
Overall, they ended up having a nice family outing, dinner and that animated movie (Jazz refused to see the horror one), but Jack couldn’t help but feel a little sad regarding why they ended up having it. He wished Maddie could be there—the past one who was much kinder, the one that Jack naively believed wouldn’t harm or reject their kids, not the current one who Jack felt he barely recognized anymore. Where had things gone so wrong?
Notes:
Things are getting interesting with Valerie, hm?
Next up: The band works on writing some songs, during which everyone gets some more backstory on the ghosts. Lancer calls a meeting with Danny and Jack after something falls out of Danny's backpack. Ellie and Valerie spend the weekend together, during which Valerie can no longer deny that her suit has irreversibly changed her...
I'll be posting it tomorrow! I realize I have more time this weekend than expected, so can get out a third chapter this weekend after all. (Next weekend it'll definitely only be 2 though).
Chapter 20: Music, Drugs, and a new Halfa
Summary:
The band works on writing some songs, during which everyone gets some more backstory on the ghosts. Lancer calls a meeting with Danny and Jack after something falls out of Danny's backpack. Ellie and Valerie spend the weekend together, during which Valerie can no longer deny that her suit has irreversibly changed her...
Notes:
Didn't think I'd get around to 3 chapters this weekend, but here we are! I think you'll especially enjoy the third scene that features Valerie and Ellie.
CW: discussion of death (context of Ghost backstories), opioid addiction (it's the climax of that arc).
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
On Wednesday after school, the band members Ellie, Danny, Ember, Sam, Kitty, and Johnny gathered at Sam’s music studio, although this time it wasn’t simply to practice—it was to work on their music for the A-List concert in a few weeks.
Ellie’s instrument for the band was something Sam had never heard of before called a taishōgoto. When Ember brought Ellie to the Ghost Zone music shop after school on Monday to get a guitar for her, instead they’d walked out with one of those—apparently Ellie had seen someone play it in Japan and, according to Ember, Ellie’s excitement upon seeing it there had been contagious, and she insisted upon learning that instead of guitar. Thankfully Ellie could somewhat read Japanese, as because it was such a rare instrument outside of Japan the only music books for taishōgoto they could find had all been in such.
Two days prior Paulina and Star (who Sam very reluctantly acknowledged were both growing on her a little, now that they weren’t being jerks at every opportunity) had gone over the set list with them, eliminating some of the songs, mostly those that were from earlier decades or for kids, as their concert would be shorter and the A-List only wanted things that teens their age would like. This filled up most of the time slot, but there was room for a few more, which Ember proudly announced they would be writing themselves and making a debut album that would get distributed at the party.
So now they had two and a half weeks to write some songs, make an album, and prepare to perform them. No pressure.
Two of the songs they actually had managed to complete already, as they were remixes of a few of Ember’s own songs, “Remember My Name” and “Girl’s Night Out”. However, they needed at least 3 fully original songs, according to Ember, none of which had been started.
“Is Lurker coming today?” Danny asked Sam. “I know they were on the fence about continuing the band.”
“Ah, right. Yeah, they’re skipping the concert this time,” Sam told the group. “They’ve got a big group project for one of their classes, plus finals are right around the corner, so they just don't have enough time to dedicate to the band right now. They’re still up for future ones, but classes come first.”
Sam did hope Lurker continued the band after finals, but she wasn’t hopeful; Lurker was just a freshman at MU, and had quickly discovered that college was a lot more intense than their high school back in Kingsport, Massachusetts had been, so doing the band in addition to classes and the school’s paranormal ecology club had been getting stressful—Lurker had been willing to drop the club, but despite the desire to see her partner more Sam had encouraged them not to, as they wanted to go into paranormal environmental conservation as a career so the club was more relevant to that than a band.
Ember giggled. “Wow. They’re so much more dedicated to that class thing than we are!”
“I mean, college is kinda different from high school,” Sam told her defensively. “Most people who go tend to take it a lot more seriously, considering it gets them the degree needed for their careers.”
Johnny sighed wistfully and said, “I wish I could’ve gone to college.”
“Oh yeah, you were headed to Princeton,” Kitty recalled, to Sam’s total surprise. Johnny, who was typically seen as one of the more laid-back ‘delinquent’ ghosts, had been Princeton-bound?!
“Yup; go Tigers… Hey, I wonder if downtown still has the Record Exchange?”
“Ooh, if it does, we need to do a group trip there!” Ember said excitedly.
“Hold up, Princeton?! As in, the Ivy League school!?” Tucker said incredulously. “Dude!”
“Yeah, got a full ride,” Johnny said casually. “Would’ve been the first one in my family to go to college. Planned to do their business program, though not sure what specific concentration. Kitty was going to come with me.”
“Not to Princeton,” Kitty quickly clarified. “I wasn’t smart enough for that. Planned to go to Trenton State or Rider, those two are really close by and I managed to get into both. I wanted to be a teacher so Trenton State was probably gonna be my choice, it’s actually one of the top schools in the region for that, literally one of the oldest teaching schools around.”
Sam recognized the name of the school but tried to think of where she heard it, since it wasn’t part of the pile of school brochures her parents had procured for her or forced her to visit (no public school was part of that). Then, she realized: that was the former name of what was now The College of New Jersey. Tucker had dragged her and Danny there for a technology convention the previous year, where they had met the ghost of a pianist that had been murdered in the 70s, still an unsolved case (unfortunately, the ghost’s memories of that night were too muddled to solve it).
After hearing the story, Sam and Danny had gone to look for the ghost while Tucker was busy doing his tech things, and found her. She had actually been the first ghost that Danny had allowed to stay somewhere instead of forcefully bringing her to the Ghost Zone, since she insisted on staying despite being weak due to lack of ambient ectoplasm and the most ‘mischief’ she got into was occasionally playing the piano late in the night; students had actually made a game of trying to hear her, daring each other to sneak around the music building at 2 or 3am.
“Wow. I had no idea,” Danny said, looking uneasy.
“Something wrong?” Sam asked.
Danny shook his head. “Not really. I just suddenly became very conscious of the fact that nearly everyone in the room, including me, all had aspirations that got cut short.”
“Oh hey, maybe we can write a song about that!” Ellie chimed in. “Like, career aspirations? I mean, we’re playing for high schoolers, college and future careers is a good topic.”
“Hun, those college and career options are as dead as we are,” Kitty said flatly. “Like, we could maybe go to MU, but that’s it, and they don’t offer teaching degrees.”
“But the science teacher—”
“Got that degree before dying.”
“Ah. Right… Wait, then that’s what can be sung about! Dead aspirations.”
“You know, that could actually work,” Ember said contemplatively, hand on her chin as she thought. “It’s super angsty, perfect for a punk band,” she pointed out, and Sam had to agree with that.
“Oh yeah, let’s just straight up sing about our deaths while we’re at it,” Johnny said with an eye roll.
“Actually, kinda dig that idea,” Kitty mused. “I mean, we’re a ghost band. What better to sing about than something that relates to our ghostly natures? Well, most of our ghostly natures.”
“Okay, you have a point, but our deaths? Come on.”
“No, I like that idea too!” Ember said. “It’s a super heavy topic, but really drives in the ghost thing. Anyone who doesn’t want to, doesn’t have to. What do you think, Babypop?”
Danny considered that. “I guess that’s not a bad idea,” he said. “But, I like the career thing too?” Sam felt a small pang of sadness, remembering how Danny had wanted to join NASA, which had zero chance of happening now and Sam knew it still made him feel sad. Singing about it might be therapeutic, come to think of it.
“Well, we can write both songs,” Sam pointed out. “We need at least two, of not three.”
“Oh! We could share other ghosts’ stories in it too!” Ellie said, then quickly added, “With their permission of course. It’d really drive in the tragicness of how human-based ghosts are formed. Perfect angst song.”
“Might also help the humans to understand ghosts a bit better, too,” Danny said with realization. Sam had to agree with that too; they were trying to bridge ghosts and humans, after all, so that could definitely be beneficial to that goal.
“Dude, we’re gonna end up being the next MCR with all these death songs,” Tucker joked. “Which, I’m oddly cool with; man, if someone told me back in middle school that I’d be the tech guy for a punk-emo ghost band, I wouldn’t have believed them at all!”
“If someone back in middle school told me anything about our current lives I wouldn’t have believed them,” Sam said with amusement. It seriously felt like they were in a sci-fi story at times (that, or horror).
“Yeah, if someone back in middle school told me I’d be dead by now, definitely wouldn’t have believed them,” Danny said, and for some reason Sam had the sudden thought that that was a lie (well, he did feed on Joy… Sam shook the thought away. No, if Danny had been suicidal back then, she would have known). “Well, half-dead,” he amended. “Or, 90% dead,” he further amended.
Ember rolled her eyes. “Just stick with ‘dead’, dipstick, you’re close enough.”
“Fine, dead,” Danny said, returning the eye roll, then glanced at Sam and Tucker, probably noticing them both wincing and giving off pangs of sadness at the exchange; well, at least Sam was, at least, although she assumed Tucker was too based on his expression. Sam really didn’t like reminders that Danny had technically died, especially because she was at fault for that (even if Danny claimed he didn’t blame her).
The other ghosts caught onto the feeling too, so Kitty said, “Let’s start with the career one, then move onto the death one, since we’ll need to contact other ghosts first to get permission. So, you know what me and Johnny wanted to do, and we know Danny wanted to be in NASA. What about you, Ember? Did you always want to be a musician?”
“Nah, that was just a side hobby,” Ember told them. “Like, I loved it, but everyone kept telling me to be realistic, so I never seriously considered it as a career. Honestly, I hadn’t given that much thought to the future? But I was definitely considering something involving animals, like a veterinarian or conservationist.”
“Yet you dated Skulker?” Sam asked, confused. He was a hunter, which was the antithesis to conservation, in Sam’s mind.
“Ironic, huh? But he hunts ghosts now, not real animals. Ghosts reform. Him taking their pelts sucks for them for like a day while they regrow it, but then it’s all good.”
Sam, Tucker, and Danny looked at Ember incredulously.
“What? You didn’t know that?” Ember said, surprised. “Yeah, it’s basically catch-and-release.”
“But he’s been hunting Danny,” Tucker pointed out. “Danny can’t do that.”
“Actually, I probably can, it would just be incredibly painful,” Danny semi-reluctantly told them, and Sam shivered at that image; it was gross to think about. “I mean, I’ve recovered from worse—remember the time I lost a finger?”
“No,” Sam and Tucker said simultaneously.
“Exactly. Because it regrew,” Danny told them, holding up his hand, which had all 5 fingers intact. “There’s just a scar where it got chopped off.” He pointed to the base of his pinky finger; it was hard to see, but there was a thin scar that circled it.
Both humans winced. “Okay, TMI, dude,” Tucker said, and Sam had to agree; she could have done without the worrisome revelation that Danny had once had a finger chopped off, although knowing he could recover from that was a little relieving.
“You know, shit like that wouldn’t scar if you didn’t believe it would,” Kitty pointed out. “Well, unless it’s the crap the ghost hunters use, or something super emotionally traumatic.”
Danny paused, considering that. “Oh,” he said with realization. “It comes down to that image thing, doesn’t it? Like how I gained some muscle in the beginning, then when told it was only because I believed it would, that stopped…” Sam wondered if he could believe the current scars away, then decided that probably not, but maybe he could prevent future ones.
“Bingo,” Johnny said. “Man, you seriously need to take a ‘ghost biology 101’ class or something.”
“They have that?”
Johnny shrugged. “Beats me. Anyway, come on, let’s get back to the song writing.”
The others agreed, and they began to work.
Or rather, they would have begun to work if someone highly unexpected didn’t appear. Sam didn’t recognize the ghost at first, then realized that the scar across the eye, cloak, and the ghost’s clock centerpiece were very familiar. She’d just never seen him in teenage form before; the time Sam had met him, he’d only cycled between toddler, middle-aged, and elderly.
“Oh no,” Danny said upon seeing the ghost. “What world-ending event is going on this time?”
Clockwork frowned. “Why do you always assume that me leaving my lair is a harbinger of doom?”
“Because until the party, it was?”
“Hmm. Fair enough.”
“So why are you here, Pops?” Ember asked chipperly.
“Ember!” Kitty hissed. “Do you know who that is?!”
“Uh, yeah, duh. Clocky here is a big fan of my music! One time he stopped time just so he could get my autograph!”
“Wait, seriously?” Johnny said. “You’re joking.”
“Nope! It was kinda badass, he—”
Clockwork coughed to cut her off and said through a green blush, “Enough of that now,” then took a deep breath and said more neutrally, “I am here because I saw that your band now lacks a keyboardist.”
“Well, keytarist, but yeah,” Ember said. “We were just gonna have Kitty do it though.”
“But then you will lack a bassist.”
“Well, sure, but it’s not like anyone else can play, and I’m not giving up my six-string. Why? Do you have a solution?”
Clockwork grinned. “Yes, in fact, I do: I would like to audition for the part.” He summoned a keytar, to everyone’s surprise.
“Okay then,” Ellie said boisterously. “Let’s see if you’re any good!”
Clockwork’s grin widened and he began to play. Sam didn’t recognize the tune, but for some reason she got the feeling it was from the future. It was really good though!
Danny smiled to himself as he realized something.
“What is it?” Sam whispered to him.
“I think I figured out something about Clockwork,” Danny quietly explained. “He tends to only cycle between toddler, middle-aged, and elderly when talking about serious matters and wanting to emphasize his Time God status. When I visit him, he’s usually middle-aged. His teenage form only shows up when he’s more relaxed and wants to be less intimidating to those around him.”
“So basically, his teenage form is reserved for having fun,” Sam concluded.
“Exactly,” Danny confirmed.
Clockwork finished the song; Danny looked at the others—Sam and Tucker gave him a nod, but the ghosts just looked at him, seeming to silently communicate, and Sam remembered that ghosts could pulse their cores to communicate feelings between each other that way, providing they were close, and Danny was definitely now close enough with them all to do that. Satisfied with the answers, Danny then told Clockwork, “Okay, you’re in.”
Lancer sat in the Vice Principal office Thursday afternoon sipping some tea when there was a knock at his door—surprisingly on time. It was the last period of the school day, which Lancer reserved for administrative duties and parental meetings. This one would be with the student too, whom the secretary had been instructed to call a few minutes prior. It was related to something Lancer had spotted when the boy’s backpack accidentally spilled open during his class earlier, a conversation Lancer unfortunately had to have far too often for his liking—his liking being never.
Lancer sighed and said, “Come in.”
The door opened and Jack Fenton walked in nervously. “Is Danny okay? I know on the phone you said he was, but…”
“He is uninjured,” Lancer said as Jack took a seat in front of the desk; ‘okay’ sadly did not define Jack’s son, however, given his mental state and what this meeting was about. “He ought to be here any—oh!” Lancer said, giving a slight jump as the boy appeared in the middle of the room, giving a fanged grin at Lancer’s surprise. “Daniel, you must stop doing that! What if someone saw?”
“Tch. No one saw,” Danny said with an eye roll. “The secretary’s not even here.”
Lancer sighed. So she had ducked out early again; well, it couldn’t be helped, given the hiring struggles. “Right. Well, sit down, then; let’s get to business.” He had hoped to tell Jack what was going on before Daniel arrived, but it seemed that wouldn’t happen; Lancer knew better than to request Daniel go into the hallway to let the adults talk first, because knowing the boy, he’d just invisibly eavesdrop.
Daniel sat in the chair next to his dad, frowning. “What’s this about? Am I being sent home for some reason? You usually don’t call me into a meeting in the middle of math class, especially saying to come with my bag… Not that I’m complaining about getting out of math, but…” He then looked confused. “Wait, why do you feel… is that pity? And disappointment? What’s going on?”
“I would like to know that too,” Jack said nervously.
Lancer sighed again. “Daniel, please empty your backpack on the desk.”
Daniel froze. “You saw,” he realized with dread. “Earlier, when my bag spilled…” He clutched his bag more tightly to his chest.
“I did. Please empty it,” Lancer said firmly.
“And if I refuse?” Daniel challenged, though it came out more panicked than the boy likely intended.
“Danny,” Jack said firmly. “Do what he says.”
Daniel shrunk in on himself slightly and let out a small, likely unintentional, whimper, but moved his bag to the desk and opened it, dumping the contents out.
Among the books, notebooks, pens, loose papers, thermos, and a few ecto-weapons sat a small translucent orange prescription pill bottle, which looked like it was about half full. Lancer picked it up; as expected, the drug listed on the bottle was hydrocodone.
“I can explain,” Danny said quickly.
“Then explain,” Jack said sternly. “Because what it looks like isn’t good, considering you have a different prescription from MU that I know is effective, so you have no reason to have these.”
Daniel sank down into his seat. Literally. In response, Jack simply reached over and pulled Daniel back up with a sigh. Lancer definitely did not envy Jack for having to endure the unique challenges of parenting a halfa.
“Daniel,” Lancer said, as gently as he could, “When did you last take one of these?”
Daniel kept his mouth closed, looking away and refusing to answer.
“We can’t help you if you don’t talk to us,” Lancer continued, having a feeling that Daniel’s reaction was more due to shame than anything.
“Please, Danno? Cooperate?” Jack practically begged.
Daniel winced, then looked guilty. “Like an hour ago,” he muttered, almost inaudible, still refusing to look at either of them.
“How many?” Lancer asked, trying to remain calm despite his internal worry that the situation was indeed as bad as he dreaded.
Daniel looked like he was going to refuse to answer, but then eked out, “Two.”
“And did you have any injuries requiring a painkiller?”
Daniel shook his head.
“Then why did you take the pills?”
Daniel was quiet.
“Danny?” Jack prodded.
After another moment of quiet, Daniel whispered to the floor, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Lancer confirmed.
Daniel shook his head.
“Why did you get a new bottle after the previous one was confiscated?” Lancer tried, having a feeling that the kid did know, at least subconsciously.
“I don’t know,” Daniel said again, quiet yet with an air of distress.
“I think you do know.”
“No, I don’t!” Daniel shouted, abruptly standing up, eyes glowing and fangs bared in a snarl. “I don’t know, okay?” he said again, voice cracking, and tears beading in the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know.” He flopped back into the chair. “I just… I don’t know. It just felt like I needed it. It was making me anxious not to have it. So on Sunday I stole a bottle and took some, and that made me feel better.”
Lancer looked at the bottle, noting the number of pills; 30 per bottle, and there looked to be about half left. “Was it full when you got it?” he asked.
Daniel nodded sadly; Lancer suspected he realized the issue, even if he was in denial.
Jack said quietly, “Danno, that’s 4 or 5 pills a day.”
“Well, they’re less effective than they used to be,” Daniel muttered. “Maybe it’s, like, a bad batch or something.”
“No, Danny,” Jack said sadly. “You’re addicted.”
“I’m NOT addicted,” Daniel protested, crossing his arms and pouting, clearly trying to remain obstinate in his denial despite the glowing tears now trickling down his cheeks. “I’m not…”
Lancer put a hand over his mouth and closed his eyes for a moment as he took a deep breath through his nose, then said, “Yes, you are. I know it’s difficult to admit, but—”
“I’m not!” Daniel interrupted. “I can quit whenever I want, I swear.”
“Can you really?”
Daniel stubbornly looked away, wiping the tears from his eyes with his hand.
“Danny,” Jack said calmly, “I’m going to call Dr. Warren, okay? He’ll have resources to help.”
“I see him after school tomorrow. I’ll talk to him then.”
“I know. But this might need a little more than your regular therapy.”
Daniel frowned, thinking, then his eyes widened. “Wait, you mean rehab?”
“Not necessarily!” Jack hurriedly said. “An addiction counselor would be the first step; Dr. Warren already said he had some he could recommend, remember? Since last week we weren’t certain if you’d become dependent or not.”
“I’m not dependent on it,” Daniel insisted.
“Humor us, then,” Jack said. “See one of the counselors, then we’ll proceed from there, okay?”
Daniel frowned, then decided, “Fine. Obviously I’m not getting out of this; you’re gonna look stupid when they determine I’m not addicted though.”
Jack and Lancer shared a look, silently agreeing not to argue; Danny likely wanted to rile them up. It was all too common with teenagers in denial that they needed help…
And Daniel desperately needed help.
“Hi, Val!” Ellie, in ghost form and floating, greeted chipperly upon appearing right in the middle of Valerie’s living room.
Valerie jumped off the couch and nearly summoned her wrist ray before realizing it was just her friend. “Shit, Ellie, you scared me!” she said chidingly, heart thumping with adrenaline. “How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?”
Ellie giggled mischievously, completely unrepentant. “Sorry, Val,” she said in a tone that indicated the little gremlin would definitely be scaring her like that again. It was a trait she shared with Danny, which made sense as she’d been based on him.
Valerie sighed. “Whatever. So, is there anywhere you want to go today?” Ellie had called Valerie earlier and demanded they spend the day together; apparently she was bored, as Danny was away somewhere unspecified for the weekend, Sam had a date with that cryptid, and Tucker had an appointment with the FBI for some reason, though he didn’t seem worried.
“Actually, I thought we could chill at my place today,” Ellie said. “Since I actually have a place! We can do video games and stuff. Don’t worry, Danny’s not there.”
Valerie actually wasn’t quite sure if she wanted Danny to be there or not. Still, “Sounds good. So, you’re definitely going to stay?”
“Well, duh! That’s why I enrolled in school, silly! Travel is awesome, but I have my own room now, and so many friends and family here; honestly travelling alone started to get a little, well, lonely.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Valerie said. “Have you done any decorating yet?”
“Decorating?”
“Yeah; you’ve been there a week, right? So I bet you’ve started making the room yours.”
“Oh,” Ellie said, looking embarrassed. “No, actually. I, er, don’t really have anything of my own, just clothes. Lots of clothes; Jazz took me to Kohl’s after school on Tuesday, and we went a little overboard on that front,” she said with a chuckle.
“Well then in that case, I think our first stop is the mall,” Valerie decided. “We’ll get you some fun posters and stuff!”
“Really?” Ellie asked, eyes lighting up—literally. Then, she frowned. “Wait, I don’t have any money.”
“That’s okay; I’ll buy something for you,” Valerie offered.
Ellie shook her head. “No, that’s okay; I don’t need charity. How about, you spot me and I’ll pay you back? Dad was gonna get me some from the bank yesterday, something about 18 months’ worth of allowances owed, but then—well, something came up, and he didn’t get there yet.”
“Okay, that works,” Valerie agreed; she was the same way when it came to disliking people paying for her. “But, I’m still buying you at least one poster; call it a homecoming gift, okay?”
Ellie grinned. “Okay!”
“So awesome!” Ellie said, grinning widely; Valerie noted that unlike Danny, Ellie did not have fangs. What determined that? Danny didn’t originally have fangs; was that something halfas got as they matured, or did it vary?
“It is pretty cool; definitely feels like a teenager’s room now,” Valerie said as she too looked over Ellie’s now-decorated room. It was still sparse, but now the basic neutral grey walls were lined with posters of various characters; Valerie didn’t know any of them. Ellie had apparently really fallen in love with Japan, including their animation and comics—‘anime’ and ’manga’, is what Ellie called it. The mall had a brand new Japan-themed store that Ellie had nearly fainted upon walking into, with lots of imported things, so they’d left not only with the posters but also with a fair number of manga that were in Japanese, which apparently the girl could actually read. Those now sat on the bookshelf in the corner of the room along with a few character plushies and figures. Also gotten there was a big fluffy fleece blanket with a design based on the video game ‘Kingdom Hearts’, now spread on Ellie’s bed.
It had dealt a big blow to Valerie’s wallet, but Jack had been in the kitchen upon arriving home with their loot and upon realizing what Valerie had done he had immediately written Valerie a reimbursement check, plus an extra ten bucks for helping out his kid, which Valerie tried to decline but he insisted upon.
“Thank you,” Ellie said, suddenly grabbing Valerie in a hug; surprised as she was jerked out of her thoughts, Valerie stepped back. Ellie went intangible to let go.
“What the…” Ellie trailed, looking a little confused.
“Sorry! You just surprised me,” Valerie said. “I’m all for getting hugs from you, really; just battle instincts, you know?”
“Oh, yeah, totally do get that,” Ellie said. “I’m more referring to the fact that you phased away! Danny did say he suspected you’d gone intangible a few times, but—”
“Wait, I did what?” Valerie asked, freezing. No. No, no, no. It wasn’t like she hadn’t suspected, with the amount she kept dropping stuff in class, but… no. No, she was just clumsy…
“You—you really aren’t aware you did that?” Ellie asked, seeming surprised.
“I thought you did!”
“Nope, it was definitely you.”
“No, I didn’t. There’s no way I could have,” Valerie insisted. “I’m not a ghost.”
“Not saying you are,” Ellie said, putting her hands up. “I’m just saying that, maybe, you might… have ghost powers?”
Valerie shook her head. “No. No, I can’t; the only way a human can have ghost powers is to have that ghost virus, which I definitely do not have, to be overshadowed, which I’m definitely not, or to be part ghost, which—which I just can’t be. I can’t be part ghost. I fight ghosts.”
“So? Danny fights ghosts as much as you. I fight ghosts occasionally. We have ghost powers.”
“Well, yeah, but…”
Ellie floated up to be eye-level with Valerie, grinning. “Dude, you should be excited about this! Ghost powers are fun!”
“How is phasing through half the stuff I hold fun!?” Valerie snarled, anger beginning to rise.
“Well, with practice that’ll stop,” Ellie said matter-of-factly.
“You want me to practice using ghost powers?!” Valerie asked belligerently.
“That’s what I said.”
“But—” Valerie stopped, then took a deep breath to calm herself down. Arguing this wouldn’t do anything. Denying reality wouldn’t do anything. This was the situation, and the evidence was too damning to keep denying. “Okay fine, say I do have ghost powers, how the hell would I even have gotten them?” Valerie asked, tense tone more of a demand, even though she was well aware of that answer.
Ellie didn’t let Valerie’s flash of anger bother her. “Your suit, duh. It’s ecto-based. Ghost tech. That level of ectoplasm exposure over time? Yeah, really surprised it took a whole year to get here, honestly. So, what other powers have you noticed?”
Valerie sighed. There honestly, truly, really, definitely was no getting around this, huh? “Didn’t Danny tell you? He’s been watching, hasn't he?” He’d definitely been in class, enough to catch that beaker.
“Well, yeah, he did tell me his suspicions,” Ellie revealed. “But, I wanna see what you’ve noticed!”
Valerie shifted, thinking hard about that. Yes, there had been other things she noticed. Things she didn’t want to acknowledge. She also recalled, “Danny mentioned something about me projecting emotions… Is that one? I didn’t even know that was a thing ghosts did until he said something.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s a thing,” Ellie told her. “Most ghosts don’t do it often, if at all, but it’s a thing. Ghosts can also communicate with each other by using their cores to pulse emotions at each other; but, you don’t seem to be that ghostly yet. Danny and I can do it but Vlad can’t, I tried testing it against the halfa-mice dad made and only the higher percents responded. It seems to correspond with the ectoplasm requirement, like emotion-reading does. But, you do seem to have the emotion projection thing—wanna practice?”
“I dunno,” Valerie said. “It feels… invasive.”
Ellie nodded. “That’s what Danny says, too; I don’t think he’s ever used it willingly. But it can be useful! It’s not just negative ones that can be projected—back in Tokyo, I used it to coax someone off of a ledge of a building before they, well, you can fill in the blank.”
Valerie raised her eyebrows. “You did hero work there?”
Ellie scoffed. “Nah, seeking out trouble is Danny’s thing. And yours. But I was already right there and no one else noticed, how could I not help? So, yeah. Maybe projecting emotions at people can seem manipulative, but it has its uses—like anything, it depends on how you use it. So, let’s practice.”
Valerie was still unsure; noting this, Ellie pointed out, “Practice will also help you not do it unintentionally, which seems to be a huge problem for you.”
Valerie frowned and grumbled, “Well I guess I can’t argue with that logic.” She didn’t want to keep accidentally making Danny think she hated him, after all.
“I also want to practice the intangibility today,” Ellie revealed. “Danny said you’ve been dropping a lot of pencils and beakers, which I’m guessing is probably annoying.”
“Tch. That’s an understatement,” Valerie said. She’d dropped most of her burger at Nasty Burger the other day, and thus the rest of her dinner had been fries because for some reason management let them have as much of those as they wanted yet only one burger per shift. Honestly, it was a miracle she never dropped any of the customers’ food. “I’m guessing Danny had the same issue, given he got banned from carrying breakable objects his freshman year.”
Ellie nodded with a grin. “Oh yeah. I’ve heard the stories. Let’s see, what else… you seem to have a good handle on the ecto-attacks, so—”
“Whoa, what?” Valerie interjected. “I don’t—” she stopped herself, thinking hard about it. “Do I…?” Where did her suit get ecto-energy? Shit. No, she wasn’t ready to accept that she was generating that on her own. Definitely not. If she was, that meant… There was no going back once you were that far gone, was there? Oh, who was she kidding. She’d tried to remove her suit before (including to clean that blue blood off it after fighting that cryptid earlier that week; the suit’s self-cleaning function refused to touch that stuff). It was impossible. It was as much a part of her as her hair and skin were. Had been since the moment that ghost had put it on her, more than a year ago.
Ellie nodded. “We’ll do some tests, but as far as Danny and I can tell, you’ve definitely been self-generating the ecto-energy for the lightning and ecto-blasts. The suit has no way to store it, and any ghost can see that your guns and stuff are basically ecto-based accessories—just manifested by the suit, no power packs or anything.”
“Yeah,” Valerie confirmed. “They’re just visual representations, not actual guns.” She had noticed a while ago that the guns weren’t behaving like guns should, and in retrospect even on some level started to suspect that the energy was somehow being generated inside her rather than the suit, but hadn’t wanted to think about what that meant. She admitted, “I wanted to believe it was still just the suit, but… But I think I’ve known for a while that it wasn’t.”
Ellie looked contemplative as she put a hand on her chin. “You know, I bet your flight is the same; that hoverboard doesn’t really work like a hoverboard should either.”
Valerie but her lip and looked away. She knew that, too. She could do maneuvers on it that, upon retrospect, weren’t physically possible, that should have sent her crashing to the ground; but if she believed it would work, it did. Like when fighting the strange not-ghost creature, she’d twisted the board vertical to block the ice, and it had just stayed in place; not even in science fiction did hoverboards work that way. It was even silent!
“Come on, let’s test it!” Ellie said excitedly. “Try to float!”
Valerie looked at her in disbelief. “What are you crazy?”
“Oh, what, think you can’t?” Ellie challenged, tone playful.
“I’m not saying I can’t!” Valerie protested. Didn’t want to, sure, didn’t even want to believe she could, but she knew in her heart it was possible. Had caught herself using it a few times after tripping, again chalking it up to her suit being helpful; ha.
“Then do it!”
“I… Well, what if I fall? Gravity works by default in your human form, right? So if I lose concentration…” A part of Valerie knew that wasn’t an issue. Again, it had saved her from tripping. Her suit—no, her powers—would never let her actually fall; how many times had her board saved her when she’d been knocked off of it and too distracted to summon it?
“Then, suit up,” Ellie said simply.
Valerie sighed. She wasn’t getting out of this, was she? “Fine,” she said, and summoned her suit, minus the hood.
Ellie gasped. “Ooh, that’s so cool!”
“What?” Valerie asked, looking blankly at Ellie.
“Your hair! It’s like, got white stripes! Like a skunk!”
“What?!” Valerie hissed, grabbing a chunk of her hair and pulling it in front of her face; sure enough, a good chunk was the same pure snow white as Danny and Ellie’s hair. “Shit,” was all she could think to say. This cinched it, didn’t it? Valerie was a halfa, no doubt about it. She even had the transformation, albeit minus the rings.
“Your eyes are really pretty too,” Ellie commented.
“My eyes?” Valerie said. Right, her eyes—if she was part-ghost, and technically this was a ghost form… Valerie recalled the dresser in the room had a large attached mirror, and swerved towards it, rushing a few steps to stand in front. She gasped. Her eyes weren’t her usual green, rather were a vibrant glowing gold. Honestly, they were beautiful, if one looked at them objectively and ignored the ghostly aspect. And seeing her hair… Just under half, maybe 40% or so, of it was white, streaked at random. It was surreal. This was her? Even her skin had a very faint glow in this form! …Her suit always had a faint glow though, didn’t it? Had this glow been on her since getting the suit?
The situation was impossible to deny. Valerie had an urge to slap herself, to wake up from this nightmare, but she withheld, knowing in her heart that this was no dream. She was part ghost.
“If you want, we can go to the lab and do some scans,” Ellie offered. “My dad knows a lot about halfas now, there’s all different percents, which can affect different abilities and stuff. If I had to guess, I’d say that since your hair isn’t all white yet your core probably isn’t stabilized yet, but we can see how far along it is, and he might be able to help theorize what percent you’ll be when it’s finished.”
“Wait. Core? As in, ghost core?” Valerie asked, heart flutt—wait. That wasn’t her heart fluttering, was it? It was something to the side of it, something more in the direct center of her chest…
“Duh. You have a transformation, Valerie—of course you’ll have a core. The halfa-mice dad made only could transform if they were 50% or more, and those were the ones that had bonafide cores. The ones that were less, that only got the simple ghost powers with no transformation, didn’t have true ghost core. Ergo, if you have a transformation, you have a core. Here,” Ellie said as she placed a hand over Valerie’s chest, right above the core. “It should be right there; can you feel it?”
Valerie nodded. It was obvious, now that she’d been made aware of it. “Yeah, actually… There’s definitely something pulsing there.”
Ellie nodded. “I can sense it too, with my hand here. I can feel that it’s not fully stabilized though.”
Then, something occurred to Valerie as Ellie removed her hand. “Wait. If I’m… if I’m a h-halfa, which is part ghost, does that mean I’m part d-dead? Or d-dying?”
For one horrifying moment Ellie simply looked at Valerie, considering the question. “No, I don’t think so,” she finally concluded. “Not any more than me—I was created in a lab, remember? Never went through the dying part, like Danny or Vlad did. You know, most ghosts aren’t ‘dead’ in the sense that they were living, then died and became ghosts—many are born directly in the Ghost Zone, with no past human life, like the yeti. Technically ghosts, but can they be considered dead if they never lived?”
Valerie, calming at that, considered those words. “I guess not,” she concluded.
“Exactly! Human definitions of life are very limited,” Ellie told Valerie sagely. “So, why can’t someone start as a human, then become part ghost while never dying first?”
“Yeah, I suppose that does make logical sense,” Valerie said, relieved.
“Ellie nodded. “Of course it does; I thought of it,” she said confidently. “So, lab?”
Valerie nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do this.”
Monday morning, Danny dragged his feet as he headed into the school, trying to delay the encounter with his friends. Unfortunately, Ellie was not going to let this happen; she took his hand and led him to his locker, where Sam, Tucker, and Ember were waiting, all looking worried.
Ellie obviously knew where Danny had been on Friday and the whole weekend, but she had respected Danny’s wishes not to tell his friends—he felt that was something he had to do himself. All he’d told them, via a text in their group chat (Ember had a phone now too, for when in the human realm), was that he would be going someplace with no cell service for the weekend and to not worry. He would prefer not to explain that he was at a rehab for supernatural creatures off in some mountains somewhere, where he was put through a detox regimen of strange herbs (that he was pretty sure were from a different dimension) meant to fully flush the opioid from his system, did way too much talking with counselors of various types, cried way too much, learned coping strategies for when the craving returned, and did ‘de-stressing’ activities such as tai-chi and twice-daily meditation sessions (which, apparently, he instinctually floated during, so he’d need to be careful if trying that in the human realm), but he knew he couldn’t keep this from his friends.
Hopefully none of them cried, like Jazz had; she’d warned him to be careful so many times, trying to prevent this from happening, yet Danny hadn’t listened—she blamed herself for not trying harder to stop him, and Danny spent an hour assuring her that it was not her fault, which he still wasn’t sure if he’d convinced her of. It was no one’s fault but his own, he was confident of that.
“Hey, Danny!” Tucker said with a wave as Danny and Ellie joined them. “So, dude, where were you all weekend?” So, they’d be discussing it immediately, then.
“Yeah, you just randomly vanished on Friday, I was pretty worried, Babypop,” Ember said. “We were supposed to get songwriting done together…”
“Was it something ghost-related?” Sam wondered. “Like, did Clockwork summon you or something?”
Danny winced. Clockwork had, in fact, shown up momentarily, to attempt to comfort Danny again and bring him some ecto-cookies, assuring Danny that, although he was somewhat disappointed Danny found himself there, he was mostly proud of him for getting help, which Danny actually did find somewhat comforting.
“Danny?” Tucker prodded when he didn’t respond, worry increasing.
Danny sighed. There was no way to not tell them, huh? “Rehab,” he said simply, voice quieter than intended.
“What?”
“Rehab,” Danny said a little louder, though still quiet so as not to be overheard. “I was in rehab. For…” He glanced at Sam. “For opioid addiction.”
“Damn,” Ember said quietly.
Sam frowned. “What, for the painkillers? But weren’t yours confiscated, and you said you had some other thing, that you didn’t want more of those?”
“Yeah,” Danny said, then shamefully admitted, “I thought I didn’t need them, then I realized I did. Or, thought I did, technically I didn’t actually need them. I was embarrassed, so instead of asking, I… I stole them. From your mom’s stash. I’m sorry.”
“Danny…” Sam trailed, sadness wafting off her, as well as a confused and conflicted feeling—she must still be grappling with the knowledge of what those pills were, especially as they were her mom’s. “It’s… it’s fine. I don’t blame you; you couldn’t help it.”
“You really got sent to rehab?” Tucker said incredulously.
Danny nodded. “Yeah, Dr. Warren knew of one for supernatural creatures I could go to. Basically, Lancer found the bottle, and called my dad. Guess I really am a delinquent now, huh?” he said with a depreciating laugh that sounded more like a bark. “So much of a junkie I started stealing pills. Yup, the so-called ‘Town Hero’ is just as bad as the press thinks. Total deadbeat.”
Tucker raised an eyebrow. “Really? A death pun? Now?”
“So, after the three-day rehab thing, are you better now?” Sam asked, ignoring the pun with a slight flash of irritation as usual—she clearly still didn’t like Danny referencing his death, especially via jokes. Maybe he should be more careful about that around her.
Danny looked towards the ground as he repeated what the doctor there told him. “Unfortunately, addiction isn’t that easy to shake. The drugs are out of my system and the cravings are gone for now, but part of it’s psychological, an emotional dependence… Which, according to the counselors, means it’s a little tougher for ghosts to shake, since we’re emotion-based beings. Luckily the intervention was early enough that they don’t think it’ll be as much of an issue, but once a week I’ll be seeing…” he trailed off, sensing a large wave of guilt, coming from… “Sam, you don’t need to feel so guilty,” Danny told her. “You didn’t know. You thought you were helping.”
“So? That doesn’t change the fact that my ‘help’ ended up hurting,” Sam snapped, then wilted slightly, the brief flash of anger fading as she said semi-despondently, “Sorry. I’m just… sorry. I… I need to be alone right now.” She turned and walked off towards her own locker.
Danny opened his mouth to respond, then decided against it. He could tell she wasn’t mad at him, and usually when Sam said she wanted to be alone pressing matters only made things worse. He had a feeling she was thinking more about her mom; as much as Sam and they disagreed, Sam did ultimately care about her parents, and if what she gave Danny was enough to get him addicted, then her mom surely was too. After all, Sam had always said if her mom was fine using them regularly, Danny ought to be too, so if Danny wasn’t fine using them, that meant neither was her mom, who definitely took more than he did.
Ember put an arm around Danny’s shoulder. “Cheer up, Babypop. Everything will work itself out.”
“Yeah, you’ve got this!” Tucker cheered, although his tumultuous inner emotions belied that enthusiasm.
“I believe in you, bro,” Ellie said with a grin, holding out her fist.
Danny gave the three a shaky smile as he returned Ellie’s fist bump. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I can do this.”
As the group started to head to class, Ember mentioned, “You know, this does explain the ‘random’ locker inspection on Friday and the drug awareness assembly scheduled for later today. I was wondering why they’d just all of a sudden schedule it.”
“It’s not all of a sudden,” Tucker told her. “Today’s assembly has been on the school calendar since after Halloween—just because the A-list party got out of legal consequences thanks to Paulina’s dad doesn’t mean the school didn’t catch wind of it. APPD and DARE representatives are coming to talk to everyone.”
Danny felt a little relieved; good, it wasn’t just him that had caused this to be needed, although the locker check was—hopefully that didn’t get out. He wondered if the Amity Park Police Department had been alerted to the opioids Danny had or if they only knew about the party, then decided they must not know given no one had questioned him about it.
Honestly though, Danny didn’t quite understand how DARE was meant to work. They told the kids all about drugs, how they looked, what they were supposed to do, told them about negative consequences, then claimed the cool kids would be trying to peer pressure them into doing them and they should ‘just say no’. Didn’t they realize that teenagers didn’t give a crap about negative consequences, and that telling them the cool kids did such would only make them want to do it more? No wonder there was an epidemic of drug use among high schoolers!
“Hey, boyfriend,” came a purr next to him, and Paulina slid her arm around his shoulder, following it up with a cheek kiss. “Missed you on Friday.”
“Yeah, I, er, wasn’t feeling well,” Danny half-lied. Or, he considered it half-lied, as people tended to assume one meant physical illness from that phrase, not a mental one. “Had to go to a, er, supernatural doctor,” he whispered to her, before the question about how a ghost could get sick came up.
“Ouch. Well, glad you’re feeling better!” Paulina said as they entered the classroom, Danny not used to the attention as classmates stared at them—he was dating who was considered the hottest human girl in school, after all (as far as out of all students, however, Ember was ranked higher, and not because of her fire core; even Paulina had reluctantly admitted that).
Or, the stares could also be from certain semi-correct rumors going around, that thanks to his enhanced hearing Danny could hear the whispers about. Turns out, the enigmatic kid whose behavior could be considered erratic at best being called out of class, missing school the next day, and having a random locker inspection at the same time, led to rehab being a common theory, given that many people had already assumed he was a junkie given his unexplained behavior. The other recurring theory, which was entirely incorrect, was that the locker search was for weapons upon suspicion that Danny might be planning something he’d never even dream of planning (not counting James doing that on a more extreme scale; he’d been combined with Vlad at that point).
Lancer gave Danny an understanding smile as Danny slinked into his desk, but Danny looked away, feeling shame at how he’d disappointed the man… Especially as he had another bottle burning a hole in the wall next to his bed, which he’d stolen Thursday evening, even though had no intent of using after the rehab (he staunchly ignored how he’d happily taken some just before being sent there, unbeknownst to anyone, and despite his words to his friends, still kinda wanted more—theoretically he should have probably gone to the rehab for longer than three days, but there was the whole issue with him still getting way too anxious every time he went far away from Amity Park for more than that, at least with no way to check in).
Danny took some deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. Maybe he should have stayed home; everything was feeling so overwhelming! He needed—no, no, no. He didn’t… Damn it. He should be over that, why was he thinking about it again, so soon after?
Danny made it through homeroom and his first period class, then flew up to the roof to take a breather, sitting with his back against some sort of large metal block, an HVAC vent or something.
After a few minutes, Valerie, in her Red Huntress gear, appeared on the roof, phasing through to get there.
“You’re willingly using your ghost powers?” Danny questioned as he wiped the tears away that had gathered in the corners of his eyes. He knew Ellie was going to talk to Valerie about that, but hadn’t realized Valerie would so easily start using them.
Valerie nodded as she shifted awkwardly, thankfully not mentioning the tears. “Ellie’s been showing me how to. I still don’t really like having them, but… well, it’s no use staying in denial, and can’t say they aren’t useful.” She walked over and sat next to Danny, retracting her hood; her usually-black hair was now streaked with white and her eyes glowed gold. Upon noticing Danny’s surprised reaction, she chuckled. “Yeah, apparently I’m developing an actual ghost form under the suit, who knew? Core, too—it’s still developing, but it’s there. Your dad helped Ellie and I do some tests, my core is 41% developed right now.”
“41%...” Danny repeated, ignoring a spark of annoyance at the fact that neither Ellie nor his dad had told him about that; they were likely respecting Valerie’s privacy. “But, I thought only 50% halfas got cores?”
“Yeah. The 41% isn’t the halfa percent, it’s how much of the core’s developed; actually, it seems like my hair matches it, so I guess when it’ll all white we’ll know it’s done,” she said with a chuckle. “We don’t know what percent halfa I’ll be when it’s finished, but since there is a core developing it’ll at least be 50%, if not more,” she explained. “And there’s definitely no stopping it; the suit just can’t be removed, like it fully fused with me. Since this is a unique case, even compared to Vlad who also gradually became a halfa, we have no idea how far it’ll go, or if it’ll even stop. Eventually, I may be…”
Danny shook his head. “It won’t get to that, I’m sure,” he said, even though he wasn’t. “But, if you need someone to talk to about it, or help…”
“I have Ellie,” Valerie reminded Danny. “We spent almost all of Saturday and Sunday together, had a sleepover even. She’s already helped me get that emotion-projecting thing under control, for the most part, and I can better control the intangibility too.”
“I know. But Ellie was born with her powers,” Danny pointed out. “She can help you learn how to control them, but she has no actual experience with them developing, with them being uncontrollable and activating at random. I did go through that. Plus, I know what it’s like to suddenly realize you’re not fully human anymore, and to realize you’re gradually changing even more—technically I was fully changed from the start, not gradually, but it took a while to stabilize and for my old blood to go away. I didn’t know what was happening, only that ectoplasm was slowly replacing the blood and I was gaining more and more ghostly traits—for all I knew at the time, I’d eventually be fully ghost. So, yeah, I can understand in a way that Ellie can’t.”
“You do make some good points,” Valerie said, then shifted and told Danny, “I’m not dead, you know. According to the tests. Even though I’m becoming part ghost. Unlike Vlad’s change, there wasn’t any dying first, my organs aren’t failing or anything. We checked.”
Danny considered that; it hadn’t even occurred to him to think about that factor. “So, you’re basically a new kind of halfa,” he concluded. “A fourth type? Since mine was an immediate death while exposed to charged pure ectoplasm that then partly revived me as it fused with me, Vlad’s was a slow death while exposed to corrupted ectoplasm that slowly fused with him and revived each organ individually and as they failed, Ellie was created to be a halfa from the start, and you’ve become one via gradual infusion while still living.”
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like, for now at least. We think it’s that ‘corrupted ectoplasm’ that made the difference in mine and Vlad’s case. That’s what caused the ecto-acne, which was the deadly thing, not the initial blast. My suit actually seems to have some sort of extra component in it to prevent any development of that, a filter or vaccine of sorts.”
“Huh. That’s actually pretty thoughtful of Technus to include that,” Danny said. It wasn’t something he’d expect.
“I know, right? You ghosts keep surprising me; there’s so much I didn’t know, so much I misjudged… So, anyway, what brings you up here?” she asked, apparently ready for a change of subject; Danny had a feeling that, much like he had when he first became a halfa, Valerie was still struggling with fully accepting her situation, even though she lacked the death part—honestly, Danny was a little jealous of that, as when he first changed he really hoped that had been the case with him, just superpowers, in denial of his death and partial resurrection.
Danny pulled his knees towards his chest and wrapped his arms around them, looking at a random point on the roof as he debated if he should say anything.
Valerie gave Danny a moment to think and then asked gently, “Does it have anything to do with the rumors going around? About the drugs.”
Danny slowly nodded his head, trusting her not to further spread the rumor, and admitted, “Yeah. I was in rehab for the past few days, and will be seeing an addiction counselor regularly.”
“I was wondering why you weren’t around all weekend and Ellie was being so cagey about it,” Valerie commented. “What—sorry, that’s rude to ask.”
“Painkillers,” Danny answered the unasked question.
“Painkillers…” Valerie trailed. “Because of the ghost fights?”
“And Dash,” Danny muttered. “I have an actual prescription version meant for halfas now, but the ones I was using until then… Well, guess you were right about me being a bad ghost, because they were both illegal without a prescription and stolen.” Even before Danny himself had stolen them, technically Sam had been stealing them.
Valerie was quiet for a moment, then carefully put a hand on Danny’s shoulder and said, “It’s not your fault. Addiction is a complicated disease and messes with your mind. It wasn’t your ghostly nature that made you do that.”
Danny couldn’t help but chuckle slightly. “Seriously? The Red Huntress, claiming a ghost had a reason for doing illegal things that isn’t just because he’s a ghost?”
“Yeah, who would’ve thought,” Valerie said, chuckling back. “Although it did take me becoming part-ghost to really start to seriously reevaluate my views on that…”
Danny gave Valerie a nostalgic smile. “Same, actually—you know how my parents are. When I first came out of the portal, I actually was in my ghost form. I panicked, terrified that I’d become a monster, thanks to all the anti-ghost rhetoric I’d grown up with. When I changed back to my human form, I flat out denied I was a ghost at all, or even part of one; I just tried to pretend I’d just gotten superpowers, like some comic book hero. Even when I finally realized I truly was part ghost, I tried to convince myself that I was just the exception, and that all the ghosts I fought were still evil.”
“What made you change your mind?” Valerie wondered.
“Cujo,” Danny told her. “I’d already started to suspect, thanks to meeting Poindexter, but Cujo drove that home. He’s just a dog who wanted a toy he’d left behind; besides the ghost part, how could he be evil? And yeah, I know the irony, telling you this, since he made you think the opposite.”
Valerie sighed. “I know. And I know I was wrong about that. I was angry, and wanted someone to blame. But even though I logically know I was wrong, it’s difficult to accept that, to let go of the anger… But I am trying though. I know you don’t believe me, but—”
“I do believe you,” Danny interjected. “I do, actually. I’m sorry about last week; I was really on edge, and misinterpreted things.”
“Because I was accidentally projecting my negative feelings,” Valerie concluded. “Which, I’m sorry for; if I’d have known…”
“But you didn’t know. So I’m not mad about it; more frustrated at myself for not realizing sooner.”
Valerie then looked curious. “Can you do that too?”
“Do what?”
“Project feelings. Ellie can.”
“Oh,” Danny said. “I haven’t intentionally tried it, but I might have accidentally. Apparently all ghosts technically can? They just don’t do it much since there’s not really a use for it outside of scaring people away. If I’ve done it though, I have no way of knowing. I do know I can pulse my core to communicate feelings to other ghosts though; I think it’s technically the same concept.”
“Huh. Why do you do that?”
Danny was a little confused at the question. “What, share emotions? They’re my friends, and it’s an easy way to communicate without taking the effort to talk, especially when they’re feelings humans don’t have words for.”
Valerie shook her head. “Not that. I mean, you refer to yourself as a ghost, and treat humans as separate.”
Danny took pause to that. “I do?” he asked. He’d vaguely noticed that he’d gradually started to feel closer to a ghost than human over the past couple months, especially since realizing that he wasn’t a 50-50 split, and of course referred to himself as a ghost when in Phantom form to help hide his identity, but he hadn’t realized he’d actively started speaking that way in human form, too.
