They’re Your Teeth

The greenhouse -the one that Sam had put in a very aggressively worded petition for- behind Casper High has never looked so… sentient. Vines creep where vines have no business creeping, ferns lean in like gossiping neighbours, a sunflower rotates its head with unsettling attentiveness; the air itself smells like damp soil and something faintly electric. At the center of it all ‘stands’ UnderGrowth, towering, vine-skinned, eyes glowing a violent red. A chalkboard has been dragged in, though the chalk had been replaced by a twisting tendril that writes by scratching into the board.

Sam’s sitting in the front row, looking absolutely thrilled; no real surprise there. Everyone else looks like they are attending their own funerals; which honestly? reasonable, it was weird that this little lecture was even allowed to happen at all.

UnderGrowth drags his vine across the board, carving deep grooves, ‘ECTO-BOTANY & BIOLOGICAL DOMINANCE 101: AND WHY YOU ARE THE PROBLEM’, he turns slowly, like a tree deciding to become a storm. Hissing faintly, “leeeet us begin”. A vine snaps out, yanking a desk into perfect alignment; the class flinching in synchronized terror. Someone yelps as their backpack gets yanked out of their hands and tossed into a corner pile like trash. The ghost continues, “ecto-ology”, his voice like roots cracking through stone, “is the study of ghostly energy. But more specifically, I am going to speak about it as it manifests within -and enhances- biological systems. Plants, in particular, are… receptive”, he gestures, and a nearby potted plant pulses. Its leaves shimmering with a faint green glow, “unlike you humans”, tone curdling, “plants do not choke their own world”.

Dale slowly lowers his hand, UnderGrowth’s eyes snap to him, “…you will speak, and then you, who barely qualify as background noise, will not interrupt me”.

“Uh- yeah- um…quick question”, Dale was already regretting being alive, “are… are ghost plants, like… dead plants? Or… like- uh, super plants?”.

UnderGrowth considers this, the room holding its breath, “…yes”.

Dale nods like that cleared everything up, it obviously did not, but he wasn’t going to call the known murderous ghost out on that. Fucking hell.

UnderGrowth turns back to the board, carving again ‘ECTOPLASM = ENERGY + MEMORY + WILL’ speaking again, “ectoplasm is not merely energy. It is intent. Residual existence. When it binds with plant life, it amplifies their natural capabilities”. A vine from the ghosts body lashes out toward a nearby oak sapling, it grows instantly, bark thickening, branches stretching, leaves unfurling like a time-lapse on fast-forward; gasps rippled through the room and UnderGrowth smirks to themselves. Continuing slightly softer, almost reverently and clearly talking to the tree rather than the class, “growth. Defense. Adaptation. Energy. Memory. Will. All things humanity consistently wastes. Plants become what they need to be. Something needed by this planet rather than something-”, glancing at the class, sneering, “-infesting this planet”, turning fully to face the class, “imagine a world where forests reclaim what has been stolen. Where concrete cracks like eggshells beneath roots. Where your cities are compost”.

Dash raises his hand halfway, “dude, that sounds kinda shitty, why wreck our stuff for some dumb plants-”. A vine wraps around his chair and gently but firmly tips him upside down.

UnderGrowth glowering at the jock, “silence, weed”, hissing, “jussssst a plant?”, voice sharpening into something jagged. Roots reach up through the ground, pinning the jock to the ground.

Dash choking, “O-okay- okay!”.

UnderGrowth leans in, eyes blazing and inches from his, “you weeds pave forests and call it development. You poison rivers and call it industry. You choke the air and call it progress”, each accusation makes the vines constrict tighter, “you are not the apex of anything”.

With a flick, Dash is released and he scrambles back, pale and shaking.

Sam raises her hand and every vine in the room stills. UnderGrowth’s posture shifts, it’s subtle, but unmistakable. Less brewing storm, more… attentive thundercloud, “yes, little garden caretaker?”.

Sam leans forward, eyes bright, “would ectoplasmic enhancement change a plant’s nutrient cycle? Is in, would it still rely on photosynthesis, or could it sustain itself entirely on ambient ecto-energy?”.

The ghost blinks, then, slowly, UnderGrowth smiles. It is not a comforting sight, but it was an… approving one, “an excellent question”, he gestures, and a glowing diagram forms in the air; roots, veins, energy flowing like green fire. “Photosynthesis becomes… optional. Ecto-infused plants can metabolize ambient ghost energy. Ecto-enhanced flora require no sunlight. They need no soil touched by your contamination. They feed on ambient energy. On the very residue of existence. They do not need your world to survive; regardless of how much your world needs them. However, many retain traditional processes. Efficiency is… adaptable”.

Sam nods, fully locked in.

UnderGrowth continues, voice lowering into something almost like a lecture hall calm… if the lecture hall wanted to overthrow humanity. “This dual-energy system allows for exponential growth rates, heightened resilience, and in some cases… cognition”. Right on cue, a nearby vine slowly turned its ‘head’ towards Dash and tightens slightly around his ankle; Dash whimpers. The ghost smirks, “case in point”.

“Humans see plants as passive Decorative. Disposable. You poison soil. You suffocate roots. You sever forests and call it progress”. The greenhouse darkened as leaves overhead shifted, blotting out the light. “You mistake stillness for weakness”.

Then Sam raises her hand again.

“Yes, little garden caretaker?”

“…Could they coexist? As in, humans and ecto-enhanced plant ecosystems? If people actually changed how they treated the environment?”.

The room goes very still, and UnderGrowth looks at her for a long moment. Vines loosen. Light filters back in, hesitant but present. He hums, “…perhaps. If humanity learned restraint. If it remembered it is not the owner of this world… but merely another organism within it”. His gaze slides to the rest of the class, “…though current evidence is… unconvincing”; a vine flicks the chalkboard, erasing everything in one sweeping motion.

This time Star puts up her hand, “could it be used to restore damaged places? Like, fix forests, clean soil, reverse pollution? That stuff?”.

UnderGrowth looks faintly pleasantly surprised, “if you’re asking if your damage can be undone, the answer is only that it will be undone. The question is whether or not your kind are still here when it happens”, huffing and grumbling to himself, “at least it seems as if one other of them has some use beyond fertilizer”.

“Nature does not bargain, it simply corrects. One way or another, whether that Phantom of yours will allow me to do it, or the plants and earth on its own”, grinning meanly, “perhaps another asteroid will smash into all of you, like the dinosaurs before you”, scowling, “they were far better creatures than you”.

A faint bell can be heard ringing, UnderGrowth glancing at the school building, looking back to the class, “your assignment is simple”. The wall behind him cracks open just enough to reveal a writhing mass of roots beneath them. “Go outside, and find a plant. Observe it”, hissing at them, “try not to kill it”.

No one moves

UnderGrowth’s eyes glow brighter, “leave. Before I decide this becomes a practical demonstration”.

That’s more than enough, students bolt, chairs overturn, someone trips and crawls the rest of the way out. But Sam lingers, eyeing the ghost, “same time next week?”.

UnderGrowth inclines his head slightly, “for you, little garden caretaker, the forest is always open”.

Then Danny’s voice can be heard shouting, “I TOLD YOU THIS WAS A STUPID IDEA!”, in the distance. UnderGrowth growling immediately and loudly, while Sam just snickers meanly as she takes her leave.

End.

Celebrating the day you died is a bit weird… but oh what the heck Danny’s just gonna go along with this shit.

Danny didn’t realize the date at first, didn’t even clock it at all. Honestly, for it being the day that it was, you would have thought there’s no way he wouldn’t remember. But at the same time… why would he want to go out of his way to remember this day of all days? The world very clearly thought he absolutely should remember it though, it started small.

His alarm clock goes off at three seventeen a.m. for no reason, a.m. as in well before the ass crack of the ass crack of dawn, buzzing like it had beef with him specifically; which clearly it did if it was waking him up this early. When he smacks it, the numbers flicker into a skull emoji for half a second before snapping back. Then his bedroom door creaks open all on its own, just a polite little hellooo, entropy has RSVP’d. Danny already knowing this is gonna be some goddamn bullshit. Danny muttering into his pillow, “cool. Love that for me”, he rolls over and freezes.

There’s… there’s a fucking banner strung across his ceiling. Not taped, not hung, just… existing there, slightly translucent; aka clearly ghostly and clearly a goddamn problem.

‘HAPPY DEATH DAY, PHANTOM!’

Fuck his entire existence. Fuck it so completely and utterly. Ugh. Dragging his blanket up over his head like that would legally erase the supernatural, and screaming lightly into in. Sighing and dropping in loudly from his face, “…nope”.

