Cartoons! Games! Anime! I don't know what else!

When Manny received an invitation from Jimmy Neutron to be a part of their interdimensional club or whatever it was, he was certain nothing interesting would come out of it. Sure the idea of different dimensions and adventures was luring, but he had enough of those at home, what could they offer him that he didn’t already have? The only reason he ended up agreeing to meet them was to reject the invitation properly, he wasn’t interested at all… At least that’s what he told himself, yet regardless of his feelings on the matter, he had a sudden change of heart upon meeting the team members, or rather, one of them.

Jimmy Neutron was the brain of the team, clearly, he had a laboratory, a robot dog named Goddard, and he was the one who gave him the device to travel through universes, he was interesting, but not the reason for his change of heart.

Timmy Turner was the youngest team member, only by a year, but still; he had these two creatures following him around, “fairies”, he said, Manny wasn’t entirely sure if he believed that, but it was interesting nonetheless… still not the reason though.

Next, and this one was a surprise, a talking sponge… Spongebob Squarepants, the oldest (for real?) member of the team, with a distinguished laughter and a love for his job and jellyfishing, whatever that was; as fun as it sounded to meet a talking sponge, he still wasn't the reason for himself to be debating the decision so much.

Danny Fenton, now that was the guy, half ghost half human, a strange accident made him like that, and his powers were amazing for sure, but what drew his attention the most was just… him. There was something about him that felt kind of magnetic, and he wanted to be with him, listen to his stories and, who knows, fight some bad guys together? These guys were all heroes, right? He could do that.

Danny was undeniably fun, but there was more to him, one could say he was… cute. Especially when he got nervous. He didn’t see that shy bit of him often, even after spending some time together, Danny carried himself with confidence most of the time, maybe because he had nothing to hide from his friends (which now included him), maybe that was just the way he was; he’d only seen Danny nervous two or three times.

The first time was when he accidentally broke one of Jimmy’s inventions and didn’t know how to tell him, he’d run to him to ask for help trying to fix it… needless to say that didn’t work well and he had to tell Jimmy about it, he’d been pretty nervous about that, and terribly apologetic too; he blushed embarrassed about his uncharacteristic clumsiness when he told Jimmy how he’d broken his invention.

Then there was the time when he lost his fish net the day Spongebob asked them to go jellyfishing with him, apparently, the two of them were pretty close friends and he didn’t want to hurt his feelings or fail him in an activity the sponge seemed to enjoy a lot, but when he was unable to find it, he’d sheepishly asked Spongebob if he had a spare for him.

The last time was something else though. They’d been chatting for what felt like hours, just having a nice time sharing stories of their fights or complaining about more mundane things such as their schools. Everything was normal up till the moment in which their hands accidentally made contact; Manny wasn’t one to shy away from contact, especially not from a cute guy, but Danny had blushed on the spot and his hand went ghost, it wouldn’t have been so funny if Danny hadn’t been leaning his weight on the table on it, the poor guy almost hit his face against it, then he tried to play it cool and stand up to go get sodas, but his legs were the next thing to go ghost, the next thing he knew his pants were on the floor. Now, as funny as that was, he didn’t find this as cute as the other times, Danny wasn’t his usual type of nervous, he was mortified and Manny found himself immediately disliking that ashamed look in his face, especially after Danny ran away.

Manny was about to go after him, but just then the new recruit, Jenny, came in with the rest of the team and he was forced to stay to meet her and chat with everyone, although he couldn’t say he paid attention, his whole mind was on Danny and what to do to make him feel better and understand he wouldn’t have laughed at him.

As it got late everyone said their goodbyes and returned to their own universes, but Danny was nowhere to be found, it wouldn’t surprise Manny if he’d decided to go home right after that incident, so he didn’t question it and returned to Miracle City. For a second he considered asking someone for advice, maybe Frida, his best friend would surely help out! Or his dad! Hell, he’d even take advice from Black Cuervo on this one as long as it helped him find a way to cheer Danny up… he quickly decided against it though, what could he tell them? That the cute guy he’d been chatting with suddenly lost his pants? Hell nah, at best they’d laugh or focus on the unnecessary details, at worst they’d misinterpret everything and it’d become awkward, not to mention he didn’t feel comfortable outing this situation to anyone, he didn’t think Danny would appreciate it, so it was up to him and to him alone to find the solution to the issue at hand.

His thoughts must have summoned Black Cuervo because that same night she decided to attack, and it was up to El Tigre to take care of everything. Thankfully, his fight against the villain brought some ideas and clarity to his situation.

Who would’ve thought, he chuckled to himself, Black Cuervo actually helped with this, and I didn’t even have to ask.

No longer than a day had passed and getting the gift was far easier than remembering the universe and city Danny came from, he was used to hanging out with him in Jimmy’s universe after all, but Danny had told him about his universe. Chingada madre, what was the name? Started with A… ability? Army?... Amity! Amity Park (what kind of name was that for a city?), if he remembered correctly, it was time for a little expedition out of this world for El Tigre.