“Yeah, you do. For a while now.”
“Huh. Well, I mean, I guess I do have a lot more ghost in me than human…” Danny trailed.
“You… Oh,” Valerie said, seeming to realize something. “Ellie said she was 90% ghost. That wasn’t just because of the cloning process, was it? It’s because you…”
“Yup,” Danny confirmed. “That’s actually why she was melting—Vlad didn’t know halfas weren’t all 50-50 like him, so when he cloned me, he did everything while under that assumption. Doesn’t help that the slang term kinda implies that too. But it’s why once we got enough ecto-dejecto in her, powering up the ghost portion, she stabilized.”
“90%...” Valerie trailed. “That’s so high… Do you think I…?”
Danny quickly shook his head. “No. The severity of my accident is what caused it to be that high. I literally was electrocuted to death before the ectoplasm brought me back. Your transformation more resembles Vlad’s, as he was infused over time, and he stopped at 50%, so I highly doubt your final percent will be as high as mine.”
“But it could be more than half,” Valerie inferred.
“It could be,” Danny confirmed, knowing Valerie preferred the truth over anything else, even if it hurt. “There’s a good chance it will be, based on the fact that your suit contains a much higher amount of ectoplasm than the ecto-acne Vlad had; then again, maybe not, because the ecto-acne also was a fatal disease that hospitalized him, but your suit isn’t harming you in the same way. There’s just no way to know. Hell, even if it were the same as one of us, there’s still no way to know for sure what’ll happen; after all, as far as we know, you’re only the 4th human-based halfa—”
“Whoa, wait, human-based?”
Danny winced. “Er. Well. You know the mice in Lancer’s classroom? The ones with ghost powers?”
“Yeah…” Valerie trailed. “Oh. Oh, duh,” she said, chuckling slightly. “Man, I feel stupid; of course you mean the mice. Ellie did say your dad recently experimented with halfa-mice. They’re seriously the ones in class, though?”
“Yup,” Danny confirmed. “Well, not all of them. Those are just the ones with under 50%, that only have powers, no transformations. There’s about 8 more with actual ghost forms at Lancer’s house,” Danny revealed.
Valerie looked at Danny with mild disbelief and concluded, “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Nope,” Danny told her. “Welcome to life with mad scientist parents. When they get an idea in their head, they have to test it, consequences be damned—well, short of actual homicide, I’m pretty sure that one’s off the table. You know, making those mice is part of what clued my dad into me being a halfa. Mom doesn’t even know he made them though.”
“I was more referring to the fact that Lancer’s keeping them, but still, damn,” Valerie said with incredulity. “Like, what is your life?”
“Well, technically—”
“Don’t you dare,” Valerie said with a scowl, apparently anticipating that Danny was going to jokingly say ‘afterlife’.
“Kay, you don’t like death jokes either,” Danny acknowledged. “Sorry in advance if I forget—joking about it is, er, kinda how I cope.”
“Noted,” Valerie said, then looked contemplative again. “Do you think there’s more? Halfas, that is.”
“Probably,” Danny said. “I know there definitely have been in the past—MU had a surprising amount written about them, in multiple books too, not just Jazz’s basic textbook on hybrid creatures, although they didn’t have anything about yours or Ellie’s types, so I think both of you are entirely new types.”
Valerie frowned. “Wait. Sorry, slight tangent. Still about halfas, just something else about them—I just remembered that you and Ellie are going to—”
“It’s percent-dependent. Exponential,” Danny explained, realizing what she was thinking. “At 90%, yes, we’re immortal, just like a ghost. But Vlad’s natural lifespan is only four times that of a human.”
“Four times…” Valerie trailed. “So even if I’m 50%, I’ll still live so much longer than…”
“Yeah. It’s why having friends that are ghosts or other long-lived creatures is actually recommended for halfas.”
“Other long-lived…? Do I want to know…?”
Danny couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well, if you ever see the school nurse, you’ll figure it out.”
Valerie narrowed her eyes. “Just tell me,” she demanded.
“She’s a vampire,” Danny admitted, and upon seeing Valerie’s stricken face said, “Yeah, I know. Really was a shock for me too, but I mean, if ghosts exist, why not other stuff? It’s a good thing though, since it does mean we can actually see her! She has some degrees in paranormal healthcare. She’s the one who explained to me that emotions can affect a halfa’s healing factor.” As had been definitively proven after the tentacled not-ghost attack, the heavy bruising from hitting the bollard which healed within an hour despite being as bad as the one during the Dash incident, which took nearly a week to fully vanish. Getting the blue blood off his ghost form, both hair and suit, took longer, as it refused to self-clean it as his transformation did with everything else (Danny vaguely wondered if his human form didn’t need washing either because of that phenomenon; he’d never tested that).
“Damn. Do I even want to know if that’s the end of it? Like if ghosts and vampires and whatever Sam’s… partner? is, and whatever those lake things were, exist, what other supernatural creatures are there?”
Danny shrugged. “Who knows. That reminds me though: I’d stop by MU if I were you; they have doctors who can treat halfas, and psychologists who specialize in supernatural creatures. I’ve been seeing someone there, Jazz convinced me to and it’s seriously helped me cope with everything. Ellie’s actually agreed to start seeing someone too, to deal with her trauma related to Vlad. There’s some which specifically work with those new to being part-human, which I’d really recommend for you.”
Valerie sighed. “Well, it’s not like I haven’t been to therapy before,” she said. Right, she’d done anger management. Still was doing it? Danny decided best not to ask.
Valerie then winced along with Danny as the school bell rang. She looked at her watch. “Dang it! We missed all of second period,” she said with a scowl.
“Sorry,” Danny said guiltily. If he hadn’t been so overwhelmed…
“No, it’s not your fault,” Valerie grumbled, standing up, then offering Danny a hand to help him up too, which he accepted instead of just floating. “Are you okay to go to class?”
Danny considered that. “I guess,” he decided.
Valerie viciously grinned as she squeezed Danny’s hand tighter instead of letting go. “Good, because you don’t have a choice this time; last time, your shadows gave me hell for letting you skip!” She then dove down, going intangible, which she even managed to share with him; damn, Danny hadn’t been able to figure out how to share intangibility until months after first getting his powers! In turn, Danny activated his invisibility, which he spread to her.
The two ended up in the girl’s bathroom; with a blush, Danny hopped through the wall to the boy’s bathroom, and when the coast was clear removed the invisibility and hurried off to class, very pleased that his decayed friendship with Valerie finally seemed to be improving.
Notes:
Yay, Danny got help! And Valerie and Danny's friendship is finally recovering too!
Fun fact: The TCNJ unsolved murder ghost story is real! It was even featured on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. That's my alma mater, and I swear I actually did hear the ghost playing music one night my sophomore year while walking around campus with some friends late at night.
The Princeton Record Exchange also still exists! It's a really awesome old music shop downtown, check it out if you visit!
Next weekend, due to an all-day family event on Saturday there will be only two chapters posted, on Sunday. (And then the final 3 the following weekend! Yup, we're in the final stretch!!)
Chapter 21: A set of anonymous videos is sent to Jack, showing recordings of many of the recent incidents of Maddie hurting both him and Danny; it's plenty of evidence to guarantee custody falls to Jack, but who sent it? Then, Valerie's dad realizes something about Danny, and Valerie reveals her own Halfa status to her dad.
Chapter 22: Dale and Ben are back, and try to bully Danny, but Paulina is having none of their shenanigans. Thanksgiving is coming up. Jack realizes he misses Vlad, and considers inviting him given that currently the event would only have him and his three kids this year; his kids have a better idea of who they could invite. Then, Danny has a talk with Lancer about his future after failing to turn in his assignment about future plans, Sam discusses the situation with her mother with Lancer, and Ellie meets with Valerie again.
Edit 7/3: I added a lot more and split chapter 22 into 2 chapters. In chapter 22, after the bullying scene, Danny is going to finally talk about his mental health more with his larger friend group and tell his friends what happened the summer after 8th grade. In chapter 23 will be the rest of it. So there will be 3 this weekend after all.
Chapter 21: Blackmail and Secrets
Summary:
Danny and Jack receive some mysterious videos featuring the abuse they went through at Maddie's hands. Then, Valerie talks with her dad, and tells him about her halfa status.
Notes:
So I forgot today's actually July 4th (usually the family BBQ is on the holiday itself, having it tomorrow's atypical) and thus I have off from work. So I'm posting one chapter today! Then, 2 on Sunday. So you get 3 this weekend after all!
You may have noticed the chapter count was boosted by 1 again. The chapter after this had some more scenes added, enough that it needed to be split (an 11k word chapter was already a lot, let alone over 17k! Now they're both between 8k and 9k); I realized that Danny never addresses his pre-accident suicide attempt with his friends, and he probably should. There were a few other things I never followed up on too that I added.
CW in this chapter for discussion of child and spousal abuse.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It had been a week and a day since Ember joined their classes, and Sam was still adjusting. She tried her best to be friends with the girl, but her jealousy kept flaring up when she saw her and Danny be flirty with each other (which they did regardless of form, irritatingly—it wasn’t even to keep up appearances, both simply claimed it was fun), and unfortunately the halfa and ghost could both recognize that, to Sam’s frustration. She really was trying to contain it!
And there was the issue of Star and Paulina, too. Sam still couldn’t believe that Danny had impossibly befriended them—and possibly Kwan, too, now! He had even gone as far as to go to the mall with all three of them the previous day after school. Given, Sam had had a thing with her parents again (they were still insistent upon getting her to ‘adjust to high society’, which meant ridiculous charity fundraisers and galas—this time it was a new art gallery opening), Tucker had had another robotics club meet, Ember and Ellie had been in the Ghost Zone trying to figure out how to incorporate taishōgoto into some of the songs the band would be covering, and Johnny and Kitty had been exploring Mexico via another natural portal they’d discovered, so it hadn’t left Danny with many options, but still, Sam struggled with the jealousy.
It also irked Sam that she couldn’t tell whether the jealousy stemmed from lingering romantic feelings or from simply being worried that their friendship was being threatened, which she knew wasn’t the case but her brain wouldn’t stop bringing up the thought that they’d drift apart, that Danny would abandon her and Tucker for the cool kids—of which he now technically was, due to ‘dating’ Paulina, even though Danny didn’t seem to care about that sort of thing anymore.
Technically Sam and Tucker’s social statuses had risen slightly as well, thanks to the band being such a huge hit. A few people even were now demanding CDs be made, even if the songs were all covers for now—that might take some time though because all the copyrights for that had to be worked out and Sam wasn’t sure if her parents would be willing to pay for them, although her grandma might (they hadn’t needed to worry for the show at the school, because it was a public school event they weren’t being paid to be at, but anything for-profit such as an album definitely needed those fees paid). They were working on writing some songs though, with the A-listers’ encouragement, hoping to debut them during the party in a couple weeks; those could possibly be released as a debut album. Maybe they could even produce some demos to give out during the party.
Danny looked nervous as Sam joined him, Tucker, Ember, and Ellie outside for lunch—they were some of the only students who were out there, given the chilly temperature of mid-November wasn’t very compatible with humans. Sam was running a little late due to helping the art teacher clean up.
Tucker was currently chatting about the new gaming system he’d preordered, the Nintendo Wii, which would be coming out in 5 days—apparently he’d gotten the money for it by hacking some government servers, part of a program where the FBI offered rewards for whoever could expose holes in their security. Tucker had taken it upon himself to do things like that for extra cash—Sam had a strong feeling that someday one of those organizations would try to recruit Tucker for their tech division.
“Something wrong?” Sam asked Danny with a frown, sitting down next to him. Ember, across the table along with Ellie, pushed over a small bowl that she had filled with ghost fire, which Danny (who had his jacket off, as did Ellie; Ember, in her usual crop top and mini skirt, hadn’t worn a jacket that day, as she didn’t need to pretend to be human) scooted away from a little. She handed Tucker, who was on Danny’s other side, a bowl of fire too; Sam appreciated the gesture from the ghost, especially as Danny tended to forget that humans could not tolerate the cold as well as he could; Ember honestly wasn’t so bad, and was actually the type of person Sam could see herself befriending (had already befriended?), it was just the stupid jealousy ruining things.
Danny scooched back to sit directly between the two, eyeing the fire, then sighed. “It’s nothing to worry about, really.”
Sam’s first thought was drugs; he’d only been out of… of rehab… for two days, would he really be struggling already…? That anxiousness though… Should Sam ask? She was still having trouble processing the fact that Danny had to go to rehab in the first place, especially for an opioid addiction that Sam had enabled.
“Dale and Ben returned today,” Tucker helpfully explained, easing Sam’s fear. “He says it doesn’t bother him but I think it secretly does.”
“And tonight’s the monthly school board meeting, which will have the meathead’s expulsion trial,” Ember added.
“I have permission to beat them up if they try to do anything to you, right?” Ellie asked her ‘cousin’ innocently.
“You’ll have to get in line,” Sam told her with a chuckle.
“No,” Danny said, seeming unamused. “No one’s beating up any humans.”
“Fine, then I say we skip gym class,” Ember said confidently.
Danny sighed. “Ember, we can’t just skip class, even if it is just gym.”
“Sure we can; not like it really matters to us, anyway.”
“Of course gym matters!” Sam said. Did Danny not remember the whole president’s fitness test thing? She thought he had learned the importance of gym from that.
“Not for ghosts,” Ember quipped back.
“Yeah but Danny is part human,” Sam pointed out. “You should have seen him freshman year—his strength and stamina has definitely improved since then! He passed the fitness test first try last year.”
Danny winced. “So, about that…”
“What?” Sam asked, confused. “You didn’t cheat or something, did you? I don’t see how…” Now he could probably use his flight to pretend to do pull-ups or something, but at that point Sam was pretty sure Danny still didn’t have full access to his powers in human form, including flight.
“A ghost’s appearance is largely psychological,” Ember supplied. “It’s not as easy as saying ‘I want to look this way so I will’, but if you truly believe something will affect your appearance, then it will. Back then he thought he’d gain some muscles and stamina in human form by working out, so he did. But that was just appearance, unrelated to actual strength. The strength difference was because he took the whole psychology thing a step further by seeing his human and ghost forms as super separate, to the point some powers were actually inhibited in human form, like his ghost strength, stamina, and flight. Plus the excess blood hadn’t worked its way out yet which probably messed him up on some level too.”
Danny sighed with exasperation. “Ember, I could have explained that myself.”
Ember shrugged in response.
“So basically, you’re saying now that you’ve accepted that the ghost and human parts aren’t so separate, the ghost strength and stuff aren’t suppressed in human form anymore?” Tucker asked Danny.
Danny nodded. “Yup,” he said, then frowned. “Although knowing that the muscle gain was only because I believed the exercise would help kinda ruins any chance of me gaining more muscle, I guess…”
“Does it matter though?” Sam said, sensing that Danny was a little upset about that—he’d always been a bit self-conscious about his looks. “I think you look good as you are! You don’t need bigger muscles.”
“Yeah, you’re good how you are, Danny,” Tucker confirmed, then said with a sly look, “Although… Maybe you should prove it?”
“Yeah!” Ellie agreed. “Show us what you can do, bro!”
Danny grinned. “Sure thing!” he said, then hopped out of his seat and grabbed the picnic table at the spot he’d been seated, everyone else still seated upon it, and lifted it up with one hand, though he seemed to be straining slightly before putting them back down.
Ember giggled. “That proof enough for you, techie?”
Danny walked through the table and sat down next to Ember, then nudged her, and she moved to sit in-between Sam and Tucker while Danny moved to where Ember had been sitting. Sam was briefly confused, then felt the warmth Ember gave off, a stark contrast to Danny’s icy chill; huh, color Sam surprised, Danny had actually remembered that humans need warmth.
“Damn,” Tucker said as the two swapped, sounding impressed. “Guess you really don’t need gym.”
“Wait, if you don’t need it, then I don’t need it either, right?” Ellie asked.
Danny shrugged. “I mean, it’s actually good to help practice keeping our cover,” he told her. “Like, it’s good that I can use ghost strength in human form, but also annoying, since human form is supposed to be helping me pass as human. Gym class can be used to get used to just how much strength is needed for what thing, and at what point humans get tired.”
“Plus the sports stuff is fun!” Ember added.
“And sports help with hand-eye coordination,” Sam supplied, hoping that would further help convince Danny that gym class was useful even for him.
“Assuming you use your hands,” Danny said with a chuckle.
At Tucker’s confused look, Sam remembered he had a different gym period, so explained, “Yesterday we played dodgeball and Ember got in trouble for using telekinesis.”
“Yeah, which totally wasn’t fair because dipstick here was using it too!” Ember said, gesturing to Danny.
Sam turned to Danny and raised an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?” How hadn’t she noticed that? Well, Ember was using it too, so it wouldn’t have been easy to tell if they both were.
“Not much!” Danny defended. “I definitely don’t have that much control over it yet. I was still throwing balls. I just might have given some a nudge or two to hit their targets. No one even noticed, except Ember.”
“Danny, that’s cheating!” Sam chided. “You’re supposed to rely on your natural abilities for sports.”
Ember scoffed. “Those are natural abilities, princess,” she said with an eye roll, and Sam bristled slightly—she hated that nickname, which was precisely why Ember used it, and she really hoped it wouldn’t grow on her like ‘dipstick’ had seemed to have grown on Danny. He did know that originally that word was supposed to be an insult, right? Even if now it’d morphed to affection between them.
“No, pretty sure telekinesis is considered supernatural,” Tucker commented.
“For a human, sure. Not for a ghost.”
“Whatever, semantics,” Sam said with an eye roll. “Still say it’s cheating.”
“Hey, there was no rule against it at the time,” Ember pointed out. “Totally on the teacher for forgetting to specify.”
“Besides, it’s not like I did extra well or anything,” Danny reminded Sam. “I still barely scored. And I didn’t use intangibility or anything like that to dodge, unlike some people,” he said, smirking at Ember.
“Hey, like I said, natural abilities,” Ember said.
“Wait wait wait, hold up,” Ellie said loudly. “Danny, since when can you use telekinesis, and can you teach me?”
“All ghosts can,” Danny told her. “I only recently got the hang of it though, thanks to Clockwork. Apparently being unable to use it well had been a confidence thing,” he said with an eye roll.
“Guess that’s not so surprising,” Tucker mused. “I mean, ghosts are emotion-driven, right?”
“You bet we are!” Ember said cheerfully. “Oh, heads up, jock incoming,” she said, gesturing to somewhere behind Ellie and Danny.
“Yeah, I feel him,” Danny said tiredly, not bothering to look, although both Sam and Tucker looked to where Ember had gestured. Sam was relieved to see that it was just Kwan.
“Finally found you!” Kwan said. “Man, did not expect you to be outside—it’s freezing!”
Danny scoffed. “It’s only, like, fifty degrees.”
“Which is still pretty chilly to eat outside when you have a perfectly warm cafeteria,” Kwan pointed out. “Especially without a jacket! How are you three not cold?”
Danny turned to Kwan with a deadpan expression. “Yes, it’s such a mystery how ghosts with ice cores and a fire core manage to be perfectly fine without coats in cold weather.”
“Okay, I get it,” Kwan said with a scowl. “You don’t need to be so rude about it… Wait, that girl’s a ghost too?”
“Uh. Danny?” Ellie asked, turning to her cousin.
“He knows about me,” Danny told her. “It’s up to you what you want to reveal.”
“Oh, good. Then, nice to meet you!” Ellie said, hopping up and holding out her hand. “I’m Danielle, but you can call me Ellie. An evil fruitloop tried to clone Danny, but ended up with me instead. I escaped and now I’m living with Danny! We’re telling people who don’t know about him being a halfa that we’re cousins, now siblings after his dad adopted me.”
“Oh. Um, nice to meet you too,” Kwan said, shaking her hand, looking like he’d need some time to process all that. Then he looked towards Danny, and his eyes lit up. “Hey! You’re wearing the shirt I picked out for you!”
Danny looked down at the crimson Star Wars t-shirt, then looked up with a blush as he said, “Uh, yeah. It’s a good one.”
Sam narrowed her eyes at the interaction. There was no way…
Danny shook the blush away. “So, why were you looking for me?” he asked Kwan bluntly. “And what are you so worried and concerned about? I’m not that scary, am I?” he asked dryly.
“What? No, I’m not afraid of you!” Kwan protested, and even Sam could tell it was a lie.
Danny sighed. “Dude, what Paulina told you in that closet is a lie, I told you that. I don’t rip peoples’ throats out. I thought you were good though? I mean, you haven’t felt afraid of me all last week, and I thought we were getting along pretty great yesterday…” He blushed slightly again.
“No no no, I don’t think you’ll rip out my throat or any other murdery things!” Kwan assured him. “Er, You won’t, right?”
Danny scoffed, though there was amusement in it. “Why, do you want me to?” he said with a mischievous grin… Was he attempting to flirt? Although that didn’t mean much, given that Danny was often unintentionally flirty.
“No, no, I’m happy being alive!” Kwan said with a laugh.
“Okay, so then why are you nervous?” Danny asked curiously.
“Ah, well… I don’t want to upset you or anything, and I don’t know if what I say will!” Kwan said. “I mean, I don’t want to mess up our new friendship… Er. It is friendship, right? You don’t hate me anymore?”
“I never hated you,” Danny said with an amused eye roll, though didn’t confirm nor deny the friendship. “Look, just tell me what this thing is that may or may not upset me.”
Kwan took a deep breath. “Right. So, if you haven’t already heard, Dale and Ben are back,” Kwan said. “I already told them that they better not mess with anyone, especially in the locker rooms, but I’m also going to be keeping a close watch on them in gym so if they try anything I’ll stop it.”
“Do you think they will?” Sam asked. The locker room was one of the few places Sam couldn’t keep a watch on Danny.
“I doubt it,” Danny said. “Those two don’t really do much on their own. Without Dash there to lead them, they’re kinda useless.”
“Actually, I don’t know,” Kwan said with worry. “They’re leaderless, yeah, but they’re kinda angry that they’re leaderless so I dunno if they’ll try to confront you or something, like Ken did—that’s what I wanted to warn you about.”
Danny sighed, but didn’t respond, looking like he was trying to decide something.
“Like I said before: Let’s skip class and go to the mall,” Ember suggested.
“Tempting,” Danny agreed.
“I’ll go with you! I’ve never skipped class before!” Kwan said excitedly.
“Weren’t you just at the mall yesterday?” Sam pointed out.
“They were. I wasn’t,” Ember pointed out. “So, the rest of you in?”
“Not giving my folks another reason to force me to go to some charity ball,” Sam said. “I’ve been to enough this year.”
“They make her go to those things as a punishment,” Danny explained to Kwan, who looked slightly confused at Sam’s words.
“Well, what about the rest of you, then?” Ember asked.
“Actually, I want to do class,” Ellie said. “I dunno why you all hate it so much; it’s super interesting!”
Danny gave Ellie a deadpan look. “How are you my clone and not Jazz’s?”
Ellie giggled. “Come on, can you blame me? I’m literally less than two years created! It’s a brand new experience!”
“Tucker? You in?” Danny asked; apparently he’d decided to go.
“Eh, I dunno… On one hand it sounds fun, and I wanted to go to the mall anyway to get that new PDA attachment, but on the other I do need to keep my attendance up…” Tucker trailed off.
“If you don’t go, it’ll just be Danny, Kwan, and Ember,” Sam pointed out.
“That… is a very good point,” Tucker said.
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?!” All three aforementioned delinquents simultaneously shouted.
Sam’s phone then began vibrating; she frowned and fished it out of her bag, unsure who would be calling her at school. The caller ID said… Danny’s home phone? She flipped open the phone to answer. “Hello?”
“Sam!” Jack’s voice boomed. “Oh, good. Danny wasn’t answering his phone, guessing it’s muted or whatever. Anyway, you’re all at lunch, right? Can you put him on? It’s important.”
Sam handed the phone over to Danny. “It’s your father, says it’s important.”
Danny accepted the phone with a frown. He didn’t bother to leave his seat as he answered it. “Dad? What’s up?”
A pause; the volume wasn’t high enough for Sam to hear.
“Huh? What do you mean, video evidence?” Danny asked. “How is that possible?”
…
“You can’t be serious.”
…
“What do you mean, you have ‘no idea who did it’? Clearly it was the crazy fruitloop!”
…
“Well, it’s the only explanation; she wouldn’t do that herself, and he used to have the whole house bugged—or, I guess still did.”
…
“Uh, yeah, he’s had the house bugged for a while, thought we got rid of most of them but I guess not? Or he put in more?”
…
“Yeah, I know, I’m sure he really is done plotting, they were probably installed before that whole mess and just kept recording.”
…
“What? No. No way in hell are we taking that to the police!”
…
“Because I don’t want her getting arrested!”
…
“Okay, yeah, we could use it to avoid court, but—you know what, give me a sec, I’m gonna go somewhere more private.” Danny flew further away, behind a tree.
Kwan whispered to Sam, “Is Danny a criminal?”
Sam shook her head slowly. “Not any more than usual…” The usual being ‘Public Enemy #1’ when in ghost form.
“Something about video evidence that they can use to either press charges against his mom or blackmail her into not taking them to court,” Ember supplied, and when the others looked at her in surprise she shrugged and said, “What? Ghost hearing’s better than human hearing.”
“Huh. Guess he has a good excuse to skip class now,” Tucker stated.
“Why would they press charges or need to blackmail?” Kwan asked, out of the loop. “Also, isn’t blackmail illegal?”
Ember opened her mouth to say, then closed it and took a moment to think. “Actually, that’s probably something he’d rather tell you himself.”
Danny rejoined them. “I’d rather not tell you at all,” he told them, then sighed as he sat down. “But the papers are probably going to do all sorts of speculation once everything’s sorted with the divorce and they notice we’re with Dad instead of Mom… Kwan, remember those bruises on my back that I had on Halloween?”
Kwan nodded, looking nervous.
“Yeah, those were from my mom,” Danny revealed. “She’s got a bit of a violent temper. It’s one of the reasons why she and my dad are divorcing. Anyway, today Dad received a copy of a surveillance video that showed her hurting me and dad over the past few months. It was anonymous, although I’m pretty sure it was from Plasmius, who kept illegal recordings of the Fenton household; the note with it said ‘evidence in case you need it for the legal battle’.”
“Wait,” Sam said, realizing something. “If it’s just regular surveillance recordings, won’t it show you transform?”
Danny shook his head. “No, Dad said the mysterious letter also said that anything involving Phantom or the mice had been edited out, before the letter burst into flame.”
“So, Vlad’s definitely behind this,” Tucker concluded.
“Yeah, I just said that; it’s obvious.”
“But… why? I thought he wanted to marry your mom or something; you think he wouldn’t want to give you evidence that can be used to get her arrested.”
Danny shrugged. “I have no clue what goes on in his mind—maybe he decided child abuse was a step too far or something,” he said, then muttered under his breath, “even though he did worse.”
“Hold up,” Kwan said slowly. “When you say Vlad, and Plasmius, are you talking about ex-Mayor Masters…?”
“Oh. Yeah, he’s kinda been my arch nemesis for a while,” Danny said. “Anyway, Dad said I don’t need to come home or anything, but I definitely can’t go to class after learning that…” He stood up. “Who’s going to the mall?”
“I think it’s just me, you, and Kwan,” Ember said, and the others all nodded.
“Cool. Sam, Tucker, if the teachers ask where I am, just let them know my mom is a bitch, okay?” Danny shifted to Phantom and flew off before getting confirmation, Ember following.
“Hey, wait for me!” Kwan called, rushing after them on foot; Ember and Danny both doubled back and each grabbed him by an arm, flying off with him screaming—clearly he had not been flown anywhere before.
“...Right, just tell the teachers his mom is a bitch, that excuse will definitely go super well,” Sam muttered, as she began cleaning up the table; lunch was almost over, and she was not going to be late again due to forgetting that pesky five-minute difference between timelines.
“Well, on the plus side, at least this means the custody case won’t need to go to court,” Tucker pointed out with a nervous laugh. “Since, you know, blackmail.”
Sam sighed. “In other words, classic Vlad.” Well, at least he was doing it for Danny, this time; maybe he was starting to reform, after all, in his own weird way.
After ‘school’, aka the mall trip, Kwan and Ember returned to the school for football and cheerleading respectively while Danny returned home—usually he had therapy on Tuesdays, but that had been rescheduled to the next day as Dr. Warren was at some sort of academic conference. He had to remember to talk to the guy about therapist recommendations for Kwan; Ember could also sense the melancholia beneath Kwan’s happy demeanor, and between her and Danny they’d managed to convince Kwan to get help, although he didn’t need a ghost-specific therapist as his depression stemmed from the trouble with his best friend and partial ostracization by some of the football team.
Also at the mall had been an interesting conversation with the manager at the body jewelry store there, which was one of only a few places in Amity Park that sold things for stretched ears. As it turned out, he wasn’t human (Danny wasn’t sure what he was, but the pointed ears and forked tongue were apparently natural, not extreme mods), and had easily clocked Danny as Phantom. So he thanked Danny for increasing business, as apparently the Town Hero having stretched ears had inspired many townsfolk to stretch theirs too; Danny was surprised that enough people liked him for him to become a trendsetter.
Danny flew through the door to his home, not bothering to change back into human form first, and into the living room where he sensed his father and sister were. He abruptly stopped in the center of the room and changed into his human form, still floating.
“Danno!” Jack said, leaping off the couch and pulling Danny into a tight hug against his chest. He immediately burst into tears.
“Hey, dad, you’re crushing him!” Jazz chided, and Jack loosened his grip but didn’t let go.
“Dad? What’s wrong?” Danny asked, then could have slapped himself if he weren’t still pinned to his dad—Jack had just been presented with video proof that his ex-wife, who he still loved on some level, had been severely abusing his son, likely including things Danny hadn’t told anyone about. There was no way Jack hadn’t reviewed it.
Jack set Danny back onto the ground—or, rather, the air, misjudging Danny’s actual height, though didn’t seem to realize this as he put his hands on Danny’s shoulders. “Danny, I’m so sorry,” Jack said wetly. “I’m so, so, so sorry. I should have seen it, should have stopped her, this is all my—”
“Dad,” Jazz said sharply, still on the couch. “We’ve talked about this. None of this is your fault. Those tapes show her hitting you just as often as she hit Danny—and don’t even try to argue that you can take it so it isn’t bad. And Danny, don’t you argue that either.”
“But, Jazzie, I—”
“Nope, not hearing it. Most of it she intentionally hid,” Jazz pointed out. “You noticing and trying to stop her would’ve just made her hide it more.”
“I guess,” Jack muttered, looking a little lost and still radiating guilt and sadness. “Come on, let’s sit on the couch,” he suggested, shifting to place his arm around Danny’s shoulders instead and gently guiding him to the couch, seeming a little amused at how Danny floated the whole way (Danny knew that would amuse his dad; after the initial surprise of Danny using his powers in human form, Jack had started finding it wondrous, so Danny started to use that to cheer him up).
Danny submitted to gravity as he squeezed between his father and sister on the couch. “So, how much of those videos did you see?” he wondered.
“We didn’t,” Jazz said. “Thankfully, this ‘anonymous good samaritan’ included a paper copy of transcripts describing the videos.” She gestured to the table, where there was a manila folder. “With any luck, this means there won’t be a need to go to court over the custody situation—if this video evidence gets out, she’ll surely be arrested on abuse charges, and it's damning enough that no lawyer would recommend trying to fight it rather than make a deal.”
“That’s good, I guess,” Danny said, feeling a little numb, possibly mildly dissociating. “So, you know everything she did…?”
Jack nodded, giving Danny a pitying look, vibes sad yet also caring. “Yes, including the cage.”
“Oh. Um, that wasn’t so bad,” Danny said. Better than the kicking, or potential whip.
“You were crying,” Jack pointed out.
“Yeah, but not for the cage itself, mostly because before then I never thought she was bad enough that she would go as far as put me in one. It also just brought back some not-so-pleasant memories,” Danny told them. “Like, the time Vlad tried to get my mid-morph DNA to clone me; that box was a different shape and I was in chains and there was electricity, but it was also glass so I guess it reminded me of that. More than reminded me, actually; I felt like I was there.”
“You had a flashback,” Jazz stated, and Danny nodded, recognizing the term Dr. Warren had used. Danny had initially thought the only type of flashback was the kind shown in movies and TV, something like a hallucination where the person literally relieves the event with no one able to snap them out of it—but now Danny knew that that wasn’t always the case. Emotional flashbacks, where one suddenly feels the same as they did during the event, thinking that whatever situation they’re currently in is just like it, without visual or auditory aspects, was another common type of flashback.
“Did you say… electricity?” Jack said in a whisper, looking pale, and Danny winced; right, he never shared the details of that with anyone, not even Sam and Tucker knew the full extent of that—only those there knew, and probably Clockwork.
Jazz gave off similarly stunned vibes. “Danny. Did Vlad… torture you?” she asked quietly. “I thought you said he had a clone overshadow you…”
“He tried that too,” Danny said. “But, uh, yeah. He also used electricity. Which is, well. Definitely not a good time.”
“It’s still difficult to believe Vladdie did all those things,” Jack said sadly. “I guess it goes to show that you can never know for sure what someone’s like beneath the surface.”
“Trust me; you don’t want to be able to know,” Danny said dryly, reminding them that he actually could tell that. “Learning that half the people you thought you knew are actually totally different below the surface is not fun, especially…”
“Especially when it’s someone you love, like a parent?” Jazz finished when Danny trailed off.
“Yeah,” Danny said, then returned to an earlier point in the conversation. “So, you mentioned there won’t be a need for court for the custody case…?”
“Oh, right,” Jack said. “Yeah, I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that. Maddie’s stubborn, not stupid. No way she won’t try to make a deal instead of going to court, not with that video existing.”
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Danny hopped up and flew over to answer it; it was most likely Sam and Tucker, they’d texted him about coming over.
“Mr. Lancer?” Danny asked in surprised confusion, then realized that, whoops, he was floating again, and sheepishly lowered himself back to the ground. “Um, come in, I guess. What are you doing here?”
As Danny and Lancer went to the living room, Lancer explained, “I wanted to check up on you and your family, as your friends told the teachers for your afternoon classes that you had to go home because of an issue with your mother; knowing about the issues your family has been having lately, I wanted to be sure you’re safe.”
Danny froze; his dad and Jazz were both standing to greet Lancer, and now had matching expressions of mild confusion and suspicion.
“Whereas it’s true that I called to alert Danny about an issue involving her,” Jack said carefully, “It was only about a new development on the legal end of things. Danny wasn’t instructed to come home.” He turned to Danny and crossed his arms, frowning. Disappointed, not angry, which felt worse.
“There weren’t any reports of ghost fights,” Jazz said, looking at the news via a thin notebook-sized touchscreen PDA-like device that could access the internet; she’d acquired it from MU and called it a ‘tablet’. Tucker had practically drooled over it, but apparently it was a prototype device she was testing for a friend. Danny suspected it was stolen from the future, and the only part actually being tested was the battery that, much like a ghost core, was charged by ambient emotion.
Lancer wafted disappointment too. “What were you doing, then?” he asked. “Ember and Kwan were both out this afternoon, too; were you with them?”
Danny winced. He could deny it, but he could sense that Lancer wasn’t going to buy it.
“Yes, yes he was,” Jazz said curtly, turning the tablet so the others could see the image.
“Oh, man, she actually put that on her MySpace page?” Danny whined. There was a photo of Ember, Kwan, and Danny sitting in the loops of one of the mall’s massive chandeliers, eating fish and chips from Archer Treachers—Danny was upside-down, hanging by his knees. In the background there were a few security guards, looking a mix of baffled, worried, and angry. The photo had been taken via a camera Ember had attuned combined with telekinesis.
“Whoa! I didn’t know you could do that!” Jack said, clearly impressed. “That kind of pose takes a lot of core strength and flex…i…bility… oh. Right. Er, that was very irresponsible of you!”
Danny couldn’t help but snicker.
“Daniel,” Lancer said with a sigh. “Skipping class to go to the mall notwithstanding, you are aware that Kwan is human, right? You should not be flying him onto chandeliers that high up without any safety measures in place. Do you even know what weight those are rated for?”
Danny winced. “Um. Well, Ember and I don’t really weigh much anyway, and it worked out okay?”
“That’s not the point…”
Jazz groaned. “Danny, you have to tell her to change this caption,” Jazz suddenly said, looking tense.
“Caption?” Danny asked, confused.
“On the chandelier photo. It says, “Just hanging around with Babypop and K-Rock!”
“K-Rock?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, she’s calling Kwan that now,” Danny explained. “Though I dunno what’s wrong with the caption? I mean, ‘hanging around’ is a good pun considering where we were?”
Jazz sighed. “It’s not about the pun, Danny. She called you ‘Babypop’.”
“Yeah, so? That’s what she calls me.”
“That’s what she calls Phantom,” Jazz pointed out. “And there’s literal news footage of that. You’re Fenton in the photo.”
“Oh, that,” Danny said, then shrugged. “She calls me that in both forms, plenty of people have overheard and never drew the connection. They probably think it’s just a silly pet name she calls lots of people, like ‘baby’ or ‘hunny’, not exclusive.” At Jazz’s skeptical vibes Danny continued, “Seriously, this town is, like, totally oblivious. I am absolutely horrible at hiding my identity, Fenton and Phantom are basically just a difference in hair and eye color, we got matching piercings and fangs at the same time, our guitars are inverted—hell, my hero name is a freakin’ pun of my real name! Sharing a pet name is not going to be what gets them to notice.”
“I must agree,” Lancer said, to Danny’s surprise. “Either everyone is simply that oblivious, or they know and have been hiding it,” he said. “The other day, he tripped through his desk, and his classmates simply shrugged it off as, I believe Paulina said, ‘typical Fenton weirdness’.”
“To be fair, Paulina does know my secret now,” Danny pointed out. “But, er, yeah, the rest of the class somehow bought that, so you definitely have a point there.” Stupid powers activating on instinct; sure, he avoided crashing into the desk, but as he’d come in slightly late everyone definitely had seen that. “As long as I blame everything on ‘ecto-contamination’, they’ll buy anything.” Plus Paulina being the one to make the excuse had been immensely helpful.
Jack scratched the back of his head, slightly embarrassed as he said, “I mean, I couldn’t figure it out until I made those mice, and I’ve technically got a PHD in this stuff…”
“Lancer figured it out,” Jazz said, apparently not wanting to let this go. “So did Valerie, Paulina, Star, and Kwan.”
Danny growled. “Okay, Valerie has had a vendetta against Phantom since she became the Red Huntress, honestly she should have figured it out much sooner, and definitely should have after meeting Ellie. Totally unsurprising she did. Paulina and Star… that’s really on me, I thought they spread a rumor about Phantom and threatened them as Fenton accidentally. With Kwan, I talked to him as Phantom for a while at the Halloween party and he realized. As long as I’m more careful when talking to humans who know Fenton while in Phantom form, that won’t be an issue. Lancer—actually, I dunno how you drew the connection.” He looked at Lancer, hoping for an answer.
“It came in stages,” Lancer told him. “The first realization was at the concert; your stage presence had the same air of confidence you show as Phantom, complete with the grin, and with the all-black outfit and your eyes glowing, it was hard to not draw a visual connection, especially with the matching fangs, earrings, and… other ear jewelry.”
“Stretched piercings,” Danny supplied. “Or, some say stretched holes. The jewelry itself is called plugs if they’re solid, tunnels if they’re hollow like these.” He gestured to his ears; today’s were amethyst, the actual stone not just color.
“Right,” Lancer said, and Danny resisted laughing at the man’s obvious discomfort over the concept. “I didn’t want to believe it at first so I convinced myself I was mistaken. But I kept thinking about it, how all the struggles you exhibited made sense under such a context. Then you went missing, and suddenly Phantom was missing too, and when your sister said she was worried you went into the Ghost Zone, it just all clicked.”
“Well, you’re smarter than I was, then,” Jack said with a sigh. “I literally found him, in Phantom form, on the same hill we used to stargaze on when he was a kid, and he talked to me about his family issues, of which I realized directly parallelled with my own family’s—because it was! Yet I still didn’t notice my son was the one right next to me, only thinking, ‘Wow, our families are so similar! What a coincidence!’”
Danny couldn’t help but snicker. “I’m honestly shocked you didn’t figure it out then and there. Or any of the times I accidentally slipped up and said ‘Mom’ or ‘Dad’ instead of ‘Maddie’ or ‘Jack’ while in Phantom form.”
Jack looked surprised. “Suffering spooks! You did do that sometimes, didn’t you? We just thought that maybe we reminded Phantom of his own parents—which, I suppose, was true, as we’re the same!” he laughed. Then, he frowned. “Although in retrospect it’s kinda weird we even thought that, since at the time we thought that ghosts had no memories of their pasts. Pretty sure Mads still thinks that.”
“When did you stop thinking that?” Danny asked curiously.
Jack took a moment to think about that. “Probably around the time that there was that bounty on you, and you helped change the ecto-filtrator before it exploded,” he said, and Danny felt a pang of alarm from Lancer. Jack continued unaware, “I remember thinking that if ghosts don’t have memories or true emotions, only ever wanting to trick people and cause chaos, wouldn’t a ghost want a ghost hunter’s house to explode? Yet you helped save us. You were even the one who brought up the fact that it was in trouble! You seemed to genuinely care, and if you didn’t remember your family or have emotions, that wouldn’t have been possible. It’s part of why I didn’t tell Maddie about that incident, aside from the embarrassment.”
“Huh. Didn’t realize your mind started changing that early,” Danny said, genuinely surprised. He felt happy at that realization; his dad hadn’t hated his ghosts as much as he’d thought for a much longer while, he’d just been hiding it from his mom… Who apparently had maintained such harsh views the whole time. If this were the other timeline, the one where she knew about him, would she have been secretly plotting his demise, still thinking he was bad, despite seeming supportive on the surface?
Ellie suddenly flew through the window; Lancer jumped and stared at her wide-eyed. “A ghost?” he asked, confused, then surprised, said, “Wait… Ellie?”
“Uh, yeah, obviously,” Ellie said with an eye roll, switching back to her human form and dropping to the ground. “I’m cloned from Danny, remember?”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Lancer hurriedly said, vibes of embarrassment coming from him. “I just, well, hadn’t seen you in that form before, so was surprised.” That made sense, Danny supposed; relatively few people had seen Ellie’s ghost form, as she wasn’t as into fighting as Danny was, nor had ever felt any obligation to protect the city as he did.
Ellie narrowed her eyes at Lancer. “Hmm…” Then, she came to the same conclusion as Danny: “Seems like you’re telling the truth. So, what’s with the party?”
Danny sighed. “Gaining more legal leverage against Mom wasn’t a good enough excuse to skip class…”
“Not when you didn’t need to leave for it,” Lancer corrected. “If your father asked you to leave school, that would be one thing, but he did not.”
“Yeah,” Jack chimed in. “I’m sorry, Danny; ghost fights and other emergencies are one thing, but you can’t just skip school because you feel like it.”
“So, let me guess, I have detention and I’m grounded?” Danny guessed.
“Detention, yes,” Lancer confirmed. “You skipped three afternoon classes, so three days of detention. Ember and Kwan will be receiving the same punishment.”
“And you’re not grounded,” Jack said. “I know you’ll just sneak out—instead, this weekend you’re going to help me recalibrate the equipment in the ops center.”
“What? But that’s so boring!” Danny complained. It would take a full day, maybe longer, and was extremely tedious work.
“Which is exactly why it’s an apt punishment,” Jack said, seeming proud of himself for thinking of it; Danny internally smiled in amusement. He couldn’t be mad at his dad—it was definitely better than Maddie’s punishments, and his dad seemed so pleased that he thought of something safe that Danny couldn’t escape from. Danny was definitely going to try to negotiate a different day to do that though, or maybe see if it could be scattered across multiple evenings—this upcoming weekend the band needed to prepare for the A-list concert that would be the following weekend.
Danny sighed, still not liking it, but, “Well, it’s definitely better than being locked in a ghost-proof cage.”
Lancer’s eyes widened in horror. “You were locked in a cage?” he asked, vibes fearful for Danny. Right, he hadn’t seen the footage or transcripts, and Danny wasn’t about to show him.
Danny shrugged. “She only did that once; we moved to MU a couple days later.”
Ellie looked at Danny in disbelief; right, she didn’t know the details yet either. “I thought you said your parents were different from Vlad?”
“They definitely are different,” Danny quickly said.
“Well I know your dad obviously is—”
“Mom is too. She doesn’t do crazy evil plots, she just… takes punishments a little too far,” Danny tried explaining. “It’s not so bad.”
“Not so bad?!” Lancer interjected. “Daniel, please don’t try to downplay what you’ve been through.”
“But I’m not? I’ve been through a lot of worse things?” Danny truly didn’t understand why they were all making such a big deal about the containment unit. It had been scary, sure, but it wasn’t like there was electricity or anything.
“Worse things?” Lancer whispered.
Danny gave him a deadpan look. “Yes, worse things. I literally died. Being locked in a cage is nothing compared to that.”
Lancer, Jack, and Jazz all winced. Ellie didn’t react much; she still didn’t seem to understand death as much as full humans did, as also happened with many Zone-born ghosts—even though she was lab-created, she’d still started out part ghost, and thus shared some psychological traits with ghosts who were never human because of that.
“Just because there are worse things doesn’t mean it wasn’t bad,” Jazz said gently.
Danny sighed. “I know, I know. Sorry, I’m working on that, promise.” It was true; Dr. Warren had talked to Danny about it. Trauma was trauma, regardless of how objectively bad an incident was or wasn’t compared to another.
Suddenly, Danny gasped, a mist of cold air coming from his lips; an unfriendly ghost was around.
“Remember, check the power level before running off,” Jack reminded Danny. “It’s only an emergency if—ah, there it goes,” he said, as the house alarm rang and a robotic voice rang out with a warning that a ghost with a power level of 7 had been spotted. Ember was that level, as was Technus, but Danny’s friends and ghosts with jobs had been excluded from this new alert system that Jack and Tucker had installed, meaning…
Danny sighed in frustration. “7, huh? Either it’s a new ghost, or it’s freaking Spectra.” She was a 7 while Bertrand was only a 4; 4 would only send a message to his phone, but not cause the house alarm. He took his phone from his pocket and flipped it open; 2 automated alerts from the ops center, mentioning a level 4 and level 7. “Yup, level 4 there too; it’s Spectra.” There was another ping, and Danny frowned. “Says there’s like 6 level 2s with them too, and the location’s at the mall…”
“That many level 2s are probably all ectopi, I doubt she’d be with the Box Ghost,” Jack said.
“Bet she’s trying to get them to scare people,” Jazz said. “Get a quick fix of fear.”
“Fear?” Lancer asked. “Does she not feed on misery and insecurity?”
“She does,” Danny said. “But fear’s adjacent enough to that that she can get a small buzz—honestly, she’s probably planning to bait me there and then say a bunch of stuff to try to get to me, she’s done that before. Apparently if she pushes my buttons right I can be ‘a verifiable feast’, according to her.” Then, he grinned fiercely. “She’s going to really hate that I started seeing a real therapist and working on my issues.”
“Well, regardless, I’m going with you,” Jack said firmly, hurrying to a drawer and pulling out a thermos and ecto-net and a wrist ray—things that wouldn’t damage a ghost too much, Danny happily noted. He wouldn’t even wish some of the more dangerous inventions on Spectra, no matter how much he hated her; capture-and-release was still his go-to method, and now it was Jack’s too.
“Probably for the best,” Danny agreed, then admitted, “Honestly, I’m not feeling so great after the video thing so even just moral support to shout at me that she’s telling lies would be good.” He flew over to another drawer and pulled out some Fenton Phones. “Jazz, I’m assuming you’re coming, too?”
“Of course,” Jazz said.
Ellie opened her mouth, but Danny preemptively told her, “I don’t want you fighting Spectra; she has a specific ability that lets her identify what bothers people the most, and will probably bring up the stuff Vlad put you through.”
Ellie crossed her arms and pouted. “Fine; you’re lucky I don’t really like fighting. But at least let me help! I can be in the GAV monitoring things.”
“Yes, that would be good,” Jack agreed.
“I’ll go too,” Lancer spoke, looking surprised at himself that he offered.
“Sure!” Jack said, tossing Lancer a wrist ray before Danny could say it wasn’t necessary. “Now, to the GAV!”
“I’ll fly; it’s faster,” Danny said, turning and zooming through the wall, wanting to get Spectra captured as soon as possible.
That evening, Valerie sat on the couch with her dad watching the news when a story she never expected came on. She nearly dropped the TV dinner in her hand, and her dad let out a gasp.
The story? Summarized by the bottom bar: ‘Jack Fenton rescues Phantom from GIW capture, claims most ghosts are not bad; Maddie Fenton speaks out in opposition’.
Valerie watched in incredulity as the news anchor discussed what had happened, complete with footage. Apparently, first Phantom had fought and defeated Spectra, and then the GIW came rushing in and tried to capture him. Jack Fenton, instead of also going after Phantom as everyone assumed he would, charged at the agents, used his own net gun to subdue them, and then rescued Phantom from the electrical net they’d caught him in. Phantom then shakily flew off; Valerie winced in sympathy, knowing how electricity especially affected him—physically it was no worse than other elements, but mentally it tended to rattle him, likely reminding him of his death, and that on top of Spectra probably did a blow to his mental state.
Jack then started yelling at the agents, all caught on film, telling them how the research was wrong and they had to stop being so biased because ghosts were mostly not bad, that only a small percentage truly were, and that Phantom was a hero and often the only thing preventing the town from total disaster. Valerie had expected some support of Phantom, given his dad knew he was Danny, but for Jack Fenton to claim most ghosts weren’t bad?
Maddie had arrived as Phantom flew off, and looked flabbergasted the entire rant before loudly arguing back, claiming Jack was the wrong one and the ghosts were tricking him and stuff. It looked like the two were about to throw hands until Jazz and Mr. Lancer appeared and managed to break the fight up. Valerie was mildly confused at why Lancer would be there; maybe he’d just been coincidentally shopping, as she couldn’t imagine him willingly assisting with a ghost fight. Why he would get involved was a mystery to her though.
Valerie would have never expected Jack Fenton to speak out in support of ghosts, not to that degree, even knowing his son was one… If Jack could so drastically reevaluate his thoughts on ghosts, maybe Valerie ought to as well, trying to stop seeing Ellie and Danny (and to an extent even Ember, after over a week of classes with the ghost), as the only exceptions to them being bad (well, and herself, technically, but Valerie was still loathe to call herself any part ghost, really trying not to think about how eventually she’d be at least half of one).
Valerie was also glad she’d opted to let Phantom handle it once she saw his tracker headed there; she hated fighting Spectra, and definitely did not want to be involved in whatever that mess was between the two Fenton adults. Plus the GIW attacked her the last time they showed up, for some ridiculous reason thinking she… was… a… oh. Actually, that did make sense after all.
“Are you seeing this, Valerie?” her dad, Damon, asked in disbelief. “Do you think he’s overshadowed or something?”