A beat passes and then… confetti. Cold. Glowy. Whispering confetti. As in actually whispering, whispering gibberish but still, it’s confetti and it’s whispering. It drifts down through the blanket, landing on his skin and feeling like pop rocks candy. Danny shooting upright, swatting at a piece that hissed softly as it dissolved against his hand. Him snarling, “okay! Okay, we’re not doing this today! ClockWork, I swear if this is you being a tit about me calling you time baby yesterday-”.

“Not me”.

Danny yelps and nearly backflips off his bed; he wasn’t expecting an actual response! He never does! Because he basically never gets one! Putting a hand over his chest in offence and turning his head towards the voice. ClockWork’s there, hovering in the corner, arms folded, expression doing that timeless thing where they look both mildly amused and deeply tired of everything, “you remembered to check the date, didn’t you?”.

Danny blinks, “uh…”, grabs his phone, it’s April thirtieth… which… that… right. That. Wheezing a little breathlessly, “…oh”. There’s a long pause where the weight of it settles in a little more. It’s… not heavy heavy, just… strange. Like realizing your birthday cake is made out of razorblades and questionable life choices and lemon curd that’s just a touch too sour. Inhaling slowly, “my death day”.

ClockWork gives a small nod, an understanding one. It’s gentle and factual, but not necessarily comforting. “Anniversaries have… momentum. Especially ones tied to significant transformations. Even more so when they are bound to powerful entities, influential ones”.

Danny rubs the back of his neck, he didn’t really like thinking of himself as ‘influential’ or ‘powerful’. “Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly plan to celebrate the day I got electrocuted into a glowstick and dunked into inter dimensional ectoplasm soup”.

And as if on cue, his mirror ripples, and they started pouring in; they being ghosts, because of fucking course. The Box Ghost popping into existence holding a stack of gift-wrapped packages, “THE BOX GHOST BRINGS… PRESENTS! FEAR MY WRAPPED SQUARE DOOM!”, immediately tripping over nothing and scattering them everywhere; one managing to stab Danny square in the eyeball. Danny should cover all of the corners in his room with balls to systematically make his entire bedroom more circular, purely to spite this specific douche canoe.

A couple of smaller ghosts phase

through the wall carrying what looks suspiciously like a cake made of condensed ectoplasm. It wobbles like it might achieve sentience at any moment; and considering Danny and his parents luck with food becoming sentient that just makes Danny more annoyed. Danny glaring, “is that… safe?”.

ClockWork humming, “depends on how fast of an eater you feel like being”.

“Cool”.

Sam and Tuck burst into the room seconds later, both breathless. Tuck putting his hands on his knees and wheezing, “Danny dude, we saw the ghost traffic spike and- whoa”, pausing and staring at the banner, “Dude. You’ve got a whole afterlife birthday party going on”, making a face, “almost offended I wasn’t invited”.

Sam crossing her arms, scanning the room, “It’s clearly not a birthday. It’s a death party. Which is objectively more goth”.

Danny points at her, “thank you. That’s exactly the vibe I’m not emotionally prepared for”.

Another ghost zips past and hangs streamers that drip like liquid light; Danny’s left eye twitches but he otherwise is choosing to ignore them in hopes they’ll get bored and stop this. Will they? No, obviously not. Will that change Danny’s current plan? Also no.

“Okay but”, Tuck lifts up a finger, already pulling out his PDA, “if we monetize this, we could invent a whole new holiday. ‘Death Day: Celebrate Your Worst Decisions’. It’ll be huge”.

Danny groans, “by the Ancients, do not brand my accidental self-electrocution”.

ClockWork floats closer to him and hands him a gift; It’s… a cracked piece of his old hazmat suit. Danny blinking, “oh”, the room feels overly quiet, too quiet.

“Momento”, ClockWork hums, “you straddle two worlds. As do your milestones”.

Danny turns the piece over in his hands. The tear in the fabric lines up exactly with where the portal blast had hit. Him wincing a little and his friends studiously ignoring the definite emotional turmoil he’s absolutely trying not to feel. “I almost died”.

“You did die”, ClockWork corrects gently.

Danny looks up to them, “…yeah. Guess I did”.

Then Tuck claps his hands, “okay! Emotional reflection achieved! Time for cake that might scream when you cut it!”; and the room snaps back into chaotic life, Danny glaring at Tuck a little for wrecking the peace.

Danny huffing out a laugh despite himself. Pushing himself out of bed and transforming, “alright, fine”, floating up slightly, “if we’re doing this, we’re doing it right”, white hair catching the weird glow of the decorations, “welcome to my Death Day”, gesturing grandly, “please don’t destroy my house, my parents are already suspicious of literally everything”.

The Box Ghost salutes and Ember jumps out from behind him and fires off a streamer canon… a streamer canon that explodes immediately after releasing its streamers.

The cake… fucking giggles.

Sam smirks, “you’re taking this surprisingly well”.

Danny shrugs, a crooked smile tugging at his face, “I mean”, glancing around at the bizarre, glowing, impossible party filling his room, “it beats ignoring it”, scratching his head, “…also if I don’t celebrate it, I’m pretty sure they’ll just celebrate me instead”.

Skulker turns his head and grins very maliciously right at Danny. Danny glaring back, “yeah see? Skulker absolutely would. And imagine if Pandora was here?”.

Both Sam and Tuck wince immediately, if that Amazonian was here the entire neighbourhood would be able to hear her.

ClockWork allows themselves the faintest smile as the room fills more and more with noise, laughter, and the faint, eerie hum of something that wasn’t quite life… but wasn’t the end of it either. And somewhere between the confetti that whispers and the cake that definitely blinks when no one is looking, Danny finds this rather didn’t feel like mourning. It felt like… marking the moment the world got weirder; and he got to be part of it.

Danny should have known the party wouldn’t stay contained to his bedroom.

It starts with a toast. Johnny raising a glass that looks like it had been sculpted out of frozen lightning, “to the whelp who died and didn’t stay that way!”, then muttering under his breath, “and won’t let any of us forget that goddamn fact”.

Danny sighing, “for fucks sake, please stop phrasing it like that-”. Then the room begins to fold. Folds, like reality was a piece of paper and someone got bored and made an origami mistake. Danny, feeling that familiar yank behind his ribs, like a hook catching on something half intangible. “Oh no”, already halfway transparent, “no no no- guys, if this is a field trip, I did not sign the permission slip- fuckmylifefuckmewhyiseverythinglikethisya’llsuckdonkeytits-”.

Sam grabs his arm, Tuck grabbing his hoodie.

The portal tears open anyway, green light and wind that smells like static and old storms, a chorus of distant howls that sounded suspiciously like cheering. The portal forming and within seconds they’re all deposited into the ghost zone. But not out into an eerie, empty stretch of open sky or on to a barren land mass, the kind Danny was more used to.

This was… lit, in both meanings of the word.

There’s nein ecto-lanterns floating like jellyfish. Platforms drifting in impossible layers, stitched together by bridges made of glowing bone and humming energy. Music pulses through the air, something between a heartbeat and a rave. A massive sign blinks overhead:

DEATH DAY AFTERPARTY

Danny stares, “…I hate that I have an afterparty”.

And Technus, of all ghosts, immediately slings an arm around his shoulders, “GUEST OF HONOUR!”.

“I don’t- who- no-“, Danny sagging, “ah fuck it”, waving weakly, “hi everybody”; he’s promptly swept up into the crowd.

Ghost drinks were a mistake. A spectacular, physics-insulting mistake. The first one looked harmless. Pale green, lightly bubbling, served in a cup that phased in and out of existence. Danny poking the glass, “what is it?”.

Kitty grins way too wide, “regret with a citrus finish”.

Danny grimacing at her, “…awesome”, and takes a sip. It tastes like cold lightning, mint, and a memory he couldn’t quite place. His entire body flickers. “Oh”, blinking rapidly, “oh that is- weird”.

Sam snorting at him, “lightweight”, sipping something that hisses like acid, entirely unfazed by the drink.

“I am half-dead, I feel like I get a pass-”

Tuck was already on his third, “dude, this one tastes like dial-up internet!”.

“That’s not a flavour!”.

“It is now”.

Three drinks later, Danny was floating upside down, and not intentionally; he just kinda forgot which way gravity was supposed to go. “Ooooikay”, he announces to no one in particular, spinning slowly, “I have discovered a, uh, problem with ghost alcohol”.

Sam doesn’t look up, “you mean besides all of it?”.

“I can feel my soul vibrating”, a small burst of green energy pops out of his mouth like a firework, “…see?”.

Across the platform, a group of ghosts cheer, someone cranks the music louder.

Danny drifts sideways, phases halfway through a wall, then back out again, “okay but also”, pointing very seriously at Tuck, “I think I can taste colours now”.

Tuck tilting his head, “what does blue taste like?”.

“Like… like if math had a smell”.

“…man you’re so totally gone and fucked”.