Jimmy said the transporting device would take them somewhere near to the universe resident’s base in order to avoid issues in case someone was there, which meant he wouldn’t appear in Danny’s house, but close enough, no problem, he was ready to look for hours if needed, so knowing he’d be nearby would save him a lot of time.

Crossing the portal, he was greeted with another universe, different from his own and Jimmy’s, whose he’d gotten used to by now, high buildings and many houses raised before him as he came out from the alleyway in which he’d appear. Huh… Well, with so many houses how was he supposed to find Danny’s if the only clue was that it was near? He took back what he said earlier, this was going to be a pain in the ass.

Manny wasn’t particularly patient, so the idea of walking around until luck smiled at him and helped him find Danny’s place was giving him a headache; this was a job for El Tigre! Besides, in the worst case scenario he was sure Danny would end up finding out about a dude in a tiger suit leaping around if he didn’t find him first, and then Danny would find him; nothing could possibly go wrong.

Or that’s what he thought.

Of course, he jinxed it.

After a while looking for his friend, he found himself muttering and groaning because Danny just was nowhere to be found, and through his mind ran the possibility that Danny actually knew he was there and was just keeping himself invisible to avoid him. It was unlike him, but at the rate things were going Manny was willing to entertain the idea, if only to get that out of his head as soon as possible.

“Alright,” he took a deep breath and sat down on the roof of the building he had just landed on, “Danny, if you can hear me, I really need to talk to you right now, hombre!”

…

…

Nothing.

Of course, if Danny was avoiding him he wouldn’t reply, but-

A shudder ran through his body, the ambience growing colder than it was before; Danny had given him this feeling many times before, that was how one felt when a ghost was close. He sighed relieved, figuring if there was any ghost nearby it had to be Danny, and that meant he had listened to him. He stood up and smiled, preparing the little speech he had rehearsed for this moment, but when he turned around, whoever that was, it wasn’t Danny.

“Danny Phantom?” He asked with a smirk, “You know him, boy?”

“What’s it to ya?” Manny hissed in response, getting ready for a fight.

“You must be one of his friends! Oh, this must be my lucky day! Finally, that child will learn a thing or two about respecting elder ghosts!”

Before he could react, the ghost had a tight grip on him, lifting him off his feet and flying away from the roof; Manny tried almost every trick he’d learned as El Tigre to free himself, but there was no use, he couldn’t touch the damn spirit with his claws; for a second he considered summoning the Ancient tiger spirit, guessing that if anything could touch a spirit it just had to be another, but as soon as he was to try that theory the man he was looking for appeared.

“Well, well, well! If it isn’t Danny Phantom! I knew you wouldn’t resist coming for your friend!”

“Let him go!”

“As you wish, child!”

Being dropped from the sky wouldn’t be funny if he was a normal guy, but Manny Rivera was no normal guy, he was sure he could land relatively safely and Danny would take care of the ghost no problem, but he supposed it would be impossible for someone like Danny to ignore one of his friends falling, because the next thing he knew, he was caught by the halfa.

“Y’know, I could’ve handled that. Thanks though.”

“What the hell are you even doing here?!”

“Geez, I’m glad to see you too!”

“Are you boys done chatting?” The ghost, now angry at being ignored launched itself to attack Danny.

“Okay, we’ll talk about this later, I’ll take care of this loser first!”

Earlier in their relationship, Manny had wanted to fight side by side with him, but being held as Danny took care of everything wasn’t exactly how he pictured it, he’d imagined it more… epic, having each other’s backs as they defeated some baddie; granted, this was cool too, he could see Danny use his ghost powers from pretty close, but he wasn’t contributing much to the fight, and he was sure Frida would laugh if she could see him like this, it was a bit embarrassing.

By the end of the battle the ghost was captured in a thermos and Danny was pretty much unscathed, with only a few scratches to worry about. The two landed in the nearby roof and transformed back, finally, Manny could talk with Danny.

“For the record, getting kidnapped wasn’t in my plans when I came.”

“Why did you come?” He didn’t sound upset, which Manny counted as a small victory, but he still seemed pretty ashamed about what had happened.

“Hey…” Manny held his hand and offered a smile, “listen, about what happened; there’s nothing to be ashamed of, ‘kay? I wasn’t going to laugh.”

“Bullshit.”

“Aw, c’mon, man, give me some credit, I really wasn’t! I was going to tell you that, but you ran away and then the new team member came and I couldn’t follow after you.”

“… Alright… so you just came to tell me that?”

“Not exactly,” he chuckled as he fished from his pocket the gift he’d brought for him, placing it in Danny’s hand, “cool, right?”

“… It’s a belt buckle.”

“It is! A bit like my own, but it has a P, y’know, for Phantom. Made it myself. It’s not magical like mine, but I thought it might come in handy.”

“You made me a belt buckle?”

“Yeah! Like I said, I really wasn’t going to laugh, but you seemed mortified, and I thought this might help a bit.”

“… Huh…”

“What? You don’t like it?”

“No, it’s not that! This is just… it’s pretty thoughtful, I don’t know what to say! Thank you…”

Ah… that was a different kind of blush, one he hadn’t seen on Danny…