“No, I have a feeling we’re just seeing what’s usually behind closed doors brought outside them,” Valerie commented. Reviewing some of Danny’s recent behavior, combined with his parents divorcing and his mom briefly having a restraining order, did point to trouble at home, and, given it was the Fentons, having contrasting views on the matter of ghosts leading to such turmoil would make sense.
“Huh… Hey, their daughter’s there too but their son isn’t,” Damon pointed out. “I wonder which parent he sides with… you’re still crushing on him, right?”
Valerie winced. “Unfortunately,” she grumbled.
“‘Unfortunately’?” Damon quoted back as a question.
Valerie sighed and crossed her arms. “He’s just… not the person I thought.”
“Is this about the band having ghosts? He sides with his father, is that it?”
“Eh, kinda,” Valerie said. She didn’t want to out Fenton as Phantom, despite everything, despite him having outed her to her dad (she knew now it was to save her life, but was still slightly bitter about it); she knew the value of a secret identity. How to word this? “It’s not just supporting ghosts and being in the band. He’s legit friends with them. And you know how he has some ecto-contamination, which gives him some ghost traits? Well, because of those ghosts, he’s kinda… embraced it. Acting a little more ghostly, like not holding back on his eyes glowing and having a ghostly growl when he’s angry. He used to be more careful about hiding things, trying to stay as human as possible despite the contamination,” Valerie said. She didn’t mention how he possibly, well likely, was only being less careful about hiding his identity around her specifically because she knew he was Phantom—she’d let her dad assume it was in general, and just those small things (as opposed to flying, sticking his hand through his locker, and freakin’ sensing and feeding on emotions—Valerie sincerely hoped she never ended up enough of a ghost for that last one to apply to her).
“Ah. So you’re concerned about him?” Damon concluded.
“I mean, I guess,” Valerie conceded. “But I’m pretty sure this won’t change; he’s just like this now. A part of me is angry at him for that. It bothers me more than I’d like to admit. I tried to stop interacting with him at first, but part of me still wants to be friends despite all the ghost stuff.” Despite him, on some level, being dead. Like she—no, nope, not going there. “He knows all this, and we’re trying to be friends again, but… it’s hard.”
“Then, maybe you should try working on reducing your ghost bias,” Damon suggested. “If Jack Fenton can do it, I’m sure you can. I know you still blame ghosts for everything we’ve been through, and still hunt them, but maybe talking to some might help?”
“I have been working on it,” Valerie said. “And talking with them. I even have a truce with Da—with Phantom,” she said, cutting herself off before correcting it. She’d almost revealed the secret!
“Having a truce doesn’t mean the bias isn’t still there,” Damon pointed out.
Valerie sighed. “I know. I know that! But I still don’t like Phantom, despite the truce. I even talked to him about what happened, and he explained all those incidents I blamed him for, and the explanations all make sense. The ghost dog wasn’t even his—it was one of Axiom’s old guard dogs who just wanted his squeaky toy from the old kennel. He was just trying to help figure out what the dog wanted. Yet despite knowing that, I’m still mad! Why am I still mad?!” Valerie practically growled. “Why do I keep seeing him as a bad person? I know he’s not! I know it all had a reason! I know he can’t help being what he is! I know that he can be a sweet guy under the cocky ghost persona! Why can’t I get over this rage? Literally the only thing that holds any stock is that he lied to me about who he was, but I should know better than anyone about why that was necessary!” Especially given what Valerie herself now was…
Damon gave Valerie a curious look. “Are we back to talking about Danny again?”
“Yes! I mean, no! Ugh, I dunno anymore!” Valerie took a few deep breaths to calm herself down.
Damon was quiet as she did so, contemplative, before he finally asked slowly, “Valerie, correct me if I’m wrong, but… It’s not actually ecto-contamination, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, is Danny Phantom… Danny Fenton?”
Valerie froze, eyes widening in shock and mouth open. After a moment, she slumped her shoulders and looked at the floor. “Damn it.”
“Language,” Damon chided, though there was no heat behind the word. He looked just as stunned at having the truth confirmed as Valerie was that her dad had uttered the words. After a moment of awkward silence, he continued, “So, when did you find out?”
“About a month ago,” Valerie told her dad. “You know how Sam, Tucker, and Jazz came over to ask for my help finding Danny?”
“In the Ghost Zone, yes, I remember—you were surprised they knew who you were. I’m guessing they know Danny’s a… a ghost?”
“Yeah. Well, a human-ghost hybrid, technically—the ghosts call it a ‘halfa’. Some weird lab accident did it, he has traits of both ghosts and humans, although he seems to identify as more of a ghost nowadays. Anyway, they didn’t tell me he was Phantom, but when we found him he was literally drinking a radioactive ectoplasm-based smoothie while in his human form. Not even ecto-contamination can explain that; a human would’ve likely been fully dead after that, or at least very sick. Then he accidentally started to fly. After that I put the rest of the clues together, things I’d noticed about them both, and it clicked. It helped that I’ve met another human-ghost hybrid before, that could also switch between a human form and a ghost form, so I knew it was possible.”
“Wow,” Damon said, then sighed. “I’m assuming this all needs to stay a secret, especially because the news hasn’t mentioned it?”
“Oh yeah, definitely,” Valerie said. “If the GIW catches wind of this, they won’t care that he’s still part human.”
Damon nodded in understanding. “I don’t doubt that. Do either of Danny’s parents know? Well, I guess his mom probably doesn’t, but his dad maybe does?”
“His dad found out like two weeks ago, but I’m pretty sure his mom still doesn’t know,” Valerie told her dad. “He seems terrified of her, and from what I’ve seen, her hatred of ghosts is worse than mine, which you know is really saying something. This news footage really only confirms that.”
Damon frowned. “He’s terrified of her?”
Valerie nodded. “I don’t know what the situation is, but you know how I told you the school has a ghost student now, as well as a ghost teacher? Maddie came the first day to investigate but Lancer stopped her. They were arguing in the hallway, and I could hear because of my suit; to get her away Lancer reminded her that there was a restraining order in place and threatened to call security. Danny, who also could hear, was practically shaking the whole time.”
“A restraining order against a parent, who the child is terrified of, plus the parents getting divorced?” Damon said worriedly. “Valerie, I think there’s something more than just arguments about ghost philosophies going on with that family.”
Valerie sighed. “Yeah, I think so too. I think the worst of it is probably over though, given the divorce—unless Maddie gets custody, which given the restraining order I doubt will happen.”
“I don’t know… Unless there’s hard proof the mother is unfit to raise a child, the courts usually side in her favor,” Damon pointed out.
“Well, for Danny’s sake, I really hope they side with his dad,” Valerie said. “I don’t like that he’s Phantom, but I still don’t want to see Danny hurt,” she said, and realized that she truly meant it. “He doesn’t deserve that.” He never did, even as Phantom.
After some quiet contemplation as the news continued with less interesting topics, Damon said, “I can’t imagine what Jack is going through, learning his son is Phantom.”
“You can’t?” Valerie asked. “Isn’t it the same as with me, though? You didn’t know I was the Red Huntress, and when you found out, we had to adapt.”
“True, but you’re also still human. You just use a high-tech suit, even if it’s technically ghost tech,” Damon pointed out, and Valerie internally winced; she had no idea how to tell her dad what that ghost tech had started to do to her. Damon continued, “Danny’s… well, if it was a lab accident that did it, I’m going to assume it was in his parent’s lab, given that they research ghosts and whatnot.”
“Yeah; he said he was messing with the ghost portal back when they thought it didn’t work, when his parents weren’t home, and accidentally turned it on while inside it.”
Damon winced. “Yeah, a ghost portal opening on top of someone does seem like a logical way to create a ghost-human hybrid. So now Jack has to grapple not just with his kid being a ghost fighter, but also with the reality that it was his invention that, well…”
“Killed him,” Valerie said quietly. “From my understanding, the electricity actually killed him, but the ectoplasm partially revived him. So that’s why he got all the ghost stuff, and a ghost form, but got to keep a human form too, with some human features.”
Damon frowned. “From the way you describe it, that doesn’t sound like an even split. How much of a ghost is he?”
Valerie closed her eyes. “According to him, 90%, and lately it really does seem it; I think at first he was trying to keep a strong divide between his two sides, but now it seems like he barely cares enough to hide his identity. I think Sam and Tucker have been getting concerned too, they’ve known from the start so should be used to it but I’ve seen the looks they’ve been giving him lately when he does ghost stuff in human form, making me think this attitude is a newer thing.”
“Hmm. Maybe it has to do with his ghost friends?”
“You think they’re encouraging him to be more ghostly?” Valerie asked, heart picking up.
“No, no, not necessarily. I was thinking that perhaps it relates to acceptance. It reminds me of people from minority groups, who once they find people like them tend to seem to change but in reality they’re just embracing what they were hiding. Like your Aunt Annabelle, who went from a quiet, withdrawn girl in high school while in the closet, but when she went to college she met other gay people, after which she came out and became much more outgoing, including participating in parades and protests. She seemed to change, but in reality she just stopped hiding who she was because she became more comfortable with her identity.”
“But, Danny’s still part human. He has people like him already,” Valerie pointed out.
“He’s also part ghost,” Damon countered. “A large part. I know you don’t want to think of him that way, but he is. Growing up as he did, I’m sure at first he was partly in denial, rejecting that part of him. Sounds like his ghost friends helped him accept it.”
“But…” Valerie said, then frowned, unable to come up with a further argument. “I guess that makes sense. He’s pretty much told me as much, now that I think about it. I still don’t like it,” she said stubbornly.
“You don’t have to like it, but that’s how it is,” Damon said gently. “He’s not going to return to the person you remember him as. If you want to reconcile with Danny, you need to accept that.”
“I guess,” Valerie said, feeling her mood drop, grief slipping in for the loss of the boy she thought she knew, despite him still being in some regards alive. She did want to be friends again, though; she truly did, and had been making efforts to.
“You know what, let’s go out for ice cream sundaes tonight,” Damon decided, standing up.
“What? But that’s expensive!” Valerie protested. “We need to save money.”
“We have plenty in the spare change jar,” Damon pointed out, “Which is specifically meant for treating ourselves—and I’m pretty sure you’re in need of some comfort ice cream right now.”
Valerie chuckled, then said, “Well, I suppose I can’t argue with that, either.” She didn’t stand, though, rather sighed. “But before we go, there’s actually something I need to tell you,” she cautiously admitted, not wanting to have secrets between her and her dad again, and if he reacted that well to Danny being part ghost hopefully that meant she didn’t have to worry.
Damon sat back down and gave Valerie a sad yet knowing look as he asked, “Is this about your suit giving you ghost powers, too?”
Valerie froze, looking at her dad with wide eyes. “You know?!”
Damon chuckled sadly. “Valerie, I work in anti-ghost security. You think I haven’t noticed how my own daughter started to ping on ghost trackers, occasionally even when out of the suit? Also, you haven’t been hiding those slip-ups too well.”
“Slip-ups? What slip-ups?” Valerie asked.
“Well, I definitely caught your fork slipping through your fingers multiple times, for one. And sometimes your eyes glow gold. Plus, can you honestly say all the suit’s things are nanobots? Technology hasn’t advanced that far, even in shady billionaires’ labs, I know you know that. Those guns attached to your suit don’t shoot anti-ecto goo, they shoot the same type of ectoplasm ghosts do. The self-generated kind.”
“No way,” Valerie said. “How long ago did you figure it out? I only realized three days ago!”
Now her dad looked surprised. “Three days ago?” he repeated; Valerie assumed he must have noticed long before her.
Valerie blushed. “I, er, might have been in heavy denial; the signs have admittedly been there for a while, but Ellie had to intervene to get me to accept what that meant. And before you ask, we did tests, and it’s not reversible. The suit’s completely fused with me, there’s no way to remove it.”
Damon nodded. “I assumed as much; otherwise, with your hatred for ghosts, you’d have removed it as soon as you noticed.”
Valerie couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “Ironic, huh? The ghost-hating ghost-hunter ends up part-ghost.”
“Yes, the universe sure does love irony,” Damon mused. “The kid of ghost hunters becoming part-ghost is awfully ironic, too, after all… So, it’s not just powers, then? When you say part-ghost, you mean…?”
Valerie sighed with resignation. “Yeah. Like I said, Ellie and I did tests. The suit’s gradually been turning me into a halfa, complete with a ghost core—not a fully developed one, not yet, but it’s at about 41% formed from what we can tell, and likely not going to stop. Once the core is developed I’ll be a bonafide halfa—though before you ask, it’s not technically killing me to do that. I’m basically a whole new case study, one that didn’t have to die first, or be cloned, to become a halfa.
“Anyway, the suit’s more or less my ‘ghost form’, as Ellie calls the ghost transformation. Even under the suit I look different now, with golden glowing eyes and my hair is developing some white streaks—we suspect it’ll eventually be fully white in that form, like Danny’s and hers, but it’s hard to know anything for sure since they’re both stable at 90%. We don’t know what percent of halfa I’ll end up stopping at… or if it even will,” she said the last part more quietly.
“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Damon gently decided. “Now, still up for that ice cream?” he asked as he stood and stretched his back, easily catching onto his daughter wanting to be done with the conversation.
Valerie smiled at her father, glad that they had no more secrets and that he still fully supported her, and this time stood as well. “Sounds good, dad.”
Notes:
Next up: Some of the bullies are back, and try to bully Danny again; Paulina is so not having it, and the other girls (and Kwan) join her to defend Danny. Then, Danny has a small breakdown where he rants and lets something slip, and afterwards decides to tell his friends about the summer after 8th grade. Expect it Sunday!
Chapter 22: Learning to Ask For (and Accept) Help
Summary:
Dale and Ben are back, and when they try to bully Danny again, to Sam's surprise Paulina takes charge and gives them a piece of her mind! Then Danny, realizing his friends truly do want to help and maybe he can't do this alone, decides to tell them about the summer before high school.
Notes:
If you haven't checked in since last weekend, you might be confused as to this chapter's appearance as it wasn't initially mentioned in the "coming next weekend" note. The first scene was, but I added some more scenes because I realized that scene needed a follow-up and also that Danny still hadn't told his friends about his suicide attempt, and both added so many words it would have made the chapter 17k words! So I split it; now they're both between 8k and 9k.
Both chapters will be posted today; this is the 1st of them. Also, last Friday I posted one, so don't forget to read chapter 21 if you haven't yet!
This is another more intense chapter--there's no physical violence, but there's some harsh verbal bullying and some heavy topics are discussed, including suicide.
CW: bullying (verbal, including suicide baiting, and locker vandalism), homophobic language (including 1 instance of f*g), discussion of drugs, discussion of suicide attempt, implied previous teenage sexual behavior (no different than many high school kids regularly gossip about)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Okay, who the hell did this to MY BOYFRIEND’S locker?!” Paulina loudly demanded, audible to Sam even from down the hallway and around the corner. Sam found herself impressed at the volume and clear anger in it… Wait, her boyfriend? Meaning, Danny?
Sam quickened her pace and darted around the corner, pushing through the gathered crowd to see what was going on. She froze and her eyes widened as she took on the scene.
“Sam!” Tucker said, grabbing her to tug her over to the side, close to Danny, who was partly cowed behind Paulina, who was glaring at the crowd with her hands on her hips, clearly expecting someone to come forward.
“Found them!” Star called, pulling Dale along by the ear, the crowd parting for her. Ember followed behind with Ken, and Valerie with Ben.
“Ow ow ow! What the hell, girl!?” Ben complained.
“You’re going to rip my ear off!” Ken whimpered, attempting to grab Ember’s hand on his ear, but she just phased his hand away.
“Overheard Ben and Dale bragging about it,” Valerie told Paulina. “Ken was applauding them for it.”
“We didn’t know the little fairy was Paulina’s boyfriend, okay? We’re sorry!” Dale whined, as Star, Valerie, and Ember released the boys; Valerie and Ember moved to stand near Danny, but Star stayed on the boys’ other side to encourage the crowd to block them from retreating.
Paulina crossed her arms and scowled at the three. “That doesn’t matter! It’s the 21st century. There’s no excuse for writing homophobic slurs on someone’s locker!”
“Yeah, that’s not cool man!” Kwan added, on the other side of Paulina.
Dale scoffed. “Oh, right, I heard you’d turned soft,” he sneered at Kwan. “Dunno why Dash even kept you around in the first place, seriously. When he gets back in January—”
“When he gets back,” Kwan cut Dale off, “He’s going to be helping me fight bullies like you.”
Ken laughed. “Seriously? You think The King is going to defend plebeians like Fenturd? You’re delusional. And Paulina, baby, you ought to dump this cocksucking loser now, because the words on the locker? Totally true, just you wait.”
Paulina rolled her eyes. “Uh huh. Big words for a senior who’s never even kissed someone.”
“Hey! I’ve totally kissed someone!” Ken protested, perhaps a little too quickly.
“Besides, it’s not like Fentwerp’s got any experience with girls either,” Ben chimed in.
Ember laughed at that. “Dude, you for real? Did you not see the concert at all? Kid’s a GREAT kisser!”
“That was for show, it doesn’t count,” Ben scowled.
“Oh, you really think that was the first time we kissed? Get real,” Ember said with an amused eyeroll.
“I can also confirm that he’s a good kisser,” Valerie chimed in.
“So can I,” Sam told them. Like hell was she going to be left out of humiliating these jerks… Even if she had to lie, because Danny actually was not that good at kissing, though maybe that wouldn’t have been the case if any of them were boys.
“As can I,” Paulina said with a victorious smirk. “Danny’s got more game than you three assholes combined!”
“In fact, we got to second base,” Ember told them smugly. “Have any of you boys gotten to second base?”
Sam noted that Danny was covering his face and blushing; she wondered if that were true or not, and if so, when? Maybe Ember’s definition of it was different? She did grow up in the 70s after all… Oh, wait, some people included over-clothes stuff in that category, and the two, with Danny in Phantom form, had been ‘caught’ by the press in some very scandalous situations involving such (staged of course). Ember was probably referencing that.
“Of course!” Dale countered. “Maybe these two haven’t, but I definitely have.”
“Hey!” Ben and Ken said simultaneously, though neither refuted that.
Sam grinned mischievously. “What about third base?” she asked innocently. “He got to third base with me.” Even though it had only been once, and very brief because Danny clearly hadn’t really been into it despite telling her he wanted to, which was the final nail in the coffin for Sam’s conclusion that Danny did not like her in that way.
“Sam!” Danny hissed, hands still trying to cover his reddened face.
“Damn, Fenton really does got more game than anyone here,” Kwan said, sounding impressed.
“Well, more than any boys here,” Paulina said with a playful smirk. “I can assure you that some of the girls, including me, have gone much further.” Star giggled at those words, and Sam had a feeling the two girls likely had already reached home base with each other.
Ken scoffed. “Seriously? With who?”
“That’s my secret,” Paulina said with a wink. “But I know who I’ll be going that far with next…” She not-so-subtly glanced at Danny.
“Hmph. Whatever, fine, I get it, so Fenton’s not a fag then. Still,” Ken said with a cruel sneer, then tried to get the upper hand by veering to, “I see you didn’t refute the other thing written, hm? The ‘junkie’ bit? That one is true, right?”
“Yeah, everyone knows Fentina’s a pill-popper,” Ben chimed in. “He’s not subtle.” Then he addressed Danny directly, “What’s your drug of choice, dopehead? Oxy? Speed? Diet Coke? Scratch?”
Sam noticed Danny tense very slightly at the last one, which was a slang name for Vicodin, the generic name of which was hydrocodone, which he’d been addicted to—Sam felt a small flash of guilt, since she felt that she had been the one to cause that. Danny shrunk into himself more, looking like he was trying not to cry.
Dale chimed in with a vicious grin, “You know, Fenturd, maybe you should just take the whole bottle; everyone would be better off for it.”
Sam inhaled sharply; the entire crowd seemed to bristle at that, yelling and booing, even the ones who had initially seemed entertained by the scene—it seemed that was one step too far even for the sympathizers. Sam’s fists tightened as she held herself back from punching the bastard.
“Don’t worry, I’m recording it,” Tucker whispered to Sam, and she realized he did indeed have a small camcorder subtly poking out of his jacket’s pocket. Sam closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose; a physical fight wouldn’t help things. Hopefully someone thought to go get a teacher, because this was getting way out of hand!
Ken, ignoring the clearly-angry crowd, continued, “Imagine that, Paulina’s boyfriend, not just a loser but a druggie too. How low can you go…”
Kwan was the one who scoffed at that. “Oh, like you’re one to talk, Ken. We all know those muscles are not just from the gym.”
“Excuse me?!” Ken bristled, glaring at him.
“Dude! That shit’s a team secret!” Ben declared, looking scandalized.
Sam blinked. Huh; so the football team, or at least some of them, doped up. That… wasn’t actually that surprising in retrospect, and explained why a disproportionate amount of them were way larger than high-school kids should be.
Sam vaguely noted Valerie and Danny were now making faces at each other and whispering, some sort of conversation at a volume that was too-quiet for human ears. Ember noticed and joined in too… Were they plotting something?
“Dude, you’re not even on the team anymore, it’s not like it matters to you,” Kwan replied.
“Because of you!” Ben growled. “If you hadn’t intervened—”
“Like I’ve told you before, if I hadn’t intervened, Danny would be dead,” Kwan asserted. “What part of that don’t you get? Dash wasn’t stopping.”
“Whatever, fine, I guess stopping him was right, but you didn’t have to blab about everything! You should have just kept your damn mouth shut. But no, you had to—”
“If I ‘kept my damn mouth shut’, Dash wouldn’t have faced consequences, and would still be bullying people,” Kwan practically growled.
“So? We’d also still be on the team!”
“Is that all you care about!?” Kwan shouted. “The damn team!? Well, sorry, but some of us have a little thing called ‘morals’, and those morals tell us that human lives are worth more than being on some damn sports team!”
“Why you—” Ben’s lunge forward was cut off by an icy wind as the temperature dropped until everyone could see their breaths and frost climbed over the lockers lining the walls; all the lockers except for a few, conveniently Danny’s and his friends’, then burst open and the items in them began flying around.
As students began looking fearful and started to scatter, Sam glanced towards the three ghostly students; Danny’s eyes glowed a sharper blue, Ember’s glowed a brighter green, and Valerie’s seared gold. All three looked like they were hiding amusement despite also clearly being angry and upset. Danny was responsible for the temperature and icy wind; Ember was likely responsible for the telekinesis; and Valerie… Oh, she must be why everyone was suddenly so afraid, as usually ghost attacks did not elicit so strong a reaction from most students anymore.
As the hallway cleared out, with Ben, Ken, and Dale all strangely tripping more than once on the way, the ghostly students’ eyes stopped glowing and their abilities all ceased—well, mostly. Danny seemed to have forgotten to return the temperature back to normal, although the blizzard had vanished.
“Um. What just happened?” Paulina wondered, looking around. Her, Star, Sam, Kwan, Tucker, Ember, Valerie, and Danny were the only ones left.
“Some badass ghost shit happened, that’s what!” Tucker cheered.
“Sorry; I just was kinda fed up with everything,” Danny sheepishly admitted.
“It was a group effort,” Ember said.
“Ghosts can make people feel fear if they want to,” Valerie explained, without giving herself away. “Pretty sure that’s why everyone ran.”
Hurried footsteps sounded, and Lancer turned the corner. “War of the Worlds!” he proclaimed upon noticing the open lockers and scattered contents. “I saw everyone fleeing—Just what went on here?!”
Ellie then raced around the corner too, yelling, “Sorry I’m late! I—whoa, what did I miss?”
“Ghost attack,” Star said simply.
“Don’t worry, Phantom stopped it,” Paulina said matter-of-factly.
The school bell rang, but the group ignored it.
Lancer raised an eyebrow. “Phantom stopped it, huh?” He looked at Danny. “So why is Phantom’s ice still in the hallway and the temperature still near-freezing?”
Danny blinked, processing that, then blushed. “Oops,” he said, and then the temperature returned to normal and the ice vanished.
“So, what ghost might you have been fighting?” Lancer asked. “Since it’s awfully interesting the alarm system didn’t ring; as far as I know, most of the ones programmed in as exceptions are all right here, and have promised me there will be no play-fighting on school grounds…”
“No ghosts; only bullies,” Poindexter said, appearing out of thin air… Sam couldn’t help but give a little smile as she realized that the ghost must have been the one to trip Ben, Ken, and Dale. “They used their ghost powers to scare them away before anything physical could start, but it did get close to it. However, there was a lot of verbal bullying, and some vandalism.” Sidney gestured to the locker.
Lancer gasped as he saw what was graffitied upon it.
“It’s okay!” Paulina said. “We convinced everyone that those things aren’t true!” Then amended, “Well, the gay part at least.” Yeah, Sam had to agree that the druggie allegations weren’t going away.
“Yeah, but now I’m pretty sure there’s going to be different rumors going around,” Danny muttered, looking at the floor and blushing again, though something seemed off, more like it was automatic, a scripted sentence instead of an organic one.
“Who did it?” Lancer sharply demanded.
“Ben, Ken, and Dale,” Kwan immediately reported.
“It’s okay,” Danny said. “They’re just still upset that I got them kicked off the football team, can’t really blame them for retaliating…”
“Daniel,” Lancer said firmly, yet kindly. “It is their own actions that got them kicked off the team, not yours. And regardless of the situation, vandalism, especially when involving hate speech, is unacceptable,” he said, gesturing to the locker.
“I guess,” Danny said, looking a little despondent; it seemed like any adrenaline rush gained from making the bullies leave was quickly dropping, if Sam had to guess.
“They said worse, verbally,” Tucker spoke up, holding up the camcorder, which he held out to Lancer. “I secretly recorded it.”
“Worse?” Lancer asked in a whisper with eyes wide as he accepted the camera.
“Suicide baiting,” Kwan said quietly, looking especially worried… Did he know something? Danny had said concerning things before; was that an actual risk…?
Lancer sucked in a sharp breath, then looked immensely angry. “This will not go unpunished,” he asserted. “Get to class now; I’ll take it from here.”
“Wait, don’t we need late slips?” Ellie reminded him.
“Ah, yes,” Lancer said as he pulled out a pad of late slips and then looked at the group. “Well, eight of the nine of you are in my homeroom and first period class, so that makes this easy,” he said as he signed a single pass, tore it off, and gave it to Ellie, who hurried off with it. “I’ll go find the janitor to get the locker cleaned up, and then I need to talk to Ishiyama; the rest of you, head to class, let the other students know that it’s just a study hall until I get there.”
Sam almost pointed out that that likely was not going to result in any studying, then decided the bullies getting punished was more important than maintaining order in the classroom.
“Mr. Lancer? Can I take Danny to the nurse instead?” Ember asked, arm around Danny’s shoulders as he looked at the ground, seeming to be barely paying attention. “I think he’s a little overwhelmed; you know, the whole ghost emotion thing? There was a lot of anger in the air.”
“Also, the locker room incident got brought up, when I was arguing with Ben, Ken, and Dale,” Kwan pointed out.
“Danny?” Sam asked, looking closely at his face. Definitely some sort of dissociative episode, possibly triggered by trying to avoid panicking in public—Danny tried to hide them, or play them off as nothing major, but Sam was pretty certain he got anxiety attacks of some sort.
Tucker waved a hand in front of Danny’s face and said, “Dude, you in there?”
Danny shook his head back and forth slowly. He clutched his biceps with his hands, shivering slightly and ‘breathing’ rather fast. He looked close to passing out, honestly; Sam was sure if Danny needed to breathe, he would have passed out by now.
“I can bring him to the nurse,” Lancer offered.
Danny curled into Ember’s side, nonverbally indicating he wanted her with him—and for once Sam found herself not jealous, to her surprise. Which was good, because she also knew that Ember was the right choice for this situation—there had been a lot of anger and upset in the air, which Danny had trouble with now that he could sense it. He needed a friend whose anger he couldn’t sense, and Sam was definitely still outraged at the whole situation.
Lancer sighed. “Okay, Ember can bring him to the nurse,” he decided.
“No, I’m fine,” Danny said quietly. “I can go to class.”
“I beg to differ,” Lancer said.
“Babypop, it’s okay to admit when you aren’t okay,” Ember told him gently as she rubbed his shoulder. “That was a lot of anger in the air—it’s one of the emotions your core reacts negatively to, right? It was tough on me, too, and it’s not even one of my real bad emotions.”
“I can handle anger,” Danny said. “I mean, it doesn’t make anything better, but I’m just… upset in general I guess? But I shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t be freaking out so much about this…”
“Dude, it’s okay,” Tucker said. “You’re allowed to ask for help if you need it.”
“Why do you think you shouldn’t be upset about this?” Sam asked; maybe getting Danny to admit to the root of the issue would get him to see that it was actually okay for him to be upset.
“Because!” Danny said, pulling away from Ember and waving a hand towards the locker. “They’re just words! They didn’t assault me or anything. What’s the saying adults always say? ‘Sticks and stones break bones, but words can’t hurt’?”
“That is an outdated saying that is not nor has ever been true,” Lancer said firmly.
“Okay, fine, but I still shouldn’t let it bother me. I’m supposed to be the Town Hero! Instead, I’m having a near panic-attack over some fucking words! I’m supposed to be strong, instead I’m just some suicidal gay loser junkie with fucking PTSD and anxiety and depression and whatever other diagnoses they slapped on there, because apparently fucking dying wasn’t enough for the universe—and I couldn’t even do that right! Maybe Dale was right.” He muttered the last sentence almost inaudibly.
Sam shivered as the temperature dropped so low she could see her breath.
“Okay, nope, none of that again,” Ember said, putting a hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you away from the crowd and somewhere quiet to cool down, okay?”
“I’m fine,” Danny ground out tersely.
Sam bit back a clever quip about the display two seconds prior being an indication that that was completely false, particularly giving the suicidal portion.
“Humor me, then,” Ember said.
Danny shook his head.
Lancer then pulled Danny aside and quietly asked him something; Danny tensed slightly, then wilted and nodded his head while looking at the ground. Lancer then said something else, and Danny sighed and looked at Lancer, nodding again before he quickly said something, and Lancer replied, a lengthy one that looked like it ended in another question. Danny wrapped his hands around his upper arms and looked down, nodding slowly, looking like he was holding back tears, then Lancer said something else which was followed by a small sigh from Danny and then another nod. Then Lancer gestured Ember over, and Danny complied as she guided Danny towards the medical wing, both of them floating; hopefully no one outside their group saw before they reached the nurse’s office.
“Okay; the rest of you, back to class,” Lancer told the group, then sighed. “I’ll join you when I finish dealing with…” He made a sweeping gesture, “Everything.”
“Before you get to punishing the bullies,” Poindexter chimed in, “You might want to know that there are also allegations of steroid use among them and other football team members.”
Lancer looked at Kwan, who nodded and confirmed, “Yeah. It’s been going on for a couple months—mostly among the seniors who are trying to get drafted by college teams.”
Lancer sighed with exasperation. “I see. In that case I will order testing for the school athletes, too,” he said, then muttered under his breath with slight frustration, “again.” He continued in a normal tone, “Now, hurry along.”
Lancer, headed to the administrative and medical wing, went the opposite direction of Sam, Tucker, Paulina, Star, Valerie, and Kwan, who were headed to the classroom.
“I didn’t realize Danny struggled so much,” Paulina said quietly. Sam almost instinctually spat a mean retort that she knew she’d immediately regret (she actually kinda liked that she now could get along with Paulina somewhat!), but then Paulina surprised Sam by continuing, “I wi—would really like it if there was some way I could help him…”
“You already are helping,” Sam told her. “I mean it. Yelling at those jocks like that? Brilliant!” she said heartfeltly.
“You mean it?” Paulina asked, voice a mix of skepticism and hope.
“Yeah, actually,” Sam said. “That was seriously badass.”
“Hey, you played a role too; it wasn’t all me!” Paulina reminded her.
“Still, you started it. Also, you’re helping just by being his friend, you know—in general, I mean, not just the fake-girlfriend thing.”
“You really think so? I feel like it’s not enough…”
“Don’t worry; it really is helping,” Sam told her confidently.
“Well, if you think of any other ways I can help, just let me know,” Paulina said with a smile.
“Sure thing,” Sam easily agreed, and the group was quiet for a moment as they walked; their class was annoyingly far from Danny’s locker.
“You know, I don’t really feel like going to class after that,” Valerie said with a heavy sigh, echoing what Sam was feeling.
“I vote we skip; it’s just a study hall,” Tucker suggested.
“As much as I’d like to, I already have three days of detention for skipping yesterday,” Kwan said. “My parents weren’t happy at all. I’m stuck helping the maid clean the house in preparation for Thanksgiving! If I get detention again, they’ll probably make me do it without her.”
Paulina sighed. “I want to as well, but if I get in any more trouble this year, Daddy says he won’t let me use the yacht for our winter party.”
“The winter party’s gonna be on a yacht?” Tucker asked in awe.
“Yup! Daddy just bought a new one,” Paulina informed them. “We’re gonna have professional fireworks, too!”
“Well, I’m cool with skipping,” Sam decided, steering the topic away from maids, yachts, and other rich kid topics. This time skipping was worth the pain of another charity event. “How about Nasty Burger?”
“Ugh, no, not my workplace,” Valerie moaned.
“How about that cute bakery on Main Street?” Star suggested.
“You’re coming with us?” Sam confirmed.
Star shrugged. “Sure, why not,” she said as they passed their class, upon which Paulina and Kwan waved bye and entered the classroom while the remaining four continued towards the exit.
Sam looked around at the hodgepodge group; if someone just a few months ago had told her she and Tucker would someday be playing hooky with Star and Valerie, she would have laughed in their face. There seemed to be a lot of situations that applied to lately… Including allowing Ember to take Danny to the vampiric school nurse (and vampires existing in the first place).
Meanwhile, Lancer entered his office, after requesting that the secretary (she was actually in on time for once!) check if Ishiyama was available and if so to request an immediate meeting, so the two of them could review the footage from the camcorder, after which they’d meet with the three bullies. He put the camcorder on the desk and then pulled out a request form for the sports drug testing from a file cabinet (sadly not having to look very hard; it seemed like every other year this happened!), grabbed a request form for APPD to visit, this time with a request to hold an anti-bullying assembly (also not hard to find, as he’d just recently filled out the same form for the drug assembly), then grabbed three disciplinary forms (suspension was what he was thinking), and turned to his desk.
Theoretically he should probably also give Danny and Ember detention for using their ghost powers in the hallway to create chaos, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that, especially given Danny’s breakdown. Besides, what would he write on the forms for that?
Before he sat down, Lancer casually glanced out the window, did a double-take, then sighed in exasperation as he watched the Red Huntress fly off with Sam, Tucker, and Star seated on her board. He grabbed four more disciplinary forms (they’d be getting detention) before finally sitting at his desk, wondering if he would be able to fill out all the paperwork before Ishiyama arrived.
But first… Lancer picked up the phone to call Nurse West; he wanted her to have Danny call Dr. Warren, as the boy had admitted to him that he was having some dark thoughts again; Danny promised he wouldn’t actually do anything, and although Lancer did believe him, he would much rather be safe than sorry. Plus, the boy had admitted to a desire to take pills again after that encounter, claiming he had none available but although Lancer wanted to trust Danny on that front he knew better than to fully accept it at face value, so again, best be sure he had someone who could properly talk him through that urge.
Lancer shook away the thought that he could really use a drink; he’d been sober for five years at this point, made it through years of ghost attacks without it, and wouldn’t let this be what did him in. Instead, he’d grab some tea later. Lancer sincerely hoped that Danny managed to get through his own cravings as well.
Later that day, Danny sat down at an outdoor lunch table beside Ellie, while across from them Ember sat between Paulina and Kwan (so her fire could keep them warm). It seemed the other members of their usual group had decided to ditch the entire day.
Before he could even take his lunch from his backpack, Danny’s ghost sense went off; he turned to see a small ectopus floating near their table. It wasn’t doing much; Danny stared at it, debating if he had the energy.
“You gonna get that?” Paulina asked.
Danny sighed. “I guess,” he said tiredly, not even bothering to fight it, rather simply summoning the thermos and sucking it in.
“Dude! That must be a record!” Kwan cheered.
“To be fair, it was just floating there doing nothing,” Ember pointed out.
“Yeah, wouldn’t it be great if all rogue ghosts were that easy to catch?” Ellie said.
Danny scoffed. “Man, I sure wi—W-I-S-H—”
“I can spell, you know,” came a sultry voice from beside his ear, and Danny jumped in his seat and twisted around, looking wide-eyed at Desiree. What was she doing here?! And why didn’t his ghost sense—oh. The ectopus was to hide her presence.
Danny could have quipped something about Desiree thinking she was so clever for that, but he was still tired from earlier. So instead he sighed, slumping his shoulders. “Look, I really don’t want to fight right now, so if you could just hop in the thermos too, that’d be great,” he told her, giving her a sullen glare.
“Relax,” Desiree said with a chuckle. “I’m not here to fight.”
“You’re not?” Danny asked skeptically.
“No. This time, I am the one with a request.”
Danny was sure his eyebrows rose into his hair. “You have a request for me?!”
“Did I stutter? Yes, I have a request,” Desiree confirmed. “Specifically, one for your little band—word on the street is that it’s pretty good. I’m hosting our region’s Christmas Truce Gala in my palace this year, on Christmas Eve, and I would like your band to play.”
“Done,” Ember immediately answered.
“Hey! Don’t agree to things without asking everyone else!” Danny told her.
“Oh come on, like you’d turn it down?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Sounds fun to me!” Ellie said.
“Pretty sure Kitty, Johnny, and Clocky will be game too,” Ember added. “Dunno about the humans though.”
“Sam and Tucker have things with their own families,” Danny told her. Sam’s family was taking their annual 4-night post-Hanukkah cruise to the Bahamas from the 24th to 28th (she’d barely be back in time for the A-list party they’d be playing at on the 30th), and Tucker’s family always had a big celebration with his extended family. Jack and Jazz would probably both love to come to the Truce Party despite being the only humans there (if there was an issue with them being regular attendees, Danny could just say they were part of the stage crew).
“Well, we can adapt,” Ember said easily. “Benefit of a shit ton of members.”
“Hold on one moment,” Desiree interjected, then asked with a voice heavy with suspicion, “Who is this ‘Clocky’ you mentioned?”
“Clockwork,” Danny explained. “He joined the band like a week ago, he uses his teenage form for it.”
Desiree stared at Danny with incredulity for a moment, then concluded, “Surely you jest.”
“Nope, he’s really in it,” Ember said. “Teenage form is cool Clocky, hence the band. Adult Clocky is like Danny’s dad though, so it’s kinda weird, because it’ll be like a fun casual teen hangout and you’ll forget he’s, well, him, but then Danny will say or do something that Clocky disapproves of and suddenly he’ll just transform to his middle-age form and start being all parental.”
“...Parental,” Desiree repeated. “Clockwork is… parental, to you?” She looked worried.
“Yeah, he, like, basically adopted me,” Danny said. “Observants told him I was his responsibility, and I guess he interpreted that as ‘be his parent’. Now, are you going to return to the Ghost Zone on your own, or do I need to thermos you?”
Desiree scrunched her nose. “Still as rude as ever, I see. But fine; I will return on my own. I shall see you at the gala.” She turned and flew off in the direction of the portal, thankfully not questioning why the Observants had been involved.
“Twenty to one she stays away from Amity Park from now on,” Ember said with a grin.
“Why?” Danny wondered.
“She’s terrified of Clockwork, and definitely won’t want to risk harming his ‘son’.” She snickered at that.
“Clockwork’s the time ghost, right?” Paulina asked. “Why’s she afraid of him?”
Ember shrugged. “No one really knows. Whatever happened to make her afraid, it was a really really long time ago, and she sure as hell won’t talk about it… Oh, hey, Danny, maybe you can ask Clocky about it! He might tell you.”
“Maybe,” Danny said semi-listlessly as he pulled out his lunch; the others took out their lunches too, all packed rather than the cafeteria’s questionable slop-of-the-day (Kwan’s was something called ‘gimbap’, which his mom often packed for him (Danny initially thought it was sushi, but when they got some sushi from a new place in the food court during their mall trip after school a few days prior and Danny asked how it compared to his mom’s version, Kwan explained that gimbap was apparently very different from sushi despite the looks); Paulina’s was what looked like some sort of salad topped with lobster, allegedly made my her family’s personal chef; and Ember’s, Ellie’s, and Danny’s were all different sandwiches made with ecto-bread from MU’s cafeteria).
“It’s weird without Star here,” Paulina commented after a while.
“Yeah, you two are always together,” Ember said.
“I wonder what they’re doing?” Danny mused; it was also weird without Sam and Tucker being there. Danny had honestly thought it was a joke when Paulina told him during third period (he’d needed all of first and second to get into a well enough mental state to be cleared to go back to class; he had felt that he could return earlier than that, but Nurse West insisted not just on him waiting, but also insisted that he call Dr. Warren, and Danny didn’t have much choice but to agree to that, especially as he’d been thinking a lot about Dale’s comment—the pills currently in his backpack, which he hadn’t taken since rehab, had really been calling to him) that Sam, Tucker, Valerie, and Star all decided to skip together.
“Who knows,” Ellie said. “More importantly, Danny, eat your sandwich, or I will.”
“You can have it; I’m not that hungry,” Danny told her.
Ellie frowned and scrunched her brow in slight confusion. “You’re not hungry? But you didn’t have breakfast either.”
Ember sighed loudly and grabbed the sandwich. “Eat, dipstick,” she said, all but shoving it in Danny’s mouth.
“Hey!” Danny tried to say, but it just came out as a “Mmph!”. He took a bite as he grabbed it from Ember’s hand with both of his, then swallowed before saying, “Seriously?! That wasn’t necessary!”
“Sure it was; if your older sis finds out we caught you not eating and didn’t do anything about it, she’ll… Well, I dunno what she’ll do, but I don’t want to find out,” Ember stated matter-of-factly.
“Fine,” Danny surrendered, taking another bite; yeah, if Jazz found out he was skipping meals again, she would not be happy. He’d end up regretting it later, too, if he skipped too many, as he’d found out the hard way, when he collapsed at Lancer’s place… Stupid depression, making him not hungry when he should be. He’d thought that had been improving, but apparently that loss of appetite enjoyed rearing its head the most when Danny was stressed, and this whole week had definitely filled Danny’s capacity for stress, despite only being Wednesday.
“Hey, Danny?” Kwan asked after a few more minutes with everyone focused on eating. He looked a little nervous. “I… um. I’m not sure how to ask, but… um…”
“You have questions about this morning,” Danny quickly realized, abandoning his half-eaten sandwich again. He’d gone on that rant without paying much attention to who was there; not everyone there had known everything… “You probably do too, Paulina…”
“What, about the drugs?” Paulina said. “Please; I’m smarter than people tend to give me credit for, you know. You took painkillers a lot, you were pulled out of school while there was a locker check, and when you came back you weren’t taking them anymore. Obviously the rehab rumors were the true one, not the potential-school-shooter rumor.”
“Oh,” Danny said. “Okay. And you’re okay with… ‘dating’ someone like that…?”
“If I weren’t, we wouldn’t be ‘dating’, fake or not,” Paulina said simply.
Danny relaxed. “That’s good to know,” he said with relief, then, “Wait, Kwan knows it’s fake?”
“Kwan knows about me and Star,” Paulina said.
“And I’m perfectly cool with being the token straight dude!” Kwan announced; Danny felt a small pang of disappointment for reasons he didn’t know (okay, maybe he did know the reason, just didn’t want to admit it), which he quickly pushed down.
Danny and Ellie both then did a double-take. “Wait, you know!?” they said simultaneously.
“Jinx! You owe me a soda,” Ellie said. Danny tried handing her his own ecto-drink, which he hadn’t opened yet, but Ellie declined. “Just steal me one from the vending machine, I’m not going to take yours when you should be drinking it… Later, because you know we can’t have the radioactive kind around humans.”
Danny checked the bottle. “Damn, grabbed the wrong one,” he realized, then shoved it in his backpack.
“Um. Back to your question, yeah, or at least I’m pretty certain,” Kwan said. “I’m also not as oblivious as people think—once I realized you’re Paulina’s beard I began thinking about things and realized you’ve never seemed super into any of the girls you dated, not like how other guys act with their girlfriends. Like, I’m pretty good at telling when people are acting, and it was definitely more like you were acting, or maybe honestly trying to like them but ultimately just pretending and hoping it would grow into something real.”
“And Kwan knows acting,” Paulina said. “He did it a lot when we were kids.”
Kwan blushed. “Paulina! That was a secret.”
“You were a child star?” Ember asked curiously. “That’s so cool!”
“Not a star, just small roles, Star’s parents are actors and sometimes needed kids… I was a lot more into it than her, but then football took too much time to continue.”
“Wait, Kwan did it, but not you?” Ellie asked Paulina.
“Well, I only became friends with Star freshman year,” Paulina revealed, to Danny’s surprise; they had always acted like best friends from day one! “When she was younger, she lived in Hollywood, when her parents did a lot more acting—now they only do occasional major films, no need for constant smaller roles.”
“Our dads have been friends since childhood,” Kwan said, in explanation of how he knew Star when he’d lived in Amity Park his whole life. “Probably as close as you and Tucker.”
“Huh. That explains why you were sometimes out of school for weeks at a time,” Danny realized.
“Anyway, back to the questions,” Kwan said, vibes clearly indicating that he was done with talking about his past as a child actor.
“Wait, first, how do you know I’m gay?” Ellie asked curiously.
“Well, if Danny is, I figured you are too, right?” Kwan said. “I mean, being gay is not a choice, from my understanding…” He trailed off, the implication being that her being Danny’s clone had led him to the surmisation.
“Huh. Yeah, you’re right, you’re definitely more observant than I thought,” Ellie concluded.
“So, if the question isn’t about me being gay or a junkie, what’s it about? I, er, don’t remember everything I said in that rant,” Danny admitted; he did have a suspicion though, as his mind had been a little too focused on Dale’s ‘suggestion’ at the time.
“Yeah, I don’t really remember exactly either,” Paulina said. “I know you mentioned depression and PTSD, but, like, that’s kinda obvious, no offense. You don’t hide that you’re in therapy.”
“No offense taken,” Danny said, chuckling wryly. “Anxiety too. Nothing’s officially diagnosed yet, but all that’s been heavily talked about; Dr. Warren’s meeting with me and Dad soon to give a final diagnosis…”
He had that appointment that evening, in fact; the appointment had been rescheduled from the previous day, and was a 7pm one. They also would likely discuss medicine, although that could be especially tricky for ghosts apparently. Danny was surprised it had only been a month of seeing him; maybe it was the going multiple-times-a-week and having occasional extra sessions during ‘crises’, like earlier that day when he’d called him—apparently the nurse was worried about… Oh. Danny recalled exactly what he’d said that Kwan would be worried about.
“Honestly, for a teenage superhero the town treats so horribly, any of those things developing isn’t surprising,” Paulina said. “I mean, real life is definitely not like the kids’ movies and TV series we grew up on, where everyone’s miraculously fine after every traumatizing event.”
Danny looked down at the table, took a deep breath, and admitted, “It’s not new, actually. Well maybe the PTSD is, maybe the anxiety too, but the depression’s definitely been around since before…” he trailed off, letting the implication hang.
“So, what Dash told me was true…” Kwan mused.
Danny scrunched his brow in confusion. “What Dash told you…? Wait,” Danny said as his eyes widened. “Dash told you about the conversation at the docks!?”
“What conversation?” Paulina asked.
“I saved him from a ghost last week, and we had a talk,” Danny revealed. “It got a little heated, and I, as Phantom, told him some things. So it’s true you’ve been talking to Dash again?”
“Against my advice,” Paulina muttered.
Kwan nodded. “Yeah. I tried to do a friend-breakup, but… Well, he seems sincere about wanting to change.”
“Yeah, I actually got those vibes from him last week,” Danny revealed. “He wants to stop bullying…”
“Yeah. He told me that Phantom gave him quite a talk down about what he’s done in the past, and that he swore to Phantom he’d stop. I told him that if he helps me rid the school of it, we can tentatively keep being friends… I mean, we’ve been friends with each other since diapers, so it’s hard to let him go…”
“I get that,” Danny said earnestly, thinking about him and Tucker and what Danny might do if Tucker went down a bad path like that. “What exactly did he tell you?”
“Well, he didn’t say much,” Kwan revealed, “And he did swear me to secrecy, but he did say Phantom told him that he was bullied badly in the past, to the point he was suicidal at one point, and earlier during that rant you used that term too…”
Danny winced. “Ah. Yeah, I… Let’s just say 8th grade was my lowest mentally, and unlike after the accident—which was unrelated, before you ask—I didn’t have the whole Phantom situation to distract me from those feelings and give me a reason to want to stay around.”
“But… you’re still… suicidal?” Kwan asked quietly.
Danny sighed, looking at the table again, staring at a knot in the wood. “Yeah. Sometimes I still wi—wonder if I’d be better off if, well, you know. If the portal accident had finished the job instead of doing what it did.” He looked up at Kwan. “But I wouldn’t do it, I swear! I have too much going for me now to even think about trying that again, there’s too many people who would be upset. Plus the town in general needs me, even if many of them still hate me.”
“Wait, hold up,” Ellie interjected. “What do you mean, ‘again’?!”
Danny winced. He didn’t want to say that. “I…” He curled up on himself slightly, putting his hands on his upper arms, looking at the table again. “I may have… before the accident… I told you, 8th grade was really bad… I actually told Dash about that during the conversation, guess he kept that a secret? As Phantom, I told him that Fenton told me about that, since he was the cause of things getting that bad…” Danny closed his eyes. He probably should be telling his longer friends this too… “You know what, Sam and Tucker should be here for this. Jazz too. Can we meet after school to talk about this?” He would be telling his Dad soon too, at the behest of Dr. Warren, in his therapy session that night, and the man had suggested he talk to his friends about his suicidal thoughts, particularly after today’s incident.
The others agreed, Paulina and Kwan’s vibes a mix of curiosity, sadness, and pity, but it was counteracted by Ellie and Ember sending pulses of comfort and support to him from their cores (Ember doing that earlier had been a major help too, probably saved him from an even larger breakdown). Danny had a feeling he wasn’t going to be able to focus much in class later, but unlike his other friends he didn’t want to skip—he already had enough detention this week.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in detention?” Valerie asked Danny, Ember, and Kwan as Sam escorted the three, along with Ellie and Paulina, into her very large movie-theater basement that had become a general teen hangout space. A few couches had been installed (a hodgepodge of styles, intentionally pissing off Sam’s parents) since the last time Valerie saw it, to accommodate everyone in their hodgepodge group just in case they all were there, which apparently was today.
“Oh, shit, forgot about that,” Kwan said, looking worried.
“Eh, I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Ember said with a wave.
“I’ll just say there was a ghost,” Danny agreed. “That… for some reason all three of us had to be there to catch?”
“I mean, Boxy did show up on the way, even if he took three seconds to catch,” Ember pointed out. “Literally.”