“I’m not gone”, Danny attempts to land and instead gently bounces off the floor, “I am extremely present in multiple dimensions at once”, trying to walk but his legs have clearly forgotten how to… so floating it was.

Somewhere along the line, he ends up getting dragging into a drinking contest. He doesn’t remember agreeing to it, he does remember the drinks getting progressively more unhinged.

One screamed.

One tried to escape.

One saluted him before dissolving, “FOR HONOUR,” it had whispered.

And all Danny could think to say back was, “why does it have values”, as he was actively already drinking it.

ClockWork appears briefly at the edge of the crowd, watching like a man observing a very predictable disaster unfold in slow motion.

Danny stares, “thiis- tha, feels lick cah miscake”, pointing at his spooky guardian, “ya! Timmie guy! Tim’s guy! Ya cou hop this!”.

ClockWork nods a little, “I could”.

Danny squints, “bruh you woon”.

“No”.

“Respeck peck”, Danny nods and immediately loses balance, drifting into a decorative pillar.

Eventually, absolutely inevitably, Danny hits the peak. The point where he is so utterly turbofucked that he no longer gives a shit and his self control is so trashed that it’s nonexistent. Even his ecto-field messed up, leaving his outline flickering like a broken neon sign. Danny crawling up on a table, “ohey, I ‘av an annecament”. The music dips slightly, like the Ghost Zone itself was curious. Danny points at the crowd, “I doied, seup seup deied”.

And like assholes everyone cheers, fucking cheering over his dumbass kicking the bucket. He wobbly points at everyone and scowls, “I gots bettar”; at least they have the decency to cheer at that too. Danny swaying, eyes glowing overly bright, “agg ow! I ‘a dow THIS-”, and grabs his head, yanking ‘it off’, obviously still connected to him but not really attached, black wispy particles of his body still connecting head to neck. Then he falls partly through the goddamn table, flopping back and landing flat on his back; head rolling around a bit away from the rest of his body. It takes all of two seconds for the entire place to erupt into laughter and applause.

Danny lays there, staring up at the swirling, impossible sky of the Ghost Zone. Muttering as his head, via the wispy attachment, literally snakes its way back to his body, “…I rink I’m tha enerrainment”.

Sam crouches down beside him, smirking, “ya are, ya are”, laughing a little, “always were, you dumb bass”.

Tuck leaning over, recording, “this is goiong in the ‘chives, by the hay”.

Danny groans, “deleke me”.

“Nev’”.

Later, much later, when the music blurs into a distant hum and the crowd thins into drifting shapes of light, Danny sits himself down on the edge of a random floating platform; the world around him still tilting slightly. Rubbing his hand across his face very roughly, “kay”, groaning a little, “so bee celerating my daath bay in the GZ wit’ haunted ‘rinks was… naw my smarrest id”.

Ember plops down beside him, drink in hand still, “no shite. Buuuuuut it was very on-brand”, elbowing him, “ya got yerself wasted with literal ghosts on the anniversary of becoming one. That’s commitment to the bit”, nodding her head, swaying only slightly, “respect”.

Danny huffs a laugh, rubbing his face again, “…I’mma gonna ‘ave the worse gangover evar, are I?”, glaring at her, “i are ya ‘ine?”.

Ember rolls her eyes, lifting her drink a little, “I’m a rocker, babypop, gettin’ shite faced is my jammy”, smirking at him, “‘nd ya, futura you is gonna hate you”.

Danny stares, “…coolie. Fack me”, tipping backwards, lying flat against the glowing platform, watching the strange sky churn, “…still warth it”, huffing, “…nevar droing it ‘gain”, snickering to himself, “… ‘less they venti a whorest sippy sippy”.

Ember snorts, “I can cheers ta that, you silly little princy”.

“Fack yoooouu”.

And somewhere in the distance, the Ghost Zone pulses like it was already planning next year.

ClockWork does not ‘interfere’, not necessarily; but they do enjoy employing a… little encouragement. Which was absolutely a difference, a very important, extremely defensible difference.

They stand at the edge of a moment, watching threads of possibility spool out across Amity Park like a cat’s cradle built by a nervous universe. In one version of the day, nothing happened. In another, Danny sleeps off a catastrophic ghost hangover and then quietly pretends the whole thing never occurred.

Boring. Very very boring. ClockWork doesn’t particularly care for boring, and really neither does their charge… regardless of his half hearted complaining. ClockWork tilts their head, “…a nudge, perhaps”.

Across town, Jack bursts in through the front door of the Fenton Works lab holding a clipboard, three pens, and the kind of expression that meant science was about to happen at someone. Shouting excitedly, “MAD’S!”.

Maddie doesn’t even look up from her workbench, “if this is about labeling the anti-ghost grenades again, we’ve discussed your… artistic interpretations of ‘organized’”.

“It’s BIGGER than that!”, Jack slamming the clipboard down.

That gets her attention, “what is it?”.

Jack spins the clipboard around, at the top, in bold, slightly crooked handwriting: PHANTOM’S DEATH DAY: TODAY???

Maddie blinks, “I …what”.

Jack jabs at a series of increasingly chaotic notes, “I was reviewing ecto-temporal fluctuations, and there was a spike! A huge one! Ectological event pattern level spike! And then! then! I found this!”. He holds up a printout of what looks like a spectral calendar… with today’s date circled in glowing green.

Maddie narrowing her eyes, “where did you get that?”.

Jack hesitates for exactly half a second, “uh …science?”.

(See, about five minutes earlier, a sheet of paper had simply… appeared in Jack’s notes, without any sound or flash or commotion or anything. It was just kinda… there, suddenly.

ClockWork, unseen, had adjusted a single variable with the delicacy of a watchmaker nudging a gear; laughing silently to themselves).

Maddie straightens slowly, “if this is accurate…”.

Jack gasps, “it means today is the anniversary of Phantom’s creation!”.

“Or death”, Maddie corrects.

Jack gasps louder, “EVEN BETTER”.

“That is not better”.

“It’s a ghost! They totally celebrate death and think it’s better!”.

Maddie’s already moving, pulling up data, cross-referencing readings and dates, “…the energy signatures line up with what was recorded exactly a year ago…”, her humming and tapping her chin, “this is a pattern. Though one year of data isn’t much to go on”, sighing, “sadly we can’t get any readings from before we made the portal”, looking to the portal, “imagine if we could”.

Jack leans in, eyes wide, “we could have back tracked to figured out when It passed”, laughing heartily once, tilting his head at her, “…so what do we do?”.

Maddie pauses and thinks, Phantom… was an ally of the town. It was undeniably a friendly ghost and without It most of the townsfolk would likely die. The last thing they wanted to do with piss off or insult the ghost, and this calendar clearly hints that ghosts do celebrate their own… demises. So, with the slow inevitability of a domino tipping the first in a very long, very unfortunate chain, she sighs, “…we acknowledge it”.

Thirty minutes later, Dash is halfway through loudly not paying attention in class when his phone buzzes, glancing down and seeing this shit flashing across his screen ‘AMITY ALERT: Possible Ghost Event Today- Phantom-Related’, Dash sits up straight in an instant, ‘Phantom’s death anniversary’. “Yo, Phantom’s got, like, a death birthday or something today”.

Everyone in the room freezes, Brittney blinking, “…his what?”.

Dash shrugs, phone buzzing some more, “death day. Anniversary of when he died. My dad just texted me, says the whole town’s buzzing about it”.

Within seconds, phones were getting pulled out; even the teacher abandons teaching to check.

Messages spreading, screens lighting up; and like a spark hitting a field of dry grass… Amity Park lost its collective goddamn mind.

Someone shouts outside of a coffee shop, “it’s Phantom’s DEATH DAY?!”.

“Is that, like, when he’s strongest?!”.

“Or weakest?!”.

“Do we hide?!”.

“Do we celebrate?!”.

“DO WE APOLOGIZE?!”.

“DOES HE LIKE CHOCOLATE CAKE!”.

“OH GOD WILL HE WANT US TO JOIN HIM IN DEATH!?!!?”.

“Why the FUCK would he want that?!? Don’t be stupid Susan!”.

“I’m getting him a FREE SMOOTHIE!”.

“Think he’ll accept birthday kisses?”.

“HOW LONG DEAD OR OLD OR WHATEVER EVEN IS HE!”.

“WHAT KIND OF PRESENTS DO GHOSTS EVEN WANT! THEY’RE DEAD!”.

At City Hall, Vlad calls a meeting, looking both incredibly annoyed and incredibly amused. Making a point to make his sighing not visually noticeable, “we need a plan”.

“A defensive plan?”.

“A respectful plan?”.

“…A festive plan?”.

Vlad stares at everyone, smirks a little, and readjusts his collar, “I propose all of the above”; if only to further confuse young Daniel… and perhaps panic the town a little for the fun of it.

