IMMORTAL KOMBAT

“Wait a second.” Danny frowned, squinting at one of the phighters. “Is that… Dash?” 

“Dash Backstreet? That football player my son’s buddies with?” Jack nearly jumped out of his seat, but Vic and Lexx managed to hold him down. “Let me at ‘im! There’s no way I’m letting my son go to school with a ghost!”

“So Phantom Planet wasn’t canon after all. Cool.” Tali nodded. They weren’t concerned about Jack right now; Lexx and Vic were applying Denny’s maple syrup to the back of his jumpsuit, which would keep him stuck in his seat even without them restraining him. “And no, that’s not Dash Baxter. That’s Angie Constellaj, one of our two phinalists. She/her for the good ghost, please.” 

Angie spun her football on the tip of her finger and winked.

“No such thing as a good ghost,” Jack muttered, but Tali ignored him.

“And our other phinalist is the effervescent Ray (Ghostsray), formerly known as Void. Let’s give them both an explosive welcome!”

Ray tipped their green baseball cap as confetti cannons went off around the arena. The hat filled up with the confetti, which was in the shape of tiny Danno faces. The paper Dannos scattered in Ray’s hair when they put the hat back on. Luckily, Jack was too far away to notice that the faces were modeled after his son.

“Will one of our phighters get torn apart, molecule by molecule? Will Constellaj’s football protect her through the final highs and lows of the Phandom Phight Club? Will Ray’s love-and-gun combo shoot its way into our hearts? Will I ever get to finish playing Xenoblade? There’s only one way to find out!” Tali let out an earsplitting DOOT on their kazoo. “Let the Immortal Kombat begin!”

The speakers began playing a mashup of the Mortal Kombat and Danny Phantom theme songs. It didn’t distract Constellaj, who hurled her football with practiced precision. 

“Touchdown!” she shouted as it struck home in Ray’s shoulder.

Ray skidded back, pulling the football free. They bandaged the ectoplasm-leaking wound with their purple scarf. 

“I’ve been around this block before.” Ray grinned, cocking their gun. “It’s gonna take more than that to knock me out!”

A pink blast erupted from their gun, which Angie dodged by falling to the ground and beginning to do pushups. 

“You think she’s taking the kinning too far?” Danny asked.

Tali shrugged. “Whatever keeps her alive—well, dead, I guess—out there is fine by me.”

And it did. While Ray was busy being impressed at Angie’s physical strength, she leapt to her feet.

“Baxter Beam Attack!” she shouted, firing a ray that obliterated Ray. 

“But… the power of love…!” Ray gasped, trying to fight back with their own lovebeam. 

“Guess you should’ve loved winning more.” Angie grinned.

With an explosion that smelled mostly of old gym socks, Ray was blasted against the pavement. (Not torn apart molecule by molecule, thankfully. It would be difficult to give the 2nd place trophy to someone who’d been vaporized.)

“And with that, we have our winner!” Tali called through the megaphone. “Ray is unable to battle! Congratulations to Angie Constellaj, the winner of our 2023 Phandom Phight Club!”

Amid cheers and shots, the spectators stormed the arena, as if they’d just finished a particularly tense football game. Angie crowdsurfed over the top of them, basking in the victory.

“I hope everyone had a great time,” Tali said, though even through the megaphone they doubted the excited crowd was listening. “Special thanks to Vic and Lexx, who handled just about everything while I was at ghost college. The Phight couldn’t have happened without their hard work. And thanks to everyone who voted and participated in any other way! We hope you’ll stop by the Denny’s for post-Phight refreshments—pancakes that probably won’t have any hairs in them.”

“No promises,” Vic added with a grin.

“If that happens, we’ll throw in a ghegg as emotional compensation,” Lexx chimed in.

Tali groaned. But, as Jack had indirectly pointed out, the phighters of the third place match were floating into the ring.

One of them was… a giant peach? Okay. The other ghost held a potato, so this looked like it would be a very nutritious phight.

Tali cleared their throat and squinted at the cue cards Vic had prepared. Then they raised the megaphone.

“Phighting for third place, we have Peach and Andi (Englandamericaitaly)! Congrats on getting this far!”

The crowd cheered, Lexx waving her Danno on a stick enthusiastically. Down in the ring, Andi took a bow. Peach, being a giant peach, didn’t have a waist to mirror the action. Her weapon, a 64-pack of Crayola crayons, wrote a rainbow THANKS on the asphalt instead.

“Now, without further ado… PHIGHT!” Tali dooted their kazoo.

Andi sprang into action. They ran circles around Peach, trying to find the best angle to yeet their potato. 

“I don’t see any explosions,” Jack grumbled. 

Danny patted his shoulder sympathetically. Did Jack know that Danny was his son? Despite the phinal round’s prompt, it was unclear if Phantom Planet counted as canon. 

“Andi is looking for an opening,” Tali announced. “Jack, you may get your wish yet. Yes, they’re going for it! They yeet their potato, and—oooh, that’s gotta hurt!”

The potato exploded against part of Peach’s fuzzy flesh. However, instead of blasting apart into fruity guts or ectoplasm, a pile of chocolate bars tumbled out of the wound.

“Ah! That’s right!” Tali referenced the cue card again. “Peach’s special skill is collecting an unholy amount of chocolate bars! Looks like that candy armor is gonna keep her in the game a little longer.”

Peach prepared her retaliation—a spear of crayons, all sharpened to points. 

Andi pulled another potato from behind their back, but their yeet wasn’t fast enough to counter the waxy weapon. The spear lodged in Andi’s chest, then exploded into its individual crayon components. 

“Yeesh. That’s gonna be a tough one to come back from.” Tali grimaced as Jack whooped. 

“WOOO! THAT’S WHAT I CALL MOLECULE BY MOLECULE, BABEY!” Even without a megaphone, the whole stadium could hear him.

“Vic?” Tali said into their walkie-talkie. “You mind dispatching the emergency medical team? …Do we still have one of those?”

“Nope. We’ve got the janitorial staff, though.”

“Eh, close enough. Over.” Tali hung the walkie talkie back on their belt, then picked up the megaphone. “Andi is unable to phight! Peach is the winner of the match, and will take her rightful place as third place victor!”

With her crayons broken in the explosion, Peach couldn’t write anything, but she seemed happy.