“So, why’d you want us all here to talk?” Valerie asked curiously. She wondered if he’d intentionally sought for her to be there, or if it was just because she had been with the others already.
“I’ll tell you when Jazz gets here,” Danny said. “I wanted to tell all my friends at once—Johnny and Kitty are somewhere in Africa on a safari date, but everyone else is here. These four,” he said, gesturing to Ember, Kwan, Ellie, and Paulina, “Know some, since they had questions about what I said in that rant this morning, but I didn’t give many details. I just didn’t want anyone out of the loop this time.”
Valerie was a little surprised Danny was including her in whatever this was, given their relationship had been very rocky over the past month, but she was glad for it. Hopefully this meant the relationship was on the mend. She was also hoping this would help clarify what happened earlier—Valerie knew Danny was in therapy, but a breakdown like that, coupled with what he said and the impact of the bullying starting back up… Well, to say Valerie was immensely worried about Danny was an understatement. She no longer entertained the extremely-biased idea that his rocky mental state was a sign that he would devolve into an evil ghost, but now she was worried about what he might do to himself…
The group began casually chatting, Valerie joining in some, as they waited for Danny’s sister to arrive, who had had class just before this. Valerie was surprised at how much… not quite fun at the moment, with what Valerie suspected would be a heavy discussion looming, but she was enjoying her time with this group, a group that just a few months ago she wouldn’t have imagined even existing.
Valerie still was in disbelief that the group she’d skipped class with earlier had been Tucker, Star, and Sam. Sam and Tucker weren’t unusual, Valerie had an on-and-off friendship with them, although usually it was tied together by Danny’s presence—she thought it would be odd without him there, but instead it was fun! And Star… Valerie had been sorta-friends with Star for a couple months freshman year, though it was purely by association, and she’d met the girl a few times in middle school when she visited Kwan, but Valerie had never known she could be so interesting!
Honestly, Valerie was a little overwhelmed by her friend group blossoming so quickly; she had spent almost a full year at this point as mostly a loner, focused on ghost fighting and work while pushing her budding friendship with Sam, Tucker, and Danny away, and then a month ago her whole world had been flipped upside-down and now she had potentially 8 friends, providing she kept fostering the relationships. 9 if she included Ember, which… well, Valerie was trying. Ember was actually pretty cool, if you got over her being a ghost, and Valerie actually had been a fan before learning the girl was a ghost. She vowed to work hard to get over the ghost bias, like she told her dad she would—who knows, maybe her and Ember could be good friends eventually.
Ten minutes later, Jazz arrived, and they could get answers.
“What’s this about, Little Brother?” Jazz asked, sitting on the same dark tan corduroy couch Valerie was seated on, with Ellie between them. “Is it about what you called me about earlier? That rant?”
“No. Well, yes. Kinda. An extension of that, really.” Danny explained. “It’s about… it’s about the summer after 8th grade. I want to tell people about that. You know, when you found… When you found the thing that sparked your psychology obsession,” Danny told her cryptically. He was on a chocolate brown faux-suede crimson couch between Sam and Tucker, Ember seated on the back of the couch above him, arms resting on his head.
“Oh,” Jazz said, apparently immediately realizing what Danny meant. “You lied to me, didn’t you? When you said you didn’t…”
Danny sighed, giving Jazz a fond yet sad look. “You catch on quick,” he said.
The doorbell then rang, and everyone froze.
“Oh shit!” Tucker said, jumping up. “Sorry; we ordered pizza, I forgot—be right back.”
“Wait!” Sam called, and Tucker turned, confused until Sam handed him a hundred-dollar bill. “Tell him to keep the change.”
“Right,” Tucker said, hurrying off.
“I’ll help!” Ellie said, jumping into the air straight from sitting and flying behind Tucker—in human form, apparently having picked up that habit from Danny. Hopefully she remembered to ground herself at the door.
“That would explain how the pizza got here in under fifteen minutes,” Valerie said, slightly surprised—she knew Sam was rich, but sometimes forgot as the girl didn’t flaunt it much, outside of insisting on frequently paying for her friends’ food at Nasty Burger when Valerie rang them up, and then always stuck a twenty in the tip jar; that wasn’t flaunting so much as just being nice, though. Danny had told Valerie once that he kinda felt uncomfortable when Sam did that, and when Sam caught wind of that she had started calling it ‘payment for all of Phantom’s services’.
When Tucker and Ellie returned with the pizza, Jazz had swapped seats to the one Tucker had vacated. Tucker made a face, but accepted this change, silently acknowledging that perhaps Danny needed his sister for whatever this was, as she seemed to know more than them.
After he and Ellie passed out pizza to everyone (on fancy reusable sustainably-sourced plastic plates, as per Sam’s insistence) along with cans of soda, Tucker then tried taking Ellie’s spot (Valerie suspected he’d recently been trying to flirt with her again, but she had no interest); the two argued for a moment until Ellie decided to simply use her intangibly sit in it while Tucker was also there, causing the boy to yelp and scooch over.
“Thanks,” Valerie muttered to her, quietly enough that only the girl could hear.
“No prob,” Ellie replied, similarly quietly. “I could tell you were uncomfortable; and for the record, yes, he still is pining for you.”
Valerie scrunched her nose at that. She’d need to have another chat with Tucker about boundaries—she wanted to be friends, that was all, and he needed to get that no matter how much he tried flirting the two of them would never be a thing again.
Danny, who had initially refused pizza until his sister insisted he take a slice, finally spoke up again. “Right. So… about earlier,” he began. “During that rant this morning, I said some… concerning things, I know. I also know one of those things shouldn’t go unaddressed; what I want to tell you is an extension of that. It’s about something that happened in the past, before my portal accident; Dr. Warren’s actually been saying I should tell my close friends this, and this morning the nurse had me call him and he again suggested I talk to you about my mental health… This is a lot of people I’m telling at once, and is kinda nerve-wracking, but I guess you all kinda count as close friends now so I should tell all of you. I know you’ll keep it a secret at least, since you keep my other secrets secret…” He trailed off, looking a little nervous and unsure where to begin.
Valerie thought it was a little soon to be calling Paulina, Star, and Kwan ‘close friends’, and even herself too even though she definitely wanted to be close again, but Danny had always been very forgiving and receptive to friendship, maybe too trusting at times (Valerie sheepishly recalled how their friendship got started in the first place; it had initially been born from her wanting ghost hunting information from him, not truly about Danny as a person).
Jazz put a hand on Danny’s shoulder and gently squeezed in a comforting gesture. As she did so, Cujo appeared, and hopped into Danny’s lap; he smiled and pet the dog, and to her surprise Valerie found that for the first time she didn’t feel rage upon seeing the ghost dog.
Danny took a deep breath and continued. “I know some of you have been wondering why I feed on joy, why it would be the emotion I had so little of around my time of death that my core now craves it. Well, in eighth grade, I wasn’t doing well at all. The bullying got a lot worse, my parents were more obsessed than ever with their newest invention to the point they ignored me and Jazz more than usual… Combine that with teenage hormones and likely just a general imbalance of brain chemistry, and it was the perfect recipe for falling into a deep depression.
“If I got help then, it probably wouldn’t have gotten nearly as bad as it did. But at that point my parents were refusing to believe a kid of theirs could need help—Jazz eventually convinced them of it a couple months ago, but back then they were firmly against it. So, I had very little help, aside from Jazz, but she didn’t know much about psychology yet… So, it got bad. Really bad…” He trailed off and looked at a random point in the distance, seemingly lost in his own thoughts now.
Valerie glanced around the room; the expressions on everyones’ faces showed heavy worry and in some cases dread, as though they knew where this might be headed… Valerie was starting to suspect she knew, too, but she didn’t want to believe that kind, sweet, innocent (well, maybe not-so-innocent anymore) Danny had been so depressed at one point that he’d tried to… Tried to… But, he did feed on joy, so…
“Do you want me to help?” Jazz asked gently, and Danny looked towards her and silently nodded. So Jazz continued, “I don’t know the full story, but a few weeks into the summer after Danny graduated middle school, I… I searched Danny’s room. He had been acting off for months, so I started doing research, and drew the entirely wrong conclusion—so I searched his room, but instead of finding drugs, like I thought I would, I found a letter.
“I was being nosy, I know, but I decided to read it anyway, especially given it was addressed ‘to those who knew me’. Past tense. You’ve probably already guessed it, but it was a suicide note.”
Valerie’s heart broke at the confirmation. Earlier, Danny had told his sister he lied to her; is that what he meant? Had he actually tried, but said he didn’t?
Jazz continued, “I talked to Danny about it immediately after, and he told me how he’d been feeling. He said the note was an outlet, that he hadn’t actually tried anything, and we burned it together… But I’m guessing that was a lie?” she asked her brother gently, putting an arm around his shoulders.
Danny nodded, leaning into his sister slightly, then continued the story. “Yeah. Yeah, I lied,” he said weakly, voice cracking slightly; he seemed to be holding back tears. “I tried. I did try. A few days before you found it… Remember how I said I had food poisoning? Well, I didn’t. I took a chemical from the lab that I thought was toxic, and ingested it.” He gave a wry chuckle. “You can thank dad’s frequent mislabelling for me still being here, because whatever was in there wasn’t what the label said… When you found the letter I realized how much you cared, and realized I couldn’t try again, not without hurting people too much.”
After a few moments of quiet, everyone processing that, Tucker ventured, “So… that means you got better after that, after talking with Jazz…?”
Danny looked at the floor and shook his head. “No. It means I decided I wouldn’t try again, not that I didn’t want to. Then everything with the portal happened…” He shrugged. “Now it’s pretty much impossible. But even if it were, I have too many people who care about me, and the town needs me, even if lots of people still don’t think so…”
“But you still feel that way?” Valerie asked softly. “You still want to… to die?”
Danny gave a small amused scoff. “I believe the correct term is ‘fade’ now.” He sighed. “But, yeah. Not all the time—it is getting better, slowly, now that I have professional help, but yeah, the desire’s still there… It was really bad earlier today; Lancer noticed, which is why he insisted I go to the nurse, who had me call Dr. Warren. And that’s why I’m telling you this,” Danny said with more earnestness. “I need your help to get through things—and you know how much I like to admit I need help, so you know this is serious,” he joked.
“Then, just tell us how we can help,” Paulina stated with determination.
“Yeah; whatever you need, we’ll do it,” Sam ardently declared.
“Nothing much different than what you’ve been doing, honestly,” Danny said. “Everyone here, for the most part, has been really good at noticing when I need help lately… Even if I’m not always so cooperative, like earlier today. Which, I actually want to thank you for. I know it can be difficult when you’re trying to help, but I’m lost in my head and emotional and being stubborn… I realize you’re just being helpful after, especially when I feel better, but at the time, when I’m feeling overwhelmed, I know I can get snappish and hard to deal with. So I’m sorry…
“And I want you to know that when that happens, it is the right move to try to force it rather than leaving me alone. Like Ember this morning, encouraging me to go to the nurse to cool down instead of simply going right back to class. She could tell that I was obviously lying about being fine, but I get… Well, part of me has this idea that I shouldn’t need help, and that I need to hide it when I do, and I know that’s wrong to do, logically I know, but… Well, it’s a matter of pride, I guess. Especially in Phantom form, when I don the superhero persona…
“So, yeah. Just, I guess I’m telling you all this so you can be aware of it, of why I might act certain ways sometimes, and to let you know that it’s okay to force the help, and to please not hold it against me if I try to fight you on it at the time… Because I do appreciate it, I really do.
“And other times, I just need someone to be there, I guess. Someone whose shoulder I can cry on, who can just listen and not judge—just, someone to be a friend. Which you all are! Of course you all are. But, that’s something I try to hide too, because I get this concern that I’m just a burden on people…”
“Which you’re not,” Sam asserted. “You’re not a burden, Danny—honestly, you’re the opposite. Without you… Without you, this group wouldn’t even exist. You’re the one who ties us all together, the one who encouraged us all to interact and become friends in the first place.”
“Yeah,” Valerie decided to chime in. “I… I know things are still a little rocky between us, but I’ll do my best to help, I promise.”
“Really?” Danny asked, looking towards Valerie with a hopeful smile.
Valerie nodded resolutely. “Of course. That’s what friends do,” she told him, and she found that she meant it. She did have some biases to get over yet, she could acknowledge that, but Valerie did see Danny as a friend, and was determined to prove it to him.
The others also affirmed their desires to help how they could, and all made sure to assure Danny he wasn’t a burden and that it was brave of him to talk about this and all that. By the end, a huge group hug had ensued, with Danny in the middle, happy (glowing?!) tears trailing down his cheeks.
“Thank you,” Danny said earnestly. “Thank you all so, so much. I love you guys, I really do… I wouldn’t be here without you, so thank you, just… thank you.”
Cujo barked and licked Danny’s face, causing him to genuinely laugh, a purehearted sound without any underlying sadness, the dog wagging his tail excitedly as if to say he was going to be helping Danny too—and probably had already, Valerie realized, like a therapy dog. Her vendetta against the puppy now really seemed silly in retrospect; he was literally just a dog, acting like any dog would, no maliciousness in sight. Valerie had been a fool to ever think otherwise, on both their parts; she could acknowledge that now.
Notes:
Danny finally opened up to his friends! It's truly a miracle.
I know some of you were excited for a possible Danny/Kwan thing; sorry for that not happening. I definitely did mean to imply Danny has a small crush, kudos to those who caught that, but unfortunately Kwan is straight in this fic (giving me flashbacks to my time in high school where my first gay crush turned out to be straight...). Plus it could easily be interpreted as a matter of hero worship, since Kwan's been defending Danny; I didn't want to write a relationship built on that, nor did I want it to feel like I was shoehorning a relationship in at the end.
Next chapter, which will be posted later today:
Jack is feeling down when he realizes that Thanksgiving will only be him and his kids this year, so considers trying to invite Vlad; Danny and Ellie immediately shut that down, but have another idea as to who they can invite...
Then, Lancer has a talk with Danny about various things, including his future after high school, followed by a chat with Sam, who is worried about her mom.
Then, Valerie hangs out with Ellie again.
Chapter 23: Invitations and Conversations
Summary:
Jack is feeling down when he realizes that Thanksgiving will only be him and his kids this year, so considers trying to invite Vlad; Danny and Ellie immediately shut that down, but have another idea as to who they can invite...
Then, Lancer has a talk with Danny about various things, including his future after high school, followed by a chat with Sam, who is worried about her mom.
Then, Valerie hangs out with Ellie again.
Notes:
(Whoops! Sorry it's up so late; I apparently saved it as a draft earlier instead of posting.)
(This is the 2nd of 2 chapters posted today; a 3rd was posted 2 days ago, so if you haven't checked in since last weekend, don't forget to read chapters 21 and 22!)
This is a much lighter chapter in comparison to the previous one! Things are looking up, and we're in the final stretch now.
CW: mentions of past abuse, mentions of things Vlad has done, discussion about drug abuse.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Danny and Ellie arrived home much later than expected Thursday evening due to a ghost attack after band practice (the A-list party they’d be playing at was only 9 days away!); their dad of course knew they’d be returning after dinner, and didn’t specifically give a curfew, but Danny had a feeling that close to 11pm was pushing it.
The two halfas stepped through the door. Danny then froze, feeling a vibe of negative emotions. Grief, sadness, longing, worry, anger… mixed with love and nostalgia.
Ellie gave Danny a look of confusion, then her eyes widened, noticing it too.
Danny headed to the living room to find Jack seated on the couch, looking at a framed photo, hand on his head and tired eyes staring at it. Danny walked over, Jack seeming not to notice him or Ellie, who had hesitated for a bit and then followed him.
“Dad?” Danny asked, and his father startled.
“Oh, Danno! Ellikins! Wow, I must really be distracted, since I didn’t hear the door!” Jack said.
“Oh. We, uh, didn’t open the door,” Danny said sheepishly. “Sorry. So, what has you so distracted?” he asked as he sat down beside his father. Ellie awkwardly sat on Danny’s other side. Danny wondered if they should get Jazz, since she was better at dealing with this sort of thing, but a quick probe of nearby feelings showed she was in her room heavily concentrating on something and Danny didn’t want to interrupt her, whatever it was.
Jack sighed and tilted the photo so Danny and Ellie could see it. It was the same photo that Vlad had had of their college days, depicting Vlad, Jack, and Maddie, but a fully intact photo… A photo that Danny realized had actually been on the shelf of photographs all along. Wow; noticing that would have been super helpful when Vlad first appeared, as it could’ve led to the assassination attempt being linked to Vlad much faster.
“Ah,” Danny said, realizing. “You miss them.” Danny could understand that; a part of him missed his mom, who he’d likely never see again, at least for a long time—she had been informed about the videos the previous day and reluctantly agreed to give Jack full custody. Danny wondered if she still planned to hunt Phantom in Amity Park or if she’d move away.
“Well, more like miss who they used to be,” Jack said. “Back in college, before Vladdie’s accident… The one that turned him into… well, you know.”
“An evil fruitloop hellbent on taking over the world and stealing mom?” Danny asked with a wry grin.
“Yeah,” Jack said, not even cracking a smile at the joke. “If I had known that was a risk…” Jack trailed. “No, even not knowing that, I should have taken more precautions,” he said.
“It’s not your fault,” Danny said gently, even though it kinda was.
Jack raised an eyebrow at Danny. “I appreciate the effort to make me feel better, son, but the objective facts say otherwise. I’m the one who got so excited I accidentally put grape soda into the filter instead of the ion solution, and didn’t bother listening when Maddie questioned the calculations and Vlad expressed concerns about it not yet being ready for testing. I pressed that button. Honestly, I’m lucky Vlad never sued me for it.”
“Probably didn’t want to risk his secret, and now he’s so rich anyway there’s no reason to bother taking the time,” Danny reasoned. “Plus, he might’ve been nervous that Mom would hate him for it.”
“Well, I’m glad that you messed up,” Ellie announced. “If you hadn't, I wouldn’t have been created!”
Jack chuckled wetly. “True, true. I’m certainly glad you exist!” he exclaimed, then sighed. “I wonder if he’d be up to trying to reconnect,” he said wistfully. “Like, actually, this time.”
Danny winced. “Uh. Did you forget he literally held the world hostage? And tried to kill you on multiple occasions?”
“Well, yeah, but he gave us that video footage; maybe he deserves a second chance.”
“More like, twentieth chance at this point,” Danny muttered.
Jack ignored the comment and asked, “You know where he is, right, Danno?” Vibes of hope buzzed around Jack.
Danny winced. “Er. I know Vlad has a castle in the Ghost Zone,” he admitted. “But, not the exact location.” He did know the general area it was in, and it should be large enough to easily find, but Danny needed to somehow get Jack away from this train of thought.
“And I would not suggest trying to find it,” Ellie asserted. “Vlad is bad news.”
Jack sighed. “I know he is. I know! I just… I don’t know.”
“Maybe you can try a letter?” Danny suggested. “We can use the Ghost Zone’s mail service.” Vlad would likely never reply, of course.
Jack’s eyes lit up. “Oh? The Ghost Zone has a mail service?”
Danny chuckled at the predictability of Jack’s excitement over ghosts also having something humans did. “What, you think the Box Ghost was the only delivery person to ever become a ghost while loving their job so much they wanted to do it after death?”
“Frankly, yes,” Jack said, which Danny supposed was understandable. “Do you think it’ll reach him by Wednesday?”
“This upcoming one?” Danny asked with a frown. That was only 6 days away. “Maybe. Not sure if Ghost Zone mail is the same speed as human mail. Why—wait. You’re not going to invite Vlad for Thanksgiving, are you?”
“And James!” Jack said. “I want to meet him too!”
“...No, you really don’t,” Danny said flatly. “And please don’t ask again.” Danny somewhat regretted telling Jack about that situation, although he’d wanted to be honest about everything so felt obliged to. “Or even talk about him.” Danny may have felt some compassion for the future Danny/Vlad hybrid, wanting him to live, but that didn’t mean he wanted to share his family with him. He hated that that branch of the timeline had ever been a possibility, and did not want the reminder of it.
“If Vlad is at Thanksgiving, I don’t want to be there,” Ellie said, crossing her arms.
“Besides, Dr. Warren said you shouldn’t try reconnecting with Vlad for at least a few years,” Danny pointed out. “Something about it still being too raw right now, and impeding progress.” Danny knew Jack still hadn’t fully processed the weight of everything; it’d only been a few weeks after all. For the same reason, Dr. Warren had suggested that Danny avoid James—Danny had to reconcile with his own emotions on the matter first, which he thought he had but apparently had not yet. Not that Danny wanted to connect with James anyway.
Jack sighed in resignation. “Yeah, okay. I won’t invite them.”
“What’s this really about?” Danny asked, sensing that Jack wasn’t actually that disappointed at not having those two specifically visit.
Jack sighed again. “Well, it’s just that, with Maddie out of the picture, Thanksgiving is going to be much smaller… Just us and Jazz, really.”
“Oh. Right,” Danny said.
When Danny was a kid, the Thanksgiving celebrations used to be huge—Alicia would host them with her husband, who had a huge extended family. Jack’s family tended to have a huge one too, with his parents and uncles and cousins and their kids at his parents house; they’d alternate between which to go to. When Alicia got divorced, that whole branch of the family got cut off (not that it made much of an impact on the Fentons; they’d only see them once a year anyway), leaving just Maddie and Alicia and their parents on that side (Maddie’s parents were both only-children, so the two girls had no aunts or uncles). Around the same time Jack’s parents moved to a smaller house in a senior community, so Maddie and Jack began to host Thanksgiving at their place, for both sides of the family.
But over the years, Danny’s grandparents passed away. Maddie’s parents went first, leaving just her and Alicia. Jack’s lasted longer, but by the time Danny started high school, they were gone too. Jack was an only child, as was his dad, but Jack’s mom had two brothers and a sister—however, Jack had never been especially close to his aunt and the one uncle, and their respective spouses, who all highly disapproved of his profession, and they had passed the prejudices onto his cousins. As a result, three years ago had been the last Thanksgiving with them; once Jack’s parents passed they had no reason to go to Jack and Maddie’s, instead opting to do the holiday with their in-laws the previous few years, taking Jack’s cousins and their kids with them—they cited the distance as the reason, living in different states, but they hadn’t even replied to the invite last year, and Danny had a feeling they didn’t this year, either, otherwise Jack would have mentioned it; Christmas cards and whatnot went unanswered too. The other uncle, whom Jack actually had been close to and shared his passion for the supernatural, never had children, and he had still come to their Thanksgiving.
So Danny’s freshman year, it had been Jack, Maddie, Alicia, Danny’s Great-Uncle Albert, Jazz, and Danny. Albert had passed shortly after, so had been absent last year’s Thanksgiving, leaving just Danny’s immediate family and Alicia. This year, with Maddie and Alicia celebrating in Spittoon instead (and not invited to theirs for obvious reasons), it would just be Jack, Danny, Jazz, and Ellie.
So, Danny could see how his dad might be tempted to try to invite Vlad and James, even though there was definitely lingering resentment and it would set back his progress at recovering from Vlad’s betrayal.
A sudden idea then occurred to Danny. “What if we invited some of my ghost friends?” he suggested. “You know, Ember, Johnny, and Kitty? Maybe Dora too. And Poindexter! We could even invite Frostbite and Clockwork, you haven’t met them yet but they mentor me. Oh, and Mr. Lancer might be interested too! He doesn’t have any family to have Thanksgiving with.”
Jack swam with vibes of excitement, which Danny happily used to charge his core a little. “That’s a brilliant idea!” he practically swooned. “Oh, maybe we can invite that Youngblood kid, too?”
“Uh. He can only be seen by kids,” Danny pointed out.
“No, he visited on Halloween!” Jack informed Danny. “He had a bunch of other child ghosts with him. I asked about that and he said he can choose whether or not adults can see him!”
Danny took a moment to process that. “Seriously?” he groaned. “Ugh. What an ass.”
“Language!” Jack chided.
“He’s the one that made you all think I was hallucinating!” Danny pointed out. “I think I have a right to call him an ass.”
“Yeah, but he’s just a kid, you know—just wants to have fun. In a ghostly way, but still.”
“I guess that’s true,” Danny conceded, once again surprised at his dad’s new(ly revealed) view on ghosts. “Well, if you want to invite him, I’ll ask. He’s actually pretty good friends with Ember so maybe if she comes he’ll be game.” It was almost a sibling dynamic, come to think of it.
“Great!” Jack said, excitement rising. “Oh, this Thanksgiving is going to be amazing!”
“Sure will!” Danny agreed cheerily, though was a bit wary—it might take some convincing to get those ghosts to attend. Hopefully at least some would agree.
“It better be!” Ellie chimed in. “It’s my first one, after all! Hey, think I can invite someone too?”
“Who were you thinking?” Jack asked, and Danny was curious too.
“Well…” Ellie shifted nervously, then looked at Danny. “I know your relationship with her is still complicated, but it’s just her and her dad, and I was thinking they might be lonely on Thanksgiving too…”
Danny grimaced. “You mean, Valerie,” he said.
“The Red Huntress?” Jack said, perking up. “Sure! Her dad and I can bond over raising teenage superheroes who hid their identities from us!”
“Ancients,” Danny groaned, sliding a hand down his face. “Look, I would love to be friends with her again, and yeah, we’ve made significant progress on that front, but she still hates ghosts in general with a passion!” Although, she had been pretty calm around Cujo the previous day…
“Well, then, maybe this can be an opportunity to change her mind,” Ellie pointed out. “If I can convince her to have a truce with the ghosts that day, will you let me invite her?”
Danny sighed, and looked at his dad, who seemed oddly enthusiastic about meeting and potentially befriending Valerie’s dad. “Fine,” he decided. “Only if you can make her promise not to harm anyone, and after I ask my ghost friends if they’re okay with it, got it?”
“Got it!” Ellie cheered.
Danny’s eye then caught something on the table. “Hey, what’s this?” he asked, leaning forward and picking up the yellow-covered library book with amusement. Vibes of embarrassment wafted off of Jack as Danny read the title: “‘Single-Parenting for Dummies’?”
“W-well, yeah!” Jack stuttered out, grabbing the book from Danny, clearly embarrassed. “Obviously I didn’t know much to begin with, and usually I’d just follow whatever she did, but now that Maddie is gone it’s all up to me. Dr. Warren recommended it! …Although I guess a lot of it doesn’t really apply to immortal superpowered ghost kids…”
“‘Immortal superpowered ghost kid’. Hmm, I like the sound of that,” Ellie said with a grin.
Danny smiled at his cousin—no, ‘sister’. Adoption paperwork was being drawn up by some lawyers at MU (Dr. Warren insisted upon only using paranormal lawyers, due to her halfa status), hopefully ready to be signed as soon as tomorrow.
Danny was happy for Ellie, but couldn’t help but feel a little jealous—she was so easily and quickly embracing everything Danny had struggled with for over two years (and on some level, still was struggling with). True, they had very different upbringings, with Danny constantly being told ghosts were evil before becoming mostly one, whereas Ellie was born a halfa and told from the start that being a ghost was perfectly fine, but still.
Danny wondered if he’d ever actually fully accept his own status as an ‘immortal superhero ghost kid’; yeah, he pretty much considered himself a ghost nowadays, but a part of him still mourned for a time when he was still fully human.
Suddenly, Jazz came racing down the stairs, looking completely frantic as she held a book in her hands.
Jack, Danny, and Ellie all abruptly stood up, reacting to her clear panic.
“Jazz? What’s going on?” Danny asked worriedly.
“Danny!” Jazz shouted, running over. “Quick, you gotta fly me to MU.”
“Now?” Danny asked in confusion. “Why? And can’t you drive?”
“Driving’s too slow! It needs to be now!”
“What book is that?” Ellie asked, tilting her head to try to read the title despite Jazz’s arm slightly covering it. “Necron—”
“No! Don’t say the name!” Jazz said as she shot her hand forward to cover Ellie’s mouth. “Danny, please, I need to bring this book back to MU, it’s not supposed to leave the school but it keeps following me! I think it wants me to open it, and I know better than to do that, but it just won’t leave me alone!”
“Haunted book?” Jack asked, curiosity and excitement spiking.
“It is giving off a strange vibe, almost like it’s alive…” Danny said, reaching towards it.
“Don’t touch it!” Jazz shouted, hopping out of reach. “It’ll curse you too!”
Danny frowned, catching a vibe of upset from—not Jazz? The… book? The book had feelings? “Um. Jazz, I think calling it a ‘curse’ upset the book?”
Jazz froze and stared at Danny with wide eyes. “It’s alive enough to have feelings!?” she hissed.
“Maybe it’s following you because it likes you,” Ellie suggested, and Danny got a sense that the book purred slightly in response to the suggestion.
“No. No, I can’t deal with this right now,” Jazz said. “Here, you take the creepy living book.” She shoved it into Danny’s arms and raced back up the stairs.
Danny held the book out at arm’s length to take a proper look at the cover, which… “Oh, Ancients, please tell me this book is not bound with what I think it is.”
“Is it breathing?” Ellie asked.
Danny took a moment to consider that. There was a slight pulsing of energy… “No, it feels more like a ghost core,” Danny determined, “But… not a ghost core? Something else. Definitely alive though.”
“Danny, maybe you shouldn’t be holding that,” Jack said nervously.
“Yeah, probably a good idea,” Danny said, and the book, which definitely had been purring, gave a distinct vibe of disappointment as it was sat on the table. “I’m gonna call MU about this,” he said, walking over to the phone on the wall.
“It’s nearly midnight,” Jack pointed out.
Danny shrugged. “So? It’s MU. More people are up at midnight than they are at noon.”
By the time someone answered, the cursed book had vanished from the table. The school secretary checked MU’s storage vault, only to discover that the book had decided to return on its own. The secretary did not seem worried, only commenting that the book sometimes did that and as long as no one opened it they should all retain their usual levels of sanity.
Danny made a note to recommend Jazz check in with Dr. Warren, just in case.
Lancer once again was seated at his desk in his classroom ready to eat lunch when Daniel Fenton appeared in front of him.
Lancer jumped slightly. “The Invisible Man, Daniel! What have I said about opening the door?”
“Oh, I flew in from the ceiling this time,” Daniel said casually. “My prior class was right above here—don’t worry, no one saw, I went invisible first!”
“Right,” Lancer said, unsure if he would ever get used to his student using his ghost abilities around him—or just get used to his student being a ghost in general, even in part, after thinking he was human for years.
Danny tilted his head. “You’re still not used to this,” he concluded, then winced. “Sorry, I know me reading emotions is uncomfortable for humans.”
For humans, Lancer noted. Did Daniel not think of himself as one anymore? He was more ghost, true, but he still had some humanity in him. “No, it’s fine,” Lancer told him. “I know you can’t help it. You’re right; it’s been… an adjustment.”
Danny took a moment to consider that, then said, “Contact Dr. Warren at MU. He’s that therapist I’ve been seeing; he also does therapy for people who have had friends and family members become non-humans, and has been helping my dad with that.”
“I see. Perhaps I will do that, then,” Lancer said; it would be good to have someone to help him work through his feelings about learning one of his students had been a ghost for years. He knew Ishiyama was having a difficult time of it too—perhaps he’d recommend she also talk to Dr. Warren. Lancer then asked, “So, what can I help you with? Is everything good at home?”
Daniel nodded. “Yeah! Better than good, actually. Well, kinda. It’s nice having Ellie there and not having to hide from dad, and even though I feel bad saying it I like not having my mom around anymore. My dad’s been taking everything pretty hard though, he’s got some pretty bad depression vibes growing, but Jazz has been on top of that and he’s already seeing Dr. Warren so it should be fine. Dr. Warren says it’s common with both divorce and, er, learning your kid isn’t human anymore, so I shouldn’t worry too much.” Lancer took note that he again didn’t say ‘dead’ or ‘part-ghost’, rather ‘not human’—which he supposed made sense for a paranormal psychologist to say since Lancer now knew that not just ghosts but also vampires and presumably other things existed, as harrowing as that realization was.
Daniel continued, “Anyway! That’s kinda why I’m here. You see, with mom gone it’s just going to be Dad, me, and my sisters for Thanksgiving this year, and it’s really gotten him down. Then I realized you might not have extended family to go to either! Not that I, er, want to assume…”
Lancer sighed. “No, you are correct in that presumption. Usually I go to the local diner, as they offer a special Thanksgiving-style meal that day.” It was lonely, but usually Lancer managed to find other lonely people there who would sit and chat with him, different every year.
“Then, maybe you want to come have Thanksgiving with my family!” Daniel offered, to Lancer’s surprise. The boy hurriedly added, “Don’t worry, Dad stores the ecto stuff in a separate fridge now, so I’m sure nothing will become reanimated this year! Especially not the turkey, we’re just gonna get a precooked one.”
“That’s… good,” Lancer said, immensely glad that Jack had seemingly taken his warnings seriously and shaped up on safety, though the mere imagining of a reanimated turkey was a little harrowing. “Are you sure it’s okay that I’m there?” He liked the idea of spending Thanksgiving with a family, but didn’t want to feel like he was intruding.
“I wouldn’t invite you if it wasn’t,” Daniel pointed out.
“I suppose that is true,” Lancer conceded, feeling touched at the gesture. “Okay, I’ll be there. Do you have a time in mind? What kind of dish should I bring?”
“We usually gather around 2 and then start eating at 4, and you can bring whatever you want. Just let us know ahead of time, since most of the regular human foods we're just going to get catered—and by that I mean the pre-made stuff from the grocery store,” Daniel explained with a chuckle.
“Hmm. Well, in that case, let him know that I’ll make a sweet potato casserole, an apple pie, and some sort of baked appetizer.” He would have to look through his recipe books before deciding, and see what ingredients he had on hand—he’d rather not have to purchase too many ingredients, as then he’d likely have too much excess that he’d need to figure out what to do with (he learned that lesson after making a tart for a staff party that used three types of berries; he needed slightly more than the smallest bags sold, so had to buy the large ones, and then he had spent the next two weeks having smoothies for lunch).
“Whoa. Three things? You sure?”
Lancer nodded. “Of course. I would be happy to; I’m quite fond of baking, yet find I have little opportunity to share.”
Daniel grinned. “Awesome, thanks! Oh, but if you find that’s too much after all, don’t worry about it, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of food regardless,” he assured, and Lancer couldn’t help but smile. The boy was so courteous, further proving how poorly Lancer had misjudged him his freshmen year.
“Of course. I’m looking forward to it,” Lancer told him with a smile.
“Cool, cool,” Daniel said, and shifted slightly. “Um. I should probably let you know though that some of my ghost friends will also be there, and Ellie wants to invite Valerie and her dad. Is that still okay?”
Lancer nodded. “Of course,” he agreed, though was a little wary about attending a holiday event with ghosts; but, he now knew that not all ghosts were bad, so it was simply a bias to overcome. “Now, I have a feeling you have something more to ask?”
Daniel blushed. “Ah, yeah, can’t get anything past you, huh?” he joked, even though a lot had clearly gotten past Lancer in the past, given he hadn’t realized his student was mostly ghost. “I was just wondering; Ellie is in your freshman English class, right? How’s she been doing?”
Lancer smiled. Daniel asking about his little ‘cousin’ reminded Lancer of Jasmine, who had always been asking about how her little brother was doing in school. “Overall, well. Her grades are very good; I suspect much of it is merely review for her at this point, though, so we’ll see what happens once she reaches past that point. Socially she is a bit awkward—”
“Is she being bullied?” Daniel cut Lancer off to ask worriedly.
“No, not as far as I know,” Lancer told him. “It’s more like she simply doesn’t know how to make friends. It’s the same thing you see in many homeschooled children if they transition to public school. It’s complicated by her having a very different life than the other kids had up until now, as well as an unfamiliarity with modern teenage culture in the US, though the latter I’m sure will quickly change with time. The other students seem interested in getting to know her, seeming particularly enchanted by her being ‘from Japan’, though she seems reluctant.”
Daniel relaxed. “Oh, that’s not so bad then. Honestly I think that’s just because she tends to hang with me and my friends, and Valerie, so might not feel a need to make other school friends.”
“That very well could be,” Lancer said, relieved to hear that Danielle wasn’t actually as alone as he’d begun to fear. “Though, I must ask, is she safe with Valerie? She’s, well, you know. Do they know about each others’ identities?” If not, that would spell trouble—Lancer had not missed the increased tension between Daniel and Valerie in the month since she’d discovered his secret.
“Oh, yeah, they both know, and are fine with it,” Daniel assured Lancer. “I know it’s weird, especially because Valerie still definitely has a lot of obvious ecto-phobia issues.” He shrugged. “They make it work though… Oh, you want to ask something else, right?”
Lancer paused his thoughts in surprise. Yes, there was, but Lancer had barely realized it yet. “That really is uncanny how you do that. It’s somewhat unrelated, but I just remembered something I wanted to ask you. You’ve been getting much better with turning in homework this year, so it has struck me as slightly bizarre that you still haven’t turned in the survey about future plans that was due last week.” It was something all juniors had to do, assigned the first day of school and due at the latest the second week of November, a precursor to Lancer meeting with each student about their career plans after graduation, to help them decide which colleges or trade schools to apply to, if any.
Daniel winced at that and leaned back a little, at an angle that if it were any other student Lancer would be worried about them losing balance. “Ah, well…” he trailed off, and Lancer had a feeling it had to do with more than just forgetfulness.
“Is it because you wanted to work for NASA?” Lancer asked gently. He knew it had been a dream of Daniel’s, crushed after he became a halfa—grades notwithstanding, he’d never pass the needed physical, and being a government organization they would be obligated to report any ghostly suspicions to the GIW.
Daniel sighed, shifting forward slightly, and Lancer realized that the strange positions were because Daniel was, likely without realizing it, floating. The boy explained, “No, it’s not that. I accepted a long time ago that that wasn’t going to happen—besides, I’ve flown to space before, and honestly, flying around freely there is much cooler than going there in a ship with a clunky suit.” Lancer was surprised at that; Daniel could survive in space without a suit? Well, ghosts were very different from humans, and gravity didn’t apply to them if they didn’t want it to, so he supposed it wasn’t that far-fetched that the vacuum of space wouldn’t affect ghosts either.
“I see. Then, are you still concerned about how your… lack of aging might affect things?” Lancer ventured, wondering when Daniel would realize that he was now sitting in the air, legs flat butterfly-style with hands around his ankles as he pressed his feet together. The cheer team would probably beg to have him if they saw the casual display of flexibility.
Daniel shook his head. “No, it’s not that either. Actually, I already have a spot at MU if I want it, even if I have no idea what I’d major in! Although, I kinda get the feeling half the reason they want me there is to brag about having an endangered species as a student… Anyway, yeah, there’s plenty of unaging students there, so that’s not really it.”
“Then, what is it?” Lancer wondered. It couldn’t be about not leaving Amity Park, because MU was in it. “Is it that you don’t want to do college?” he realized.
Daniel winced; bingo. He admitted, “I don’t know. Maybe? I mean, I know I’m expected to do college. All the adults keep saying we all have to or we have no future. I mean, I might want to go eventually, but…”
“But?” Lancer prodded.
Daniel took a deep breath. “Well… I kinda fell in love with music? Like, the band has been considering eventually putting out a full album, we’ve actually been working on some original music and are recording an EP this upcoming weekend! And Ember suggested the band could go on tour when we graduate, and I really love the idea of that—it’s so much fun, and all the joy it creates in the audience really charges my core! But, I know that’s not that realistic of a goal. So many teenage bands end up going nowhere; everyone always says it’s nothing but a pipe dream to be in a band that makes it big. But, I really feel like we could! Isn’t it worth a try at least? If it fails, I could go to college after that, right? College doesn’t have to be immediately after high school, does it?”
Lancer considered that. He should suggest something like music school, right? He was supposed to encourage kids to go on to further their education, to get a degree. But, Daniel had a good point: he had the spot at MU already, and colleges did admit older students all the time; Lancer himself had taken an alternative educational path, although his wasn’t by choice. Plus, Daniel was a unique case, in that he potentially had eternity to do college. So he concluded, “You do make very good points, Daniel. Have you discussed this with Sam and Tucker? They turned their plans in, and neither mentioned music or the band…”
Daniel winced. “Yeah, I know. Um. To be fair, Sam’s is pretty much all BS. Her parents ‘supervised’ her when writing it, and it’s pretty much all their plan, which she has no interest in.”
“Good to know,” Lancer said, though he suspected as much already. He hardly could imagine Samantha willingly going to an Ivy League school and getting a business degree—law or political science, maybe, given her penchant for protesting, but not business given she was very vocally anti-capitalist.
“Yeah, she figured telling them she wants to go to MU to study occult ritual magic wouldn’t be a good idea,” Daniel said with a chuckle.
“Yes, I can see why it wouldn’t be,” Lancer said, surprised that such a major even existed. He wondered if it was more from a historical context or if rituals were actually performed; if it were the latter, that meant magic existed, and—and wait. Ghosts basically performed magic, didn’t they? One could even grant wishes! Okay, so magic definitely did exist, they’d just been calling it ‘ghost abilities’ instead to explain it. Then again, what was magic but what science had yet to explain?
Daniel continued, “Tucker wants to go to MU too, he wants to study ecto-engineering. That’s a Master’s though, for undergrad he wants to do a dual degree in paranormal engineering and computer science, but he said there’s some sort of 5-year program they offer to get the Masters in conjunction with the undergrad degree. He really likes messing with my parents’ tech—at first it was by necessity but then it was for fun as well, and I caught him willingly helping my dad create some stuff the other day,” Daniel said, chuckling again.
“So Tucker skewed the truth too,” Lancer mused. He did mention he wanted to study engineering and computer science, though listed schools like MIT, NJIT, and CalTech. Lancer had a feeling Tucker didn’t want his parents knowing he had such a high interest in the paranormal. He wondered how many other students had skewed things to cater to their parents; Lancer would have to address that during the meetings, which would begin after Thanksgiving break. “Well, no matter,” Lancer decided. “Do you think they’ll choose to do the band with you?”
Daniel, to Lancer’s surprise, actually shook his head. “No, music isn’t really their passion. Sam likes being in the band, but I can tell it’s not the same as with me. I don’t think it’ll trump her wanting to go to MU, especially with Lurker going there too—that’s the cryptid MU freshman who’s in the band, she’s dating them now and I’m pretty sure they won’t want to drop out of college for the band. Tucker… Well, most of our special effects were just ghost abilities, honestly. He was more bored than anything during the school show; the only real thing he did was set up the sound for Sam and Lurker’s instruments, but if it’s only ghost instruments, that’s not needed. He’s definitely going to want to go to MU to do more advanced techy stuff, that’s his true calling.”
“I see. I know you three are thick as thieves; will you be okay, going on tour without them, if they choose to do college right away?”
Daniel nodded. “I think so, yeah. The band is pretty large anyway, it can easily adapt to less instruments, and—”
Lancer cut him off. “Not the band; I meant you personally.”
“Oh,” Daniel said. He considered that for a moment. “Yeah, I think so. It’s not like I’ll be alone; I’ll have Ember and Johnny and Kitty. They’re my friends too. Oh, and Clockwork too. Plus, we’ll come back here in-between tours!”
Lancer smiled at Daniel. “Then it sounds like you have this pretty much decided.” He opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a blank ‘plans after high school’ packet, which he handed to Daniel. “Fill this out with your plan to do music, along with MU as your backup plan. I expect it turned in by Monday, okay?” That gave a buffer day in case it was late again; as long as it was in by Tuesday that would be fine, so Lancer could review everything over the break. “Now, quick question: are you aware that you’ve been sitting in the air?”
Daniel blinked, then looked down. “Fuck,” he hissed.
“Language!” Lancer instinctually chided.
Daniel blushed. “Sorry,” he said, moving to stand back on the ground. “I, er, really gotta stop doing that…”
Lancer looked at Daniel in sheer disbelief. “Apologies, but, The Canterville Ghost, Daniel, how have you managed to hide your ghostliness for so long?”
Daniel chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of his head. “Honestly? I have no idea.” He shrugged. “Humans are just really good at ignoring things that don’t make sense, I guess.”
“I suppose so,” Lancer said with a fond chuckle. “Now, go eat lunch before the period’s over, okay?”
Daniel grinned. “Sure thing, Mr. Lancer!” he said, then vanished into thin air, to Lancer’s surprise.
Lancer sighed. This boy was seriously going to give him a heart attack someday!
“Wait, one more thing,” Daniel said, reappearing, causing Lancer to jump slightly. Daniel shifted slightly, then took a deep breath and said, “I want to thank you. For, er, last week. That meeting, when you found… you know. And I know I wasn’t very cooperative during the meeting, which I’m sorry for, but my doctors at MU helped me understand that I was addicted; I can admit that now, and they’re helping me get better… So thank you for intervening before it got worse. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Of course I had to,” Lancer said gently. “I only want what’s best for my students.” Especially one of his favorite ones; Lancer knew he should try to treat all his students the same, but he couldn’t help but have some favorites.
“I know,” Daniel said with a soft smile, which then shifted to a look of guilt. “But, um, I have a confession…” He sighed, then shoved his hand in his pocket, but didn’t remove anything yet. “After that meeting I…” He withdrew his hand from his pocket, taking with it a small bottle, which he placed on the desk in front of Lancer; Lancer’s heart dropped upon realizing what it was. Daniel explained, “I stole more. I used some—but just that night, I swear. The next morning was the meeting with Dr. Warren and… and the addiction counselor. I didn’t take any more after that—they, er, made me spend the rest of Friday and the entire weekend at a rehab place for supernatural creatures, to detox and learn strategies to resist the cravings. I’ve been tempted, but I haven’t taken any since, not even after that locker incident two days ago, I promise.”
“I believe you,” Lancer said softly, feeling sad, even though he’d already been informed by Jack that Daniel had been sent to that rehab. Although amidst that sadness, Lancer was also proud that Danny had the strength to get help and turn the bottle in. “Thank you for turning these over. Is this all of them?”
Daniel nodded. “Yeah,” he said, then asked quietly, “Are you going to tell my dad?”
Lancer considered that. “Not this time,” he decided. “You’re not in any trouble, either,” he added, anticipating the boy’s next question. “I just want you to be safe.”
Daniel smiled, though seemed slightly downcast as he said, “I know, me too. Again, thank you.” He once again vanished into thin air, and Lancer could tell he’d flown away because the room increased back to the usual temperature—Lancer hadn’t even noticed it had cooled down.
Lancer sighed, looking dolefully at the pill bottle on the desk. He sincerely hoped this truly was the last of them.
Someone then entered the room, via actually opening the door this time, not bothering to knock.
“Oh, good, you’re here,” Sam Manson said, walking over; seeing the pill bottle on the desk, she frowned and asked, “Danny was just here? He dropped those off?”
Lancer sighed. “I can’t divulge—”
“It’s fine, I recognize the name on the bottle, it’s one of the fake ones my mom uses.” Sam sighed and hopped onto the student desk closest to Lancer’s teacher desk; technically it was against school rules to sit on the desks as opposed to the chairs, but Lancer really didn’t care. She continued, “I’m glad he turned it over.”
“You knew he had it?” Lancer asked, before her words fully registered. This was where Daniel had been getting the pills? From Sam’s mom?
Lancer had been attempting to investigate where Daniel had gotten the drugs from, given the boy was tight-lipped on the matter; he had assumed someone was selling them and Daniel was afraid to give a name, but it seemed he had actually been protecting his friend. The only explanation Lancer could think of in that case was that Sam had thought she was helping her friend; after all, until MU appeared, Daniel didn’t have a doctor in the human realm that he could go to.
“Well, not that specific bottle, but I’m not surprised—after that bullying thing, when the nurse informed him they were opioids, he told me to stop getting them for him, but then he stole a bottle, since he didn’t want to admit he was addicted—that’s the one you took last week, so I guess he took another. I’m not mad at him though—I know addiction can make people do things they wouldn’t normally.”
“Well, if it’s any comfort, this bottle is mostly full, and given he brought it to me, I believe he is serious about wanting to get better,” Lancer said, feeling this was safe to admit, though did not want to say more than that as he wasn’t aware of how much Daniel had told his friends about the situation.
Sam looked relieved at that. “Yeah, you’re right, that’s a good sign; I’ve been worried about him.” She sighed, then admitted, “It’s my fault this happened.”
“Why do you say that?” Lancer wondered.
“Because I gave them to him,” Sam revealed, guilt heavy in her voice. “I gave them to him. He was hurting a lot from all the injuries, and couldn’t go to the doctor because, well, you know, and ibuprofen and whatnot doesn’t help much with the pain from stitches and things, so I took some of them from my mom. She takes them all the time, I thought it was fine… until… until, you know.”
Lancer nodded in understanding. “It sounds like you were only trying to help,” he told her, his feelings mixed on the matter; he was thankful that no one was selling drugs to students, as Lancer had feared, but the situation was still tragic.
“I was!” Sam hurriedly said. “I was. But things are still fucked up because of me.”
Lancer opted not to call Sam out for her crass language. “Perhaps,” he said, knowing that Sam hated being coddled, then assured her, “However, this is not your fault.”
“It is,” Sam insisted. “I caused it! How can it not be my fault?”
“Numerous things contributed, for one,” Lancer told her. “But it was ultimately an accident. You don’t blame Daniel for it, do you?”
“What? Of course not.”
“But he’s the one who took the first pill.”
“Yeah but he didn’t know!”
“Exactly,” Lancer said. “And neither did you. Neither of you are at fault.”
Sam was quiet for a moment. “Oh,” she finally said. “It’s just like the portal…”
“The portal?” Lancer questioned, unsure why she was bringing that up.
“Yeah, Danny’s accident, the one that made him, you know—he told you about it, right?” Sam looked at Lancer for confirmation, and at Lancer’s nod, told him, “I blamed myself for it for a long while. Still do sometimes… Basically, it was my idea we check it out in the first place. It took a while and multiple people to convince me I wasn’t culpable.”
Lancer nodded. That was indeed a very similar situation. He assured her, “Just as you were not at fault for the portal, you are not at fault for the drugs.”
Sam nodded slowly and trailed, “Thanks…” Then she sighed. “So, how much trouble am I in?”
“You’re not,” Lancer told her. “You did what you thought was helping.”
Sam scoffed at that. “Come on. I just admitted to supplying a student with illegal drugs. That has to be against school rules. Sometimes I gave him the bottles while at school!”
“Well, I believe an exception can be made in these circumstances,” Lancer told her. “You’ve learned your lesson, I’m sure. Now, is this what you wanted to talk about? I don’t want you to miss lunch.”
Sam glanced at the clock and winced. “Shit, it is getting late,” she said, and again Lancer opted not to call her out on the language. Sam took a deep breath. “Kinda, actually. But, more about where I got them? I’m just not sure what to do. I got them from my mom. She has a stash, because she… she takes them all the time. It’s why I assumed they were harmless at first, but now I know… She takes a lot more than Danny was taking, more than is probably safe, and I don’t know what to do.” Her voice cracked as she finished.