Within the hour, the town has split into factions: Team This Is Dangerous And Stupid, who go with barricades and salt circles and someone even tries to bless a stop sign. Team This Is A Cultural Event, putting up banners and balloons and a poorly designed logo that reads ‘HAPPY DEATH DAY PHANTOM!!!!!’ with far too many exclamation points. Team We Owe Him So Much Holy Shit, with their growing piles of thank-you cards and baked goods and one extremely aggressive weirdly flavoured milkshake stand.

At Fenton Works, Maddie watches the chaos unfold on a tv. Her sighing, “well… this escalated”, shaking her head, “here I thought one or two people might get It presents or just awkwardly congratulate It when It shows next”.

Jack beams, “I’m so proud of the town”.

On tv, Someone unfurls a banner across Main Street, reading ‘THANK YOU, PHANTOM’, and right next to it, another banner gets put up, ‘PLEASE DON’T BE EXTRA DEAD TODAY’.

(Back in the Ghost Zone, Danny sneezes, a small burst of green sparks pop out. Frowning, “…why do I feel like something terrible is happening”).

ClockWork observes it all from their quiet vantage point outside of time.

Amity Park, scrambling between fear and gratitude. Daniel, blissfully unaware and still slightly intoxicated, teetering on the edge of a very confusing return home. ClockWork allows themselves the faintest, tiniest smile, “have fun, young Phantom king”.

All this meaning that, by the time Danny stumbles back through the portal, half-hungover and expecting maybe a quiet nap, the entire town will be waiting.

With cake.

With caution tape.

With deep confusion.

With an ungodly amount of really goddamn weird milkshakes, because everyone knows he likes weird milkshakes.

And, in its own chaotic, deeply Amity Park way… also with something that will look an awful lot like appreciation.

End.

At exactly three seventeen pm, Danny realizes two things. One, Wes had been mysteriously ‘transferred’ out of Casper High for the week. As in, an entire week. And two, the basketball team was desperate.

So it takes all of a minute for Danny to get a terrible, wonderful idea. He’d been practicing for months, sure he only did that to just randomly show Wes up randomly. Like… run out onto the field in a stupid costume, steal the ball and absolutely slam dunk that shit, flip Wes off, and then run off of the field never to return.

But this idea is absolutely way better. He’s gonna be so good at being Wes that everyone’s gonna think Wes is some kinda fake.

So he slips into the washroom, fucks with his hair just enough that it looks like Wes’s -their hair styles really are way too similar, honestly- and books it to go steal Wes’s jersey. Then, he’s gonna play ball.

Danny tries to keep his grin from being shit eating, “sup guys, Wes has arrived”.

The locker room goes quiet. Dale squints at him like he’s trying to solve a math problem with violence, “you look… kinda off, man. Get stuck in a tree again or something?”.

Danny, wearing Wes’s jersey and approximately sixty percent confidence, nods stiffly, “new haircut”.

Conor tilts his head, “naw, it ain’t that”.

“Growth spurt”.

Then the coach claps her hands, “shut up, squirts, we don’t have time for identity crises. Weston, ‘weird looking’ or not, you’re in. Tryouts start now”.

Danny internally screams in delight… Wes was gonna be so pissed.

The ball lands in his hands, and Danny almost doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s never actually played basketball seriously before. Sure, he’d practiced and made mild attempts at it once or twice during gym, but this? Plus it’s not too different from just throwing ecto-blasts. But this is gravity-heavy, expectation-loaded, very mortal basketball.

Dale crosses his arms, “well, Wes? Shoot your shot”.

Danny glances at the hoop, eh fuck it, let’s do this shit self. But… he’s always been told to use all his skills to his advantage. So, just for a second, he lets himself lighten; letting his bones remember how to ignore physics just a little bit, before jumping.

He’s not flying -that would be suspicious as fuck- but letting himself rise just enough that the world slows beneath him, and the hoop drifts closer like it wants to be reached should be fine. He dunks that shit hard, like the hoop pissed him off; the rim rattling like it had just been insulted. Fucking good.

Danny lands a little too smoothly; eh people haven’t noticed weirder shit.

The gym is dead -ha- silent. Dale blinking after a beat, “…okay, what”, shaking his head, “where the zone have you been practicing and can you get me in yesterday”.

Danny snickers very meanly.

Everyone is more than a little baffled, and only get more baffled as time goes on. Within ten minutes, ‘Wesley’ has:

Blocked a shot without looking at the shooter

Stolen the ball from behind someone without physically being behind them

Made three full-court shots that barely seemed to even obey geometry…

Kyle blinks very harshly, “Wes…., since when are you… this good? Yeah you don’t normally suck but you’re, like, good good now?”.

Danny shrugs, “since today?”.

That answer did not help and only made everyone even more baffled.

“Pass it, Wes!”, and so Danny does.

The ball ricochets off of someone’s elbow, bounces off of the floor, clips someone’s sneaker, and technically should have gone sailing out of bounds… instead, it… curves. Not sharply, not enough to trigger alarm bells; just enough so that it drifts back into Danny’s reach like it forgot its original plan. He catches it mid-step and scores.

Everyone just… stares. Kyle muttering, “did… did the fucking ball just… come back? Did a boomerang ghost curse it or something? The fuck?”.

Danny, already jogging away, calls over his shoulder, “teamwork!”; half the group just flips him off.

Jesse misses a shot, pretty damn badly actually. The ball flying high, hitting the backboard at a terrible angle, and shoots off.

Everyone tracking it and trying to predict where it’s gonna land… everyone except ‘Wes’, who just… kinda drifts to a spot and waits. The ball comes down directly into his hands like it had an appointment.

He doesn’t even look surprised, but the entire gym sure as fuck does; because what the actual fuck???

The ball goes out of bounds, Danny shrugs and sprints for it. He’s obviously not going to make it, everyone knows it, even Danny knows it. But Danny wants to fuck with all of them, meaning he is going to technically ‘make it’.

He takes one extra step, one extra step in midair. He doesn’t jump or push-off of anything. He just… takes a step where there shouldn’t be ground, where there isn’t any ground. And taps the ball back inbounds, lands his feet inbounds, and keeps running like nothing weird happened at all.

Testlauff blinks, “…legal”, and grins a bit wolfishly to herself, they were so going to crush the Vipers next week.

By the end of practice, the team has gathered in a tight, suspicious huddle. Dale pointing dramatically, “there ain’t no way you’re Wes”.

Danny freezes.

Kyle narrows his eyes, “you’re…”, rolling his wrist around a bunch, “you’re… that other guy”.

Danny blinks all innocently, “that narrows it down to, like, half the school”.

Dale practically jumps, pointing at him, “the Fenton kid!”.

Well… fuck. Danny considers his options. One, he could deny it. Two, he could run off like a little bitch. Three, be honest… not exactly his strong suit or his forte. Four, really fuck with these guys and go intangible, then phase through the floor like a startled ghost pancake.

Instead, he sighs, “yeah yeah yeah, you caught me. I’m the Fenton kid”, and then does a silly little bow. Straightening up and pointing at all of them, “and my name’s goddamn Danny, regardless of Dash being an ass”.

They all smirk meanly for a second, Conor snorting, “yeah I knew there was no way Wes got that good that fast”.

Dale laughs, “cool”, and smacks Danny on the shoulder one, “not sure why the heck you’ve let Dash and coach harass you if you actually had game, though”.

Danny blinks, “…cool?”, that was absolutely not the reaction he’d been expecting. A mild ass kicking maybe? Them accusing him of getting a ghost to help him prank them? Maybe just grumbling about Danny obviously fucking with Wes again. He didn’t expect any of them to just be cool with it.

Dale nods, “you. You’re staying”.

Danny blinks even harsher, “what?”; oh man… what did he get himself into here? Sure, Wes was gonna be so pissed and that was gonna be so funny. But ugh.

Dale points at him, “you’re the best player we’ve had in years. Like, actual literal, years. Heck, probably decades. You can’t not be on the team, man”.

“I’m literally impersonating someone”.

“Details”.

“I might accidentally float”.

“Don’t do it during games.”

“I can’t promise that”.

“Float subtly”.

“That’s not a thing!”.

“Make it a thing!”.

Oh zone why did Danny sign up for this? Damn him and his desire to fuck with Wes’s constantly trying to expose him ass. At least ‘floating a little’ was pass off able as ecto-contamination…. Some days he wonders if people actually believe that or if everyone’s just humouring him.

And now the entire team has fully encircled him like a council of extremely enthusiastic gremlins. Conor pointing at him now too, “rule one, no glowing”.

Jesse jumping in, “rule two, if you do glow, say it’s sweat”.

Danny blinking, “I… don’t think that’s how sweat works”.

“Dude, you’re weird, nothing works the way it’s supposed to work with any of you Fenton’s. Like, how the actual fuck can your dad basically throw an entire weaponized military truck?”.