“Ah,” Lancer said, thinking about how to best approach this. “Does your father know?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said with a sigh. “I’m not sure how he wouldn’t know; she’s not subtle at all… Why? Do you think I should talk to him?”
“That would probably be a good start,” Lancer told her.
“But what do I say?”
“Well, why not simply tell him you’re worried?” Lancer suggested. “Simply express your concerns. Don’t accuse him of not noticing, or anything like that, just simply say you’re worried and see how he responds. Perhaps he’s even already working on getting her help if it’s as noticeable as that.”
Sam twisted her mouth into an unsure expression. “You think it’ll be that easy? You’ve met my parents.”
“Yes, I have met them; that’s why I think it might be as easy as that,” Lancer told her. “I know you and your parents do not have the most compatible personalities, but I can tell that they still love you, and you still love them. Your father won’t fault you for being worried about your mother, of that I am certain.”
Sam considered that for a moment. “I guess you’re right,” she decided, seeming much calmer. “For all I butt heads with him, my dad does tend to listen if I come to him with concerns. I’ll try talking to him first and see what happens. Thanks.”
Lancer nodded and gave Sam a kind smile. “Of course; always happy to help.”
Sam smiled back, then hurried out of the room, not bothering to close the classroom door on her way out.
Lancer sighed. He took the pill bottle and shoved it into his desk drawer; he’d take it to the school nurse for proper disposal later. For now, it was time to finally eat his—
Lancer sighed again as his sandwich floated out of his hands and out the open door, a ghostly glow surrounding it. The Ghost Alert went off, and the Lunch Lady ghost could be heard shouting in the distance.
Lancer glanced at his watch; there was still barely enough time to go to the Nasty Burger drive-through, he supposed.
“Ellie, after work on Fridays I need to patrol, you know this,” Valerie told the girl patiently, while seated at a table in the back of the Nasty Burger eating her once-per-shift free burger; she had been extra careful not to drop it this time.
“I know, I know!” Ellie said, waving a ketchup-dipped fry in the air as she spoke, before popping the fry in her mouth and saying as she chewed, “We can hang out while you patrol.”
“Please, for the hundredth time, don’t talk with your mouth full; it’s gross and you’ll choke,” Valerie said tiredly.
“Yeah, yeah, you sound like Jazz,” Ellie said with an eye roll. “Besides, I literally can’t choke.” She picked up her triple-decker burger and said, “So, you’re in?” then took a bite.
“You want to join me on patrol,” Valerie said with slight disbelief. Ellie hated fighting, even though she no longer melted when attempting to.
“Yeah! We can practice your ghost powers while you patrol,” Ellie said excitedly, and maybe a little too loudly.
“Shhh, not so loud!” Valerie warned, glancing around. There wasn’t anyone else currently there. Her coworker didn’t even seem to be at the counter, which he really should be in case someone came in; oh, well, that was management’s problem while she was on break.
“Whatever,” Ellie said, though returned to a more appropriate volume. “Yeah, so I know I said we could practice this weekend, but I’m unexpectedly busy, so I thought why not tonight! We can do stuff while patrolling. Like, practice your hoverboardless flight and cool shit like that instead of those more boring intangibility and feeling-projecting control drills.”
Valerie frowned. Ellie was way more excited about all her ghost powers than she was, but Valerie did need to practice them whether she liked having them or not. If Ellie couldn’t hang out over the weekend, then might as well do it tonight. “Sure, that works. But why can’t you hang this weekend?” Valerie wondered.
Ellie grinned. “The band is recording an EP! Next weekend we’re opening for Dumpty Humpty at the A-list’s Fall Break party, and we’re gonna give out the CDs. We’ve gotten five songs written, two remixes of Ember’s and three entirely original ones. We just gotta record them now. Just wait until you hear the songs! I really think this band is going to make it big.”
Valerie felt a small pang of sad nostalgia; she used to be one of the ones who would host the school break parties, yet was no longer part of that crowd now, not in the same way. Paulina, Star, and Kwan had mellowed out since freshmen year, and had started being nicer to Valerie recently, enough to even be in her friend group and invite her to the upcoming party, but honestly that initial betrayal still lingered a little.
Valerie ignored that nostalgia and instead chuckled. “That’s what they all say, though if the Fall Festival concert was any indication, I definitely have to agree that the potential is definitely there.”
“Oh! You should come to the studio tomorrow and listen in!” Ellie suggested.
Valerie shook her head. “Sorry. I’m pretty sure all the band members know I’m the Red Huntress; that won’t go over well.”
“Dude. They all know you’re my friend, and that if I invite you, you won’t hurt them…” Ellie narrowed her eyes at Valerie. “This is about them being ghosts in general, isn’t it?”
Valerie winced. “Not entirely…?” She was trying to get over her bias, and was even okay around Ember now when others were there, but the thought of being in a room with more ghosts than humans was still a little nerve-wracking.
Ellie sighed. “Okay, fine, I’ll give you a pass for tomorrow. But you better get over this ectophobia soon, or you’ll have lots of trouble next Thursday!”
Valerie blinked. “Next Thursday? What’s happening next Thursday?” Dread then filled Valerie as she realized, “Oh no, is there an invasion planned?”
“What? No,” Ellie said, sounding confused. “It’s Thanksgiving! And Danny invited a few ghosts to it.”
“Okay… And this has to do with me why?” Valerie wondered.
“Because you’ll be there too, duh.”
Valerie stared at Ellie for a moment before realizing, “Is this your way of inviting me to have Thanksgiving with your family?”
“So you’ll be there? Great!”
“What? No! I mean, I’m sorry, but my dad and I—”
“Oh, right, he’s invited too. I think he and my dad will get along great, actually!”
Valerie paused in slight confusion, then realized that by ‘dad’ Ellie meant Jack Fenton. She considered the options. It was true that it would be only her and her dad, as it had been for the past decade. It wasn’t lonely per se, but maybe her dad would like to go to a larger one. She wasn’t quite sure about Ellie’s assessment that Damon and Jack would get along though. “Okay; I’ll ask my dad first, and if he says yes, we’ll be there,” she decided. “There’s just a few ghosts you said?”
“Yup. Probably, like, just the band members or whatever. Maybe one or two more.”
“Makes sense,” Valerie said. Danny invited those three to everything these days, to the point Sam and Tucker seemed to be dealing with a little jealousy over it—anyone with eyes could see that. Despite that jealousy though, Ember had somehow become so integrated with the trio that people were now calling them a quartet in school. Valerie really hoped that didn’t end up compromising Danny’s secret identity, given the ghost girl acted more affectionately towards Fenton than Paulina, who was supposed to be his girlfriend, did, even though Ember was supposed to be dating Phantom—Phantom had even been asked about it once, after he was caught rescuing Paulina from a ghost at the mall, and when he and Paulina both said it all was cool, it sparked a rumor that the all four were in some sort of group relationship, which then had to be quashed.
Valerie then noticed the time, and quickly wolfed down the remainder of her burger before hurrying to resume her shift.
Speak of the devil: As soon as Valerie pulled her apron on and stepped to the register, the quartet in question appeared, three dressed in mostly-black heavily-accessorized outfits and one looking very out of place among them in his red beret, basic blue jeans, red flannel shirt, and yellow-orange windbreaker. Ember had started varying her outfits more since starting school, as a way to try to fit in more with her still-living peers, and her aesthetic was the same punk-emo fashion as Danny (in fact, Valerie had a strong suspicion that 90% of Ember’s outfits were just borrowed from Danny’s wardrobe, as they were the same size and she came through his house every morning to get to school). Both currently sported black skinny jeans and black band t-shirts (Danny’s was AC/DC and Ember’s was Linkin Park) with chain accessories; the biggest difference was that Ember wore her usual black boots over the jeans whereas Danny had on a pair of Vans with a galaxy print. Sam’s aesthetic fit well with the two: pleated black skirt over fishnet leggings; a black blouse with spiderweb lace making up the whole top portion starting barely above the boob area, covered by a black faux leather jacket; and finished with her usual heavy black combat boots.
“Danny, shouldn’t you be wearing a coat?” Valerie questioned. It was pretty chilly out; with the amount Danny forgot about cold weather being a thing, Valerie was surprised no one discovered he was a ghost solely based on his constant lack of jacket in late fall and winter.
Danny tiredly sighed, then revealed, “I actually was for once, but a cow ghost stole it.”
“Serves you right for wearing real leather,” Sam said resolutely, while Tucker and Ember seemed to be holding back laughter.
“Oh, come on, that was from a thrift shop, it’s not like I went out and bought a new one or something,” Danny whined.
“Huh,” Valerie said. A cow ghost that stole leather jackets? Well, not the weirdest ghost this town had ever encountered. “Did you catch it?”
“No! No, before I could even find a place to change forms, my mom showed up and shot it with a portal gun, and it took my jacket with it into the ghost zone!”
“Wait, Maddie was there? And she didn’t attack…?” Valerie stared at Ember in confusion.
Ember shrugged. “Guess I looked human enough, I dunno.”
“Your ponytail’s literally fire.”
“She relies on her tracker too much,” Tucker jumped in. “I remotely adjusted it so it won’t pick up Danny, Ellie, Ember, Johnny, Kitty, Cujo, or you; Maddie definitely suspected a little, yet the tracker said no, so Maddie shrugged it off.” Valerie was surprised that she was on the list, although it did make sense; the last thing they needed was for the other ghost hunters to realize that the Red Huntress herself was a (half-)ghost.
“She was also pretty far away since a restraining order’s in place again,” Danny added. “Ember’s not in her usual getup, so from a distance it could be hard to tell.”
“You four gonna hurry up and join me over here or not?!” Ellie yelled. “And if so can you order me another triple-decker?”
The five of them chuckled, and then Valerie proceeded to ring up the quartet’s orders, plus Ellie’s, realizing she was actually feeling pretty happy for the first time in a while, no anger, frustration, or even stress in sight.
Notes:
And some more plot points get resolved! Since we're in the final stretch, please let me know if there's anything unresolved that I may have forgotten about; I think I remembered everything (there's a resolution to the 'Sam's mom' plot, we will see what the final situation with Maddie is, and of course Thanksgiving and the concert are happening), but I could easily be forgetting something.
Next weekend might only get 1 chapter posted; the last 3 chapters all still have some scenes to finish and I don't know how much I can get done (I need to write songs, or at least excerpts of them... Why did I decide the band was going to write original songs? I haven't written a song in over a decade!). I know I can at least get chapter 24 done, maybe 25, but the final one definitely needs to wait.
Anyway, here's summaries of the final 3 chapters:
Chapter 24: Sam talks with her dad about her concerns for her mom. Danny goes to visit Vlad to thank him for the thing with the tapes, and James and Vlad both have Concerns about Danny's new look (maybe showing up in a black MCR t-shirt featuring blood-covered people when visiting the two people most familiar with James's past actions was a bad idea in retrospect). Then, Ellie convinces (read: drags) Valerie to go to the recording studio to watch the band finish up recording, excited to show her the new songs--but then the GIW tries to raid the studio! They might be a little in over their heads though...
Chapter 25: Thanksgiving. Clockwork, Frostbite, and Jack get along very well with each other. Lancer is a little overwhelmed by all the ghosts, but adapts quickly. Valerie... well, she's trying, and by the end ends up enjoying it too, even if Ellie told her there would be much fewer ghosts than there were!
Chapter 26: The fic concludes on a happy note with the Thanksgiving Break concert!
Chapter 24: Things are Looking Up
Summary:
--Sam talks to her dad about her mother's addiction.
--Danny stops by Vlad's to thank him in-person for the videos; Vlad and James have Concerns.
--Valerie visits the recording studio after all; while there, she helps Danny through some anxiety, and the GIW raid it.
Notes:
This is the 1st of 2 chapters going up today! Got started a little later due to errands taking longer than expected, plus I added a scene at the end of the next chapter I hadn't planned on, but I should still get the other out by the end of the night. Both are massive chapters with between 11k and 12k words each.
Yes, the chapter count went up by 1 again. I ended up writing a brief (about 2.5k words) epilogue.
CW: discussion of drug addiction, small anxiety attack.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sam took a deep breath as she entered the kitchen on Saturday morning. She’d chickened out yesterday when she got home, even though she’d spent the rest of the school day after Lancer suggested she talk to her dad planning out the conversation, but this morning she finally felt she had worked up enough courage for this discussion.
This was also the perfect time, as Sam’s mom was currently out doing some womens’-only charity thing, and if it did get awkward, Sam had an escape, as her plans for the rest of the day were time-sensitive, given it involved a rented recording studio, and even her dad could appreciate following timelines when money was involved—the band planned to get that album recorded, and hopefully a weekend of using the studio for the max hours permitted would get that done.
“Sam! You’re up earlier than expected,” her dad greeted her; he was seated at the kitchen table reading the newspaper with a cup of coffee and plate of buttered and jellied toast. Sam internally preened a little at her dad finally willingly using her nickname; she’d fought for that for a long time, and only recently had accomplished that, although her mother still used the full name… Right, her mother.
“Yeah… Um, Dad? I have to talk to you,” Sam said nervously as she sat at the table, not bothering to get food first; she was too nervous to eat anything at the moment.
“What about?” her dad asked, looking concerned.
Sam folded her hands on the table and straightened her back, trying to convey seriousness. “I’m worried about Mom,” she said bluntly.
Jeremy stiffened slightly, then relaxed into a more neutral posture and asked, “What specifically are you worried about?”
“The drugs.”
“Ah,” Jeremy said, unsurprised. “You’ve noticed.”
“So you know,” Sam said flatly, holding back anger.
“Your grandmother and I are already working on it, I promise,” Jeremy said gently. “Your mother still refuses to believe it’s an issue.”
“Does that matter at this point? She needs help. You have the lawyers; you can force her into it! I know that hurts the family image or whatever if people find out, but better that than her overdosing!”
“It’s not at that point,” Jeremy argued.
“It is!” Sam asserted. “It really is! She has such a big stockpile and goes through them so fast she didn’t even notice bottles were disappearing!”
“Disappearing?” Jeremy asked, tensing with suspicion.
Sam winced. What could she say without her dad finding out too much… She took a deep breath. “Okay, so, just listen for a moment, and get angry at me, not my classmate, please. So, a classmate of mine was getting badly injured a lot, a combination of bullies and an abusive parent. He didn’t want to report either. But he was in constant pain from all the attacks. I saw mom using the painkillers, and saw she had so many, so swiped a bottle and gave it to him. I thought it would be fine because mom uses them all the time and was fine, you know? When he needed more, I got him more. But then he increased the use, and… Well, the school caught him with a bottle. Turned out, he became addicted. He had to go to rehab. And he hadn’t even been taking it as frequently as Mom does.”
Jeremy, hands folded too, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then after almost a full minute of contemplation looked at Sam. “I’m not mad,” he told her, to her utter surprise. “Disappointed at your approach to the situation, but not mad. You were only trying to help your friend the best you knew how.”
Sam blinked, pretty sure she was going into some degree of shock from her dad’s response. “You’re… really not mad? I’m not in trouble?”
Jeremy sighed. “No, Sam. I think you’ve learned your lesson the hard way; punishing you more won’t help. Next time, please simply tell me or your mom. We have lawyers. We can help.”
Sam frowned. “Even if it’s someone you don’t like?”
“Sam. Although your mom and I disapprove of some of your friends, that doesn’t mean we want them to suffer. Child abuse and bullying, especially when it’s to the point the child resorts to drugs to endure the pain, is inexcusable. Is the situation still ongoing?”
Sam shook her head. “No, thank fuck,” she said, and ignoring her dad scolding ‘language’, explained, hopefully vaguely enough so that her dad couldn’t draw conclusions, “He finally got help for the home situation, and the bullying eased up now that the school actually did something about it.”
“Ah, yes, the Baxter boy,” Jeremy drawled, scrunching his nose. “I never liked that family. His father’s a brute; I suppose the son follows in his father’s footsteps.”
“Isn’t his father one of the lawyers you have on retainer?” Sam asked, eyebrow raised.
“He was. Despite the horrid personality, he is still a skilled lawyer. However, we dropped him after learning what his son did; that man can get even the most horrible cases thrown out, so for him to only be able to negotiate down to probation, well, it must have been much worse than anyone is saying,” Jeremy concluded.
“I’m sure it was,” Sam said, wondering if her dad was aware it was Danny who had been the victim in that case; reports had to leave out the name given he was a minor, but the whole school knew. Sam suspected the ordeal might have been worse than Danny told them, as Danny was a master at downplaying things. “So, back to Mom…”
Jeremy sighed. “Yes. Pamela. You’re right, that is a bigger issue than I realized, if she didn’t even realize whole bottles were missing. I will try talking to her again, and if she still refuses to see the issue, I will start looking into a legal intervention, though I sincerely hope it won’t come to that.”
“Yeah. I hope so too,” Sam said, even though the hope was miniscule; her mother was just too stubborn. The only way she’d be getting help was unwillingly, of that Sam was certain.
In contrast to Sam’s opinion, Jeremy said, “I believe she may be more receptive this time, actually; I won’t mention your friend, but perhaps knowing her daughter is also worried will help her see reason.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Sam said. “Anyway, I have to go now—don’t want to waste already-rented studio time—but thanks for talking with me about this, really.” She smiled at her dad as she stood up, pleased at how the conversation had gone.
“Of course, darling,” Jeremy said, returning the smile. “Everything will work out, don’t you worry. With both your mother and your friend.”
“Yeah,” Sam said quietly. “Yeah, I’m sure it will,” she agreed, with much more confidence than she actually felt.
That same Saturday morning, Danny took a deep breath as he stood in front of the castle in the Ghost Zone that looked very similar to one that used to be in Wisconsin that had been destroyed. He had just come from the Ghost Zone music shop, where he purchased a microphone that he could attune, at Ember’s recommendation, and he was meeting the band soon, but he wanted to stop by here first.
Danny slowly lifted his fist to knock… Only for the door to open before he could; he probably should have expected that, given the resident likely had cameras everywhere.
“Ah, Daniel, what a nice surprise!” Vlad Masters, currently in Plasmius form, said. “Come in, come in!”
Danny cautiously entered the mansion, noting that even inside it seemed to be a replica of the one from Wisconsin, football memorabilia included. When the door closed, Plasmius shifted to Vlad.
“I must say, you’re here awfully early in the day,” Vlad commented. “Particularly for a Saturday.”
“Well, you’re awake,” Danny pointed out. “I’m just stopping by on my way somewhere else.”
Danny then noticed that someone else was in the hall, looking nervous, someone who looked very similar to Danny, though older, maybe 19 or 20 physically with longer hair tied into a ponytail—James. The clone body must have adjusted when fused, averaging the perceived ages of each part, as had happened when Danny’s ghost had initially merged with Vlad’s ghost to create James. He was taller than Danny and somewhat lanky, though still had some noticeable muscle that was accentuated by a form-fitting red sleeveless shirt; perhaps this was how Danny would look in the future if he’d been able to grow, rather than the broad-chested version of his future self that was more likely due to being merged with Vlad’s ghost. Danny vaguely wondered if the ghost form had adapted to match the clone body or if it was still the one he remembered; he decided not to ask.
“You’re in human form,” James noted with quiet incredulity.
“Yeah? So are you,” Danny pointed out, unsure of James’s reaction. Like with Vlad and Valerie, Danny could only weakly sense his emotions; Danny wondered at what percent halfa that stopped, because Danny couldn’t sense Ellie’s emotions unless she pulsed them at him through her core.
“But I’m inside the castle. You were outside.”
“Well, yeah? I usually stay in my human form here nowadays,” Danny told him, a little confused at why James seemed surprised at this. That was pretty common knowledge among the ghosts now.
“I didn’t tell him yet,” Vlad said simply.
James glared at Vlad. “Tell me what?” he demanded, then seemed to realize something, looking horrified with clear vibes of dread as he turned to Danny. “Wait, are you… did you…”
Danny caught on. “No!” he told James. “No, I’m not a full ghost… Just, er, 90%? So are—were?—you.”
“Were,” Vlad said. “The clone body used was still fully human, not yet with a ghost portion added—the new plan was to make a human clone and then recreate the accident that caused the halfa formation in hopes that would work, instead of it being half-and-half from the start. So when James merged with it, he became a 50-50 split between human and ghost.”
“And he’s stable that way?” Danny confirmed.
“Done the tests myself,” Vlad said.
“I’m right here you know,” James growled. “Explain the 90% thing!”
Danny scrunched his nose; James had, much like Valerie tended to do, projected his anger; unsure if it was intentional or accidental, Danny decided to check by instigating, “Stop projecting your anger; it tastes rancid.”
James blanched. “I’m doing what? Wait, tastes?! Why can you taste anger?! I thought that’s a full ghost thing!”
“I will explain the situation later,” Vlad promised. “There are many more explanations and questions that it will lead to, and I expect Daniel is not here for a social visit.” He turned to Danny. “So, tell me, why are you here?”
“Ah, right,” Danny said, shifting awkwardly. “I, er, don’t have much time, since I have to go meet the band now, but I wanted to stop by to thank you in-person. For the video surveillance footage. It really helped; she agreed to give Dad full custody. So, thank you.”
“Ah. You are very welcome, then,” Vlad replied.
“What footage are you talking about?” James asked with a frown. “What do you mean, custody?”
Danny sighed in exasperation and eyed Vlad judgmentally. “You didn’t tell him that either?”
“I thought it better for his mental health not to know,” Vlad said simply.
“For my—what’s that supposed to mean?!” James demanded.
“That’s on you to explain,” Danny told Vlad as he turned to the door.
“Wait,” Vlad said, and Danny turned back, giving him a questioning look. “Should we be worried about, well,” he made a sweeping gesture down across Danny. “That?”
“What?” Danny said, looking down at himself.
“The outfit,” Vlad said simply. “It is much darker than I recall you preferring to wear. Last time I saw you you were dressed similarly.”
“Yeah, do we have to worry about you having a breakdown or something?” James asked with clear worry.
“Probably not; I’ve got a therapist now,” Danny said in a dismissive tone with a shrug, opting not to mention that he’d technically had multiple breakdowns already. Then he told them in a normal voice, “The outfit’s just the style, Kitty and Ember introduced me to punk-emo fashion.”
“Your shirt features two blood-covered people,” James said incredulously.
“Oh, that. It’s just an MCR album cover; they’re one of my favorite bands!”
James looked confused. “MCR? Isn’t that the band that sings about really dark topics? How is that your favorite!?”
Danny shrugged. “I like the sound, and the edgy lyrics.”
“You like singing about blood and death and murder and stuff?”
Vlad, apparently unfamiliar with the band, gasped. “Daniel! Why would you possibly like a band that sings about that?”
“Just because the lyrics are about murder doesn’t mean they’ll inspire me… to…” he trailed off, realizing just why James and Vlad might be worried, then frowned. “Okay, look, I have no intention of killing anyone, I swear,” he said. “I’m not like you.” The jab was directed at both of them, but he glared at Vlad; of course, Danny had no concrete proof, but he’d looked into some of Vlad’s shady business dealings, and a suspicious amount seemed to involve ‘accidents’—Danny suspected those occurred when the businessmen’s wills were too strong for the overshadowing strategy to properly work.
“No, you’re definitely not,” James conceded, apparently unphased that Danny had implied Vlad had killed—then Danny recalled that he likely knew the truth already, as he did have some memories of Vlad’s, absorbed when he merged with Plasmius. “No clue how it happened, but you’re really not. I doubt the you from last year would even recognize the current you.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you that,” Danny said with a chuckle. “Punk-emo style complete with chains, with stretched ears and fangs, flying around in human form? Yeah, he’d totally be worried too. But I’m actually in a better situation now! And feeling much better mentally, believe it or not, especially after that stint in rehab. Seriously, therapy helps, you both should look into it, MU has someone licensed to treat ghosts, including halfas.”
“We’ll think about it,” Vlad answered for him and James, seeming like he was trying to maintain a calm demeanor despite potentially some internal panic.
“Hold up, did you say rehab?” James asked faintly.
Danny shrugged. “I nearly had to repeat half my classes two years in a row, is it really a surprise I failed at DARE too?”
Vlad looked rather harrowed at the revelation, too. “Daniel. You say not to worry, but I must admit, this is not exactly something I can ignore. If there’s any way I can help—”
Danny scoffed. “You? Help with my mental health? Yeah, right,” he said, then sighed and reluctantly admitted, “Although I suppose you did help with those tapes… Still, although I do really appreciate it, really, I definitely don’t trust you enough to help with, well, my junkie problem. I went to a rehab specifically for supernatural creatures, and can go back if I relapse. My friends know what to watch for, and both my Dad and Jazz know too.” Danny opted not to mention Ellie; he wasn't sure if Vlad knew that she was back or not. “I’m good, really.”
“Well, if you’re sure… But know that I am willing to help if needed. I am serious about reforming, even if you do not believe me,” Vlad told Danny, and what vibes Danny could sense did show he was sincere. “I do not plan to waste my second chance.”
“What was it?” James suddenly asked. “The drug. What was it?”
Danny paused at that. The split in their timelines was during the Nasty Burger explosion, meaning… “You already know.”
James scrunched his brow in confusion. “I don’t… wait,” he said, eyes widening. “The painkillers Sam got? But I—we—only took them like once a week, as needed!”
“Yeah, well, as the fights got worse, so did the pain,” Danny told him, a little testily. “Before I knew it, I was taking them for everything, not just the most major injuries. It was bad enough that people started to notice. Then when I tried to stop… I couldn’t. The adults found out last week, and I was sent there for a few days—before you ask, yes, it’s usually longer, but I get really bad anxiety when I’m away from Amity Park for too long with no way to check in.” He wasn’t sure why he was saying so much about it to these two, of all people.
“So you’re only newly sober,” Vlad noted.
“Yeah,” Danny confirmed. “But I have an addiction counselor I have to see twice a week.” Maybe assuring him of that would get Vlad to stop trying to help. Then, deciding he was done with the conversation, Danny said, “Anyway, I really need to get to the recording studio now, my band’s recording our first EP today.” Danny again turned towards the exit, giving a dismissive wave as he moved to the door, which he opened and tried to walk through, only to hit a solid translucent blue wall and bounce off it, receiving a small zap. “Ow! What the fuck’s a ghost shield doing here?”
“Since when does a ghost shield work on you?” James gaped.
“It’s the new model,” Danny said sullenly.
Vlad, looking like he was still processing every highly-concerning thing Danny had said, sighed. “Apologies; it’s kept on to keep the Ghost Zone’s ambient ectoplasm out, allowing those of us who are… lower-percent halfas than you to safely be in human form here for such an extended period of time without ill effects. Press the button beside the door to dismiss it for a moment.”
Danny pressed the button, then flew out of the castle without another word; he really did need to get to the studio; there was just one week until The Amity Park Ghosts’ second concert, after all! If they wanted an EP for it, they had to record it that weekend.
“And they claim I’m the fucked up one,” Danny heard James mutter as he left, followed by Vlad saying “Language!”
Valerie stood at the door to the studio room, steeling herself to enter. Ellie had convinced her to come for the last hour they had the recording studio, which was a stout yet long one-story building on the outskirts of Amity Park, the only one they could find to rent on such short notice. It wasn’t usually open on weekends, but Sam’s wallet got them special permission to use it.
The entrance was a lobby with a couple couches, a table, and a desk for a receptionist, with a small office behind the desk; no one was there. Ellie had explained already to Valerie that the special permission included the group having to open and set it up themselves. The studio had a hallway to the right of the small office; opposite that office was a bathroom, and following that were two recording rooms, on opposite sides of the wall, quiet as they were sound-proof. Ellie had told her they were in the left one.
The door opened before Valerie could open it, and Ellie appeared in Valerie’s vision, in human form but floating so her face was levelled with Valerie—ghosts seemed to do that a lot, Valerie noted. Was she expected to now, if she was shorter?
“Valerie! You showed up!” Ellie cheered.
“I told you I would,” Valerie said with a chuckle.
“Come on!” Ellie said, grabbing Valerie by the wrist and tugging her into the room before slamming the door closed with her foot. “You’re going to love the music, seriously,” she told Valerie proudly.
Valerie looked around the room; the room was fairly large, with some couches, stools by music stands and microphones, amps, and various other equipment. Some of the members were playing tunes or practicing together, others were just chatting; all waved or said words of greeting before returning to what they were doing. Valerie recognized all but one, a teenager in a purple cloak and large scar across his eye, his chest’s center which looked like some sort of clock, seated in the corner fiddling with a keyboard.
The room had a sound booth attached, a glass window showing inside and Tucker seated at a large soundboard and computer setup in front of it, with an additional laptop attached, talking to Danny, who was inside the room with a microphone. The microphone was fancy, a custom personal one if Valerie had to guess, the design black with thin toxic green and ice blue slightly-glowing lines spiralling around it. No wires were visible; was it a Ghost Zone one?
“They record each instrument track individually,” Ellie explained. “Then sync them together. That way if the volume or tone of the specific instruments need adjusting, it can easily be done. We want the cleanest sound possible for the album! Of course, this means we’ve gotta play everything a ridiculous amount of times…”
“We’ve just got Danny’s vocal portion of the final song to finish up,” Tucker explained, gesturing to a screen that had a column of sound waves, each labelled as a different instrument, the vocal tracks all separate too, the final empty one saying ‘Danny: vocals’.
Valerie frowned, noticing something. “Danny only has vocals? No guitar?”
“Yeah, he’s just doing the lead vocals now,” Ellie explained. “We watched a bunch of videos of different bands performing, and noticed when the lead vocalist doesn’t also have an instrument they can move around a lot more and the audience seems to react to that energy. Since we have a lot of instruments, Danny agreed to do that.”
“And he’s okay with it?” Valerie confirmed.
“He suggested it, actually,” Tucker revealed.
Ellie continued, “I actually think doing two things at once was a little overwhelming for him, especially because they’re both pretty new, but he doesn’t want to admit it so used this as his excuse.”
“Oh; I suppose that makes sense,” Valerie agreed. She certainly wouldn’t be able to do both at once!
Valerie then looked through the window at Danny again. It appeared that he was singing, but it was silent; Tucker had a headset on that he must be using to listen, because he then frowned and looked at the boy, then said, “Dude, what was that?”
“Sorry!” Danny looked like he said while sheepishly shrugging, then at Tucker pressing a button, presumably some signal going off in the room because Danny began singing again.
“Hey, Tuck, can we hear?” Ellie asked.
“Oh, right,” Tucker said, then grabbed a few more headsets and handed them to the girls. He instructed Danny to restart, and after a glare Danny complied.
Valerie put hers on; all other sounds in the room vanished, and Danny’s voice rang out.
🎵Ever since I was small / I’ve been enchanted by the vast night sky / Enthralled by images / of rockets blasting through the stratosphere / Bewitched by chronicles / of silver spacemen dancing on the moon / Fantasized about how / I too would someday float among the stars / But now I know for sure / that I’ll never manage to make the cut / Only in my dreams will / I ever live to be an astronaut🎵
“The song’s about… astronauts?” Valerie asked without thinking, mildly confused.
It seemed that whatever the settings on the headsets were, Danny couldn’t hear, thankfully. Tucker signalled Danny to go again, to which he received an eye roll, then pressed a button on his own headset and suddenly the singing cut out and only he could be heard. “The title is ‘Childhood Dreams’,” Tucker explained. “All the band members have a solo in it—at first it was just gonna be done by the ghosts and titled ‘Dead Aspirations’, but then we realized that Danny could get revealed that way, especially because his original solo was a little more explicit, so now it’s just framed as general things people dreamed of in childhood that change for whatever reason as they get older and we adjusted the lyrics accordingly.”
“Huh. Why just the ghosts at first?” Valerie wondered. “Most people have things they dreamed of doing as kids that they ended up not doing.”
“Well, most of them are teenagers who died,” Tucker pointed out. “None of them planned on that happening; they all had futures they were thinking about, plans they wanted to fulfill. The initial idea was to write specifically from that POV.”
“Oh. I… never really thought about that before,” Valerie admitted. It made sense, though—they had been living people before they were ghosts, so of course there would have been things they wanted to do that death prevented them from doing, especially teenagers who had had what they thought were many decades of life ahead of them.
Valerie herself had future plans that wouldn’t get fulfilled either, which she was still struggling with accepting—she had originally wanted to perhaps be a doctor, before the Red Huntress became her career (she wouldn’t have it any other way though), but the biggest upset for her, which she wouldn’t ever admit it to anyone here, was that she’d always, or at least for as long as she could remember, imagined herself as someday being a mother, something which was now impossible.
Valerie had learned of it because she’d noticed her period hadn’t happened in a while, so asked about it when Ellie and Jack were helping her learn about her halfa biology (upon which Valerie then had to explain to Ellie what a period even was). As it turned out, Jack’s studies on the halfa mice, which were back at the Fenton household now (Lancer’s cats were too curious, which had apparently been making him nervous, and with Maddie gone there was no longer worries about her finding them), had revealed that all of them had lost usage of their reproductive systems, regardless of gender or halfa percentage; the theory was that because ectoplasm was antithesis to life, life couldn’t be created from a being composed even partly of such. A quick scan showed that the same applied to Valerie; she would never have a biological child of her own—adoption was always possible of course, but to her it didn’t feel the same.
Valerie then vaguely wondered if Jack had told Danny that yet, then wondered if Vlad knew, then decided she did not want to think about that.
“Hey! Earth to Valerie,” Ellie joked, poking her in the shoulder, and when Valerie turned to her with a raised eyebrow asked, “Whatcha thinking about?”
“Uh… Nothing of importance,” she said, and Ellie’s frown told her, “Last weekend, the… girl halfa thing.”
“Ooooh, that,” Ellie said. “Gotcha.”
Tucker looked curious, but thankfully didn’t ask, instead focused on Danny’s song, which he seemed to be singing again.
“Yeah, I had to record mine twelve times before Tucker was satisfied!” Ellie told Valerie, guessing her thoughts. “And that was the record. Johnny took the longest, he got to seventeen. This is Danny’s tenth; let’s see if he breaks my record.”
Valerie let out a low whistle. “Wow. I had no idea this all was so complicated! But, I’m curious; what was your solo about?”
“Ah,” Ellie said. “Mine’s about Vlad.”
“Vlad?!”
Ellie shrugged. “Sure. The verse is basically, I dreamed of following in my father’s footsteps, he turned out to be a jerk, now I’m on my own. Classic angsty stuff that’s perfect for one of these songs.”
“You wanted to be like Vlad?!”
“Dude, he literally created me, and then my only exposure was to him, with all his lies about me being his perfect daughter, meant to be his heir, et cetera et cetera. I wanted to live up to that, to make him proud, as any kid in my situation would. Half of why I ran away after realizing that was all a lie was so that I could figure out who I really was, outside his influence.”
“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense,” Valerie said. “Perfect for a song like this.”
Ellie grinned. “Thanks! Hey, wanna hear it?”
“Wait until I’m done,” Tucker said. “Listen to the finished ones first.”
“How many are there?” Valerie wondered.
“Five,” Ellie explained. “Three 100% new, two punk remixes of Ember’s stuff—specifically, ‘You Will Remember’ and ‘Girls’ Night Out’. But they’re actually changed a lot! Like, the lyrics were totally rewritten. Even one of the titles is changed—it’s ‘Ghosts’ Night Out’ now. Honestly they only vaguely resemble the songs, not sure if they can even be considered remixes now.”
“Interesting,” Valerie said. “What are the other two originals about?”
“One’s about ghost deaths,” Ellie said. “We got permission from a bunch of the other ghosts! It’s kinda gonna double as a kinda PSA about enjoying life while you can but also always be cautious? Because you never know when the end is near. It’s dark but oddly hopeful?”
Valerie chuckled. “Seems perfect for this band. Is the last one like that too?”
“Nope!” Ellie said. “The last song is actually an upbeat one! It’s a ballad duet between Ember and Danny. Apparently at that Halloween party they did a duet for karaoke” —Ellie pronounced the word differently than Valerie expected, with a clear Japanese accent, making Valerie wonder if the US pronunciation of the word was technically wrong— “and it was a super huge hit!”
“Wasn’t Danny at the party as Phantom?” Valerie asked. “Won’t people draw a connection?”
Tucker answered that with, “Nah, they sang some stuff together at the Fall Concert too, and no one caught on except Kwan, so it should be fine… Anyway, I think we’re good here now! Looks like Danny took thirteen tries, so you still have the record for fewest renditions of this one, Ellie!”
“Whoo!” Ellie shouted as Danny emerged from the recording room, simply phasing through the window and flying above the sound board.
Tucker, who had tensed slightly, sighed in relief. “Good, you remembered to avoid the equipment.”
“Apparently ghosts messing up technology is an actual thing,” Ellie told Valerie. “Proximity doesn’t affect it but going intangibly through it? Yeah, it gets a little glitchy.”
“Took ten whole minutes to fix the settings when Johnny went through yesterday!” Tucker said as he fiddled with the computer, layering tracks and doing all sorts of things rapidly; Valerie became dizzy looking at it. “Anyway, give me like twenty minutes, I got all the other tracks together, just gotta meld Danny’s in and then compress them into one single mp3 file…”
Ellie showed Valerie the other tracks, which were amazing—Valerie was left with a feeling that this band truly had the potential to make it big. Her favorite song was definitely the duet between Ember and Danny; the two really synced well with each other, and their chemistry was evident—if Danny weren’t gay, Valerie would think the two were actually in love, that’s how well they worked together in the song.
However, Danny seemed a little off somehow; he sneakily phased out into the hallway when he thought no one was looking.
Valerie excused herself, claiming a bathroom break, and found Danny sitting in the hallway, breathing heavily... Wait, breathing? Danny didn’t usually breathe any more, let alone heavily given he didn’t need oxygen… He glanced at Valerie, then closed his eyes, looking like he was trying to hold himself together.
Valerie sat next to Danny and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. What’s going on?”
Danny shook his head. “It’s nothing,” he barely eked out.
“Sure doesn’t look like ‘nothing’,” Valerie said. She tried to send a pulse of comfort towards Danny, like Ellie had shown her, but it felt a little different than the usual emotion-projection skill.
Danny frowned, then turned to Valerie with a wide-eyed incredulous look. “Did you just pulse your core at me?”
“Did I? I was just trying to do the projection thing, Ellie said it could help people having panic attacks…”
“Oh,” Danny said. “Well I guess it kinda worked? Though shocking someone out of panic is kinda an unconventional method; usually they tell you to go slow,” he joked.
“Uh. Yeah. I didn’t realize I could pulse my core like that… I thought it was a more ghost thing?”
Danny shrugged. “Hey, halfas are still pretty mysterious, you know. Ghosts can only pulse their cores at each other like that if the cores recognize them as friends, and the only human one we know who’s close to your percentage is Vlad; for all we know he can do it too, but is just so coldhearted he never bothered to explore that aspect. He uses ghosts as his minions, not friends, so why would he try to get close enough that his core could connect to them?”
Valerie chuckled. “Yeah, sounds like him. So, if our cores can talk to each other, this means we’re friends now, right?”
“Well, I suppose I can’t argue with that,” Danny said with a tepid smile.
“Same. So, between friends, then, what’s got you out here alone?”
Danny sighed. “I dunno. I guess I’m just nervous? Like, this is a big thing! What if the EP doesn’t do well? What if people liking us during the Fall Festival was a fluke? I really really really love being in this band. I seriously want this band to do well. I love music. This is my passion, I know it; it’s seriously something I see myself doing in the future, the first time I’ve had anything like that since my NASA dreams fell through. But all we’ve performed were covers; what if the original songs don’t go anywhere?”
“Oh they’ll definitely go somewhere,” Valerie assured Danny. They’re good. And I’m not just saying that!”
“But… But what if they still flop? What if it’s just you and us that like them?”
Valerie thought about that; it wasn’t true at all, she knew that, but how could she get Danny to understand that? “You know the band Simple Plan?”
“Duh. They’re one of my favorite bands!” Danny told her.
“So you know their history?”
“Um. Kinda?” Danny said. “I’ve never paid that much attention to bands’ backstories, but most of the members had a different band at first, right?”
“Yeah, when they were our age,” Valerie told Danny. “They just played local. But then they formed Simple Plan, and were determined to make it big.”
“Which they did!”
“Yeah, eventually,” Valerie told Danny. “Their first album was a bit of a bust.”
“What? But that one’s the best!”
“Yeah, eventually people caught onto it, but its initial sales were horrible,” Valerie informed him. “But the band knew they were good. They knew they wanted to do music, that the rockstar life was for them. So they kept going. They played at every show they could. Their popularity grew; they made a second album, and it had fans swarming the stores on release day.”
“Okay… your point?”
“My point is that they didn’t achieve fame overnight. It took effort. They had to keep fighting. So don’t fret if your first attempt goes wrong—just try again, and keep trying, because I know you’re a great musician. Your band has a lot of promise. You will make it big someday. Maybe this EP will become popular, and progress into a full album that will sell out. Or maybe these songs won’t pan out, and you’ll have to try again. But if you just keep trying, you will make it big someday, of that I’m certain.”
Danny gave Valerie a fanged grin with tears threatening at the corners of his eyes. “Thanks, Val,” he said. “Really, thanks.”
“Of course; glad I could help,” Valerie said amicably.
The two sat quietly for a little bit, and then returned to the room once Danny seemed calm.
“Aaaaaaaaand it’s done!” Tucker declared as they phased back in (not needing to open doors really was convenient, Valerie had to admit), holding up a thumb drive. “All the tracks are on here, backed up to both my PDA and Sam’s laptop. Now we just gotta burn the CDs.”
“You’re doing that yourself?” Valerie asked. “Won’t that take a while?” She burned CDs at home sometimes, mixed tapes and whatnot, but that always took quite some time per CD.
“Yeah, I have a professional burner at my place,” Sam explained. “Bought it specifically for this; it’ll still take some time, but my grandma says she’ll help out.”
“Your grandma supports the band?” Valerie asked curiously.
“Oh yeah, she’s cool,” Sam told her. “She wants me to follow my dreams, whatever they are—even if it’s being in a punk band.”
“It’s her parents that don’t approve,” Tucker chimed in.
“Yeah but they don’t approve of anything I do, so I don’t care,” Sam asserted.
“Yeah, fight the power, man!” Johnny exclaimed.
“Woman,” Sam reminded him.
“Right. Fight the power, woman!” Johnny amended, causing the whole group to laugh.
“Can we hear the final version of the recording?” Ember asked.
“Of course!” Tucker said, and pressed a button on the laptop; it seemed he had been prepared for the request.
The song rang out, and Valerie decided she’d lied earlier: this one was her favorite. The song’s verses were quiet yet layered, all in the 6-10 syllable pattern repeated 6 times that Danny’s verse had been in. The chorus, which appeared after every two band member solos and repeated twice at the end, was louder. The only one who didn’t seem to have a solo was the purple-cloaked keyboardist, whose identity Valerie still didn’t know.
Ellie’s indeed was about wanting to be like her dad only to be betrayed, and now wanting the opposite. Danny’s solo was of course the astronaut one Valerie had already heard, vague enough to be interpreted as grades or something rather than death being the true reason for it now being impossible. However, the full ghosts didn’t shy away from the dreams being blatantly cut off due to implied deaths. Johnny, to Valerie’s surprise, sang about plans to go to Princeton on scholarship, first in his family to go to college, and actually did say that a motorcycle crash prevented that. Kitty’s was about similar college dreams, thwarted because of dropping out of high school after running away from an abusive family, but then said she didn’t even make it far before her life was gone too. Ember talked about a love of animals, plans to go to vet school, but a fire ending that. Sam, the only one other than Ellie who didn’t have a death that thwarted her plans, sang about her parents preventing her childhood dreams; apparently, she’d once wanted to be an athlete, to Valerie’s total surprise, but her parents insisted that she was only allowed to do things that were ‘proper for a lady’ like ballet, figure skating, cheerleading, and similar, none of which Sam had wanted to do—she was into rougher things like soccer and softball. Valerie had a feeling that many people would be able to relate to that one; kids being pushed into gendered activities rather than what they actually wanted to do was a ridiculous part of society, in Valerie’s opinion.
Though the verses were sad, the chorus itself was in contrast, a new choppier pattern, just 4 nearly-shouted 6-syllable phrases with short pauses, tone upbeat and hopeful, which Valerie felt was a brilliant choice:
🎵 The past—it don’t matter! / The future—it’s your choice! / Don’t fret—things get better! / These regrets—just a vice!🎵
When the song ended, Tucker closed the laptop and informed everyone that they had to start packing up to be out of there by the designated time, making plans to all grab food at a nearby pizza place after—Nasty Burger had of course been suggested first, but Ellie vetoed that with a wink to Valerie, aware that Valerie disliked going there on her off-hours.
As the band began to pack up, Valerie suddenly heard an odd buzzing. She noticed the ghosts and other halfas reacting, too, all recognizing it. A ghost shield nearby? Why—
“We have the place surrounded!” a deep voice echoed, sounding like a megaphone was being used. “A ghost shield has been placed around the building. As the ghosts detected inside have a collective power level of greater than thirty, we will breach without further investigation; we implore all humans to take cover. The ghost scum will surrender if they know what’s good for them!”
“Great; the GIW,” Danny moaned.
“We gotta fight, then,” Ember concluded.
“Ugh, I hate fighting,” Ellie complained.
“Which side are you gonna help?” Sam asked Valerie warily.
Valerie scoffed. “You guys, of course—I’m serious when I say I want to do better! Besides, the GIW attacks me, too, now.”
Johnny sighed. “This is not how I wanted my Saturday to end…”
“Well, unfortunately we have no choice,” Kitty pointed out.
“I’ll hack any weapons I can,” Tucker said, already with his PDA out.
The final member, whose name Valerie still didn’t know, cryptically said, “I believe I am not currently permitted to intervene, but I shall observe just in case that changes.” He moved to the corner and turned invisible. He was a strange one, Valerie concluded—but there were plenty of them that they could probably easily do without his help, as the GIW generally were pushovers.
Danny and Ellie quickly transformed into their ghost forms before the GIW found their room.
Valerie quickly dialed the police via her suit’s comm; it reacted to her thoughts, like she now knew ghost abilities did; human technology had not yet reached the point that suits could do such a thing.
“Hey, Val,” Police Chief Griffin answered. He was a family friend whom Valerie had known since she was born (known to her informally as Uncle Hank, despite no blood relation). He knew about her troubles with the GIW, and had been against their presence in Amity Park from the start. Surprisingly, the APPD also were overall Phanom supporters, though on the down-low due to the Mayor being against him; after all, his presence did reduce the crime rate (many would-be human criminals were more wary now that a ghost ‘protector’ of the town was around, even if he mostly only targeted other ghosts). This had been a major conflict between Valerie and Uncle Hank for a while, but the two hadn’t let it affect their relationship much.
“Sorry, no time to talk,” Valerie said quickly. “I’m at the recording studio on the corner of 8th and Green; the GIW are attacking without warning. No one here is in the wrong, I swear, it’s just the new band that has ghosts in it—”
“Say no more; we’re on our way,” Chief Griffin told her, then hung up.
The GIW then breached the recording room, and the battle began.
Valerie counted a dozen agents; not a bad match-up, but doable, given Valerie’s side had three (four?) full ghosts, three halfas, and two humans fighting. The agents wouldn’t know what hit them!
Ecto-blasts flew all around, shields went up; the band members were also attempting to guard the equipment, Valerie noted, with Kitty and Johnny apparently on duty for that, sweeping it against one wall with telekinesis and putting shields around it—right, half of that was rented. Johnny’s shadow flew around dismantling the GIW weapons, and Tucker somehow used his PDA to render some inert, though the agents seemed to have packed a lot of extra. Ember used her guitar for some sweeping sound attacks, though avoided using her fire due to being indoors. Danny did use his ice, though—or at least, tried. It seemed the GIW had some sort of shielding device that melted the ice if he tried to encase them in it, though he could make walls, which they’d need to waste shots blasting through.
Sam and Tucker helped by using wrist rays, too, which distracted the agents a little so the ghosts could get shots in; the agents seemed to be largely ignoring the humans, focusing on attacking the ghosts and halfas.
Two more agents then wheeled in a strange machine that looked loosely like a phonograph into the room… A sonic weapon, Valerie realized.
One of the two pressed a button on the machine, and Sam and Tucker gave shouts of pain, putting their hands on their ears. The GIW agents didn’t react, and Valerie then noticed they were all wearing some sort of earphones that must filter it out.
Valerie winced, a strange nausea coming over her; she noticed the ghosts were falling onto their knees, gravity apparently working on them, all looking queasy, and Valerie remembered the weapon from a demonstration in class. The same had happened then; Danny had collapsed, but Valerie could stay standing…
Valerie tried shooting the device, but had enough trouble focusing on it that none of her shots hit it, though the GIW agent who had activated it was taken down by a shot.
Then, Tucker appeared next to the weapon, wearing noise-cancelling headphones, and fiddled with the machine, seeming to have trouble getting it to turn off. He was pressing different buttons and looked confused and frustrated, as though he knew how to get it off but the machine wasn’t cooperating—which, given it was a GIW device, was the most likely scenario, as the same type of machine had accidentally gone off without even being touched in class.
Sam then raced towards it, holding a microphone stand and also with noise-cancelling headphones. It seemed the humans were still being ignored by the agents as she whacked the other agent near the machine over the head with it, just as he had noticed Tucker and moved to pull the boy away. Sam then whacked the machine repetitively with the microphone stand; the horn-like part barrelled to the ground, and the machine sparked, finally stopping the sonic sound.
Valerie looked around. Most of the GIW agents were out of commission, though many of the ghosts were as well, thankfully only in ecto-nets; of the GIW agents, 5 remained, but of the band, Valerie only saw the two humans and herself standing; Danny wasn’t netted, but he was still on the ground, and presumably the invisible unknown ghost was safe as well, but things weren’t looking good.
As Danny struggled to his feet, still looking weak, Valerie noticed one of the GIW agents on the ground aiming a bazooka at him, one of the newer models that although it couldn’t kill a ghost it could destabilize them pretty badly, enough to be unable to escape and take days to recover. The agent was unnoticed by Danny, and there was no time for Valerie to try to hit him with a weapon, especially as she was still a little nauseous and unsure she’d hit on a first shot.
As the agent’s finger pressed down on the trigger, Valerie acted on instinct and leapt in front of Danny—this would definitely hurt, but better her than Danny, especially since he was much more ghost than her so the damage would be greater.
One moment the large sphere of energy was in front of her, barely a baseball’s distance away, and the next Valerie felt a strange lurch as the shot exploded against the wall behind her and Danny, who were both suddenly a fair few feet to the left of the shot.
“What the…” Valerie trailed. She looked around; the GIW agents were all tied up against one wall. All the ghosts and humans there, the netted ones now free, looked as completely as confused as Valerie felt, except for Danny, who looked like he was trying not to laugh.
“You’re welcome,” the unfamiliar teenage ghost, now visible again, said smugly from beside Valerie.
“You did this!?” Valerie asked, amazed. If he could do this, why would he stay on the sidelines? “Wait…” she narrowed her eyes at the teenage ghost, recalling that Danny had told her about knowing an especially powerful ghost that tended to stay out of things. “You’re the time ghost, Clockwork? But you’re just a teenager!”
Suddenly, the ghost shifted to a form more resemblant of a middle-aged adult. “Only when I want to be,” he said, looking amused. Then he shifted to an elderly man, then a small toddler, and then what looked like a kid around age 8 or 9, and then back to the teenage form.
“What! You have a kid form, too?!” Danny declared, apparently having not known that.
“I have any age form I want,” Clockwork informed him. “Just because I have a few favorite ages doesn’t mean I can’t be other ones.”
“Oh,” Danny said, looking surprised. Then, he frowned. “Hold up. Won’t the Observants get mad at you for interfering so much with me again?”
“They can try. However, I was merely protecting my ward; they cannot be angry at me for that. Plus, this was best for the timeline, I feel.” He turned to Valerie. “I thank you for attempting to protect Danny, but unfortunately that shot would have gone through you both, resulting in a very bad timeline.”
“Oh,” Valerie said, feeling herself pale. She hadn’t been thinking about that possibility when she jumped in front of it. “So if you hadn’t intervened, we’d be…”
“Severely injured, but you would have survived,” Clockwork said. “Though they would have captured you both.”
“C-captured?” Danny stuttered, face paling too.
“Yes. You would have ultimately been rescued, but the blow to both your mental states… Well. I believe it’s best not to say what the result would be.”
Valerie opened her mouth to respond, but Danny put a hand on her arm and shook his head; Valerie closed her mouth, catching onto his implication that apparently when Clockwork said it was best not to know, it was best not to know. Given that both their mental states were already extremely shaky as it was (Valerie actually had taken up Danny on his recommendation to see a shrink at MU for ‘newly non-humans’ and it turned out that she had a lot more unresolved issues than she’d expected aside from that), Valerie could believe that torture at the hands of the GIW could have caused one or both of them to do something with cataclysmic consequences.
“And you’re sure the Observants won’t be causing problems because you interfered?” Danny double-checked.
“I am certain,” Clockwork confirmed. “Like I said, if they try, I will merely point out that I was fulfilling the duty they assigned me by protecting the timeline. Now, let’s get the equipment cleaned up, shall we? We don’t want to lose the deposit.”
“Um. What about them?” Johnny said, using his thumb to point behind him, where the unconscious agents were tied up and lined against the wall.
“The Amity Park Police Department will be here shortly,” Clockwork told them.
The other, minus Valerie, tensed and looked wary. “Um. Why?” Danny asked. “Should we run…?”
“Ghost shield’s still up,” Ellie pointed out.
“It’s okay; I called them, they’re on our side,” Valerie informed the group. She explained, “MU recently sued the GIW, claiming as a government agency they had to follow certain rules that they were failing to follow. Two days ago, MU won the case, so now the GIW must get an official warrant issued by a judge in order to enact a raid, which must include a proper reason for it. This raid was not sanctioned, nor would it have been given that merely having ghosts present is not a proper reason—we have legally rented this studio and are not breaking any laws.”
“But we’re some of the most wanted ghosts,” Ember pointed out, as Ellie and Danny quickly changed back to their human forms; Valerie stayed in her suit.
“Only in the eyes of the mayor and GIW; there are no official judge-signed warrants out for your arrest, nor will there be for any of your past transgressions as there is no evidence that cannot be easily refuted,” Clockwork explained.
“Police!” came a shout from the door to the studio, no knocking first as it likely had been blasted off its hinges by the GIW. “We’re coming in!”
“Stay where you are,” Valerie told the band. Before the officers reached their room, she took a deep breath and stood up straight, then stepped through the now-empty doorway (the door was lying on the floor in pieces) and into the hallway, hands up, in her Red Huntress guise; the cops usually took her as an authority on matters.
Four officers were slowly moving down the hallway, holding guns, looking wary; the front door could be seen from here, and was, as expected, destroyed.
“Red Huntress!” a larger Black man said, one who Valerie recognized—Chief Griffin. He lowered his gun and signalled for the others to do the same. “What’s going on here? Things seem quiet. Are the GIW gone?”
Valerie nodded. “The new local band, ‘The Amity Park Ghosts’, which includes both ghost and human teenagers, is recording an album here today, with me supervising; everything is above board. The GIW attacked unprovoked without a warrant, as is now required.”
“Ah, yes, we have been briefed on that new requirement,” Chief Griffin said with a nod. “Including the fact that there are no official warrants on any of the so-called ‘top ten most wanted’, thus we are not to treat them as criminals unless actively caught committing a crime or official charges are brought forward. Do you know why the GIW attacked? Was there belief that anyone was in danger or actively committing a crime to justify their lack of warrant?” Right, that was an exception.
“No,” Valerie said confidently. “Like I said, everything the ghosts here are doing is all above board. Sam Manson rented the studio for the weekend, all their recording supplies are legally purchased or rented, and none have outstanding warrants. The only reason the GIW had for attacking was that ghosts were in the room. Any modicum of investigation would prove that they are friendly ghosts and no one was in danger.” She knew Uncle Hank would accept this; again, he was already known to be more sympathetic to ghosts, including Phantom.
Chief Griffin nodded. “Understood. What of the GIW agents and band members? Are they still in the room?”
Valerie nodded. “The GIW agents have been subdued. They are unconscious and tied up; any judge would rule it as self-defense and a citizen’s arrest. Everyone else involved is still in the room and, although that’s due to a ghost shield over the building, I believe they are willing to cooperate.”
Chief Griffin nodded again. “Got it. How many are in there?”
“At least a dozen agents. They used a sonic weapon that also hurts humans, not just ghosts, as well as shot at everyone, humans included too, with some more powerful ecto-weapons that are not human-safe.” It wasn’t wholly a lie; they caused small burns on humans, but they could assume that any injury to Danny, Ellie, or herself from them were because of that reason too rather than their ghost portions. She held up her arm, where her suit was damaged and one could see the skin was burned. “Injuries are thankfully relatively minimal, but it was close; myself and one of the other humans were nearly hit with a bazooka blast that I am certain would have hospitalized us if it landed.”
Chief Griffin winced at seeing the injury, but remained professional. “And the number of civilians?”
“Four ghosts and four humans,” Valerie reported. “Five including myself.”
“You were supervising this?” one of the officers asked. “Why?”
“I believe you are familiar with Jack Fenton’s recent claims about ghosts, corroborating with MU’s views on the matter?” Valerie asked, and when the officer nodded, she continued, “Well, I talked it over with him and his son, who is in this band. I then read some recent research from MU, and decided to converse with some ghosts. I admit I still have some biases remaining that I am working to get over, but ultimately the evidence overwhelmingly supports Jack Fenton’s claims: ghosts are just as intelligent and emotionally diverse as the humans they once were, and have identical ranges of good and evil. There are biological differences, and some differences in psychology that can lead to misunderstandings and incidents that seem bad on the surface, but usually once it’s explained to the ghosts why it was bad they’ll stop—something to note about that too is that human-origin ghosts retain the mental maturity of whatever age they died at, so in that sense the kid-looking ones really can only even be held accountable in the same way a human of that age would be. Ultimately though, in essence they are just like you and me. It is wrong to assume all ghosts are bad, and I can assure you that those in that room are not bad.”
“Fascinating,” Chief Griffin said, and he sounded earnest. “I’ll have to take a look at some of those studies.”
“If you go to the school, they’ve started putting out free booklets that have highlights of that research, as a way to help educate Amity Parkers. They recently installed a newspaper box with them on their stoop,” Valerie told him. “If you want to read anything more in-depth, they have copies of the reports on their website. There’s also a lot of books on ghosts in their library you can check out—they just made a special section of it that’s free for Amity Park residents to use.” Thankfully all the books that included halfas were in the school-only/by-special-request section, by design.
“I’ll definitely be checking that out,” Chief Griffin promised. “Now, let’s get our reports taken care of, and arrest those GIW agents.”
“Wait,” another officer said, then turned to Valerie. “You said they’re all teens? We need to have their parents present to interview them, in that case.”
Chief Griffin frowned. “We’re not arresting the kids, just the GIW.”
“Yeah, but the GIW attacked the teens,” the officer pointed out. “We should do victim interviews with all of them—shouldn’t we do this entirely by the book, and gather as much evidence as possible, so the GIW can actually get in trouble for once?”
Valerie resisted chuckling; the APPD did not have the best relationship with the GIW, to say the least—Valerie didn’t know of one cop that actually liked the GIW, even among the cops who still also hated ghosts. That went for most citizens of Amity Park, actually.
“Fair point,” the chief acknowledged.
Valerie winced. “You gotta call my dad then, don’t you?” The entirety of the police force knew who she was; after all, her dad was best friends with Chief Griffin, had been since the two were young children. Plus, Valerie had talked to them extensively about everything involving Mayor Masters, since she knew more than most. The police treated Valerie as more of an adult while in her role as the Red Huntress, playing to the secret identity, but did ultimately know her actual age.
Chief Griffin nodded. “Yes. Don’t worry, though; I’m sure he won’t be angry at you for defending your friends.” He then gestured to the door. “Alright, let’s see the room.”
Chief Griffin directed one of the officers to call for backup, then they proceeded into the room, where everyone was patiently waiting; some of the GIW agents had started to wake up, but someone had put ecto-gags, blindfolds, and even ear muffs on them, so Danny’s and Ellie’s identities wouldn’t potentially be compromised (as the GIW had been fighting the Phantom siblings, not the Fenton siblings, and they were currently in the latter form).
Chief Griffin directed two of the officers to start bringing the GIW agents outside, beginning with the ones that were conscious and could be walked out; apparently, Clockwork had already tied them up well enough using zip ties that they didn’t need handcuffs.
Clockwork changed into his adult form. “My apologies,” he told the police, “But ghost hearing is rather more astute than human hearing, so we overheard the conversation. Among the teenage ghosts here, Johnny died at 19, and Kitty died at 18, so they ought to be able to give interviews without a guardian present. As to Ember, she died at 16, thus is still considered a minor, at least in regards to ghost custom. I shall act as her guardian.”
Chief Griffin looked skeptically at Clockwork.
“The transformations are superficial,” Clockwork said, shifting to elderly form. “I can change the age I look, but that doesn’t change my actual age. You see, I am not a human-origin ghost; I have been around for millennia, formed when time energy combined with ectoplasm.” Clockwork shifted back to middle-age form.
Chief Griffin took a moment to process that. “Ah. So you’re one of those ‘Ancients’, I’m assuming. Yes, I suppose you are adult enough, then.”
“Hold up,” Tucker said, the headphones now hanging around his neck. “For us humans without super hearing, what’s going on?”
“They want everything by the books to make sure the GIW gets punished, so our parents need to be present for victim interviews,” Danny explained, then with a look of realization hurriedly added, “At least, I assume so. I didn’t actually hear, being human.”
Chief Griffin chuckled. “Fenton, you don’t have to pretend with us.”
Danny froze. “What do you—”
“Kid,” the one regular officer left said, “Traffic cameras exist. Now there’s only like three working ones left since they keep getting destroyed and the city stopped bothering to replace them, but at first there were still a lot, and you weren’t subtle about those transformations. Part of my job literally is checking those cameras and scrubbing them of footage of you.”
Danny looked completely gobsmacked by this revelation. Valerie too was surprised; they’d likely seen her change too. Had Uncle Hank been keeping her secret before even her identity was revealed to her father? “H-how many know?” Danny managed to stutter out.
“Not all the police, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Chief Griffin said. “Me, Officer Mulder here,” he gestured to the other officer with him, “Lieutenant Hanscum, and Sergeant Dresden are the only ones, as far as I’m aware. Those two watch the cameras too, the three of them take turns monitoring the footage. Figure it’s time you know; was planning to contact you about it anyway soon, before APPD releases our official statement in support of Phantom.”
Danny’s eyes widened. “You’re issuing a statement of support?” he said faintly. “But the mayor—”
Chief Griffin grinned viciously. “The mayor is currently in FBI custody,” he said with clear glee. “They should be reporting it on the news tonight. Insurance fraud—turns out, he was inflating the damage and then skimming off the ghost insurance payouts! Vice-Mayor Magnus will take over for now, and she actually is supportive of Phantom. So you can look forward to a lot less crap from the local government, kid!”
Danny grinned so wide Valerie thought his face would split in half. He gave something in between a laugh and a sob, and Ember floated over to put her arm around his shoulders. “You’re serious?” he eked out.
Chief Griffin nodded. “Yup. Completely serious. I won’t say everything will instantly get better, as there’s still a lot of townspeople against you in addition to your supporters, but at least you won’t have a mayor who’s constantly on your case for once.”
Danny hopped forward and gave Chief Griffin a hug while yelling, “Thank you!”
The chief’s arms hovered in the air for a moment, his expression clearly surprised, then he smiled gently and patted Danny on the back.
Officer Mulder chuckled. “He really is just a kid, isn’t he?”
“Just fourteen,” Clockwork, in middle-aged form, said, having at some point drifted to stand next to the man.
Officer Mulder scrunched his brow in confusion. “Fourteen? But I thought he—oh,” he cut himself off with a look of sad realization. “Right.”
“It is tragic, yes, but I believe he’s come to accept it,” Clockwork said.
Danny stepped back with a blush and rubbed the back of his head. “Sorry. I just…”
“You don’t need to explain yourself, kid,” Chief Griffin said with a chuckle.
“Right,” Danny said, then scrunched his brow as he looked at Officer Mulder. “Wait… I think I kinda recognize you?” His eyes lit up. “Oh! I know—you were in civilian clothes, but you stopped by my ofrenda! Your son gave me a sticker,” he told Officer Mulder, summoning the thermos and showing him the rocket ship sticker on it.
Officer Mulder looked surprised at being recognized, then smiled. “Billy will be really happy that you’re making use of that sticker,” he said. “Thank you, again; he seriously wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
“It was during one of Technus’s attacks, right?” Danny recalled. “I’m sorry if I don’t remember which; there’s been a lot. He got knocked off the balcony, right?”
“No worries! You’re right, that ghost does attack a lot. Yeah, he was the kid who got knocked off that balcony last year; if you hadn’t caught him… Well, I’m just really glad you did.”
“I am, too,” Danny said earnestly. “And if it’s any comfort, Technus isn’t going to be attacking anymore; MU worked out a deal with him to help in their lab. Part of the contract is that he won’t cause chaos around town, and I think he’s actually serious about following that.”
“Interesting,” Chief Griffin commented. “It didn’t occur to me that something like that could work, but it makes sense… Do you think any of the other regulars would be up for something similar?”
Danny shrugged. “Who knows. Worth a shot at least, right?”
“We’ll look into it, then,” Chief Griffin decided, as the other two officers returned with six more officers and began taking the remaining GIW agents away, carrying them (two officers per agent) as they were still unconscious. That was about half the force, Valerie realized; there were only twenty-two officers left on the squad after all those who left after the ghosts started showing up—Amity Park’s population itself was down a whopping 20% from two years prior. Those still there likely would stay, but still, that was a huge dent in the population.
“We’ve already got the band to keep us busy, FYI,” Ember chimed in, gesturing to herself, Kitty, and Johnny.
Johnny winced, apparently not liking the attention drawn to him, then shoved his hands in his pockets and looked sheepish as he told Chief Griffin, “Uh, just so you know, I really am sorry for causing that traffic accident this morning…”
Chief Griffin waved a hand in dismissal. “Nah, that wasn’t your fault; local bank by the accident had a camera and showed you were obeying the traffic rules. The fact that the other drivers couldn’t stop gawking at seeing a ghost instead of paying attention to the road ain’t on you.”
“See? I told you!” Kitty told Johnny. “Not your fault; stop beating yourself up over this.”
“But someone got hurt! There was an ambulance, you saw it!” Johnny argued. “And so many police were arriving when we left!”
“Oh. Um. That wasn’t because of the accident itself,” Officer Mulder said awkwardly. “None of the drivers were hurt… but one of them had a dead body in the trunk, so… yeah.”
“Mulder!” Chief Griffin chided. “That investigation’s still ongoing!”
“Sorry, Chief.”
Kitty grinned. “So, you’re saying the accident led to finding a murder victim?” She turned to Johnny. “See! Stop blaming yourself, it was actually a good thing!”
“I guess,” Johnny said, looking a little calmer, but not much; seeing this, Valerie wondered how she ever could have thought ghosts didn’t have emotions or morals.
“Okay, we ought to get you all down to the station now,” Chief Griffin said, as he watched the last few GIW agents be removed. He looked at them, and frowned.
“Not enough room in the cars?” Valerie guessed. “I’ll take some of them; the rest can just fly themselves.”
Griffin nodded. “Sounds good. But, Fenton, you’re with me.”
“What? Why?” Danny asked, immediately looking a little on-edge.
“If I may,” Clockwork interceded, “I have the ability to see the possibilities of the future. I know you have concerns about his… origins, but I truly believe it is the best to leave things as they are. Investigating Phantom’s death will only cause undue stress, which will not lead to good outcomes; it was a tragic accident, let’s just leave it at that.”
Officer Griffin frowned, not seeming content with that.
“Chief Griffin, you can trust Clockwork on that,” Valerie told him. “I know it’s weird hearing me say you can trust a ghost, but it’s true. He can really see possible timelines, and tends to prefer to let things play out instead of interfering, so when he says something’s not a good idea, it usually really isn’t a good idea.” She might not personally know the ghost, but she’d heard the stories and rumors.
Chief Griffin sighed. “Very well, then. I’ll see you all at the station.”
With that, he and the officers left, all the GIW agents taken care of—at some point, the ghost shield had been disengaged as well.
“That was… a lot,” Danny said after a minute of silence, everyone processing things.
“I’ll say,” Valerie agreed. “Now, let’s get to the station, okay? Uncle Hank—I mean, Chief Griffin’s waiting.”
“Uncle Hank?” Tucker repeated, and Valerie winced.
“Family friend, not blood related,” Valerie explained. “Now, let’s get outta here.”
Notes:
(Yes, I watched the new Simple Plan documentary the other day.)
Well, things are looking up! The GIW finally got some regulation; the nasty mayor is gone; and Valerie's definitely coming around on the whole ghosts issue!
Writing that song excerpt literally took over an hour. I'm only gonna be doing excerpts from the band's original songs in this fic, but I might write and post full versions someday.
Maybe you caught it, maybe you didn't, but the police officers' and new mayor's names are all references to law enforcement (or adjacent to such) characters from various supernatural shows/books. Can you figure them all out?
The idea of police scrubbing the traffic cameras is inspired from the fic "This is OUR hero" by Indrel.
Next up, it's Thanksgiving! Jack, Lancer, and Damon get to meet more ghosts! Clockwork has some updates on the Maddie situation, and Jack learns some unexpected information about what it took to activate the portal. Valerie, to her surprise, finds herself more comfortable around the ghosts than she expected, and joins in a ghostly game of 'extreme croquet'. Then afterwards, Danny finds himself with serious cravings, and nearly relapses, but his sisters and Jack are there to help.
Chapter 25: Thanksgiving
Summary:
Thanksgiving is here! Clockwork has updates about Maddie, and tells Jack the true reason why the portal didn't initially work, causing Jack to realize something disturbing about Vlad. Then, Lancer meets the adult ghosts! Valerie then shows up, and though a little nervous at first, soon warms up to the ghosts there. Everything seems to be looking up, but when all the guests leave, Danny finds himself crashing, and craving something he shouldn't...
Notes:
Happy Thanksgiving! (just 4 months and a couple weeks early lol)
This is the 2nd of 2 chapters posted this weekend. If you haven't read chapter 24 yet, go read it!
Another loooooong chapter! I had fun writing this one. It's overall very fluffy! Until the last section, with Danny, which I actually wrote yesterday--it was a total surprise scene, which is why last week's next chapter preview didn't say anything about it. Sometimes, the characters just do what they want, and the author is just along for the ride.
CW: first scene includes discussion of human sacrifice and murder (based around "portals require a human sacrifice" theory) and genocide (in reference to species from long in the past that got wiped out and have ghost zone realms). Last scene heavily involves drug addiction.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Hello, Jack.”
Jack jumped and turned around, almost dropping the dish of mashed-ecto-potatoes he had just removed from the oven before quickly putting them onto a cooling rack. He hadn’t heard the door open, and the ring indicating the portal opening hadn’t chimed either.
“You’re, er, pretty early,” Jack said to the purple-cloaked middle-aged ghost, the only invited one that didn’t need to use the Fenton Portal to get to their realm, highly conscious that he was dressed in pajamas covered by a flowery apron with matching oven mitts—it was only 11am, and guests weren’t supposed to arrive until 2. The ghost had a clock-topped staff and scar across his eye—Danny had described the ghosts that would be coming, as well as his relationships to them; Jack was honestly more nervous about meeting Clockwork compared to any of the other ghosts, not because he was basically a minor god but because Danny had described him as his ‘ghost dad’. Jack double-checked, “Clockwork, right?”
“Correct,” the ghost confirmed, shifting into an elderly form. “It is good to finally meet you. I apologize in advance if I act like I know you; my primary job is to monitor the timestream, with a particular focus on Danny as he has such an important role, thus I have watched various iterations of you, many possibilities. I am very glad that this is the one that has come to pass.”
Jack blinked, processing that. “Are you saying there are versions of me that…”
“Aren’t so great?” Clockwork finished with an amused smile; right, Danny had warned Jack that the ghost sometimes did that, given he could see the future. “Every human has versions of themselves that, as you humans would say, ‘went wrong’. All people have the potential to do both good or bad, given the right circumstances.”
Jack nodded, recalling a story Danny had told him a few nights prior, when discussing how he and Clockwork had met. “Like, Danny, in the timeline where he lost everyone…”
“Correct. But as you know, simply being aware of that timeline and being determined to avoid it has negated that potential path… though as Danny has pointed out to you, that is not the only path that potentially leads to tragedy.” Clockwork shifted into a child form.
“I know,” Jack said, acutely aware that this ghost likely had watched him talk to Danny the other night. “It’s why it’s good for Danno to have ghost friends; humans don’t live forever, and there’s only a very small chance that we’d become ghosts.”
Clockwork nodded as he shifted into a teenage form. “Having friends is very important for Danny’s mental health, which as you know is still fairly frayed, though recovering.”
Jack wilted at that reminder. “I know. I feel so horrible for missing that. All these years Danny’s been suffering, even before the portal…” Two days prior, Jack had gone along to Danny’s therapy session as Dr. Warren had to to discuss with him Danny’s finalized diagnosis, which was a combination of depression, general anxiety disorder, and C-PTSD, and in the process Danny had told Jack what had occurred the summer after 8th grade, before the portal. The next step would likely be medicine, but first they’d need to consult Frostbite, as Dr. Warren and the other MU doctor’s weren't quite sure what medicines would be safe for a halfa of Danny’s degree, especially one with addiction problems—or if any even should be used, given ghosts were emotion-based and thus drugs meant to alter emotions might ultimately do more harm than good.
Clockwork put a chilly hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Though it is true that you missed it then, what matters now is that you eventually did notice, and got him help before things became too dire. He is recovering, and will continue to do so with your support.”
“I know… But, still. What kind of a parent doesn’t notice that their kid wants to die? That their kid tried to die? That their kid actually died? Not to mention the drug addiction…”
Clockwork, hand still on Jack’s shoulder, shifted back to his middle-aged form. “It is… very human to not notice things that one does not want to believe. No parent wants their child to struggle with their mental health; you are not the only one who missed things. Even more so, no human parent wants to believe that their child, especially one who still walks among them, is no longer alive, at least not completely. Denial is a powerful thing. Even Danny himself only recently came to terms with his death.”
“I know,” Jack said. “Logically, I know all that. It’s just… a part of me…”
“Still wants to pretend that everything is how you thought it was?”
Jack nodded. He was still struggling with, well, everything going on. Everything had changed so rapidly, his whole world shifted in a matter of weeks. It was frankly overwhelming.
“Hey, what’s with all the negative vibes?” came Danny’s voice from… above them? “I can feel them all the way from my room!” he said, floating down; he must have phased through the ceiling—or, his room’s floor, from his perspective. Jack was still getting used to his son doing ghost things like that, especially in human form, though Danny seemed much happier not having to hide his ghost abilities.
“Hello, Danny,” Clockwork, now elderly, said, looking at the boy with a gentle smile that struck Jack as parental. Danny really did have a ghost dad, didn’t he?
“Hi. Why are you here so early?” Danny asked, smiling back, floating an inch above the floor in his spaceship-print short-sleeve pajama set.
“I wanted to check in with your father while he wasn’t too busy,” Clockwork revealed. “The potatoes are done and the next dish needs another fifteen minutes in the oven before he can remove it and put the next one in, which is already ready to go in. Thus, the time is perfect.”
“I had planned to take a break instead,” Jack said.
“And if you did so, you wouldn’t have heard the timer, and the casserole would have burned,” Clockwork stated.
“Oh,” Jack said. “Guess, er, you saved it, then. Thanks.”
Danny looked at Clockwork with suspicion. “Did you really peek at the future of a casserole, or are you guessing?”
“It is the most likely scenario,” Clockwork stated ambiguously.
“Totally guessing, then,” Danny said with a grin, and Jack could have sworn the time ghost blushed a slight green.
Jack laughed. “Oh, no, I’d say that was a solid bet!” He knew how scatterbrained he could be, and his sense of time had never been good. Jazz had decided that he had ADHD, and Jack had to agree he likely did, based on the self-assessment packet she’d handed him a few years back. He’d only filled it out to humor her, but as more and more things fit he realized that, wow, maybe he should seek out a professional diagnosis. He never had though, in part due to Maddie’s strong aversion to anyone in the family seeking mental health help. Maybe he should ask Dr. Warren about that; he’d started making regular appointments with the psychiatrist/therapist too, discovering that having someone to help him through his still-complicated emotions regarding Danny’s non-human status as well as the situation with his wife—rather, ex-wife—had been useful.
“So, whatcha talkin about?” Danny asked, folding his legs up to sit cross-legged in the air so he was level with Jack and Clockwork, the latter who was also floating just high enough to be face-to-face with Jack, maintaining that height as he switched forms between the different ages. Jack wondered if it was a ghost culture thing—was the height they floated at indicative of something? In this case they were all equal, but would floating higher mean power, like with cats? Was being at the same height a courtesy, given that Clockwork was definitely the most powerful of them?
“You,” Clockwork, now in child form, said with a mischievous grin.
“Me?” Danny asked with an exaggerated gasp. He seemed to be in a very good mood, to Jack’s delight; the mood recently had been more than a little dour, among the whole family, due to everything that had been happening. Today, though, was going to be a good one, Jack could feel it—he couldn’t wait to meet so many of Danny’s ghost friends and mentors!
“Yes,” Clockwork confirmed, then further explained, “You are doing much better mentally.”
Danny blushed. “Um. Thanks, I guess?”
“It’s true,” the Time God/Ghost, now in elderly form, said with a gentle smile. “You should be proud of how far you’ve come. I know I’m proud of you, as is your father.”
Jack wasn’t sure if Danny’s face could get any redder as the boy looked down, apparently unsure how to respond to the praise.
“He’s right; I am proud of you, son!” Jack said, giving Danny a small thump on the back.
Danny gave a shout as he floated quite a bit forward through the air before waving his arms and stopping. “Dad!” he said with a laugh, floating to return to his previous position.
“Oops, sorry,” Jack said sheepishly. A strange thing about ghosts floating, Jack had learned, was that when relaxed they could be pushed around like a balloon, but they could also anchor themselves into one spot—the latter took concentration though, so most ghosts only activated that anchor if they anticipated being pushed or jostled, which Danny hadn’t.
“Nah it’s cool,” Danny said. “You know, it’s really nice that I can use my ghost powers around here now!” He had rotated in the air to be upside-down, face still level with Jack’s. “Even in the Disasteroid timeline I couldn’t use them as freely in human form, since mom would always have this disapproving look when I did, making me feel guilty.”
“Oh, right; the one where the world knew your identity,” Jack recalled. He was still trying to grasp all the different things about time-travel and reality shifting.
“Yeah, where I lost my drive and I almost faded because I felt useless,” Danny said bluntly. “Really glad that didn’t happen!”
“Yeah, I’m glad of that too,” Jack hurried to say.
Clockwork sighed. “You didn’t almost fade, your core just went dormant. If it truly faded, you would have left a corpse, as your human portion is too small to live long without the ghost portion.”
“Oh. Well, still a good thing that didn’t happen!” Danny said. “I didn’t realize there was a difference.”
“Which is why I am going to teach you and Ellie the intricacies of being halfas as well as the mechanics of ghost anatomy,” Clockwork said. “Classes will be held Saturday mornings.”
“What! That’s new cartoon morning!” Danny protested, and Jack chuckled; he was definitely still a child at heart, even if his life—afterlife?—had often forced him to act more mature.
“Sundays, then,” Clockwork amended.
“Ooh, can I join in?” Jack asked excitedly.
Clockwork chuckled. “Sure. Jazz can come too if she would like, as can Sam and Tucker,” he said, glancing knowingly at Danny, who looked like he had been about to ask just that. “I would also recommend inviting Valerie, if she is willing, and if they desire, Paulina, Star, and Kwan.”
Danny looked confused. “I get Valerie, she definitely needs to learn about ghost stuff given what’s happening to her, but why the other three?”
“They are now part of your circle of trusted friends, are they not?”
Danny considered that. “I guess they are,” he concluded. “You know, I’d have never thought before that some of the top A-list members would end up part of my friend group, but it does seem that somehow they have…” He trailed off, looking contemplative.
“Now, there’s one more thing I would like to discuss, before Jack must return to working on the food again,” Clockwork said, and revealed, “I know you are both nervous about the situation with Maddie and custody, as although she has verbally agreed to the terms in light of the video, nothing has yet been signed and she has changed her mind before. Well, I was able to look a little ahead in the timestream, and investigated that; unless something drastically changes, with the current trajectory, Maddie will sign the legal documents to cede custody to you, Jack. Then, she will decide to move to Innsmouth, Louisiana.”
“Will decide, or already has decided?” Danny wondered with a shrewd expression.
Clockwork chuckled. “Ah, can’t get past you, can I, Danny? From the start, she has planned for two situations: One, to move there, if she cannot get custody; and two, if she can get custody, to stay in Amity Park, at least until you finish school. Given the latter will not happen, she will undoubtedly decide to move.”
Danny grinned. “Logic, huh?” Then he asked, looking curious, “Why Louisiana?”
“That was another place we considered moving, before choosing Amity Park,” Jack recalled. He noticed Danny scrunch his nose at the thought, and chuckled. “Bet it’s a good thing we didn’t, huh, Danny-boy? An ice core definitely wouldn’t be happy there!”
“That’s for sure,” Danny agreed. “Why would you consider moving there, though? Why would she still want to?”
Jack answered, “The veil is particularly weak there, enough that a portal could be easily opened. People say the town is cursed, but I’m pretty sure it’s just ghosts, even though most reports say they’re aquatic creatures.”
Clockwork nodded. “There is a permanent natural portal in the area that opens exclusively during the New Moon. It connects to a land in the Infinite Realms known as Sarnath, modelled after an ancient Earthly city of the same name. Ten thousand years ago, when homo sapiens encountered a land populated by a different species of humans, homo ibianus, who were amphibious and scaled, they took to eliminating them, starting with that city, razing it to the ground and destroying tens of thousands—just like they did with other human species, like homo neanderthalensis and homo denisova, both species which also have lands in the Infinite Realms.”
Jack blinked. “Wait, humans did that? Humans are the reason that…”
“That homo sapiens are currently the only species of humans currently believed by homo sapiens to be extant on the surface of Earth? Yes,” Clockwork confirmed; Jack noted the odd wording, but decided not to ask as the Time Ghost continued, “There is an unfortunate genetic instinct in homo sapiens to fear anything that is extremely close to their own species yet not quite the same—meaning, instead of trying to communicate with the other group, homo sapiens often instead dismiss them as evil and seek to destroy them.” Jack paled; that was just like what happened with ghosts, wasn’t it? Modern humans had long ago categorized them as malicious with little proof other than spooky looks. Clockwork continued, “Though, my apologies; it seems that the archeological researchers in your world will not recognize the evidence leading them to start theorizing such for another decade or so.”
“That’s… a lot to unpack,” Danny said with a look that seemed to be a cross between concern and awe.
“Thanks for telling us that,” Jack said. “It really is fascinating! Though, tragic too. Wow, our species kinda sucks, doesn’t it?”
“Dad!” Danny said with a laugh, then said to Clockwork, “Thanks for the update about Mom. Honestly, I’m not sure what to think about Mom moving so far away; like, I know it’ll be good to be away from her, but I still… Well, she's my mom. Part of me still loves her.”
Jack nodded. “I know the feeling,” he said. He missed Maddie—his wife Maddie, not the monster Maddie. In-between the abuse she had been loving and caring.
Danny then frowned. “Hey, do you think she’ll try to build another portal there?”
“Probably,” Jack said. “Why—wait, you don’t plan to use it, do you?” he asked with suspicion.
Danny shook his head. “No. It’s, well, last time a portal was built…” Danny looked somewhere into the distance and shivered slightly. “Also, well…”
Jack put a hand on Danny’s shoulder, comforting him before a flashback could start. “Danny-boy, don’t worry. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“She won’t open one,” Clockwork said with confidence. “She is cruel, but not that cruel.”
Jack looked at the ghost in confusion, and Danny paled. “Do you have to tell him?” he asked quietly.
Clockwork frowned. “Oh. My apologies again; I forgot that Jack was still unaware of the true reason why the portal worked when it did…” He trailed off and sighed.
“What do you mean, true reason?” Jack asked warily. “I thought it was a mechanical issue… The extra switch that had been accidentally installed…”
“The extra button did not matter, just as an extra lightswitch on a wall doesn’t matter,” Clockwork explained. “Either button would have turned it on—in fact, it technicallydid work the first time you tried, when there was that brief flash before it fizzled out. However, that first time there was one ingredient missing that was required for it to fully open. Danny, would you prefer to tell him, or should I?”
“Does he have to know?” Danny asked desperately. Why was he so nervous about saying it? What was different when Danny went in there? The only thing different was the switch, right? No, wait, not just that…
Clockwork told Danny, “It would be for the best, for at this point curiosity would have him seek out the knowledge. Besides, he already begins to suspect.”
“Danny?” Jack nervously prodded.
Danny sighed, then revealed, tone sounding like he was trying to be more clinical while holding back his own discomfort, “Breaching the veil to the degree needed to form such a large permanent portal requires a sacrifice.”
“A… sacrifice?” Jack asked. What had been sacrificed?
“Yeah,” Danny grimly confirmed, though didn’t say more.
Jack took a moment to consider what Danny was talking about, then recalled some of the earlier research on portals that had delved more into the occult than science. He could feel himself pale. ”Oh,” he whispered in realization. “Wait. Do you mean… a human sacrifice? Danny, were you…?”
“Yeah,” Danny said listlessly.
“But, the permanent mini portals we made don’t need that,” Jack pointed out. “We have five or six down there right now. Is it only the big ones that need… that?”
“Now that they are in the vicinity of such a powerful portal, your miniature ones, created in the lab nearby it, feed off its energy and thus do not require sacrifices,” Clockwork explained. “If you tried to create them outside the portal’s range, they would fail without a sacrifice, although only a small animal would be needed for those; but to create from scratch one as powerful as the large one in your lab, a human or equivalent sacrifice is needed, in every instance. The portal would not have opened if Danny had not died inside of it.”
Jack shivered slightly at that. His invention only worked because of his son’s… his son’s death?
“Hold up,” Danny said with a frown. “Vlad made three full-sized portals—one in Wisconsin, one in Colorado, and one here. But I don’t see three more halfas around.”
“Only the death is required,” Clockwork explained. “The sacrifice returning as a halfa is not a requirement.”
A feeling of dread came over Jack. “Hold up. Are you saying that Vladdie…?”
“Do you truly desire to know the answer?”
Jack considered that. “No, I guess not,” he decided, though by that question Jack’s fear was confirmed. Vlad Masters was much much worse a person than he’d thought—if there were anyone who fit the definition of ‘evil ghost’, it was him, despite only being half of one. “I think I got the picture.”
Danny looked disturbed too, likely having come to the same conclusion. “Vlad’s a serial killer,” Jack’s son voiced what Jack hadn’t wanted to. “An actual, legit serial killer. I… how’d that not occur to me before? I mean, some of the business deals I suspected might’ve involved shady stuff like that, but I didn’t really think he did it himself… but I know he made the portals alone, and I’ve known for months that the portal required that… I should’ve realized…”
Jack also wondered how he could have missed so much; no wonder Vlad had never told Jack and Maddie about having continued with portal research to the point of completing one of his own—they would have wondered how exactly he’d done so, and potentially learned what it required.
Jack was now immensely glad that he had not invited Vlad to Thanksgiving; in fact, he wouldn’t even send a letter, officially cutting all contact with his ex-best-friend. Although, the fact that Vlad had held the literal world hostage probably should’ve been enough alone to do that. Not even giving them the video evidence was enough to make up for all that.
Maybe the scale of things was why it hadn’t struck Jack before just how bad Vlad was. Things like holding the world hostage just for clout, or kidnapping your son to create clones, was just so fantastical, like something one would expect from a comic book, whereas being a serial killer was… more normal? Well, not normal per se, but more human, something you’d never want to believe of a friend but always a real possibility. Something that could not be explained away as solely a ghost-related madness, especially now knowing that the vast majority of human-based ghosts, even the ones that caused destruction, avoided bringing actual harm to humans, especially death—in fact, bringing death to humans was considered a huge taboo among most of them, just as much of a taboo as it was for the majority of living humans; after all, they knew what it was like to die.
“Now,” Clockwork said, “I believe it is time to address the food in the oven?”
Jack frowned. “But the timer—”
The over timer beeped, signaling the food was done.
“Ah, nevermind,” Jack said, and hurried to take care of it.
Lancer arrived at the Fentons’ house at precisely 2pm, along with Sidney Poindexter, whom he had run into on the way—as the ghost school he technically lived in was connected to Casper High via a portal in his locker that only he could use, he used that way to get here since it was closer than flying to the Fentonworks Portal—apparently space in the Ghost Zone did not correspond 1:1 with the human world, and it would be twenty miles of flying to get from the Ghost Zone’s Casper High duplicate to the Fentonworks Portal versus the just-over-a-mile flight from the Human Ream school. The other ghosts would all need to use the Fentonworks Portal.
Lancer repositioned his grip on the cooler of food so he could ring the doorbell, only for Sidney to telekinetically lift it; Lancer thanked him as he rang the doorbell, and moments later it was opened by Jack Fenton, who was dressed in a burgundy sweater with a turkey on the front and looked a little haggard. His eyes lit up. “Oh! Mr. Lancer! And Sidney!”
“Please, call me William,” Lancer told Jack for what must have been the twentieth time; Lancer didn’t mind though, well aware that it was common for parents to call teachers by whatever their kids used for them. “You, too,” he told Sidney.
“Of course, William,” Jack amended as he gestured them in and directed Sidney to levitate the cooler onto a kitchen chair as he showed Lancer where to put his coat. “Surprisingly, you’re not the first to arrive! Clockwork and Frostbite both came early to help out with cooking and setup, and Ember and Youngblood arrived like twenty minutes ago—they’re in the yard right now with Danny and Ellie having a snowball fight, Frostbite is trying to get them to come inside so the GIW don’t get suspicious, I reworked the ghost shield into a device that will shield ghosts’ signatures, but it doesn’t extend to the yard yet, and snow in a single yard is rather suspicious…”
“Mr. Fenton,” Sidney interjected. “Perhaps William could use some introductions?”
“Oh, right,” Jack said. “And, call me Jack, okay? Mr. Fenton sounds so formal!”
“Apologies; I’m not used to calling my friends’ parents by their given names,” Sidney said. Lancer’s heart warmed at that; he knew Sidney had considered himself friendless in life, so it was nice that he’d been able to make some friends in death.
Lancer removed the items he brought from the cooler; his appetizer was small beef tartlets with walnuts and red currants, best served chilled due to the bottom cream cheese layer, and his sweet potato casserole would need to be warmed up but Jack seemed to have some sort of large warmer to store food in that looked like he created it himself; allegedly by the time they eat the already-baked casserole would be warm enough. The apple pie found a spot in the kitchen fridge, which was thankfully free of any ecto-food—it seemed Jack truly was making an effort to be more conscious about safety, particularly as there seemed to be a table set up specifically for preparing the ecto-based foods instead of sharing the counter with the human foods.
“William,” came a new voice, and Lancer turned to see a ghost that seemed to be clock-themed. To Lancer’s surprise, he shifted from Elderly to Middle-aged. “It is nice to finally meet you; I am Clockwork, Guardian of Time,” the ghost said, offering his hand.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” Lancer said, shivering slightly as he shook hands, not anticipating the cold, although he should have. He wondered what exactly ‘Guardian of Time’ meant; was it literal? He did know some ghosts had powers akin to the gods in ancient mythologies, or in some cases actually were the same gods of myth.
“Yes,” the ghost said, to Lancer’s surprise, then grinned and answered Lancer’s next barely-thought question with, “No, I cannot read minds; but I can look slightly ahead to what may pass. In one instance you asked the question, in the other you did not. I monitor the timesteam, and help assure the best possible future comes to pass—and no, I cannot adjust everything so it is perfect for everyone; I am not that all-powerful, and even if I were, I would not do that. Sometimes the best path for humanity requires pain and sacrifice.”
“Like how if I didn’t enter the portal,” Daniel chimed in (causing Lancer to jump; he hadn’t noticed the boy, who someone had managed to get into a button-down short-sleeved shirt with an autumn leaf pattern instead of the usual black band shirt, sneak into the kitchen behind him), “Then there wouldn’t have been anyone to defeat Pariah Dark, and he would be ruling both the Infinite Realms and Human World.”
“More accurately, the ones who would defeat him would only do so after more than a century, once he had destroyed most of the world,” Clockwork clarified, “By that time there would be less than a thousand humans, whom an insurrectionist faction of vampires would herd up like cattle to farm for blood, using their control of the food supply to subdue the rest of the vampires.”
Daniel, Jack, Lancer, and Sidney all stared at the Time Ghost in disbelief. All of them knew vampires existed, given their school nurse, but it hadn’t occurred to Lancer that they might have some sort of societal structure.
“You’re joking, right?” Daniel asked.
“Unfortunately, I am not,” Clockwork said.
“How many vampires are there in the world?” Lancer wondered, unsure he wished to know the answer.
“Not enough to worry about that scenario as long as humanity remains this size,” Clockwork promised. “Vampire society has surprisingly strict rules about adding to their ranks; anyone who intentionally changes someone unwillingly is met with destruction.”
“So… there’s a vampire government?” Lancer asked faintly.
“No,” Clockwork answered. “However, though technically there is no vampire ruler, there is a small group of ancient vampires who enforce a very small set of rules.”
“Is keeping their existence a secret one of those rules?” Daniel wondered.
“No; however, there have been no new vampires for quite some time. Almost all currently existing remember the days of vampire hunters, and none desire a repeat of that, hence why they let the humans believe they had died out, then faded into myth. The few who came after were told the stories and know to be careful who they trust—like your school nurse, who saw your teacher had a positive relationship with another paranormal being, namely you, thus felt it was safe to reveal herself.”
Suddenly, the iron door to the lab opened, revealing Jasmine and a few ghosts following behind her. Lancer recognized two of them as Johnny and Kitty, but not the third, who seemed to be a maiden clad in higher-class medieval garb.
“Oh! Looks like everyone’s here, then!” Daniel said excitedly, flying over to them, and Lancer realized that this meant that, technically, the event only had three full-humans. Daniel continued, “Here, let me introduce you; all the ghosts know each other but only a few know you. And even if they do I don’t think you’ve formally met?”
Lancer shook his head as he approached, Jack joining them too. “I know of you two,” he told the two older teens. “Kitty and Johnny, right?” He held out his hand.
“Mr. L!” Johnny said loudly with a grin, and smacked his hand in more of a high-five than a shake. “Sorry for crashing into your classroom that one time.”
“Ah. I had already forgotten,” Lancer said truthfully; so many ghosts crashed through his classroom that it was probably easier to list which (of those that visited Amity Park) hadn’t.
“And you’re the ‘rent!” Johnny said to Jack, giving him a high-five too. “Danny told us how you were intentionally missing your shots; seems you’ve got a pretty rad rebellious spirit!”
“Uh. Totally?” Jack tried.
Kitty snickered. “I think you’re scaring them, Johnny,” she said as she properly shook each of their hands.
Lancer turned to the quieter third ghost there. “And who might you be?”
The girl, who appeared to be a couple years younger than Kitty, bowed slightly. “It is good to meet you,” she said, prim and proper like a princess. “I must apologize too; the incident with the beauty pageant was my fault.”
“No it wasn’t,” Daniel quickly chimed in. “You were being threatened by your brother, who knows better than to do that now. Mr. Lancer, this is Queen Dorothea of the Timeless Kingdom.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” the Queen said. “Call me Dora.”
“Likewise a pleasure,” Lancer said, holding out his hand. He’d already been informed that he’d be meeting a queen of one of the Ghost Zone’s many kingdoms, and had been told to treat her no differently than anyone else, at her request. “You may call me William. You all can—you too, Daniel, when not in school.” Danny’s eyes lit up at that—quite literally.
Dora glanced at Danny a little nervously, who nodded encouragingly. She tepidly took Lancer’s hand and shook it.
“My apologies; I fear I am not quite accustomed to modern human customs,” Dora explained, finally letting go after shaking Lancer’s hand a little too long. “For the past 1600 years my brother had our kingdom frozen in time, but now that I rule instead of my brother our time is finally moving forward. We have much catching up to do.”
Lancer nodded with understanding. “I will keep that in mind; thank you for letting me know.”
“Hey, Mr. La—er, William,” Daniel said, looking a little nervous, “Um. Speaking of names, if you don’t mind, could you call me Danny? I actually don’t really like my full name being used…”
“Oh, of course, Danny,” Lancer easily agreed. “I apologize if that has made you uncomfortable in the past.” He generally defaulted to the full names of students, unless they asked—or in some cases loudly demanded it along with threats of violence, as Danny’s friend Sam had done the first time Lancer had uttered ‘Samantha’.
“No, it’s fine, I’m the one who didn’t say anything sooner,” Danny told him. “And it used to be okay, but now Vlad uses it too, and he’s, well, Vlad…” the boy shivered, and Lancer wondered— “Vlad Masters, aka Vlad Plasmius,” Danny clarified, apparently noticing Lancer’s confusion and mild concern. Ah, yes, that made perfect sense, Lancer decided. That man was definitely creepy, and known to be Phantom’s nemesis.
There was then a commotion at the back door, and four more people entered: Ellie, Ember, a small child ghost in a pilgrim costume that Lancer had never seen before, and what seemed to be a large yeti. The kid had what looked like a skeleton turkey near him—another ghost?
“Yo, Dora!” Ember cheered, seeing the girl. “Long time no see! Thought you’d disappeared on me.”
Dora blinked. “It has been only one month,” she said, mildly confused. “Or, perhaps two…?” Then her eyes widened. “Oh, my apologies! I forget that you are still young, thus such a length of time feels much different for you than it does me. I will remember to not let the gap grow so large between visits.”
“Nah, it’s fine, you’ve got a good point there,” Ember said with a wave. “We’ve got, like, potentially forever, right? Few months is nothing.”
Clockwork chuckled. “It is getting quite crowded in here; perhaps those of us who have met the humans might head to a different room?”
“There’s hor d'oeuvres in the living room,” Jazz said, “Including ecto-based ones!”
The ghosts left, and soon Lancer and Jack were left with just Danny (who was floating slightly to be more level with the adults), the child ghost, and the yeti. The yeti had grabbed the kid’s ankle as he was trying to fly away, complaining about how he wanted snacks too.
“Here, Youngblood,” Danny said, levitating a green cookie from a tray that looked to be meant for dessert later. The kid’s eyes widened. “Be good, and introduce yourself, and you can have this,” Danny said with a wink. “But don’t let the others know!”
“Gimme, gimme!” the kid said, grabbing for it. “I’ll be good, promise!” The yeti chuckled and released the kid’s ankle so he could get it.
“Dad, Mr. La—sorry, William,” Danny said, “This is Youngblood, a ghost that can only be seen by children if he wants to. He likes to dress up as different things, and his familiar changes based on that too—first time we met he was a pirate, and then for a while he was a cowboy. Youngblood, this is my Dad, Jack Fenton, and my teacher, William Lancer.”
“Nice to meet you!” Youngblood said, through a mouthful of cookie. Lancer wondered how old the kid was; he looked no more than 6 or 7—how many years had he been that age? Lancer felt a small burst of sadness at one so young being a ghost. Youngblood swallowed and looked to the yeti. “Can I go now? Ember said we can play a card game!”
The yeti sighed, though looked amused. “Yes, you may go play,” he said, and Youngblood zoomed off, through the wall to the living room. He sighed and looked at Lancer and Jack with amusement. “Child ghosts; what can you do?” he said with a small shrug. Then he held his hand out to Lancer. “I am Frostbite. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, William.”
Lancer’s hand almost froze as he shook Frostbite’s huge paw, the outer layer of which seemed to be made of actual ice; in fact, it was slightly blue when he released it.
“Frostbite taught me how to control my ice powers!” Danny told Lancer, then to emphasize clapped his hands together and slowly pulled them apart, creating a humongous snowflake in-between as the temperature surrounding him dropped significantly.
“That’s, ah, very nice,” Lancer said, trying to subtly rub his arms, which despite wearing a sweater were full of goosebumps.
“D-danny, t-temperature,” Jack said, teeth chattering as he too held his arms.
“Oh, sorry!” Danny said, immediately dissolving the snowflake and the temperature rose slightly, still chilly but bearable. Lancer suddenly realized why the classroom would occasionally feel extra chilly during classes with Danny; perhaps he should apologize to the school janitor for all the maintenance requests on the school’s heating system that had ‘mysteriously resolved by themself’.
Frostbite chuckled and affectionately whacked Danny on the back. “The Great One doesn’t know his own strength!” he said with a booming laugh.
“Aww, come on, Frosty,” Danny said, covering his face with his hands as a deep blush spread across it. “I told you not to call me that!”
“Is there a story there?” Lancer wondered, as Ember drifted back into the room.
“He saved the Infinite Realms!” Frostbite said, clear pride in his voice.
“The Pariah Dark thing,” Danny explained. “Which, yeah, I get that’s a big deal, but I dunno, it’s just…”
“It’s imposter syndrome, Babypop,” Ember said, throwing her arm around Daniel’s shoulders. “Lots of people get it, including me. You did something super great, but your self-esteem is shit, so you feel like you don’t deserve the praise for the awesome thing you did, because your brain keeps telling you that it must just be some fluke or something because there’s no way you’re that awesome, right?”
Danny blushed again. “Yeah, guess that about sums it up,” he acknowledged. “Dr. Warren used that term too…”
“See? Told you!” Ember said, then pulled Danny towards the door. “Come on, now that everyone knows each other, you can have fun!”