“Fair”.

Kyle adding on, “rule three, if you can go invisible-”.

“I am not confirming that”; fuck him everyone definitely knows. But… he’s so not letting Wes know that and he’s so not calling them all out on that. If they don’t want to openly admit they know he’s overly ghostly then he’s not going to own up to it either.

Kyle rolls his eyes, “-you definitely use it for defense”.

“I’m not- I’m absolutely not- that’s cheating!”.

Dale leans in, “is it cheating if it’s awesome?”.

Danny opens his mouth, closes it, “…I hate that I don’t have a good answer”.

Testlauff comes over and claps Danny hard on the back, “you’re in! Obviously. Glad to see your scrawny self has shaped up!”, leaning forwards at the group, “now we will absolutely win on Saturday”.

Everyone cheering immediately while Danny dies inside just a litttle.

The bleachers are roaring, the lights buzz overhead like electric insects. Testlauff barking, “Weston! You’re starting!”.

Danny steps onto the court, honestly a little baffled that they’re still calling him Wes… maybe they were fucking with the school sleuth too? It wasn’t exactly uncommon to take the piss outta the guy for being crazy and very very loud about said crazy. Across from him, the opposing team looks confident and relaxed; entirely unaware they were about to play against a boy who had once phased through a ghost tank while sipping from a juice box.

The whistle blows and game begins.

Danny moves forwards, not flying and not phasing, just… bending the rules of momentum like they were suggestions scribbled in pencil. He pivots faster than should be possible. Jumps higher than anyone notices. The ball seems to like him, returning to his hands as if it had loyalty issues.

By halftime, the score is absurd.

By the fourth quarter, the opposing team looks spiritually -ha- exhausted.

Both sides call little meeting things.

Dale grabs Danny, “okay. New plan”.

“I thought we were winning”.

“We are. But you’re winning strangely. Tone it down”.

“I am toned down!”.

“Tone it down more!”.

“What do you want me to do, miss on purpose?!”. Danny could absolutely do that, zone, he could do that so spectacularly and so absurdly that it would go viral.

The entire team pauses, speaking in unison, “…no”.

Danny just hangs his head and sighs as the game restarts.

At least now the other team actually scores more than two shots; in fact they almost tie up the score. Then Dale shouts at him, “Weston! Do your weird thing!”.

“I don’t have a thing! I’m always weird!”.

“You absolutely have a thing! A weird thing that applies here anyways!”.

Danny sighs and jumps, this time he doesn’t hold back as much. Jumping against gravity just high enough that the crowd inhales sharply. Releasing the ball at the peak of something that is almost wrong; it arcs and the ball sinks clean through the net followed by the buzzer.

The gym explodes with cheers and the team tackles him in celebration. Someone from the pile shouting, “you’re unreal, man!”.

Danny, squished under a pile of sweaty, victorious teammates, groans, “ya’ll have no idea”.

Dale snorts, “oh, we have some idea”.

Danny freezes, fuck him so much, “…you do?”.

Dale shrugs as everyone lets Danny get up, “you’re weird. We’re rolling with it”.

Danny blinks, okay… okay so they’re still not gonna call him on it. Cool. Okay… not really, but he can vibe. Danny shaking his head harshly, “…cool”.

Kyle finger gunning at him, “you’re never leaving this team”.

Danny rubs his neck a little, “I have to, Wes is coming back, you know”.

Kyle seems to consider that for a second before shrugging, “…we’ll deal with Wes”.

“That sounds ominous”; Danny absolutely can’t resist the shit eating grin that spreads across his face. Wes… was gonna lose it.

Did Wes lose it? Why yes, yes he did.

The guy basically storming into the gym during practice after he got back. “PHANTOM WHAT THE FUCK YOU JACK ASS!”.

Danny smirks and waves a Wes, sinking a basket ball without even looking, “hiyya!”.

Wes pointing, “why the FUCK are you DOING ME?!?!”.

Danny snorts, laughs, chokes on air, coughs, and laughs some more. Tripping over his own feet and nearly face planting, “I! I’m not! I’d never do you! Oh my zone! Ahhahhahhahahh hahah hahaha”; and collapses, laughing, to the ground, holding his stomach.

Wes points more aggressively, “you are wearing my jersey!”.

“It was… available?”.

“You are playing my sport!”.

“Basketball is not your-”.

Wes rips off his shoe and hurls it right at Danny’s stupid face, Danny just keeps on laughing and writhing on the floor. The team looks between them, at Danny, then at Wes, then back at Danny.

Dale leans over to Kyle, “…why are there two Wes’s and only one of them is good?”.

Wes snapping, “I HEARD THAT YOU ASSHOLES!”, walking over to kick Danny’s still laughing form, “YOU’RE A GHOST DOING BASKETBALL AS ME!”.

Danny keeps wheeze laughing, “that- that’s a- a very aggressive way to phrase-”.

“YOU STOLE MY IDENTITY WITH SUPERNATURAL TALENT!”.

Danny snickering, “oh my zone this is- HA- when- when you say it like that, it- oh man- it sounds bad!”.

“IT IS BAD!”.

There’s a long pause until, Dale claps his hands once, “okay, counterpoint”.

Wes turns, “there is no goddamn counterpoint to this!”.

“We’re undefeated”.

“…That’s not-”.

“We are crushing people”.

“That is not the issue-”.

“And Spooky Wes-”.

“STOP CALLING HIM THAT!”.

“-is the best player we’ve ever had. Like, legit”.

Wes looks at the team, at their hopeful, absolutely shameless faces. At Danny, on the floor and looking like the smuggest entity in existence. Wes takes a deep breath, then another, and points at Danny, “you”.

Danny smirks even more, “me”.

Wes basically growls at him, “you are not better than me.”

Danny tilts his head, “…do you want me to lie or-”.

“DO NOT ANSWER THAT!”.

Testlauff blows her whistle, pointing at Wes, “he’s staying, Wesley”. Wes throwing his hands up at angrily.

Danny smirks so hard, “I regret nothing”.

“Fuck. You. Empathetically”, Wes sighing, “at least give me back my number, you ass”.

“Naw I like it”.

“Get YOUR OWN!”.

“Naw”.

“I’m going to fully kill you”.

“Good luck with that, shit ass”.

Wes immediately starts choking Danny and Danny plays along like he actually needs to breathe. The team all shake their heads, either way ‘both’ ‘Wes’s’ stay on the team, Wes does get his own number back… with a bunch of ectoplasm stains on it that no matter what he does he can’t seem to get out.

End.

Prompt:

The first time Danny Fenton met Sam Manson, she was standing on top of a picnic table looking like a tiny pissed off pink frilly fairy… a frilly pink fairy that had taken scissors and mud to her dress. And the first time he met Tucker Foley, Tuck was under the same picnic table trying to unscrew one of the bolts with a plastic spoon.

It was spring in Amity Park, which meant the grass was damp, the sky was gray, and every parent in town had decided that children needed ‘fresh air’. The local playground now being full of toddlers wobbling like drunken penguins, little kids running amok, and older kids claiming the swings like territory.

Seven-year-old Danny wanders in holding a juice box and wearing one shoe untied. He had already tripped twice and somehow gotten bark mulch in his hair. The older kids avoid him automatically, their parents having warned them about the weird crazy Fenton’s kid; so he ignores them entirely. Instead he spots a mud-covered girl, she’s also rocking two sharp little pigtails and the expression of someone deeply pissed at humanity; in one hand she got a little wilted dandelion. “This playground”, she announces to no one in particular, “is a place of shallow joy”.

Danny blinks, trotting over, giving a chipper, “hi”.

She looks down at him as if he were a weirdly talkative cloud, “hello?”.

Danny tilts his little head, “I’m Danny!”.

She blinks back but shrugs, “I’m Sam”, tossing the dandelion dramatically into the wind, it lands two feet away.

Before Danny can say anything else, a voice rises up from beneath the table, “does anybody have a Phillips head screwdriver?”. Danny crouches down. A boy with really giant glasses is laying on his back beneath the picnic bench, feet sticking out, poking at the metal supports with determined fury. Beside him is an open lunchbox full of random objects: crayons, batteries, string cheese, a toy dinosaur, and three different remote controls.

Danny tilting his head further, “what are you doing?”.

“Screw stealing. This table squeaks so it doesn’t get to keep them”, it squeaks as he kicks it for emphasis, “I’m Tucker”.

Danny beaming, “I’m Danny!”.

“I know. You said it loud enough for under table recep- reci- hearing”.

Danny snorts and Sam leans over the edge of the tabletop, “you’ll never get them with a spoon”.

Tucker squints upward, “then why didn’t you offer help sooner, mud princess?”.

“I was enjoying watching your sad failure”.

Danny laughs so hard juice comes out of his nose.

That was how it started.