Lancer watched the two float out of the room and commented, “It’s so strange seeing Danny casually floating around like that…”
“Eh, you get used to it,” Jack said with a chuckle.
“Are you used to it?” Lancer asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Frankly, no.”
Before Lancer could reply, Clockwork floated in. “The food is about to burn,” he told Jack.
Jack swerved to the oven. “I forgot to set the timer!” he realized, then hurried over to it.
Lancer watched Clockwork and Jack save the food, then asked if he could help with anything as there was more to cook; upon being assured he didn’t need to, especially as the things left to cook were all ecto-based given most the human food had been catered, Lancer wandered into the living room, where Jasmine stood with a glass bottle in her hand. “Don’t worry, it’s just root beer,” she said, turning the bottle in her hand to show the label. “Unlike some people, I know what I can legally have,” she said, glaring at her brother as he floated by, before grabbing what looked to be a wine cooler out of his hand, judging by the bright green color.
“Hey, what’d you do that for?” Danny complained.
“You know why,” Jasmine chided. “Seriously? Here? Now? How’d you even get this, the cooler with them is ghost-proof!”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Danny said teasingly, sticking out his tongue. “Besides, with my ectoplasm-induced tolerance, I can have like ten drinks and be fine.”
“Danny,” Lancer said, quite concerned at the interaction.
Danny froze and his eyes widened, apparently not having noticed Lancer there. “Oh. Uh, this, er, isn’t what it sounds like?” he tried.
“How do you know it takes that many?” Lancer asked with worry.
“I plead the fifth,” Danny said, crossing his arms. Then, he turned and quickly flew back to the card game sans drink.
Lancer turned to Jasmine. “Should I be concerned?”
Jasmine sighed. “No, I think he’s just acting out a little. He copes with stress by joking around, and I think he may be feeling a bit overwhelmed right now; don’t be surprised if he vanishes for a little bit to cool down... I should figure out how he got around the ghost proofing though…” She looked at the drink, then put her own soda on a nearby table and picked at the label of the wine cooler a little, eyes narrowed. It peeled off easily, revealing a different label underneath written in what Lancer now recognized as ghost runes. Jasmine gave a mildly amused yet frustrated scoff. “The little shit,” she said.
“What is it?” Lancer asked with concern, withholding his instinct to say ‘language’ in light that it could be something worse.
Jasmine sighed and shook her head in exasperation. “A prank. It’s just an ecto-soda—I suspected as much as the wine cooler label says strawberry, which generally isn’t green. He’s trying to give me a heart attack, I swear.”
Lancer chuckled slightly, his worry calming. “Yes, I know the feeling,” he commiserated. “Danny can be quite the mischievous little ghost, when he wants to be. Whenever he needs to talk to me, he phases invisibly into my classroom or office and appears right in front of me, laughing when I startle!”
“Oh, yeah, he does that to me, too,” Jasmine said with a laugh. “And dad, now. He’ll probably keep doing it until we stop reacting.”
“So forever, then,” Lancer concluded. He surely would never get used to Danny’s ghostly antics—truthfully, he was still not fully used to the fact that the boy was a ghost to begin with, or rather mostly one.
“No, not forever—unless you plan on becoming a ghost or gaining immortality some other way.”
“No, definitely do not plan on that,” Lancer said. Death was scary, but the loneliness of living forever while watching everyone else die was scarier. His heart broke knowing that both Danny and Ellie would go through that with all their human friends and family; at least they had each other though.
The doorbell then rang.
“Finally!” came a shout, and then Ellie zoomed by, flying in human form, before practically ripping the door off its hinges in her effort to open it. “Val, you made it! Come on in!”
Lancer blinked. Val, as in Valerie Gray, the Red Huntress? Invited to a Thanksgiving full of ghosts? Lancer migrated towards the door, seeing that her father was there, too.
“Yeah, I’m surprised she decided to come, too,” Jasmine whispered. “But Ellie says she promised to behave, and is trying to get over her ghost-bias, so maybe this will help with that.”
“Does she know that there will be this many?” Lancer wondered.
Jasmine sighed. “Maybe. I mean, she has to know there’s some. But I have a feeling Ellie did not tell her how many exactly…”
Valerie accepted the flying tackle by Ellie as she stood at the door to the house, hugging the halfa, currently in human form, back despite her slightly stunned state. It had suspiciously not buzzed before she reached there, but now her suit’s ghost sensor (no, her own ghost sense) went off. In fact, the suit’s additional ‘extreme warning’ alarm was angrily alerting her to the fact that there were numerous potentially-hostile ghosts around. She dismissed the alarm.
“Val? You okay?” Ellie asked as she withdrew.
“You said there would be just a few ghosts here,” Valerie said faintly.
“And Mr. Lancer,” Ellie added.
“Yes. This is more than a few.”
“Really?” Ellie asked, then used her fingers to count. “Oh. My bad…” she said sheepishly, and Valerie could believe that she truly had mistakenly underestimated the number. “To be fair, I didn’t really expect everyone invited to show up? I really did think only, like, 5 max would show.”
“Hey! You think my friends wouldn’t want to be here?” Danny said as he joined them, floating. Ellie was floating too; Valerie had noticed that both tended to like floating at eye level when talking to people, and had noticed other ghosts do that too. She assumed it was some sort of ghost culture thing.
“That’s not it!” Ellie quickly corrected. “Just, it was kinda last minute, and some of the people you invited are important people who I didn’t realize you were close enough to that they would drop all other plans for! Like, Frostbite is the leader of his tribe and lives really far away, and Dora is the Queen of her kingdom so has royal shit to do, and Clockwork is basically the God of Time, and Sidney doesn’t like to leave the school, and Youngblood usually stays away from adults—like, I really only expected Kitty, Johnny, and Ember to reliably show up and maybe one or two others, not all that were invited! I swear!”
“Yeah, I can believe that,” Valerie conceded. Besides, she was trying to get over her ghost bias, after all, so meeting more friendly ghosts could be beneficial.
“Are you mad?” Ellie asked.
“You know I could never be mad at you,” Valerie said with a small chuckle, ruffling Ellie’s hair.
“Hey, you’ll mess up the braid!” Ellie protested, playfully knocking Valerie’s hand away.
“That’s supposed to be a braid?” Valerie teased.
“Hey! I did my best,” Danny said with a small pout.
Ellie turned to him, crossing her arms with her own pout on her face, and said, “I told you you should have let Jazz do it.” She turned back to Valerie and demanded, “Val, redo it for me.”
“Apologies, but first, where should I put our contribution?” Damon interrupted. “It’s getting a little heavy.” He and Valerie had worked together to replicate Valerie’s mom’s ‘famous’ blackberry cobbler that she had made every year until she died; it hadn’t come out as pretty as she could make it, but Valerie was certain the flavor was there.
“Oh, I got it,” Danny said, lifting it via telekinesis, to Valerie’s surprise; she hadn’t realized he’d finally gotten the hang of it. They all followed it to the kitchen, where Danny put it into some sort of warming contraption.
“Hello, Damon, Valerie,” Mr. Lancer greeted as he entered the room behind them.
“Ah, William,” Damon greeted. “Long time no see,” he joked, and Valerie winced. Just a few days prior the two had had a meeting about Valerie’s grades and attendance, which though not yet as bad as Danny’s, given that unlike him she actually returned to class after every fight, were still not so great. So Ghost Hunting took priority over school and sleep, could you blame her?
Surprisingly Lancer had been sympathetic though, although Valerie could do without his new idea of creating an after school ‘ghost fighter study group’ (unofficial name). Danny, Sam, Tucker, and Ember would all be in it too—Danny and Ember both had no choice (Ember was only behind because some of the things she learned in school were outdated now, which was tripping her up), but Sam and Tucker had volunteered.
“So, do you two want me to take you around to introduce you to everyone individually, or would you rather just mingle and meet people on your own?” Danny asked Valerie and Damon.
“I already know the humans here,” Valerie told Danny, hoping he caught on to her not wanting to be thrown into interacting a lot with the ghosts if possible. She’d mingle, and try talking to some, especially the ones she’d met, but not all at once.
“Right,” Danny said, wilting slightly, and Valerie felt a little bad.
“It’s not that I don’t want to meet them!” Valerie quickly assured Danny. “Just, I want to at my own pace.”
“Well, I would like some introductions,” Damon said. “I haven’t met your father or sister, and I hear you have some ghost mentors?”
Danny seemed to light up at that. “Yeah! Come on, I think you and my dad’ll get along great, I think he’s still chatting with Frostbite and Clockwork, you’ll like them too…”
As Danny led her father away, Mr. Lancer following, Ellie pulled her away and turned to face away from her, silently demanding she fix the braid which, honestly, Valerie was surprised Jazz hadn’t already redone. Well, Valerie could be a big sister, too, even if not by blood.
“Hey, gorgeous,” a svelte voice said as Valerie finished, and she turned with a frown to see Johnny leaning against the wall and grinning at her.
Valerie scowled. “What do you want, ghost?”
“What, can’t I talk to a pretty girl?” Johnny asked with a flirtatious smile.
Valerie gave the playboy ghost a flat look. “Just because we fought together once doesn’t mean I won’t hesitate to waste you if you make one wrong move.”
Johnny smirked. “The danger only makes it hotter.”
Before Valerie could think of something to reply to that, Kitty appeared. “Oh no you don’t, you greasy Casanova!” she growled as she grabbed Johnny by the ear and dragged him away; as she did so, Johnny comically shot another grin towards Valerie and mouthed ‘call me’ while mimicking a phone with his hand.
Ellie simply floated there giggling into her hands, apparently finding that all highly amusing.
“Ugh, can you believe that guy?” Valerie said with mild disgust. She had no idea how Danny could, apparently, be pretty good friends with such a sleazy dirtbag, ghost or otherwise.
“So, you’re saying I shouldn’t use him as an example of how to get girls?” Ellie asked innocently.
“What? No, definitely not!”
Ellie giggled. “Relax, Val, joking. I know not to mimic him—pretty much everyone in the band warned me not to. Danny did twice.”
“Oh, you little gremlin!” Valerie teasingly accused, playfully pulling Ellie into a light headlock before releasing her.
Ellie giggled again. “Come on, l heard Ember mention something about setting up a game of ‘extreme croquet’ down in the lab, let’s check it out!” She grabbed Valerie’s wrist and before Valerie could even wonder what ‘extreme croquet’ was she was being dragged down through the floor by the little halfa.
‘Extreme croquet’, apparently, meant that instead of hitting balls with small mallets across an even surface, they were hitting them with Fenton Creep Sticks and trying to get the balls through floating rings, some which were blocked by large metal barriers. Oh, plus ghost powers were permitted. It only very vaguely resembled the game it was allegedly based on. Thankfully someone had thought to add ecto-energy to the balls and shove all the tables with experiments and devices over to one side, blocking them with a ghost shield, to prevent destruction.
In addition to Valerie and Ellie, also playing were Youngblood, Sidney, Dora, and, surprisingly, Jazz. Johnny and Kitty joined in too a little after they started. Ember and Danny, however, the latter who joined them once he was done with introductions upstairs, were not playing the game.
🎵The little things, little things they always hang around / The little things, little things they try to break me down / The little things, little things they just won't go away / The little things, little things made me who I am today, go!🎵
No, instead, Ember and Danny had apparently decided to sit on top of one of the containment units and serenade the players with exclusively Good Charlotte music for some reason; that wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that their guitars’ settings were not on neutral, rather were set to create energy waves as they played—they were harmless ones that only could push people around, but it ended up adding an even more challenging aspect to the game, as though they were playing in high winds that were randomized given the waves tended to bounce off of each other and everything until they managed to hit someone (despite the fact that sound waves were not supposed to work like that; Valerie had stopped attempting to figure out how the powers of those guitars worked).
Yes, ‘extreme croquet’ definitely lived up to its name.
By the end, somehow, Jazz ended up with the highest score, against anyone’s expectations.
“I’ve been practicing my aim,” Jazz said proudly. “See, Danny? Now I can help in the field again!”
“Your aim with weapons isn’t the issue,” Danny told his sister. “It’s your aim with the thermos that’s problematic.”
“Oh, come on, I accidentally suck you into it two or three—”
“Eleven,” Danny interjected, crossing his arms. “You accidentally sucked me into that thing eleven times during our last attempt at a week-long patrol-assistant trial period back in August, which was your fifth attempt at a trial week of helping! One of those times you trapped me with the Box Ghost!”
“So, then, maybe just give her a gun, not a thermos?” Sidney suggested.
“Or a bat with ecto-balls!” Ellie suggested.
Danny gave pause to that. “Huh. Maybe you have a point there,” he conceded.
“See? I can help!” Jazz said.
Danny still looked a little reluctant, so Valerie offered, “You can patrol with me sometime if you want.”
“Really?” Jazz asked hopefully.
Valerie shrugged. “Sure, why not.” She’d always thought Jazz was pretty cool, but had never really been sure how to bridge the gap between ‘friend’s older sister’ and ‘actual friend’. This could be an opportunity to do that.
“HEY! DINNER’S READY!” Jack’s voice bellowed from the top of the stairs, and everyone there jumped in surprise except for Jazz and Ellie. Those two were probably used to it, although Danny jumping too was—oh. Actually not so unexpected, given that up until recently the man often bellowed like that at Phantom. Danny looked sheepish after reacting that way, as though he was disappointed in himself for doing so.
Jazz noticed, and put a hand on Danny’s shoulder; he looked up at her with wide eyes before blinking and returning to a more normal expression and giving her a small smile before heading up the stairs, walking with her instead of just flying through the ceiling like everyone else there.
Valerie could just fly too, but she opted to take the stairs as well; her dad knew she had ghost powers now, but she didn’t want to give him a heart attack by emerging through the floor! As Valerie looked up at the siblings while she climbed, she noticed just how extreme the height difference had become, and was suddenly very aware that Danny would remain that height potentially forever. Forever 14… Valerie sincerely hoped that she wouldn’t forever be a teenager, too—Ellie and Jack claimed that likely wouldn’t be the case, but almost nothing about Valerie’s condition was certain at this point…
Valerie shook those thoughts away as she exited the stairs to arrive in the kitchen. Now wasn’t the time for existential crises; now was the time to enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner with what was slowly feeling like what Valerie imagined having a large extended family would be like—for the longest time, it had only ever been her and her dad, and it was both exciting and daunting to be eating Thanksgiving Dinner with such a large crowd this year!
“Everything okay?” Damon asked as Valerie sat next to him at the long table—or rather, the combination of the dining room and kitchen table, both shoved into the kitchen (which was the larger of the two rooms, for some reason) and lined up as though it were a single long table; miraculously, this managed to fit everyone, albeit barely.
Valerie smiled at her dad. “Actually, yes,” she said confidently. “Everything’s great; I’m really glad we came here today.”
“Even with all the ghosts?” Ellie, who had apparently opted to sit on the other side of her, said teasingly as she elbowed Valerie in the side.
“Even with all the ghosts,” Valerie confirmed, and she meant it.
Valerie then embarrassingly let out a squeak when she felt something brush against her leg; she looked under the table to see the ghost dog, Cujo, sitting there wagging its—no, his—tail and staring at her expectantly.
Ellie giggled, then reached down and picked the dog up, holding him in her lap; the dog peered over the table, eyes wide as he observed the food. Valerie reached over and scratched the dog on the head; he barked happily.
“Ellie, no dogs at the table,” Jack reminded his daughter.
“Sorry,” Ellie said, putting the dog down, though not before not-so-subtly snatching a baked sweet potato to give the dog, who happily grabbed it and dove down into the floor with his prize. Valerie wasn’t sure if dogs could eat that, but he was a ghost dog, so it was likely okay. Regardless, Valerie found herself smiling at the display.
Yes, Valerie was definitely glad she had come to this Thanksgiving celebration at the Fenton household, ghost-filled or not.
Danny flopped belly-down onto the living-room couch once the last guest had left, arms stretched above him, and groaned. That had been… an ordeal.
Danny had fun, don’t get him wrong! It had just been… a lot. Overwhelming, was the word. He hadn’t been to a Thanksgiving that large in years, let alone helped host one! The last time there had been one this big, Danny had been too little to help much. This time, not only did he (with Ellie’s help) have to help clean and organize the house (Jazz didn’t trust him with any of the cooking, which she helped their father with), but then when everyone got there he had to do all those introductions…
When he invited all his ghost friends and mentors, Danny hadn’t expected all but one to RSVP ‘yes’ (the one ‘no’ had been Pandora, citing her immense size as the issue, which, yeah, was fair; she would’ve been confined to the lab, which wouldn’t have been fun for her). It was really great of course, all of them being there, and Danny had had a lot of fun, but…
But now he was crashing. The adrenaline was wearing off, and the tiredness was seeping in; not sleep-tired, but the kind of bone-tired after excessively exerting oneself, and in Danny’s case, probably also his depression getting angry that he’d been very happy for most of the day. He was gonna need the whole next day to recover! Thank Ancients the concert was on Saturday, two days away; although, Friday night they would be doing a final dress rehearsal for the concert (earlier in the day some of them would be doing Black Friday shopping—Sam’s parents always dragged her along, Tucker had some electronics he wanted to snag, and Kitty, Ellie, and Ember were planning to join Valerie, Jazz, Star, and Paulina to shop for ‘girl-only things’, which Danny interpreted to mean bras).
Danny tried hard to ignore the part of his brain trying to tell him that a painkiller—not the safer halfa-specific one he had, but the one he was supposed to resist—might help, even though he knew this wasn’t even actual pain, just an adrenaline crash. Besides, he didn’t have any on hand anyway…
“Oof,” Danny huffed as a weight landed on his back; it seemed Ellie had decided to sit on him.
“You’re taking up the whole couch, and I want to watch TV,” Ellie asserted.
“Fine, whatever,” Danny grumbled. “How do you still have so much energy?”
“You don’t?” Ellie asked as she flipped through the TV channels, seeming confused. “I feel super-charged!”
“You’re also a super-extrovert,” Jazz said with a chuckle as she plopped down into an armchair. “You get energized when around people, and I don’t just mean the core getting charged.”
“Still don’t understand how someone so extroverted came from my DNA,” Danny commented. “I mean, I’m not exactly introverted, either, but definitely not extroverted.”
“Could be a nature-versus-nurture thing,” Jazz mused. “You were pretty extroverted when you were a kid, too, Danny.”
“Really?” Danny asked skeptically as he tucked his arms under his chin instead of stretching them out, looking towards his sister.
“Yeah. You still exhibit that some when donning your Phantom persona, too, and when you’re on stage,” Jazz analyzed. “I think the years of bullying and trauma, which subsequently led to the development of your anxiety, depression, and PTSD, stamped that down, but it’s still there under the surface.”
Danny let out a depreciating chuckle. “Well don’t sugarcoat it.” He turned and slid his arms up so he could press his face into the couch, eyes closed.
The sound of heavy footsteps rang, and then stopped in the entrance to the living room. “Is he okay?” Jack asked, radiating some vibes of worry.
“Just an adrenaline crash, I think,” Jazz said. “He’ll be fine.”
Jack paused. “You sure? Dr. Warren said that could trigger depressive episodes…”
“I’m right here, you know,” Danny grumbled.
“Then I’ll ask you directly,” Jack decided. “Are you okay, Danno?”
Danny took a moment to answer, considering. He could play it off, say it was nothing, as he habitually tended to do; or he could admit the truth, as everyone kept telling him he should instead of hiding things. “No,” Danny said, choosing the latter. “No. I want…” he hesitated. “I’m tired. Not sleepy tired, depression tired. And I want… I want the… the hydrocodone,” he mumbled the last bit, unsure if even Ellie could hear. “Why do I want that?” he said into the couch, wrapping his arms tighter around his head and clutching at his hair, well aware tears were forming in his eyes. “Why? Today was amazing! I had a great time! Why am I suddenly feeling like this now? Why am I like this? Why can’t I just be normal? Why can’t I just be happy for once without feeling like shit afterwards?!”
Danny vaguely felt Ellie rubbing his back between his shoulder blades in an attempt at a comforting gesture as Jack knelt down next to the couch, gently pulling Danny’s hands away from his hair. “It’s okay; you can cry,” his dad said, and Danny did so. Jazz too came over to Danny, lifting his legs so she could sit on the end of the couch with them in her lap; she rubbed his calf muscle in comfort as she couldn’t really reach anywhere else.
Danny felt himself calming after a while, feeling better after the cry and comforted by the physical contact of his family members. It was nice; why had he shied away from physical contact for so long? Well, he knew why—to hide his identity, because his skin was cold. It didn’t seem to bother any of them though. Jazz had recently claimed that Danny was touch-starved, craving contact that he hadn’t had in so long, and at the moment Danny could definitely see where she got that idea, and maybe even agreed with her some.
“Feeling better now?” Jazz asked gently once Danny had quieted.
“Yeah,” Danny said truthfully. “I hate that I’m like this; today was supposed to be fun.”
“And it was fun!” Jack asserted. “This is just a small blip.”
“Yeah,” Ellie said. “Today was great! Did you see how Valerie willingly pet Cujo? I didn’t even feel an ounce of upset from her towards him!”
Cujo barked; apparently, he was in Ellie’s lap. Danny wasn’t sure when he’d gotten there.
Danny’s mind flashed to the painkillers again; now that he had thought of them, the idea just wouldn’t go away. Just one wouldn’t hurt, right? It would make him feel better. But, no, he had to resist… Besides, he didn’t have access to any. He could fly to Sam’s; she and her dad were going to talk to her mom, but maybe they hadn’t gotten rid of her mom’s stash yet? No, Jazz would just call Sam before Danny could reach her place. Wait, Jazz! Maybe…
“Danny? What are you thinking?” Jazz asked, notice him tense.
“Hey, Jazz? Just, curious,” Danny said cautiously, “Remember when you gave me stitches like a couple days after I ran away to the Ghost Zone?”
“Yeah…?” Jazz said, seeming unsure why Danny would bring that up.
“Um. Again, just curious, but did you ever get rid of that bottle of, you know? From your wisdom teeth removal?” It had looked a bit different, but Danny hadn’t checked the name, so it could be the same drug, just from different pharmacies.
Danny felt the moment when Jazz realized what Danny meant, and her vibes clearly indicated that no, she hadn’t. Before anyone could try to stop him, Danny went intangible and dropped down into the couch, then zoomed upwards, Jazz shouting “Danny, no!” after him. He raced through the ceiling and walls into the bathroom, barely thinking of what he was doing, one single goal in mind as he analyzed the contents of the medicine cabinet; it was like a switch had been flipped in him, demanding he find the drug immediately.
As Danny grabbed the bottle that he sought, relieved at seeing the drug was the same, just the name brand instead of generic, his younger sister’s shout of his name alerted to her appearance behind him, and Danny zoomed upwards again, clutching his prize. A part of Danny knew that what he was doing was wrong, that he was going to regret doing this, that he was trying so hard to stay sober, but another part of him just kept whispering that he needed it, that just taking one would make everything feel better… Just one was okay, right? Just one couldn’t hurt…
Danny stumbled onto the ground as he arrived in the ops center, and curled up in the corner behind a metal cabinet, a poor hiding spot but he needed to take it now or someone would stop him! Danny shakily opened the bottle; it took a few attempts, but he finally got it open; there were only a half dozen left; should he take one, or two?
As Danny began to shake the pills into his hand, his wrist was roughly grabbed and he was pulled out from behind the cabinet, giving a shout as the bottle fell and the pills scattered across the ground. He tried darting towards them, only to be pulled away again; he pushed his assailant away, only to be grabbed again, this time from behind and around the arms and chest as he tried to squirm away.
“Let me go!” Danny shouted.
“No!” Ellie screamed at him.
As Danny managed to wriggle out of Ellie’s grip and tried to again dive towards the pills, he was grabbed again, and the next thing he knew he was lying on the ground, Ellie straddling his chest and holding his wrists down beside his head. “What the fuck are you doing!?” she shouted angrily, glaring down at him.
Ellie’s unexpected and unusual rage, which Danny had never seen directed at him before, snapped him out of the frantic haze he’d been in. Danny took deep breaths, trying to get his head straight. What had he been doing? He’d been acting like some sort of rabid animal! Danny shook slightly. “I-I don’t know,” he stuttered out as he went limp, feeling tears gathering in his eyes again. “I don’t know.”
Sensing Danny was calmer, Ellie released his wrists and sat up, but didn’t move off him yet.
“Danny…” came a quiet, somber voice from the ops center entrance, and Danny turned his head to see his dad standing there, Jazz beside him, the two apparently having arrived sometime during the brief fight.
“I’m sorry,” Danny said, full of guilt, and phased down through the floor, heading right to his room and sitting in the middle of his bed, knees up and arms wrapped around them, staring at the wall as he processed what had just happened, guilt and shame swirling through his mind, enveloping him.
Not long after, there was a soft knock on the door, and Jazz’s quiet voice saying, “Danny?” She then entered the room, not waiting for him to reply, as expected. Jazz turned the light on and walked over to Danny’s bed, sitting on it and scooching over to sit next to Danny. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders and Danny leaned into it.
The two sat like that for a while, taking comfort in each other, before Danny answered Jazz’s unasked question that he knew she was wondering: “Ellie stopped me before I could take any.”
“Good to know,” Jazz said softly, emitting some vibes of relief.
After another small bout of silence, Danny told his sister, “I’m sorry.”
Jazz gently rubbed Danny’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”
“I thought I was doing better.”
“You are.”
Danny let out a wet laugh. “No, I’m not. If I were doing better, that wouldn’t have happened.”
“Addiction isn’t a ‘go to rehab and get forever magically cured’ thing,” Jazz said gently. “No one expects you to not have cravings, or to never slip up. You’re doing your best, and that’s what matters. You’ve been sober two whole weeks. That’s something to be proud of, Danny; not everyone makes it two whole weeks.”
“I should have stayed there longer than just one weekend,” Danny said with a resigned sigh. “If I didn’t have that stupid anxiety about leaving Amity Park—”
“It’s not stupid,” Jazz cut him off. “Okay? It’s not. It’s a common thing to develop when you’ve been through all the things you have. Sure, it’ll take a while to work through, but you are improving on that front, too, Danny. You’re doing so much better overall.”
“How can you be so sure?” Danny asked, voice small. He certainly wasn’t sure of that.
Jazz thought about that for a moment. “Do you want to die?” she asked. “Or, fade, I mean.”
Danny considered that. Did he? Sure, he was feeling crappy, and struggling a lot, but he had a lot of great friends who supported him, he had a dad and two sisters that loved him, he had an amazing band, he had actual plans for a future for the first time in years, the humans that had been causing the most grief in his life were gone… Overall, Danny felt content with his life, and things seemed to be looking up despite the challenges in his way. He wanted to get through those challenges, to see what his future would hold. So, “No,” Danny told his sister. “No, I don’t want to fade. I want to keep existing.”
“Would you have said the same a few months ago?”
“No,” Danny said confidently.
“Then there you have it: proof you’re doing better,” Jazz said firmly.
Danny considered that a moment. “Yeah,” he concluded, then looked up to smile softly at his sister. “Yeah, I guess you’re right, Jazz: I am doing better. This is just a small snag; I can get through this, I think.”
Jazz gave Danny’s shoulder a squeeze. “I know you can, little brother.”
The two sat like that for a little longer, then Danny realized, “We should let Dad and Ellie know I’m okay.”
So, the two headed back down to the living room, where their two remaining family members were waiting. Then, all four cuddled together on the couch and watched a movie, Danny feeling much better; the craving was still tickling the corner of his mind, but it was easier to ignore now... Yeah, he could get through this. He would get through this.
Notes:
We got some nice family feels at the end there, despite the situation. (All the family fluff spread through this fic, the hugging and touching and stuff, might just be a little projection for what I wish my family had been more like--my parents aren't overall bad, but they've always been very physically distant and I never felt like I could go to them or my brother for comfort, even at times when I really needed it).
Next week: The final chapter! It's the Thanksgiving Break A-list concert! The Amity Park Ghosts meet Dumpty Humpty. Excerpts from some of the original songs! Everyone pretty much has a good time. Then a very brief epilogue.
I'll be posting on Friday (July 18), actually! I have Fridays off the rest of the summer and I'm busy the rest of the weekend, so both the final chapter and epilogue should be up Friday.
Update 7/18: Sunday plans fell through and I still have a scene I'm finishing up, so I'll be posting the finale Sunday 7/20, sorry!
Chapter 26: The A-List Concert
Summary:
The Amity Park Ghosts play at the A-list's Thanksgiving Break Concert.
Notes:
The final chapter is here (aside from epilogue)! Sorry it's a little late in the day; this took so much longer than other chapters to write (and not just because it's nearly 12k words!), and I must have rewrote some parts of it a half dozen times each. I like the final result though; hope you do too!
This is an overall much fluffier chapter than almost all the others, and is similar to the first concert where it has the POVs of each character (not Lancer though; he gets the epilogue).
Dumpty Humpty is mentioned in the show but not really shown much, and when they are their character designs aren't consistent. None seem to have names that I could find either. So I started from scratch with their designs; let me know what you think!
Let me know if there's any plot points I forgot to tie up! I think I got everything but it's a very long fic so I may have missed something. If I have I'll go back and edit it in.
CW: Star's older brother (age 20) tries to flirt with and makes some lewd comments about teenagers younger than him (nothing comes of it, and he's scolded for it). 3rd section has recap of how a bunch of ghosts died, as well as a brief mention of a past suicide attempt.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Sorry I’m late!” Sam, violin case slung over her shoulder and a large paper bag in her arms, called as she hurried over to where the band had gathered on Star’s lawn.
“Did you get lost on the way?” Tucker wondered.
“No, no, it wasn’t that,” Sam said. “I’ve been here before, for a charity thing.” Star, like Sam, didn’t flaunt her status nearly as much as the other rich kids, but she definitely came from the upper class. Her parents were semi-famous actors, not famous enough to be household names but enough so that studios paid them more than plenty to afford a nice mini-mansion with a substantial deck and yard on the outskirts of Amity Park. The deck was where all the food was set up, and on the spacious lawn were set up some tables and chairs, a dance floor, a stage, and some games like cornhole and bocce, which some people were already playing. There was also a heated pool and hot tub to the side of the house, the latter which already had some people in it (apparently, there would be as many as sixty people eventually at the party; the sports teams mainly, Sam assumed, although she didn’t think there were that many students on sports teams as many did multiple sports).
“Then why were you late?” Danny wondered. “Star already explained everything to us.”
“Nothing’s changed from the last time we talked to her, right?” Sam confirmed. “We’ll play the show, then Dumpty Humpty will play after us, during which we’re welcome to enjoy the party too. Stage is flat but otherwise we’re set up basically the same as the Fall Festival, with Ellie and Clockwork in back with Johnny.”
“Yup, that sums it up,” Tucker said. “Though you’re usually not the last to arrive…”
Sam sighed. She looked around, making sure it was only the three of them there—the ghostly band members were checking out the drink area; hopefully the punch wasn’t spiked this time. Sam whispered to them, “It’s my mom. She actually agreed to go to rehab; Dad and I dropped her off this morning, that’s why I was running late.”
“Seriously?” Danny asked. “That’s great! What changed her mind?”
“Yeah; last you told us, it sounded like she might have to be forced,” Tucker recalled.
Sam shrugged, unable to prevent herself from blushing a little as she admitted, “Me, apparently. Dad told her that I was concerned, and I guess that’s what convinced her that it actually was bad, since I hardly ever care what she does.”
“Huh. Well, whatever works, right?” Tucker said.
“How long’s she gotta be there for?” Danny wondered.
“Not three days; you really lucked out with that,” Sam told Danny.
“Eh, well, they actually wanted me to stay for at least a week,” Danny sheepishly admitted. “I, um, probably really should have, too… But I’ve kinda, er, got that anxiety thing where I can’t be away from Amity Park super long…”
“Oh. Right,” Sam recalled. She’d forgotten about that. “So, to answer your question, she’ll be there for two weeks, to start; they might reevaluate it, but that’s the plan for now.”
“Oh, hey, you’re here!” someone called, and Sam turned to see Paulina jogging over.
“Hey, Paulina,” Sam greeted with a smile—a genuine one, surprising herself by finding none of the animosity that used to spike upon seeing the girl. “Sorry I’m late.”
“Oh, no worries!” Paulina told her, returning the smile. “There’s still some time before the concert starts. Is that the EPs? You made sure they’re in round cases, right?”
“Yup; where do you want me to put them?” Sam asked. The round cases were a precaution, just in case the Box Ghost decided that square jewel cases were close enough to a box for him (he seemed to be getting creative lately with what counted as such).
“I set up a table on the end of the stage, next to the tech booth,” Paulina said.
“I’ve got it,” Ember told her as she joined them, and used telekinesis to move the bag right out of Sam’s arms to the table. Sam had a feeling that the girl had spotted Danny also starting to do that, once again forgetting he shouldn’t publicly use ghost powers in human form.
“So, this is everyone then? Your older sister’s not coming?” Paulina asked Danny.
Danny shook his head. “No, she’s not really into parties. But, she said thanks for inviting her.”
“Ah, that’s too bad; Star’s brother is back from college for the weekend, he’s only like two years older than Jazz and I think they’d get along great,” Paulina revealed.
“Isn’t her brother kinda a sleaze?” Sam recalled.
“No, I mean the other brother,” Paulina clarified. “They’re twins, but very, very different.”
Tucker chuckled. “Hold up, are you trying to set Jazz up with someone?”
“Well, yes,” Paulina said, looking like she was trying to resist saying something snarkier. “We went shopping together yesterday, and she happened to express that she can never get beyond a second date with anyone…”
“Wait, Jazz has been dating people!?” Danny exclaimed with surprise.
“Yes? She’s in college, why wouldn’t she be?” Paulina asked, seeming baffled.
“The only time I remember her ever dating anyone was that incident with Johnny and Kitty, which doesn’t really count,” Danny said.
“Maybe she wanted to keep it secret until she actually clicked with someone,” Sam suggested. She could see Jazz doing that.
“Nah, it’s about the ghost stuff,” Ellie revealed; when did she get there? Ellie was just as bad as Danny with the quietly-appearing-out-of-nowhere thing! Ellie explained, “She ranted to me about it a few days ago, after another bust. Before she gets serious with anyone, she wants to make sure he’s ghost-friendly and stuff. The criteria is pretty strict, few pass the first interview. I suggested she ease up, maybe make some concessions, but she’s insistent that any guy she dates needs to check every single box.”
Danny chuckled and said, “Yup, sounds like Jazz.”
“Hmm. Still think she should meet Star’s brother; I have a gut feeling he’ll check the boxes,” Paulina said. “Anyway, so what’s your plan for the new songs?” she asked curiously. “Like, you gonna mix them in, or do them first…?”
“Both,” Danny told her. “Two are remixes of Ember’s songs, we’ll open with one, do four covers, and then do the other before doing four more covers. After that will be the three original songs.”
“Thirteen songs, huh?” Paulina said, slightly amused. “Spooky. Was that intentional?”
“No, that’s just what fits in the time allotment, but we can say it was,” Danny told her with a laugh. “Oh, by the way, Paulina, we had to adjust the set list a little from what we discussed last week; some of the songs we had trouble incorporating Ellie’s instrument into. It’s still all stuff from the Fall Festival that was on your ‘approved list’ though, plus the two Ellie talked to you about; Tucker will email you the updated list to send to the copyright agency.” Apparently, royalty fees were based on how much the band performing the covers got paid, and it was up to the ‘venue’ to take care of that stuff when it came to performing song covers, not the band itself; thankfully there were services that took care of it. It was a lot easier and less complicated than Sam had expected.
“Sounds good,” Paulina said. “Daddy’s taking care of all that technical stuff, I’ll let him know and forward it to him. Personally though, I’m looking forward to your original songs the most,” she practically purred.
Johnny and Kitty then returned at that point, as it was getting closer to their start time, and as Sam’s eyes wandered across the yard she realized that there were a fair amount of people she didn’t think were from school, including… “Hey, Paulina? Is that the girl from that new TV series on Nick?"
Star, next to Sam and appearing out of seemingly nowhere, giving Sam a small scare, said chipperly, “Yup! I still keep in touch with a bunch of my Hollywood friends. I was homeschooled until we moved to Amity Park so I met all of them on my parents’ sets, that’s why they pretty much all do acting—you might see some others you recognize from TV or movies! Holidays are pretty much the only time I can get all of them to visit together, otherwise someone’s always busy on some shoot or another.”
“Tucker already tried to flirt with Carly and totally failed,” Paulina said with a chuckle.
“Hey, I can’t not see a celebrity and take a shot!” Tucker asserted.
“You’re gross,” Sam said with an eyeroll.
“I bet I could net her,” Ellie said with a sly look.
“Ellie, please stop talking to Johnny and Tucker about girls,” Sam told her with slight exasperation. “You’re picking up bad habits and phrasing.”
“Well, it’s not like there’s anyone else I know who I can talk about hot girls with!” Ellie said with a small pout and crossing her arms. “You’re all either into boys or already dating people.”
“Technically, Johnny’s already dating someone too,” Kitty said with a glare at her boyfriend.
“Wait, there’s a band member missing,” Sam realized, looking around.
“Clocky’s in the hot tub,” Ember told them, gesturing over towards the pool area; sure enough there was Clockwork, in the hot tub with some of the partygoers. He still wore his usual purple cloak; Sam wondered if he actually let it get wet, or if he was sitting intangibly in there. His teenage form seriously acted like a legit teenager, to the point that Sam wondered if the ghost had some sort of multiple-personality thing going on based on the age he presented as. Ember then looked curiously at the deck, specifically the food table. “Is that Chip Skylark?”
“Oh, yeah, he’s my friend too,” Star said. “Well, actually more like an older brother dynamic I guess?”
“Oooh, I’ve gotta get his autograph,” Ember said, flying away.
Star laughed. “Oh, man, I gotta see this—Chip’s a big fan of Ember’s, too!” she hurried off.
“Huh? Star, wait up!” Paulina yelled, rushing after her.
“She does realize we’ve got, like, barely a half hour until we need to go on?” Tucker asked. “We gotta set up and pretend to tune the instruments and stuff.”
“Actually tune, in my case,” Sam reminded him. She wished her violin would magically always stay in tune like the ghost instruments did.
“Psh, we’re pretty much all set up,” Kitty said with a dismissive wave. “Let her have fun.”
“Hey, are you guys the opener?” an average-built man in his mid twenties with crimson red hair styled into sharp spikes called, giving the group a wave as he joined them. He wore a black shirt with a Dumpty Humpty logo across the front, blue jeans, and generic black sneakers.
Sam couldn’t help but gasp. “Y-you’re Freddie Phosphorus!” she recognized. “The lead singer of Dumpty Humpty!”
Freddie chuckled. “That I am. Thought it’d be a good idea to meet the hit new band that’ll be opening for us.” The other three members joined them too, all also wearing black Dumpty Humpty shirts, blue jeans, and black sneakers. “So, who might you be?”
“Sam Manson. I’m the violinist,” Sam introduced, trying to keep her voice steady; she’d seen Freddie in concert plenty, but speaking to one of her idols was a whole different thing! She gestured to each member in turn. “This is Tucker Foley, our producer, manager, and tech guy. Johnny Thirteen’s our drummer. Kitty Kat’s our bassist. Ellie Fenton plays taishōgoto and vocals. Danny Fenton’s out lead vocalist. Ember McLain, who’s over that way somewhere, does both guitar and vocals.” At Dumpty Humpty’s surprised looks, Sam tacked on, “Yes, that Ember McLain, she joined our band instead of remaining solo,” before continuing, “Clockwork, who’s over near the pool in the purple cloak, does keyboard; he’s filling in for Lurker, who’s usually the one who does keytar.” Clockwork was more comfortable with keyboard, and the setup would work well for it, as Ellie’s instrument needed to be static as well; the stage would look more balanced with one on either side of Johnny’s drum set.
“That’s quite the array of instruments!” Jake Tungsten, the band’s tall lanky drummer, whose long blonde hair was tied back in a braid, complemented. “I’ve never even heard of a tai-koto!”
“Taishōgoto,” Ellie corrected. “It’s pretty obscure outside of Japan.”
“That’s so sick. Can’t wait to hear it!” Jake said with a grin.
“Your outfits are sick too,” Charlie Cadmium, the band’s bassist, whose bristle mohawk was fire orange, complimented.
Danny didn’t let it show, but he definitely thought so too; they spent an afternoon after school at the mall finding things, as well as requested some custom things from the Ghost Zone tailor. Well, except Clockwork, who just wanted to wear his usual purple cloak as usual. His purple cloak kinda fit the general theme though; they were going for a little more ‘ghostly’ than the Fall Festival had been, to fit the band’s theme. He did, however, switch the clasp for a cartoon white blob ghost, the same as was on all of their outfits in some way or another (the little ghost was designed by Star, and was looking like it might end up being their logo; they figured a cute more stereotypical white ghost would be more accessible to the general public instead of making it green, even though in reality ghosts weren’t typically that color).
Danny wore ripped black low-cut skinny jeans with lots of chains, custom black Vans with the little green blob-ghost printed randomly on them, and a black sleeveless faux-leather (Sam refused to let them wear actual leather) vest over an ectoplasmic-green-color (well, as close as he could get) sleeveless v-neck crop top with a shredded bottom hems that showed off his abs. The accessories were black faux-leather belted collars and wrist cuffs with sharp spikes, the collar of which had a small cartoon blob-ghost pendant, as well as black fingerless leather gloves. In addition to silver tunnels in his stretched ear holes, he had again put small silver rings up and down his ears; a benefit of ghost healing was that he could just repierce them every concert with no issue instead of having to maintain them. He also had a left eyebrow piercing, just a simple bar, and a belly-button piercing with a green gem. Body paint had been used to draw green swirls wherever skin showed below his neck. He also wore eyeshadow in that same color green with heavy black mascara; swirls in Ember’s usual pattern were under his eyes, too, but in green not black. Black nail polish tipped in green completed the look.
Ellie was dressed in the same jeans and shoes as Danny, but with a black long-sleeve fishnet top over which was a ripped-sleeveless shirt in the same green with the same cartoon blob ghost decorating the front. She wore a short thick chain around her neck, the only accessory she was willing to wear aside from the silver posts in her newly-pierced ears (stretched very slightly; eventually she wanted them Danny’s size, but unfortunately humans had to take it slow and she was trying to pass as one, even if she still was going much faster than recommended) and black fingerless gloves. Her hair was tied in a braid, as it usually was now, which ended in a tie that included the blob ghost. She had refused any makeup, nail polish, or body paint.
Sam wore the same hair tie, her hair in her usual style. She wore a low-cut simple black short-sleeve dress, shredded at the bottom and sleeves and belted with a ripped green sash, over ripped ectoplasmic-green stockings and her usual combat boots. She wore a gemmed choker necklace and matching gemmed stud earrings and gemmed bracelets in the same green (Danny had been surprised Sam was willing to wear gemstone jewelry, but apparently her parents hated the style and color which made it okay); dangling off the choker was the same cartoon blob ghost. She wore the same face makeup and body paint Danny wore, with the addition of green lipstick instead of her usual purple. She also completed the look with the same black nail polish with green tips, just like Danny.
Ember had her makeup, nails, and body paint the same, but instead of green it was the same purple as Clockwork’s cloak; the ectoplasm green didn’t look so great with the ghosts’ skin colors, hence the purple. She wore the same ripped leggings as Sam, but in purple, and her preferred black boots. She had tight black torn low-hang jeans shorts and a black low-cut crop top, the shredded short sleeves of which hung off her shoulders, which showed off her own belly-button piercing that matched Danny’s, but with a purple gem. She also wore the same collars and cuffs as Danny wore, as long as similar swirls of body paint, just in purple. Her fire hair used the same hair tie Ellie and Sam wore, but fireproofed (even though technically Ember’s fire only damaged stuff if she wanted it to). She had earrings lining her ears just like Danny, although without any stretched holes, as well as a ring through the side of her nose and double eyebrow piercing on the opposite side.
Kitty, whose makeup, nails, earrings, belly-button piercing, and body paint were the same as Ember’s, wore purple fishnet stockings under a mid-thigh black leather skirt, with mid-calf black boots decorated with a blob ghost button on the outer side near the top of each. Her leather halter top was honestly more resemblant of a bra, and in the center was a brooch of the cartoon ghost. She wore a choker necklace and bracelets in the same style as Sam’s, but in purple, as well as the body paint. Her hair donned a cartoon blob ghost clip. She had also gotten a double lip piercing on her bottom left lip—the pattern known as ‘spider bites’, which she had rings in, as well as a basic side nose stud piercing with a purple gem.
Like Ellie, Johnny had opted to not wear the makeup, paint, or nail polish, instead wearing a black fishnet. Over it was a purple vest with torn sleeves and shredded bottom, left open to reveal the heavy chain necklace he wore that ended in a large blob ghost amulet. His pants and shoes were the same as Danny wore, and he also had black leather fingerless gloves. He actually had been willing to wear multiple earrings too, as well as a septum ring and eyebrow piercing.
Tucker had been reluctant, since he was only there for the administrative and tech stuff, but eventually was convinced to wear a black fishnet over a green t-shirt with the sleeves torn off and the ghost design, as well as black jeans (no chains) and the Vans. His usual beret had been switched for a green one.
Yes, the outfits were definitely a work of art, in Danny’s opinion; he was proud of the band for collaboratively coming up with them.
“Yeah, ours are super boring compared to you,” Jake added.
“Yeah but that’s part of your thing,” Danny pointed out. “So casual you could be part of the crowd.”
“Exactly,” Freddie said, sending Jake a small glare; Sam got the sense the two argued about that a lot.
“How come you’re here so early?” Tucker asked curiously, then amended, “Not to be rude! It’s just, we’re super new at this, and I’m wondering if it’s normal for bands to arrive so much earlier.”
“Eh, depends on the band, and the venue,” the final member, the guitarist Jimmy Cobalt, the bangs of whose royal blue chin-length hair swept to the side to cover one eye, told them with a shrug. “In our case, we’re just so early since we were also invited to the actual party; figured might as well, right? Free food and all.”
“Plus we wanted to see you play!” Charlie said. “Like, another local punk band? What’s not to love?”
“You haven’t even heard us play yet,” Ember, apparently already done chatting with Chip Skylark, said with amusement.
“Actually, there’s a few recordings some people uploaded of that festival,” Jake pointed out. “Just low-quality phone and camcorder ones, and they got taken down pretty quickly due to lack of streaming rights for the songs, but we heard some of them! You rock.”
“Yeah, just from the few small clips we can tell you’ve definitely got the right energy,” Freddie agreed. “I can’t wait to hear it in-person!”
“Heh. No pressure, huh?” Danny said nervously.
Sam slung an arm around Danny’s shoulder and told him, “You’ll do fine.”
Tucker’s PDA then beeped and he looked at it. “Ah. Hate to cut this short, but we definitely gotta get over to the stage,” he told everyone.
“Yes; that would be recommended,” Clockwork said, suddenly there; most people gave a jolt of surprise. He was completely dry, and a glance at the hot tub showed the people in there looking confused as to where he went.
“Well, you heard him,” Sam said to Dumpty Humpty. “Hope we live up to your expectations! And looking forward to hearing you play too!”
“Break a leg!” Charlie said, giving them a thumbs up.
Sam grinned as she headed over to the stage with her bandmates; she had a really good feeling about this show!
Finding Ellie next to her, Sam gave the girl a nudge. “Ready for your big debut?”
“Of course!” Ellie declared, completely confident, no hint of nerves in sight. “Especially my solos. I can’t believe you’re letting me sing!”
“Why wouldn’t we? You’re good,” Sam emphasized. “You’ll blow them away!”
Ellie giggled happily, but didn’t answer, as they’d reached the stage.
Sam vaguely wondered if maybe the band was the right eventual path for her too, and that rather than college she should tour with them, as Danny wanted to do, especially if it had as much potential as Dumpty Humpty claimed. Until now Sam had just expected it to be a casual high school thing for her, parting ways to go to college, but honestly, Sam was loving it a lot more than she had expected! At first it had been awkward, since Sam didn’t get along with half the members, but now? They had grown on her—even Ember and Johnny. And it was just so fun!
Sam wondered what her parents would think if they learned that Sam was even considering touring with a band instead of going right to college, then decided that she didn’t care. Sam was her own person, and if she wanted her career to be a band, her career was going to be a band—she’d make it work.
After all, last weekend at the recording studio Tucker had expressed wanting to stay with the band too, after learning all about the recording technology and realizing he loved it as much as computer science—they might not need a special effects guy, but they actually would need a manager and producer and stuff like that, which they hadn’t realized at first. And if Tucker was sticking with the band, no way was Sam going to be left out!
Of course, there was still some time to solidify these decisions… But, Sam felt confident that whatever they all chose, the three of them would always remain together.
Valerie had been hoping to make it to the party before Danny’s band started playing, so she could wish them luck before the show, but a run-in with the Box Ghost, of all ghosts, on the way had delayed her a ridiculous amount—apparently, traditionally-shaped plastic cat carriers were enough of a box shape for him, so she had to help the veterinary office capture a bunch of escaped cats and a python (was that even legal to have as a pet?!). Seems like those new fabric bag-like pet carriers were soon going to have a huge uptick in sales in Amity Park.
So, Valerie instead arrived as the band was halfway through what must be the first song, as it was the new remix of “You Will Remember”. She dismounted her hoverboard and suit at the side of the house and headed into the backyard; Paulina and Star waved her over from the food and drink tables, and Valerie hurried up the steps onto the deck, realizing she was pretty hungry.
“About time you arrived, girl!” Paulina greeted. “We were starting to think you wouldn’t show.”
“Do you hear this song?” Star asked excitedly. “Listen! It’s like a total remix, and specifically mentions Amity Park!”
“Yeah, I heard it when they were recording…” Valerie trailed, though quieted to listen to the chorus, which Ember and Danny sang together, as most of the crowd was curiously doing. A few months back Valerie would have assumed it was a spell, but now she had no doubt that it was just because of Danny and Ember’s voices, enchanting by themselves, combined with the town being the song’s focus.
🎵Amity Park, you will remember / ‘Cause here, we all remain / To you, our hearts are tethered / You will remember our names.🎵
Valerie had a sudden realization: this one related to ghosts’ deaths, too, albeit more subtly. Actually, Ember’s version of the song had been about that too, hadn’t it? The lyrics were semi-vague, as at the time she wasn’t about to reveal that she had died, but the clues were there in retrospect.
“You’re crying,” Paulina noted as the song ended and a cover began.
“Oh,” Valerie said, putting a hand below her eye, wiping the tear away. She looked at it, surprised.
“They glow, just like Danny’s!” Star pointed out.
“Oh. Yeah, side-effect of my suit, apparently,” Valerie told her.
“Ecto-contamination?”
Valerie shifted slightly; should she lie or tell the truth? Well, she was kinda-friends with them again and they kept Danny’s secret… “More than that,” Valerie admitted. “Don’t tell anyone, but the suit is ghost tech, and it kinda… fused with me. I’m slowly becoming a halfa, and there’s no way to stop it.” Apparently glowing tears came with that package.
“Oh wow,” Star said, looking unsure how to approach that. “Is that… good or bad?”
Valerie shrugged. “It is what it is. At first I was really unhappy about it, but… I can’t say that the ghost powers aren’t useful. It helps that it seems to be some new halfa formation type where I don’t have to painfully die first.”
“Well, that’s definitely good,” Paulina said. “So… why are you crying?”
“Hm? Oh. Just, the song. It’s… it’s really sung from their hearts, isn’t it? Or, cores I guess. It’s about them being… Well, them being ghosts. People are probably seeing it as a metaphor, but it’s more literal. Even Ember’s first version of the song was like that.”
“Oh, right,” Paulina said a little sheepishly. “Sometimes I forget that they’re technically… not alive. Or, not fully alive.”
“Partly revived or not, they all still died,” Valerie reminded her. “Well, except Sam,” she amended. Valerie wondered how she felt, being the only full human in the band. “And technically Ellie was just born part ghost.” Maybe Clockwork too? Valerie had no idea about what his status counted as.
🎵Well, I'll choose the life I've taken / Never mind the friends I'm making / And the beauty that I'm faking / Let me live my life like this…🎵
The band had moved to a cover; Star looked contemplative as she watched them play, then commented, “Danny’s really embraced his ghostliness, hasn’t he?”
Valerie glanced around, double-checking that they were far enough from anyone who might overhear; thankfully they did seem to be. “Yeah, he really has,” she confirmed. “You haven’t met with him when not potentially around people who don’t know, have you?”
“Well, there’s the school lunches, we’re pretty much the only ones willing to eat outside this time of year,” Star pointed out. Right, Valerie had seen them leaving the school sometimes at lunch; the two girls didn’t always eat with Danny and his friends, but sometimes they did, and Ember used her fire to help them stay warm.
“That’s still semi-public,” Valerie pointed out. “And before you say it, that big meeting at Sam’s doesn’t count, he was acting very self-conscious and subdued there due to the gravity of the situation—I mean, have you recently hung out fully in private when he was in a relatively good mood and only with people who know?”
Both girls shook their heads, looking curious.
“Well, I have a few times, and if it weren’t for the lack of glow, you’d think he were just another ghost,” Valerie revealed. “I’m pretty sure he hates the ground or something—even sitting he’ll just be in the air. And he’s super casual about the power usage. No qualms about using them whenever needed. All in human form, by the way. Doesn’t even try to fake breathing. It seriously seems like he’s much more comfortable being a ghost than being human.”
“Well, he did say he was, what, 90% ghost or something?” Paulina mused. “So that would make sense, right?”
“The breathing thing he doesn’t bother with half the time in public either,” Star pointed out, looking amused at that fact. “I don’t think that’s a ‘prefers it’ thing, more of simply a ‘forgets it’ thing. But otherwise, yeah, seems like he prefers being a ghost, if he only bothers to hide it when needed to keep his cover.”
“He seems happier now, though,” Paulina noted. “Since making the ghost friends and all, and embracing his ghost parts more. Honestly, even I was starting to get worried, before we all became friends, especially at the start of this year. He did not seem to be in a good place at all.”
“Yeah,” Valerie agreed, though felt a flash of guilt about that—she hadn’t been making things any easier on Danny at all, constantly hunting him like she had. She was extremely glad that she never caused permanent damage—she didn’t know what she would have done if she learned of his identity via shooting him down and having him transform while unconscious.
“Anyway,” Paulina said, clapping her hands together, an indication that she was done with the conversation. “Enough sad talk; who’s up for making some margaritas?”
“Ooh, me!” Star cheered.
Valerie took pause at that. She had never—
“Don’t worry, they’re virgin ones this time!” Paulina told Valerie. “No alcohol in them, promise. We’re not risking everyone being arrested this time, at least not while the bands are playing.” The we probably will bring it out afterwards went unsaid.
“Right… Well, if it does eventually get spiked, keep Ellie away from it, okay?” Valerie suggested. “I wouldn’t put it past her to test how much of a tolerance the ectoplasm gives her, and technically she’s only twelve mentally.”
Star giggled. “Sure thing. Wow, you’re really like an older sister to her, aren’t you?”
Valerie felt herself blush. “Shut up,” she said, though was smiling. Ellie really did feel like a little sister to her, though it was a little embarrassing that people had started to notice.
“Ooh, speaking of Ellie, looks like she’s up now,” Paulina noted.
The girl had grabbed Danny’s guitar from where it was lying near her instrument, then hopped to the front and exchanged it with Danny for his mic, whereas Danny moved back. Right, they couldn’t summon their instruments without revealing their ghostliness.
“She’s playing some Japanese one, right?” Star said. “By… who was it?”
“Utada Hikaru,” Valerie said. “Ellie sang it for me; it’s apparently from a video game.”
“Yeah, I played that one,” Paulina revealed. “I remember liking the opening song a lot, but it was in English; this will be the original version.”
The band then began to play; the lyrics started immediately.
🎵Donna toki datte / Tada hitori de / Unmei wasurete / Ikite kita no ni / Totsuzen no hikari no naka, me ga sameru / Mayonaka ni…🎵
Valerie was unsure how Ellie could sing those lyrics so quickly! She’d only been there for six months, right? Yet she wasn’t struggling at all… Why did it seem she was at the level of a native speaker already, accent included? Lots of practice, Valerie supposed.
Valerie couldn’t help but smile as she watched Ellie up there. She seemed extremely in her element on stage, even more so than Danny—Danny had a great stage presence, yeah, but Valerie knew he got nervous beforehand. Ellie, on the other hand, seemed to not know the concept of nervousness existed—at least, not when it came to social things. She still definitely got nervous about her power usage, but that was a residual fear from when she’d melt after using too much, and seemed to be gradually fading now that she was stable.
When the song finished, Danny and Ellie traded instruments again—Danny actually looked like he was about to dismiss the guitar at first, then remembered he had to at least pretend to be human. Ellie took the guitar and put it beside her own instrument again, taking position.
The band played a song by Panic! At the Disco, and apparently Danny had taken some inspiration from the band and song lyrics, because he seriously seemed to be channeling Elvis or something with those dance moves. His outfit and the frankly seductive looks and winks he was giving while singing did not help matters one bit.
🎵I've got more wit, a better kiss / A hotter touch, a better fuck / Than any boy you'll ever meet / Sweetie, you had me…🎵
A tall lean boy with curly brown hair then appeared near Valerie, looking towards the stage; he whistled as he stared at the band. “Those moves are positively sinful,” Star’s brother, Dean, purred. He was four years older than his sister, and attending a fancy dance school in New York City, so was only really around the house on holidays.
“Danny’s a guy,” Star told her brother.
“I know. I can still appreciate hot dance moves, can’t I? I mean, I am studying it,” Dean said with amusement.
“Damn. Does he even know how hot he looks right now?” Paulina wondered. “Seriously makes me want to bang him.”
Valerie winced. “Um. TMI, Paulina.”
“Hey, he is technically my boyfriend,” Paulina quipped back.
“Thought that was just a cover?” Dean teased, and Valerie gathered that he knew about Star and Paulina.
“Yeah well I can still appreciate him, right?”
“Hey, um, Paulina? I suddenly want to go in the pool,” Star said. “Can you come to my room with me and help me decide which swimsuit to wear?”
Paulina laughed. “What, you can’t—oooooh. Okay, yeah,” she agreed upon seeing the seductive look Star sent her. “Definitely. Let’s go.” She grabbed Star’s wrist and pulled the giggling girl towards the house.
“Oooohkay, that just happened,” Valerie said, looking towards the door the two had vanished through.
Dean chuckled. “Try living with her! Speaking of hot, though…”
“Nope; don’t even try,” Valerie said, holding her hand up, well aware of what was going through the boy’s mind. He could be as bad a flirt as Tucker sometimes—the difference was that Dean was Hot, capital H intended, and Valerie was definitely tempted to pursue that. Valerie’s dad would kill her though if she tried dating a college junior while she was still a junior in high school.
Dean gave Valerie an amused look and opened his mouth to say something when Kwan thankfully appeared, along with a boy who looked very similar to Dean—his fraternal twin brother, Frankie, who was much more scholarly than his brother and studying law at Harvard. Frankie reminded Valerie a lot of Jazz; maybe they’d get along well if they met each other.
“Hey, Val!” Kwan greeted, joining her. “Man, do you hear Danny’s band? I think it got even better since last time, and I didn’t even think that was possible!”
“Well, Danny’s stage presence has definitely improved,” Valerie noted, watching again. The next song wasn’t as ‘sexy’ as far as lyrics went, thus the moves weren’t (as much) either, but it was powerful, and Danny’s energy was almost addictive, even from a fair distance away. His confidence itself as he sang and the way he held himself was just plain hot (Valerie internally chided herself for thinking that—he was gay, dammit, and she was over him!)
🎵So back off your rules, back off the jive / 'Cause I'm sick of not living to stay alive / Leave me alone, asking a lot / I don't wanna be controlled🎵
“Damn. If I weren’t straight…” Kwan gave a low whistle.
Valerie resisted saying something about how she was 99% sure that Kwan was definitely not straight, rather bi at the very least, given the way she’d seen him looking at Dash since the two were in middle school, but if he wanted to be in denial that was none of her business.
“Dean, you’re not causing trouble, are you?” Frankie said sternly.
“Uh. No, nope, definitely not,” Dean said quickly.
“He’s ogling teenage band members,” Valerie told Frankie.
“Hey! Don’t make it sound gross. The kid’s, like, 17!”
“16, actually, and you’re 20,” Valerie pointed out. Well, kinda. Physically, apparently, Danny was still 14… Valerie felt weird thinking about that. Two years wasn’t a big deal, but that was going to get really awkward in a few years, when his birth certificate said one thing but everyone’s eyes obviously saw another. Would Danny resign himself to dating a ghost at that point? Would his identity even still be secret at that point? Valerie didn’t see how Danny could keep his ghostliness hidden for much longer; people would definitely notice his lack of aging eventually, especially if the band made it big.
“Still legal,” Dean said. “Besides, four years isn’t that bad; our parents are five years apart, right, Frankie?”
“But they were already in their 30s when they met; that’s different,” Frankie pointed out.
“Eh, not really. If only he were female…”
“Ugh, you’re gross; I’m gonna get a drink,” Valerie decided, then headed towards the drink table, in search of those virgin martinis Star and Paulina had mentioned.
🎵Hey ghosts! / We’re a lot of fun / We’ll show all you l’il humans / how it’s done…🎵
“Huh. Didn’t expect them to remix this song,” Jazz commented.
“This is one of Ember’s?” Jack asked.
“Yeah, it’s the one she, Kitty, and Spectra sang when the three tried to eliminate all the boys in town—it was when you and Danny went on that fishing trip and caught the sea serpent.”
“Oh yeah, that thing was delicious,” Jack recalled. Most of it they had donated to the local soup kitchen since only a small portion of it actually fit in the freezer; that small portion had still fed the family for weeks though!
Jack and Jazz were seated beside each other on the couch in their living room, watching a private live stream of the concert that Tucker had set up for them; a video was being saved too, so the band could review it later and see if they needed to make any adjustments for future shows. Jack didn’t think they’d need to though; every song seemed amazing so far, though maybe Jack was a little biased—he didn’t think he could ever see his son as less than perfect, even with his flaws.
Jack wasn’t quite sure of the outfits, but Danny had been really excited about the designs, so Jack allowed it, even if some were a bit… Well. Jack really hoped Maddie did not stumble across the video of this, as she definitely would not approve of Danny’s at all, especially all those piercings (Jack knew they were likely just for the show though, thanks to the ghost healing, so was fine with them). It was definitely super cool, of that Jack could agree, but his son dressed in something so revealing? Jack had mixed feelings.
Danny’s stage presence this time was even more impressive than it had been at the Fall Festival concert. Except for Ellie’s solos, he only was using his fancy new microphone, no guitar, and as a result he could move around the stage a lot more, stomping around the stage and gesturing to the audience and downright dancing at points, looking like he was genuinely enjoying himself, even if some of those moves and gestures were a little… Well, actually not as bad as some of the photos the paper had recently published of Phantom and Ember, come to think of it—perhaps Jack should talk to his son about what was appropriate for a teenager to be engaging in, even if those photos had been staged.
“I am so giving him a talk about what’s appropriate for his age,” Jazz grumbled as Danny and Ember did a dance move that involved his hand on her butt. “He’s gonna cause another Brittney Spears scandal at this rate.” Oh, good, maybe Jack wouldn’t have to do that then—yeah, he knew rock stars did tend to include a lot of questionable things in their music and dance, but most of them were older when they started incorporating that into their shows!
“At least it’s not as bad as that explicit song about teenage sex,” Jack pointed out. Well, the lyrics were tamer at least.
“Oh he is definitely getting lectured about that one, too,” Jazz said firmly.
The next song thankfully was a softer one with less moving and no suggestive movements, thankfully—in fact, it was the song that first caused Jack to resolve to do better by his boy, the song ‘Perfect’ by Simple Plan.
🎵And now I try hard to make it / I just wanna make you proud / I'm never gonna be good enough for you…🎵
That lyric struck Jack the most. He wanted Danny to know that yes, he was definitely good enough for him! Danny ought to know that by now, but maybe Jack should tell him again. Let Danny know that his dad was proud of him.
“Why are you crying?” Jazz asked.
Jack touched the corner of his eye to find that there were indeed tears there. “Oh. Well, this one, when Danny played it at the Fall Festival… The lyrics resonated so much. I felt like it could have been written about me and him,” Jack revealed. “It’s what really motivated me to fix our relationship… Danny told me later that the song really resonated with him, too. When listening, I could almost sense that he put more feeling in it than some of the other songs.
“That concert is what made me take a much harder look at ghosts as well. I saw how happy Danny was on stage, being with those ghosts… I thought, how could ghosts be evil if they’ve helped my son so much? I mean, I hadn’t seen him smile like that in… well, years. Since before high school…” Jack sighed. “We really should have gotten him into therapy back then, huh? Then maybe he wouldn’t have…”
Jazz put a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Hey. It’s no use focusing on the past. Danny is doing better now. He told me the other day that he doesn’t feel suicidal anymore, and I believe him. So focus on that: he’s doing better now, and it’s up to us to help make sure that he continues to do better, okay? There’s still a lot of work to do, but the worst is over, I’m certain of that, and now we’re just dealing with the aftermath, and making sure it doesn’t return to that.”
“Right. And I’ll do whatever I can to be sure of that,” Jack said resolutely.
The two continued watching the concert in amicable silence through the next song, which Jack remembered from the Fall Festival concert; it had fast lyrics that were hard to understand, but Jack liked how the lyrics he could understand said everything would be just fine and all right. The song after was a lot harsher in tone; Jack watched in awe as Danny sang, voice powerful and passionate.
🎵I can't escape myself / So many times I've lied / But there's still rage inside… / Somebody get me through this nightmare / I can't control myself!🎵
Halfway through the song Jack realized why the lyrics might seem to resonate so much with Danny. “This song… is it about addiction?” he asked Jazz.
“‘Animal I Have Become’, by Three Days Grace? Yeah, the lead singer wrote it while he was in rehab… for an opioid addiction, actually,” Jazz revealed.
“Oh. I guess Danny can definitely relate to this song, too, then…” Jack trailed. That whole situation still felt surreal to Jack. Danny’s expression the other night, when he tried to take those pills… Thinking about it broke Jack’s heart. Danny was still struggling so much, fighting so hard. Jack wished he could have noticed sooner that something was wrong, but what parent ever expects their 16-year-old—well, technically 14-year-old—to develop an opioid addiction? There’s always that small chance, but no one ever thinks it’ll happen to their child.
Then again, no parent expects their child to attempt suicide before high school, either, only to become part-ghost via an accident a month later. No parent expects their kid to be an immortal superhero who nearly died trying to save the world multiple times. No parent expects that the other parent would be secretly abusing their kid. No parent expects their kid would be bullied so horribly to the point that attempted manslaughter charges get filed. No parent expects that their best friend would torture and clone their child. Danny better not try to check off any more boxes on the ‘things a parent would never imagine could ever happen to their child’ bingo card.
“Oooh, looks like Ellie’s up again!” Jack then excitedly declared once the song ended and the two did the same switcheroo as earlier. “Think she’s gonna sing in Japanese again?”
Jazz chuckled. “You’ve really embraced having a third child, haven’t you?”
“Of course! She’s unexpected, but not unloved,” he said confidently. Regardless of her less-than-scrupulous origins—Jack still was extremely angry at Vlad for cloning his son, and torturing him in the process, but at least one good thing had come from all that.
🎵Das Fenster öffnet sich nicht mehr / Hier drin ist es voll von dir und leer / Und vor mir geht die letzte Kerze aus…🎵
Jack gasped. “Dutch!” he declared.
“No, it’s German,” Jazz corrected. Jack trusted her on that; the high school made all students take at least two years of a language class, and Jazz had taken German (Danny had wanted to as well, but by the time he started high school that course had been dropped due to lack of instructor, so he took Spanish, though barely passed as with most his classes). She explained, “I believe the band is called Tokio Hotel; Ellie said they were around Danny’s age when they started…” Jazz then looked contemplative. “You know, Ellie is extremely apt at learning languages; I think she only spent like six weeks in german-speaking countries, yet when I heard her practicing this morning and asked her what the lyrics were, she perfectly translated them, and I know it’s been a few years since I took it but I tried to talk to her in it and she’s definitely way above my level.”
“You know, I’ve been wondering about that too,” Jack said. “I looked it up, and her Japanese is way higher than it should be for six months, even with immersion. She claims she’s not great at reading, but Jazz, she can read those comics with almost no issues. I asked her about how much of the characters she now knows, and she confidently claimed she had about a thousand memorized the other day—and she showed me the book, and I quizzed her, and she knew every one I randomly selected! Learning that many takes all 6 years of elementary school for a native speaker to get to.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m certain she’s definitely fully fluent in speaking it,” Jazz agreed. “She was playing a video game in it the other day, and was yelling at something the characters were doing, all in Japanese, like it came natural to her.”
“Some ghosts have unique abilities; do you think language acquisition is one of hers?” Jack wondered.
Jazz shook her head. “Ghosts with language-related abilities tend to know them as soon as they hear them. This is more of an accelerated learning of it, I think.”
“So just, her brain works a little… differently… oh.”
“What?” Jazz asked curiously.
“I might know what this is,” Jack told his daughter. “Vlad did ecto-science for his Doctorate, but his Master’s degree was in genetic engineering. His thesis was on isolating and modifying different genes in-utero to affect predispositions to things like athletics or creative endeavors.”
“You mean, designer babies,” Jazz said dryly.
“Well, yes,” Jack said. “The science was still very far away at the time, and I thought he abandoned it, but now that I think about it he did manage to copy only Danny’s knowledge and not memories, so it wouldn’t be far-fetched that he was able to instill something like accelerated learning of languages—if he wanted an heir, a predisposition to learning languages is a very useful skill.”
“Makes sense,” Jazz said. “Definitely wouldn’t put it past him… Maybe we shouldn’t tell Ellie this though.”
“Yeah, I agree with that,” Jack said. “At least, not yet; she still has a lot of other trauma to deal with first.”
“Yeah, this kind of knowledge could cause another existential crisis… But, now I’m curious, how in the world did Vlad get to ecto-science from genetic engineering?”
“Oh. Well, Vladdie was fascinated by the concept of beings with biology that was so different from humans!” Jack told her.
“Huh. I wonder—oh, hold up, I think this is an original track,” Jazz said. “At least, it’s song 11, and Danny said there’s gonna be 13, with the last 3 fully original.”
“You’ve been counting? Good job, Jazzy! I didn’t think to do that,” Jack told her.
Jazz fondly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s listen; I think he said the first one was the one about lost dreams or something…”
Danny was the lead singer again, with Ellie back on her… whatever it was called. Listening to the lyrics, Jack quickly realized that the ghosts were singing about the dreams they’d had that went unfulfilled because they died. Each had a solo, and the chorus was sung by all.
Jack couldn’t help but cry once more as Danny sang his solo about being an astronaut. He’d wanted to be one for as long as Jack could remember, up until… That should have clued Jack in to the fact that something was seriously wrong. Even if the astronaut dream was gone because of grades, there were plenty of related space fields, yet Danny had just given up. He had just stopped talking about any future plans, space or otherwise. That kind of thing was a huge red flag, and Jack had been completely oblivious!
Maddie had said Danny was just being a teenager, but back when Jazz, barely a teenager herself at the time, first started talking so much about her pre-teen brother needing help… Well, Jack had considered it, but he really should have pressed the matter. They were all extremely lucky that Danny had… well, saying ‘survived until now’ wasn’t quite the right phrasing, Jack supposed, but he was still around, which was lucky considering he’d come extremely close to being gone for good. When Danny told him about it, Jack had never been more relieved for mislabeling a chemical. He wondered if Danny had noticed that Jack had started being extra careful about labelling and now made extra sure to lock them all up when finished—as he should have done from the start anyway, Jack shamefully thought, especially in a home with kids. That was basic home lab safety.
Danny was definitely doing better though, of that Jack was sure! Now he actually was talking about future plans again, what he wanted to do beyond high school. He had dreams and goals again! Things to strive for, things to live—or rather, exist—for. He could envision a future that he wanted to be in… And if that future was being in a ghost band in lieu of going to college, well, Jack was going to support Danny in that endeavor however he could.
Lost in his thoughts, Jack barely noticed that the next song had started—and when his focus returned (when the first lyric rang after a surprisingly lengthy instrumental introduction) he realized that despite the fast high-energy pace of the music itself, it somehow was even darker, yet fitting for a band full of ghosts. Danny had told them about this song, how they were going to sing about the ghosts’ deaths, with their permission. Jack, frankly, was surprised that so many ghosts had given permission, even ones that were frequently at odds with Danny. Even Spectra had given permission!
The format was four versus, each with a pause between them, refrain, repeat until all versus done, refrain multiple times. Ones that died together, namely Johnny and Kitty, Walker and Bullet, and Spectra and Bertrand, shared a verse instead of having separate ones. The versus, each which talked about a ghost’ background and subsequent death, were sung so rapidly that it was slightly hard to follow, but in a good way; it reminded Jack of songs like ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ by Billy Joel or ‘It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’ by R.E.M.
Jack was morbidly fascinated by the variety of ways in which the human-based ghosts had died; he knew ghosts usually were created around highly traumatic moments, but it somehow hadn’t occurred to him just how traumatic the deaths likely had been—and certainly hadn’t occurred to him that some had actually been involved in historic events.
The first four versus were the Box Ghost, who had been a victim of 9/11; Technus, who had perished as a result of a drunk driving accident; Dora, and her whole ghostly kingdom, victims of a city razed during a war to eradicate dragons (apparently those amulets held the actual spirits of the dragons the town raised, a last-ditch attempt to save them); and Youngblood, who had been on The Titanic.
The second group included Desiree, who, despite the kid-friendly version of her story told by Baba Zita saying she died of a broken heart after she was kicked out by the sultan’s wife, had actually been murdered by that jealous wife; Spectra and Bertrand, who had died together, victims of The Blitz in 1940 (Jack hadn’t realized that the two were that long dead!); Skulker, who had been mauled by a grizzly bear after trying to hunt her cub (no one knew why his base form was so small; the robot suit was apparently closer to the shape he was when alive); and Sidney Poindexter, who suffocated in a locker after the bullies had duct-taped it closed (Jack shivered at the thought that Danny, if it weren’t for his halfa status, could have similarly been a victim of bullying-gone-very-wrong).
The third group included the Lunch Lady, who had been poisoned by a bad batch of lettuce during an attempt to tweak the lunch menu (fully explaining her aversion to the lunch menu being changed and strange distaste of leafy green food); Walker and Bullet, who had worked at Libby Prison and perished during the mass Civil War escape in 1864; Wulf, a human-wolf hybrid created in an island lab that the government shut down and subsequently destroyed all ‘experiments’ within (which, Jack had some questions about); and Ghost Writer, living name C. Wesley Phy, an English professor from Lehigh University who was killed by a student in 1936.
The final group of verses included Cujo, who had been tossed aside like a broken tool by the security company who raised him, along with the band members, some of which had been alluded to some on the previous song: Johnny and Kitty, who had died from a motorcycle accident, slipped on a patch of black ice while running away from home; Ember, who had been in a fire, origin still unknown; and Danny, who… well.
The song said Phantom had been messing around with a machine he shouldn’t have been, and was electrocuted. The part of the crowd that could be seen at the edges of the recording looked like they were whispering to each other at that line—many people had speculated about Phantom’s death, which he’d been tight-lipped on, but, although ‘lab accident’ was a common theory given the hazmat suit, electrocution had never been considered, as far as Jack knew. The song intentionally left out the portal aspect and ectoplasm, leaving it at that—which technically was accurate, Jack supposed, as the ectoplasm had essentially been what brought him back, not what killed him.
Jazz, too, was crying by the end of that song.
The final song, however, was more upbeat, a duet between Ember and Danny.
“This is a love song,” Jazz concluded partway through. “Why are they singing a love song?”
“What’s wrong with a love song?” Jack wondered.
“Well, for one, Ember and Phantom are the ones dating. People will talk!”
“I’m sure they know it’s just a show,” Jack said, noting Jazz was becoming a little stressed; honestly, the more Jack learned about psychology, the more he suspected Jazz had some sort of anxiety issues too—perhaps he should suggest she sign up for therapy too, given everyone else in the household now was in it. Couldn’t hurt, right?
“Yeah but what if they draw a connection? Realize that Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom are the same?” Jazz asked frantically
“Nah; if anything, it’ll just reignite those rumors about a polyamorous quartet, or the ones claiming Ember’s cheating,” Jack reasoned.
Jazz considered that, then took a deep grounding breath. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. If they haven’t drawn the connection based on Ember at this point, a duet for the band won’t change that. I gotta stop being so nervous about this.”
“Hey, you’re just looking out for your brother,” Jack pointed out. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“There is when it’s so much that he gets mad at me for it,” Jazz grumbled. “And he’s right, I do worry too—oh come on, they’re seriously kissing AGAIN?!”
“Good way to stay stealth,” Jack pointed out.
Jazz sighed with mild frustration. “I guess,” she conceded.
“Thank you for listening!” Danny announced, holding Ember’s hand in the air, as the other band members joined them at the head of the stage, each arranging themselves to be touching at least one other member, whether around the back or on the shoulder or otherwise. “Once again, we’re The Amity Park Ghosts! For those interested, we’ve got free demo discs on the table to the right of the stage, featuring the two Ember remixes and our three fully original songs; don’t be shy about taking copies and sharing them with friends! Love you, Amity Park, and see you soon!”
With that, the band vanished, and the crowd gasped; the touching had been to ensure that the audience assumed the four confirmed ghosts had simply extended the ability to cover the ‘humans’ too.
They regained visibility once off the stage, then the crowd dispersed as the stage lights dimmed, giving just enough light for the band to work on removing their instruments, which was a very quick feat given most were ghost ones. Once everyone retrieved things (this time, Johnny had surprisingly actually voluntarily de-attuned his motorcycle so he could attune his drums for easy dismissal) and left the stage again, Danny did a quick final check and followed them, signaling to the next band that they were clear.
As Danny left the stage and Dumpty Humpty walked onto it, Freddie Phosphorus told Danny in passing, “Killer show; can’t wait to tour with you this summer!”
Danny took a second to process that, then swerved around. “Wait, what?” he asked, rushing a few steps towards the man.
Freddie chuckled and turned around. “You heard me. The Amity Park Ghosts are gonna be opening for Dumpty Humpty on our national tour.”
“You can’t be serious,” Danny concluded.
“Oh I definitely am,” Freddie assured him. “The opener we had lined up broke up a couple days ago, and quit the show, so we’ve been looking for a new one—you’re perfect.”
“I… I don’t know what to say,” Danny shuttered out. “Um. Yes, yes, we’d be happy to—well, I’ll have to talk to the other band members, but yeah, pretty sure they’ll be game!”
“Good, because we’re not taking ‘no’ for an answer,” Freddie asserted. “One caveat, though: all original songs, okay? Those songs were seriously killer, no joke! Think you can get enough, in addition to those five, to get forty minutes’ worth of them?”
“Yes. Yes, definitely,” Danny told him. “This is… Just, wow. Thank you, thank you so so much.”
Freddie chuckled. “Enough grovelling; be confident! This isn’t a favor: you’re good. You’re the next big thing, I’m sure of it. That’s why we want you.”
“Yo, Freddie, get up here! If you’re not set up in time, you know we’ll start without you!” Charlie yelled from the stage.
“Right, right, sorry!” Freddie yelled to him, then turned and grinned at Danny. “See ya around, kid.” He gave a small wave and then jogged up the steps onto the stage, where a crew was setting up the giant egg that the band would emerge from.
Danny felt like he might be in a mild state of dissociation as he walked over to his own band, now a fair distance from the stage where they could review the show in private; as he did so he subtly dismissed his microphone (allegedly it had an attack function too, which similarly to the guitar reacting to the notes strummed could react to whatever Danny sang, hummed, or even screamed, and might even be able to help control his wail so he stopped passing out from it and even to the point he could do smaller versions of it too, but Danny hadn’t tried that function yet).
“Dude! That went so well!” Tucker said.
“We were incredible,” Ember cooed.
“Apparently, Dumpty Humpty thinks so too,” Danny said, honestly still processing what had just happened.
“Is that what you were talking about with Freddie?” Sam wondered.
“That, and a little more, correct?” Clockwork, still in teenage form, said with a knowing smile.
“More than a little more,” Danny said. “Apparently, we’re the opener for their summer tour.”
Everyone except Clockwork stared at Danny with wide eyes and open mouths, looking speechless; Danny tried not to laugh.
“This is a joke, right?” Tucker concluded, looking faint.
“I thought they had an opener?” Sam said, looking mildly confused.
“Nope; that one apparently cancelled a few days ago,” Danny explained. “Freddie says he thinks we could be the next big thing…”
Johnny chuckled nervously. “Wow, no pressure, huh?”
“We just need forty minutes’ worth of original songs,” Danny revealed.
“We can totally do that!” Ellie said. “Right?”
“Hell yeah we can!” Ember agreed.
“Yes, we’re gonna rock their socks off!” Kitty asserted.
“How does—”
“It’s a metaphor,” Sam quickly told Clockwork, and Danny tried not to chuckle. Despite watching humans so much, Clockwork, like most Ancients, didn’t quite understand a lot of human metaphors and turns of phrases, often taking them literally.
“I see,” Clockwork said, though Danny could tell he didn’t really.
“I dunno if anyone really knows the origins of it,” Danny told Clockwork, throwing him a bone. “It just means we’re going to be super great and our music will make people happy.”
“Then just say that next time,” Clockwork grumbled, the attitude his teenage form sometimes had showing a little, then smiled. “I agree though; we’re going to be really awesome! And I don’t even need to peek into the future to know that.”
“Great; now, let’s go get some food,” Ellie asserted. “I’m hungry after that!”
“Yeah, same,” Tucker said.
“You weren’t even on stage!”
“Well, I’m still hungry.”
“You’re always hungry,” Sam said with an eye roll. “I agree though—Star told me they actually have a separate table with vegan options, which I want to check out.”
“Think there’s alcohol?” Danny wondered, only half-serious, then upon the looks the humans and Clockwork gave him amended, “Joking, sheesh!” The three still looked unamused, but the ghosts and Ellie laughed. “Let’s get food though, before Dumpty Humpty finishes setting up—don’t want to miss the opening!”
“They come out of a giant egg, right?” Kitty recalled. Neither she nor Johnny had seen them in concert before.
“Yup,” Ellie confirmed.
The group went to the food area; there was a mix of fun party appetizers and desserts that Danny recognized, like pigs-in-a-blanket and cookies, but also some stranger things that seemed more like something found at a fancy dinner party that Danny was slightly wary of trying.
But before they could get anything, the band found themselves swarmed by people, all speaking at once.
“You were awesome!”
“Oh my gosh, you’re my new favorite band!”
“I’m so first in line if you make a full album!”
“I need your autographs!”
“Will you be playing again?”
“Please say you’re playing more shows!”
“Seriously, autograph the EP?”
“Sign my boobs!”
“I love you so much!”
“Why are you all so hot!?”
“You are the next big thing, seriously.”
“If someone says you’re bad, I’ll punch their lights out.”
“Okay, okay, that’s enough,” Danny said, moving his hands in a ‘calm down’ gesture. “Please don’t punch people.” The girl who said that was a larger one that Danny recalled was on the wrestling team.
“YO! LET THEM GET FOOD!” Paulina shouted, shooing the crowd away as she approached with Valerie, Star, and Kwan. “We do have security guards we can call over! Any autographs and whatnot can be done AFTER the Dumpty Humpty concert, which is starting soon—go find places to watch it instead of accosting this band.”
“Um. Are we actually doing autographs?” Danny wondered as the crowd dispersed, feeling a little overwhelmed.
“Of course,” Ember said. “People want them, so why not?”
“Yeah I guess,” Danny agreed, feeling really good after the concert, mood high and core pulsing with contentment at the crowd’s excitement. “Anyway, food, then let’s watch.”
“You were really great, seriously,” Star said, sounding highly impressed. “I mean, I knew you would be, but wow.”
“Apparently, Dumpty Humpty thinks so too!” Ellie told them. “The other band for their summer tour cancelled, and they want us to do it!”
“Whoa, for real?” Valerie asked. “That’s amazing!”
“You definitely deserve it,” Paulina asserted.
“As great as this conversation is,” Clockwork chimed in, and then reminded them, “We are on a time limit.”
“Oh right!” Star said. “Food. Try the lobster puffs, they’re amazing! We also have—”
“Daifukumochi!” Ellie shouted excitedly, hopping over to the table and grabbing something that looked like a squishy pink ball from a large plate covered in many different-colored similar balls.
“Imported from Japan,” Star said proudly. “My parents were filming there last month.”
“I love you for this,” Ellie said through a mouthful of the thing; it appeared to be filled with a thick gel-like substance. She swallowed and revealed, “I haven’t had proper daifukumochi in a long time.”
“I thought it was just called ‘mochi’, is that not true?” Star wondered.
“Oh! Is ‘daifuku’ strawberry?” Kwan asked. “The pink one is strawberry flavored right?”
“No, it just means it’s filled,” Ellie explained. “Well, more specifically it translates to ‘great luck mochi’. Strawberry is ‘ichigo’. Regular mochi doesn’t have filling, just the flavored dough, and is usually more like a rectangle shape.”
“Neat,” Star said. “I love how you know so much Japanese stuff! Anyway, Clockwork’s right, food time.”
Soon the band was equipped with plates of food, Danny being daring and choosing some of the new things with encouragement from Clockwork and Star (she was adamant about people trying those lobster puffs), and were back down in the yard along with the three girls and Kwan, just in time for Dumpty Humpty to start.
A guitar chord rang out, and then smoke emerged from the giant egg as the top lifted up and sides moved away to reveal the band playing their most iconic song, ‘Great Fall’, the audience—including the group of eleven—screaming.
After the song finished, the band spread out more as the egg’s bottom automatically left the stage, and Freddie, at the front, began speaking: “Well, if it isn’t Amity Park once again! As you know, we’re Dumpty Humpty! You’re our favorite town, by far, and we are excited to play for you once again at this special Thanksgiving Break Party! But first, a shoutout to our opener, ‘The Amity Park Ghosts’! Super rockin’ band, right?” He paused, letting the crowd cheer, then signalled the crowd to calm down and continued, “Well, if you’re wondering if you’ll ever have a chance to see them again, don’t worry—they’re our new opener for our ‘Sunnyside Up Tour’ this upcoming summer!” Another pause, giving the crowd a chance to gasp, whisper, and cheer, then he again signalled for them to quiet and continued again. “Yup, exciting stuff! Now, without further ado, let’s get this show going!”
“Well, guess we’re definitely committed to it now,” Ember said with a chuckle.
“Oh, like you weren’t the second I told you about it,” Danny teased.
“Says the one who basically said ‘yes’ without consulting us,” Ember quipped back.
“Well, I knew you’d all be game!”
“Just shut up and watch the show!” Ellie snapped, then mumbled, “‘Cracked Eggs’ is my favorite song.”
As the group quieted and began watching the show, yelling, screaming, and singing at all the right points, Danny reflected a little on life in general.
Danny realized that, just as he’d told Jazz the previous day, he was truly looking forward to the future for the first time in a long time. He didn’t want to die. He found something he loved to do, a new dream. He had friends he was incredibly happy with, even some he would have never expected. He was mostly ghost, but that no longer bothered him—in fact, Danny would dare to say he liked being so.
The Danny from just a few months prior probably wouldn’t recognize the Danny of today, but that was more than okay with him, because today’s Danny was definitely in a much better place than he was back then. Sure, there were challenges, including the beast known as addiction, but Danny was more confident than ever that he could get through them.
Danny couldn’t help but smile broadly, fangs peeking out, as his core buzzed in contentment. Next to him, Clockwork noticed and put a hand on Danny’s shoulder, smiling gently at the boy who had become like a son to him; Danny’s core purred in response.
Yes, things could only go forward from here, of that Danny was sure.
Notes:
(the ending sentence is actually meant to be hopeful this time, not ironically ominous like I've done in other fics, I swear)
What a concert! Did Dumpty Humpty's offer surprise you? It sure surprised me! I didn't originally plan it, but then before I realized what I was typing Freddie made the offer, so I rolled with it.
Next up: A few months later, Lancer turns on the local news station's 'local celebrity' segment to watch the show interview Danny about his band.
Epilogue is just one short scene and will be up in roughly a half hour, so if you started reading this immediately upon getting the new chapter email and don't see the 'next chapter' button then refresh the page and it should be there.
Chapter 27: Epilogue: TV Interview
Summary:
Lancer turns on the local news to watch them interview Danny about his band.
Notes:
Well, here's the short little epilogue! Enjoy!
(I posted another chapter today, so if you've just seeing the update now, go read that before this).
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Sometime in the Spring following the formation of The Amity Park Ghosts, Lancer kept Amity Park’s local news channel on after the general news in order to watch the hour-long (well, 46 minutes of actual show plus 14 minutes of commercials) talk show that discussed local celebrities, at the behest of some of his students, who had left school early that day—with actual permission this time, for once. This segment did live interviews with local celebrities and businesses.
The newscaster said in a chipper voice, “Welcome to yet another episode of Amity Park Celebrity Watch, where we tell you about who to keep a lookout for around town! Today we have two guests for you: First up, we’ll talk to Nate Owlson, former manager of Nasty Burger turned master of haute cuisine, with his new restaurant that’s sparking national attention, and then we’ll talk with Danny Fenton, founder and lead singer-guitarist of the hot new local band that’s already gained a spot on the charts! Our guest musician tonight will be that very same band: The Amity Park Ghosts!”
Lancer largely ignored the first segment about the restaurant—he did feel some pride in the fact that his former student had finally started to actually make something of himself after over a decade, but the restaurant itself Lancer simply didn’t understand. The food was based on something called ‘molecular gastronomy’, featuring strange-looking foods created using science that, although his brain knew were technically edible, Lancer would be wary to put anywhere near his mouth. He supposed that was the appeal to people—the art, novelty, and experience of it. Lancer himself preferred simpler foods that he could recognize.
After a commercial break, the newscaster announced the night’s musical act, The Amity Park Ghosts, who would be playing two original songs. Lancer wasn’t usually into pop-punk bands, but there was something about this one that made him think that maybe he could be if he gave the genre more of a chance.
The first song they played was a brand-new, never-before-heard one about high school, called ‘Freaks and Geeks’. It was an angsty one about feeling like they didn’t fit in, one that would definitely appeal to other teenagers, which was their primary audience as they all were teens themselves (minus the Ancient ghost Clockwork, who Lancer still was in mild disbelief would be in a teenage band, even if in a teenage form that definitely acted like a teenager).
The second song was one that had managed to climb the charts on iTunes, in part due to a recommendation by the other local band Dumpty Humpty, who had garnered national attention a couple years prior. Lancer recalled that they had formed in their junior year as well, roughly a decade prior, although they didn’t gain fame until a few years after graduating high school—a feat that Lancer had to practically force them through, as at one point they all wanted to drop out. Thankfully the only band member this time who had considered such was Danny, and it had been easy to convince the boy to stay in school. Unfortunately, Lancer had a feeling that next year he’d need to convince all of The Amity Park Ghosts who were attending Casper High to stay in school, given this upcoming summer they’d be touring with Dumpty Humpty and the thrill of such might make them want to stay on the road.
The chart-climbing song in question Lancer was very familiar with; Daniel had both given him one of the EP discs and, when it was released for sale a few weeks prior, he’d bought both an official hard copy and the digital version simply to support his students. The album cover, which had been drawn by Star, featured a medley of cartoon blob ghosts engaging in the activities mentioned in the song ‘Childhood Dreams’, the very song that had soared in popularity. Lancer had cried when he first heard the song, realizing that despite being framed as general childhood aspirations many of the things were actually the future plans all the ghosts in the band had had before they… before they died, including Danny’s portion (despite it having been roughly six months since Lancer found out, his heart still broke at the thought of his student being a ghost, even if he technically wasn’t fully so).
The show then went to commercial again, and afterwards opened with Danny sitting on the couch that was at an angle to the interviewer, who was in an armchair; it looked like Danny was struggling to resist the temptation to sprawl out on the couch rather than sit in the standard position; he then opted for tucking one leg under himself, the other kicking in the air as from that position he was short enough that it didn’t reach the floor. He really looked like the kid he would forever be at that moment, despite the edgy outfit he’d chosen for the show (rather than anything formal, Danny had opted for black chain jeans, skate shoes with a ghost pattern, and a black t-shirt with the band’s cartoon blob-ghost logo over a long-sleeve fishnet weave, along with the usual accessories—well, aside from the collar and wristlets actually having spikes on them, which were banned in school).
“Your song has managed to climb to #12 on iTunes in just one week, something almost unheard of for a new band. What are your thoughts on this?” the interviewer asked.
“Well, honestly, I’m still struggling to believe it,” Danny said. “Back in September, the band was only a vague concept, a cover band formed on the fly because the school’s Fall Festival couldn’t find anyone and I wanted the extra credit in class. Now we have a song that’s on the charts? It feels like a dream, really.”
“September! Wow. Want to explain how just a school festival led to you now being the opener for Dumpty Humpty on their Sunnyside Up Tour this upcoming summer?”
“Well, like I said, the band was formed on the fly. I wasn’t even planning to be in it! Ember is who encouraged me—she said she’d only play in the band if I were in it. At the time I had no experience with that; I could sing, but I didn’t even know how to play guitar! But, I agreed. Ember taught me guitar; we spent weeks practicing daily. At that time, I totally thought it was a one-and-done thing, but then after the Fall Festival concert went well, some classmates asked us to play at a private party. I’d completely fallen in love with music at that point, and didn’t want the band to end, so accepting was a no-brainer.
“As it turned out, Dumpty Humpty was also playing at their party—we were the opener. Our bands instantly vibed with each other, and after hearing our show, they’re the ones who proposed we join them on the tour. Honestly, I’m still in slight shock over that, too—they’re one of my favorite bands! Opening for them on a tour feels like a dream.”
“You were still mainly a cover band at that point, correct?” the interviewer asked. “But you won’t be for the tour?”
“Yeah. We’d written some of our own songs by the time of that concert for our classmates, and recorded a promotional EP, but most of it was still covers. Part of the contract for this summer is that our set includes all original songs, or remixes of Ember’s. That first one we played tonight was actually brand-new!”
“And it was definitely punk-rockin’!” the interviewer declared. “Gives vibes of bands like Simple Plan, MCR, and Good Charlotte.”
“Well, those were some of our influences,” Danny revealed. “I mean, we’re edgy high school kids. Until recently, we were the ones that were always on the sidelines, the ones that people either ignored or pushed around, the ones who half the kids called ‘losers’, ‘geeks’, or ‘freaks’ more than our names; of course we’d feel a connection to those bands.”
“Well, that song definitely reflects such,” the interviewer said. “Including the title itself! I have a feeling that a lot of teens across the nation are going to resonate with your band, too, just like those!”
“Thanks,” Danny said, with a blush.
“Now, let’s get into what’s extra unique about this band of yours,” the interviewer said.
Danny grinned slightly, showing a fang. “You mean, the ghosts?”
“Yes! Until recently, Amity Park’s government has been staunchly anti-ghost, until Mayor Magnus took power and the police announced their support. There was also the matter of the ghost fighters—now Jack Fenton and the Red Huntress support the view that not all ghosts are bad, and the GIW has eased up thanks to new regulations, but back then it was still extremely dangerous for ghosts. What inspired you to have ghosts in the band, and how did you handle those unique dangers surrounding that?”
Danny took a deep breath. “Well, what first inspired me was that Ember’s my friend, and I knew she was a great musician. Back then our friendship was still a secret. At first I only planned to invite her, but we did need more members, especially a drummer. So Ember suggested we invite Johnny and Kitty too; I wasn’t yet friends with them at the time, but figured if Ember thought they were good, why not? We figured we could disguise the three and no one would find out.”
“And the dangers?”
“Well, we didn’t handle that great at first, to say the least. The disguises did not work out—I’m sure you remember what happened after the Fall Festival concert…”
“Ah, yes; that was quite the battle! The whole town was certainly shocked to see the son of the city’s two most infamous ghost hunters fighting his own parents in defense of ghosts.”
“Yeah… That was definitely not a good time,” Danny said with a small shiver, likely recalling what came after. “Thankfully, my dad was already reevaluating his views on ghosts at the time, and eventually I was able to fully convince him that all ghosts aren’t evil, particularly my friends. Mom unfortunately never came around though.”
“Do you think that might be a reason for your parents’ divorce?”
Danny frowned, and Lancer had a feeling that that had not been a canned question; nevertheless, the boy answered. “Oh, I definitely know it was. Maybe some people can compartmentalize, only argue in the lab but be nice outside it, but neither of them have been very good at separating work from family, so not agreeing on that caused a lot of tension everywhere. But, that’s all you’re getting on that front; I’m not here to gossip.”
“Of course, of course, my apologies,” the interviewer said, and Lancer had a feeling she wasn’t actually apologetic, confirmed by the flash of amusement on Danny’s face—he could sense emotions, after all. The interviewer continued, “So, now for something the audience has been demanding to know: What of the rumors that you and fellow band member Ember are secretly dating?”
Danny sighed in clear frustration. “This again? For the hundredth time, Ember is dating Phantom, and I am dating Paulina. No, we are not cheating. No, we are not a quartet. No, we are not swinging or whatever. We’re two separate couples who are friends, that’s all. Any kissing on stage is strictly acting done for the show.”
“Well, I’m sure not everyone will believe that, but I’ll play along,” the interviewer said with a wink, and Danny rolled his eyes; Lancer got the sense that that question and answer had been rehearsed. The interviewer continued, “Now, we don’t have much time left, so is there anyone specific you’d like to give a shout out to? Perhaps a supporter, a fan, or someone who inspires the band?”
“Actually, yes,” Danny said. “I want to thank my teacher, Mr. Lancer.”
Lancer did a double-take. Danny was thanking him on live TV? Why?
Danny continued, “Without him, there wouldn't even be a band in the first place; he’s the one who offered the extra-credit for finding one. It’s more than that, though; he encouraged me to keep it up. You see, when you’re a teen, the adults all tend to try to push college on you, and often discourage you from following what people decide are lofty pipe dreams. They tell you to be realistic, to go get a college degree and a nice office job somewhere, or go to trade school if your grades suck too much.
“Yet when I nervously told Mr. Lancer that I wanted to do not just music as a career, but do it with this band, going on tours and making albums instead of going right to college, he didn’t tell me it was unrealistic or say something about how statistically few bands make it. He didn’t push college or trade school. Instead, he told me to follow my dreams. He said that he believes the band has a real chance, and that college doesn’t have to immediately follow high school.
“So if you’re watching this, Mr. Lancer: Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, from my very core. You’ve helped me so much along the way. Without you, I wouldn’t be here. So just, thank you.”
Lancer had tears in his eyes by the end of that speech, especially as he had a feeling that the ending part also had a very different meaning, given everything Lancer had helped the boy through that didn’t explicitly relate to the band.
The interviewer then said, “One last question: What do you say to the rumors that the entire band is ghosts, not just half? You in particular, given you’ve gone as far as, or so you claim, ‘modding’ your teeth into fangs to fit the ghost look of the band.”
Danny looked very briefly surprised, then laughed. He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow at her. “Seriously? Me, a ghost? My parents are two of the leading ecto-scientists. If I were a ghost, don’t you think they would have noticed by now?” He gave a fanged grin, and Lancer could swear for a millisecond his eyes flashed green. The answer had allowed the audience to easily come to the conclusion that he probably wasn’t a ghost, while still neither confirming nor denying it; perfectly in-character for Danny, in Lancer’s opinion, and he couldn’t help but smile at that.
“And there you have it!” the interviewer said. “Danny Fenton, lead singer-guitarist and founder of the local half-ghost band that’s climbing the charts, The Amity Park Ghosts! Remember, their hit song ‘Childhood Dreams’, which is that second song you heard earlier, is available digitally now, as is their entire 5-song EP, which also has physical copies purchasable online or in select music stores! That’s all for tonight on Amity Park Celebrity Watch! Next up—”
Lancer clicked off the TV, feeling a sense of pride at his favorite student. It seemed his decision to support Danny on his music dream rather than pushing college had been the right decision, after all; he was certain that The Amity Park Ghosts were going to be a household name someday.
Notes:
And that's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed this wild ride!
(fun fact: back in 2006, hour-long TV programs in the US actually were 46 minutes plus 14 minutes of commercials. Today, they are 42 minutes of show with 18 of commercials. When airing reruns of older shows, channels speed up the reel ever so slightly, not enough for humans to notice but enough to cut it down to 42 instead of 46).
I have two more chaptered Danny Phantom fics in the works for you to look forward to, again which I'll wait until 95% finished to start posting but at least one should be finished soon (at my current hyper-motivated pace maybe it'll be posted next weekend!). They'll both likely be somewhere between 30k and 40k words each (with shorter chapters than this one). Here's their (subject to change) summaries:
Fic 1, rated T or M:
Casper High has noticed things about Danny Fenton. He’s cold, he has fangs, he heals fast, he doesn’t always remember to breathe. Clearly, he’s a vampire. Danny decides to play along, because it’s better than them thinking he’s a ghost.
After Star and Paulina find out that Danny’s actually a ghost, they rope him and Ember into a money-making scheme that takes advantage of a certain vampire romance novel’s popularity. Danny, who has been using adrenaline derived from ghost-fighting to stave off depression, quickly realizes that he can get the same rush from this, and eagerly participates.
The adults are not at all enthused when they discover this.Fic 2, rated T:
A group of kindergarteners has fallen into the Ghost Zone! Maddie and Jack call a temporary truce with Phantom in order to save them. The two very quickly realize that Phantom is their son, and the more they explore the Ghost Zone the more they start to question everything they knew about ghosts.
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