Within ten minutes, they had become as thick as thieves; somewhat literally. Danny climbed everything he wasn’t supposed to. Sam narrated his ‘for sure doom’ in a calm, satisfied voice. Tucker tried to ‘upgrade’ the merry-go-round by attaching a jump rope to it and calling it a ‘move faster system’. They spun so fast that Danny flies off into a sandbox, emerging seconds later buried to the shoulders, shouting, “again!”

Sam smirks, “you are chaos in sneakers”.

Tucker adjusts his glasses, “and I respect that”.

Later, they sit beneath the slide sharing snacks. Sam with her organic raisins she calls ‘nature’s warning labels’. Tucker with a handful of neon cheese crackers that are actively staining his fingers orange. Danny, meanwhile, had somehow traded away his sandwich for two cookies and an oddly wet whistle.

“Do you guys ever think”, Danny muttering between bites, “that there’s weird stuff in this town?”.

Sam and Tucker stare at him. Tucker blinking, “what kinda weird stuff?”.

Danny points vaguely towards the woods beyond the park, “like monsters. Or secret labs. Or aliens. Or invisible things watching us”.

Sam nods once, “yes, spooky is everywhere”.

Tucker nodding twice, “absolutely”.

Danny’s eyes widening, “really? My parents always go on and on about ghosts”, pouting, “no one seems to agree but I do. So you really really do?”.

“No”, Tucker shrugs, “but now I do. If a grown up says it’s a thing then it’s a thing. Some grown ups are just big ol’ dummies, and ignore other grown ups”.

Sam leans closer, voice grave and theatrical, “this town has a vibe”.

Danny tilting his head, “a spooky vibe?”.

She smirks very meanly, “a tacky vibe”; and they all laugh immediately.

Then something moves in the bushes, making the three kids freeze.

Leaves rustle.

Branches shake.

A pale shape lunges out with a terrible groan.

Danny screams, Tucker screams louder, Sam just narrows her eyes.

But it is only Mr. Campbell, the librarian, crawling after a runaway white kite tangled around his shoulders. Him running up to the three, wheezing, “children, has anyone seen my glasses?”.

Tucker slowly points to the top of Mr. Campbell’s head. The man grabbing at them, thanking no one, and wanders off trailing kite string like a defeated ghost.

The silence lasts three seconds, then Danny bursts out laughing, Tucker promptly joining in; even Sam, who clearly thought of smiling as a weakness, snorts.

As the sun dips lower, parents begin calling names.

“Daniel!”.

“Samantha!”.

“Tucker Foley!”.

The three of them all groan in chorus. Danny standing first, “same time same tomorrow?”.

Sam shrugging, “If society allows”.

Tucker snapping his lunchbox shut, “I’ll bring more tools”.

Danny grins, “I’ll bring cookies”, humming thoughtful, “I’ll bring cookies that do not come alive and bite back”.

Sam hops off of the table, “no, no, do it, bring the pain cookies. I can think of at least two girls who need a good biting”.

They all walk towards the gate together, three tiny weirdos with grass stains and impossible futures.

None of them truly knew about ghosts.

None of them yet knew about portals, powers, or disasters.

No, they only knew they’d found something rare on an ordinary afternoon, other kids strange in all the right ways.

End.

Dash had planned this birthday for weeks. Not because he cares about sentiment or memories or any of that mushy refrigerator-magnet nonsense. No, he cares because birthdays mean attention, gifts, cake, and the legally mandated social requirement that everyone be nice to him for one entire day. Especially, since it was his eighteenth.

He had a schedule.

8:00 AM: Wake up victorious. 8:15 AM: Open presents. 9:00 AM: Birthday breakfast. 12:00 PM: Glory lunch. 3:00 PM: Party prep. 7:00 PM: Main event.

Then, at seven fifty-eight am, a ghost comes through his bedroom wall screaming, “WHO STOLE MY MOUSTACHE?!”.

Dash bolting upright so hard he head butt's the headboard.

A translucent old-timey man in a top hat floated over his dresser, weeping dramatically, “my magnificent whiskers! My spectral handlebars! Gone!”

Dash blinking before yelling, “what the fuck?! It’s my birthday! Screw off!”.

The ghost sticks his nose up in the air and crosses its arms, “and it is the anniversary of my grooming tragedy”, leaning at Dash, “now have you seen my moustache?!”, his shouting is loud enough to crack a lamp.

Dash’s mom all but throws open the door, takes one look at the floating Victorian catastrophe, and sighs, “honey, breakfast is delayed”, looking down and muttering under her breath, “this town is ridiculous and I blame the Fenton’s for all of this”.

Dash gapes at her, “BUT IT’S EIGHT IN THE MORNING!”.

She shrugs, “and I’m very sorry about that, but this thing wrecked the food and the presents”.

“WHAT! NOOOOOO!”. A tragedy, truly.

He manages to get his pancakes by nine thirty. Dash sitting down, raising his fork, birthday grin loading, ready to dig in. Then every pancake rises off of the plate, rotates in the air like saucers, the Lunch Lady Ghost shoving her head through the wall, “UNACCEPTABLE! INSUFFICIENT FLIPPING TECHNIQUE!”, and she slaps syrup across the room like paint.

Dash lunges for his breakfast, but the pancakes form a stack tower and escaped through the ceiling fan; growing teeth and beginning to snarl loudly. Leaving Dash standing on the table growling and grinding his teeth together. He’s blaming Fenton for this, he’ll have to schedule a beating; at least that never fails to brighten his days.

At noon, Dash heads to the Nasty Burger with his friends. Announcing to the group, “okay. No ghosts here. Public place. We’re safe, or at least Phantom will show up and deal with the ghost”; at least if this gets messed up too, he’ll get to see Phantom.

Kwan points at him, “the ghosts are worth it to see Phantom in action, man”.

Dash sitting down with his food, “zone yeah, dudes so cool”, grinning to himself, “heck, maybe I could convince him to spend the day with me since it is my birthday”.

Dale humming, “oh man, that would be amazing”.

Then that blonde biker ghost drives right through the wall, parking the bike literally inside of one of the booth seats, stomping up to the tills, “mighty meaty mega burger with phantomized fries, and the spectral mix”, the guy paying with zoneloons.

Kwan shaking his head, looking to Dash, “it’s kinda hilarious that every thing in town accepts goddamn ghost money now”.

Dash chuckles, “if you ask me, good, we should be able to make money off of them tormenting us”, grinning, “no one would dare force Phantom to pay though”.

Dale rolling his eyes, “well duh, he pays by lowering all the damage repair costs and hospital bills”.

Then the ghost walks over to their table, taking a bite out of his burger grossly, “so, punk, Phantom actually, like, knows your dumbass name or whatever, so happy fucking birthday”, and dumps his drink right on Dash’s head.

Dash staring for a beat before jerking to stand up, “what the FUCK MAN! I don’t even know you!”.

Biker guy revs his engine and does a few donuts through three booths, leaving fire and tire marks, “HA! Eat shit! Shit head! Names Johnny! And I’m the guy who got to kiss that pretty little redhead girlie you like so much!”.

Dash hurls an onion ring at the ghost, who obviously ducks; it embeds into a milkshake machine. Does… did that ghost mean he kissed Jazz?! Oh that ass! Though that means she is into bad boys but damnit Dash doesn’t know how to drive a motorcycle!

Meanwhile, Kwan and Dale side-eye each other and quietly slide out of the back door.

By afternoon, Dash is sweaty, furious, and giftless. Him returning home to find his yard already decorated. There’s balloons, streamers, and a huge banner reading: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DASH! PREPARE TO BE CURSED!

“What the actual fuck?”. Dash is… Dash is so utterly confused. And he’s stating to realize that that biker ghost sorta wishing him a happy birthday was a goddamn warning. Fuuuuuuuck.

A cluster of cheerful little blob ghosts pop out from the bushes wearing party hats, they unleash confetti with the force of artillery.

Dash staggering backward as ghostly confetti adheres itself to his hair. One blob ghost hands him a wrapped box. Dash blinking, then grinning, “well at least they brought me presents”, and tears it open. Inside is another smaller box… inside that is another smaller box…… annnnnd inside that was a note ‘BOO’. Dash screams in pure rage so loud a neighbour scowls at him. Dash flips them off immediately, and throws the boxes on the ground; blob ghosts scattering into the grass and air looking evil and content with themselves.

At least by six forty-five guests start arriving for the real party. Not some dumb bullshit prank some stupid ghost fauna decided to pull on him. Fuck those little fuckers, he’s using one as a football then next time he sees one. Music’s playing, the pizza arrives without issue, and Dash finally relaxes. Flopping down onto his couch, half full solo cup of cheap vodka getting placed on the floor, “this is it”, grinning to himself, “I goddamn win”. Honestly, he really should have known better by now not to say shit like that.

And as he should have expected, immediately after that comment, the ceiling explodes downward in glittering drywall dust. A giant axolotl ghost wearing a tiny paper birthday hat descends into the living room, “WHO TURNS EIGHTEEN WITHOUT OFFERING TRIBUTE TO PARTYLOTL? WHO LIKES TO PARTY! PARTYLOTL! I CAME TO PARTY, SO PASS THE BOTTLE! YEAH!”.

Everyone scatters immediately, this was a large unknown ghost after all, pretty reasonable reaction… even if Dash thinks this is goddamn bullshit. Why’s this fucking crap have to happen on his goddamn birthday? Even if this fucker sounds like It’s here because of his birthday. Who the heck even told all the ghosts when his birthday was?!? Whoever they are can go fuck themselves with an iron ladle.

Someone yells, “cool!”, and Dash thinks that they, too, can get fucked by that same iron ladle.

Partylotl inhales deeply and breathes out a stream of balloons. Hundreds of balloons and streamers blasting out from Its mouth, filling the room instantly. Dash getting promptly buried beneath the latex chaos, from somewhere inside the balloon storm anyone could easily hear his muffled rage.

Then a white and black blur crashes in through the window, Phantom grabbing Partylotl by the external gill, “sorry! He got out of the Zone banquet hall”.

Dash’s scream is a little muffled under all the balloons, “why does this keep happening?!”.

Phantom blinks, trying to look confused but it’s really obvious that he’s trying not to smirk or laugh; like extremely obvious, “…you’re asking me that?”. Then the two ghosts crash through the wall and off into the night.

The party was ruined.

The house was dented.

The pizza had ectoplasm literally on it.

Dash shoving ectoplasmicly infused balloons and streamers out of his way, kicking them everywhere, as he storms outside, sitting down harshly on the curb in frosting-covered silence. He wants to be goddamn seventeen again, and he never thought he’d ever think that. Fuck.

Then goddamn Fenton has the balls to approach him holding a fucking tiny ass cupcake with one tiny ass fuck ass candle. The freak clearing his throat, “damn, man. Rough day?”, snickering a little, “possibly the funniest rough day I’ve ever seen”.

Dash glares, “if you don’t beat it, Fentit, I’m gonna find a way to shove your shoes down you throat”.

Fenton rolls his eyes and offers the cupcake, “yeah, sure, whatever. Happy fucking birthday? You asshat?”.

Dash stares at it… the things goddamn candle rises slowly into the air all by its fucking self because of course it goddamn does; the two boys just watch it. Fenton’s dumb ass looking amused, while Dash is… Dash is just fucking done. The candle lights itself, forming a ghost shaped flame that’s got a party blower in its mouth; it toots once and the cupcake explodes. Because OF COURSE IT GODDAMN DOES! FUCK THIS FUCKING SHIT ASS BIRTHDAY!

Dash stands slowly, covered in even more frosting and cake bits, walks into the street, and screams at the sky, “WHY DO GHOSTS EVEN KNOW MY BIRTHDAY?!”.

Fenton laughs, throws his hands up in the air, and cackles, “this was the best idea ever!”.

Dash slowly turning to face the smirking jerk, who only smirks even more so hard that it looks fucking painful before booking it. Dash snarling, “I’m going TO KILL YOU, FENTAINT!”.

Dash chases Fenton for a full hour and a half, eventually whacking the fuck out of the jerk with a random tree branch, throwing the jerk into a dumpster, wheeling and shoving the dumpster into a hole in the ground, and throwing dirt on top of it trying to bury the FUCKING JERK alive. Twerp crawls out and survives, unfortunately; and runs off away from a panting Dash while cackling.

As soon as the stores open Dash is going to buy a goddamn iron ladle, and he’s going to carve Fenton’s name into it, and then he’s going to find Fenton and beat him black and blue until he fucking pukes.

End.

Project: Empirical Evaluation of Historical Anti-Ghost Countermeasures Lead Team: two doctorate certified ecto-ologists, Dr. Madeline Fenton and Dr. Jackson Fenton. One phd certified psychologist, Jasmine Fenton. One ecto-ologist intern, Daniel Fenton.

Abstract

Historical Anti-Ectoplasmic Entities Countermeasure Efficacy: A Controlled Review

This study evaluated a range of traditional anti-Ectoplasmic Entities practices under laboratory conditions using controlled instrumentation, repeatable protocols, and marginally cooperative spectral subjects. Methods tested included salt barriers, iron wards, holy water aerosolization, mirrored containment arrays, Latin exorcism playback, sage fumigation, bell resonance exposure, and candle-circle deterrence.

Results demonstrated that most classical protections failed to produce consistent suppression of Ectoplasmic Entities. Salt lines were physically disrupted, iron caused only incidental spatial entanglement, and holy water prompted relocation rather than banishment. Mirrors generated severe perceptual anomalies, while prerecorded Latin rituals proved ineffective when poorly pronounced. Sage smoke enhanced visible manifestations, bells produced erratic resonance-dependent responses, and candle circles primarily improved environmental aesthetics.

Across trials, Ectoplasmic Entity reactions appeared less governed by material properties than by subjective preference, symbolic recognition, and personality persistence after death.

The study proposes a new behavioural model, Reciprocal Superstition Dynamics, wherein spectral entities respond selectively to beliefs they themselves endorse. Researchers conclude that successful non-harming non-capture focused haunting mitigation may require psychological intervention, negotiation strategies, or postmortem conflict resolution rather than historical deterrent objects.

Keywords: ghosts, folklore, applied ecto-ology, spectral behaviour, ritual efficacy, experimental paranormal science, Danny Phantom

Field Notes

1. The Ring of Salt Barrier Test

Historical Claim: Ectoplasmic Entities cannot cross a line of salt.

The Fenton team constructed a perfect 3-meter diameter sodium chloride ring using laser-guided dispensers. Moisture content calibrated, grain size standardized, purity: 99.8%.

They then invited Subject DM-5, a Draconian maid apparition, into the lab. She approached the line, paused, looked offended, then slowly bent down and blew on it. Half the ring dispersed. She crossed while muttering, “Pathetic”. Daniel F. was amused, which seemed to please the ghost.

Result: Salt barrier ineffective against entities possessing lungs, wind, legs, gravity nullification, sarcasm, or contempt. See: nearly all Ectoplasmic Entities

Follow-up Discovery: The ghost did avoid iodized salt, but only because she claimed it “smelled modern”.

2. Iron Poker Repulsion Trial

Historical Claim: Iron wards Ectoplasmic Entities.

The Fenton team suspended twelve wrought iron objects in a Faraday cage around Subject LL, a food-Obsessed lunch lady Ectoplasmic Entity. Subject LL passed through all of them unhindered, then became trapped for forty minutes inside a decorative Victorian coal-burning stove. Ectoplasmic Entity was extracted through the means of a food fight started by Daniel F. and Jackson F.; Madeline F. was unamused.

Result: Iron does not repel Ectoplasmic Entities. It merely creates embarrassing geometry problems. Cooking related objects remain the best way to lure, trap, or converse with Subject LL.

Secondary Observation: Haunting intensity increased whenever cast iron pans were insulted.

3. Holy Water Aerosol Dispersion System

Historical Claim: Holy water banishes Ectoplasmic Entities.

The Fenton team atomized consecrated water into a fine mist and dispersed it through HVAC ducts into a sealed containment chamber containing three simple wisp Ectoplasmic Entities. All three Ectoplasmic Entities vanished instantly. Celebration was premature, as they had merely floated to the dry side of the area and were shrieking through the containment walls; Daniel F. stated they were shrieking obscenities.

The Ectoplasmic Entity known as Phantom later came, took a cup of the consecrated water, and drank it. Jasmine F. was incredibly annoyed, and attempted, once again, to get the Ectoplasmic Entity to attend therapy. Madeline F. admonished the Ectoplasmic Entity for contaminating the test materials; It was non-apologetic, stated water “tastes like zone apples”.

Result: Holy water functions less as weapon, more as an annoying weather pattern or ectoplasmic-like fruit juice.

4. Mirror Reflection Containment Study

Historical Claim: Mirrors trap Ectoplasmic Entities or reveals them.

The Fenton team placed 64 mirrors in a hexagonal chamber to create recursive visual fields. Ghost Subject E-10, a multi-eyed Greek Ectoplasmic Entity, manifested six times simultaneously, became self-aware of multiple angles, and screamed. Then every mirror in the room reflected the researchers instead, but older.

Daniel F. resigned to rest briefly, disturbed by the sight; muttering about “inevitability”.

Result: Mirrors interact with Ectoplasmic Entities unpredictably and may also bully the living.

5. Latin Exorcism Playback Experiment

Historical Claim: Sacred Latin drives away Ectoplasmic Entities.

Instead of a priest, they used a studio-grade speaker system with pristine audio playback. Upon hearing it, the resident poltergeist corrected the pronunciation, then it demanded the verb tense be changed. Turns out the Ectoplasmic Entity had been a grammar instructor in 1720.

Phantom then offered to let Its “time dad” correct the wording before a retest. Offer was taken, unfortunately time-related Ectoplasmic Entity turned out to be, similarly to Phantom, a trickster. Sacred Latin instructed subject C-1, a size changing dog Ectoplasmic Entity, to slobber all over every chair in the area. Daniel F. found this hilarious.

Result: Latin potentially effective only when grammatically competent, and not translated by Ectoplasmic Entities of the trickster variety.

6. Burning Sage Purification Sweep

Historical Claim: Smoke clears Ectoplasmic Entities.

Air quality sensors showed particulate rise, latent ectoplasmic energy sensors showed that Ectoplasmic activity also rose. Several invisible Ectoplasmic Entities gathered near vents and used the smoke to write rude messages in cursive.

One with seemingly small hands drew a pirate ship. No one knew why, however Daniel F. flipped the invisible writer off.

Result: Sage smoke increases visibility of haunting graffiti, which only stands to encourage Ectoplasmic Entities to play with it.

7. Bell Ring Resonance Purge

Historical Claim: Bells disperses Ectoplasmic Entities.

The Fenton team tested bronze, silver, church, hand, and cow bells.

At 432 Hz subject T-8, a loud technology Obsessed Ectoplasmic Entity, vanished. At 440 Hz It returned furious and louder than ever.

At cowbell frequencies, five new Ectoplasmic Entities appeared from unknown locations in farm attire.

Result: Bell use not recommended without sheet music and evacuation plan.

8. Candle Circle Protection Method

Historical Claim: Candle flames repel Ectoplasmic Entities.

Infrared cameras showed the Ectoplasmic Entities merely using the candles for mood lighting. One Victorian-themed Ectoplasmic Entity asked if everyone wanted to “do séances properly for once”. Another requested softer shadows. Subject E-3, a musician rocker ghost, stated it “gives me new ideas for stage lighting”.

Result: Candle circles improve ambiance, not security.

Final Scientific Conclusion

After three years, twenty-seven trials, and substantial property damage, the Fenton’s published a landmark paper:

Historical anti-Ectoplasmic Entity methods are largely ineffective unless the Ectoplasmic Entity personally believes in them.

This theory, dubbed Reciprocal Superstition Dynamics, suggests Ectoplasmic Entities are governed not by physical law, but by aesthetics, stubbornness, and unresolved personality traits. Jasmine F. specially adding that therapy was a more effective deterrent.

End.

By the time the third locker vanished, everyone at Casper HighSchool had accepted that Danny Fenton was either cursed, chosen, or extremely committed to drama.

Danny, on the other hand, just kept saying he was, ‘theatrically burdened’ or that his parents had probably pissed off some ghost… which was sadly very possible given their profession.

Danny just thought that his body was being an ass. Maybe the world was getting back at him for the whole: high schooler with piss poor grades, suspiciously toned reflexes, and a talent for arriving late with leaves in his hair, by day, and the town’s least silent spooky protector a black-and-white ‘nuisance’ that fought crime while delivering one-liners no one had requested.

“Looks like your getaway car has been… repossessed”. That one had gotten some actually human robber to surrender mostly out of secondhand embarrassment. Danny was very proud of that one, very proud.

He was also a king of shitty nicknames, like ‘candypants’ and ‘boxy’ and ‘tinman’ and ‘grass stain’ and of course good ol’ ‘clocky’ (modified to ‘cocky’ when ClockWork was being a real know it all bastard).

Danny’s spooky boy powers used to be simple… well okay they were ‘numerous but simple’. He might have too many individual powers to count or remember or to even learn how to use properly, but a lot of them could just be combined into ecto-something. Ecto-manipulation: creating constructs, invisibility, intangibility, ectoblasts, ecto balls, ecto-kenisis ecto shields, his ecto field, ghostly wail, yada yada yada. Ecto-temperature kenisis: the fire and ice stuff, dropping room tempatures, being really fucking cold. Ecto-enhancements: strength, speed, agility, durability, heightened senses, yada yada yada. Gravity nullification was kinda just its own thing. See, simple. Not really, but really. He gave up a long ass time ago, trying to fully keep track of everything and thoroughly train everything. Total lost cause there.

Then, his folks went and shot him with another one of their experimental weapons, and something changed. For a second he’d been able to see the ghost zone without actually being there, very trippy, then right back to normal…. Well besides the smell of burnt pennies, which made him sneeze, and a glowing portal tore open in the air beside him. A startled pigeon flew through it and emerged three blocks away inside of a bakery.

That was the beginning of The Problem.

At first, the portals only happen when he was stressed. He’d be worrying over some test he absolutely didn’t not have nearly enough time to study for to have any hope of actually passing. Annnnnnnddddd Pop! A tiny green swirly opens under his math teacher’s coffee mug, and it drops neatly into the boys’ bathroom sink. The teacher cried a little when he got it back and saw that it wasn’t even chipped.

Another appeared in gym class when he missed a dodgeball, already tensing up for some mocking from Dash and co. The ball went through the portal and struck Principal Ishiyama in the back during the junior’s assembly.

One opened up in his bedroom while he was trying to sleep only to get rudely awoken by Technus screaming about his newest plan, the portal revealing a view of the ocean at midnight. Salt wind poured in and a crab entered without permission, walking right across Danny’s bed.

He named the crab Leonardo Da Pinchi.

He wound up taking an honestly ridiculous amount of impromptu portal related vacations to various parts of the world, including the moon one time. He even teleported not just himself, but his whole family to Cancun once. Jazz had been pissed and basically hissed at him about how this ‘wasn’t what she meant by vacation or getting out more’.

Then came ‘hero work’.

He’d been chasing down some new lock-themed ghost who was literally locking everyone’s cars and houses shut, trapping people in them. Danny shouting, “you’re about to be locked down!”, having every intent to tackle the ghost. Instead, a portal opens beneath his own feet right when the ghost throws a ton of lock picks as knives at him, so Danny shrugs and just drops through the portal to avoid the ‘weapons’; emerging from another portal in the middle of a yoga studio six blocks away.

Twenty women in matching leggings all staring at him. He’d even managed to land in downward dog, so all he had to say for himself was, “…Namast-ay out of crime?”.

Everyone started smacking him with their yoga mats and towels.

He accidentally kicked Skulker through portals three separate times. Once to a beach with a very pissed off lifeguard, because Skulker had shot off a taser weapon and basically electrified the entire beach. Another time to wedding, Skulker wound up getting tackled by three bridesmaids and someone’s uncle named Darren. And the third time, was just directly in front of a semi truck; Skulker left that time muttering about demanding a raise from Vlad.

He wound up redirecting one of Ember’s guitar rift lazer beams into a marble slab, made the perfect cut out of a crab. At least the city later installed it in a park. Danny took Leonardo Da Pinchi to see it, the crab raised its pinchers and did a little jig: Danny liked to think the crab was very pleased.

He even successfully unintentionally trapped a speeding Johnny in between two portals, driving through one and coming out the other over and over and over again. Danny eventually took pity on the guy and ecto-blasted the bike -and Johnny- the next time the ghost exited the one portal.

While rescuing a cat from a tree for publicity reasons, Danny got emotional because the cat resembled Leonardo Da Pinchi the crab somehow. So he accidentally portaled both the tree and the cat into the mayor’s office. Vlad was both pissed, because tree, and happy, because of the Danny-induced cat distribution system.

He even managed to link an active raging house fire to a bakery oven, shit smelled great but did nothing to actually help his situation. The fire fighters were very angry because the smell only reminded them that the call had interrupted their lunches, which were all slowly going cold at the fire house.

There was that one time the portal thing was actually working pretty well for him during a blackout, letting people pass flashlights and supplies and other necessary shit through them to get to other each other faster. Then one fucker had to start putting goddamn rubber chickens through them. Yes that was the kinda shit Danny would do, but it was very noisy and just made everyone mad at him. Since, again, it was something Phantom would do and everyone knew it; he couldn’t convince anyone that it wasn’t him.

The worst part is that the portals seemed to respond to emotions, but Danny was well known to have all the emotional stability of a soda can in a paint shaker. He was always too tired, a bit battered, stressed, over caffeinated, oh and the whole having the biology and physiology of two different species smashed together into one body. None of that shit was good for being stable in any sense of the word.

Nervous? Portal.

Excited? Portal!

Embarrassed? Three portals.

Crush smiles at him in chemistry class? Catastrophic portal event.

That happened with Valerie, because of course it did. They may not currently be a thing but goddamn does he still helplessly like her. That whole getting tied up and tased by her did things to his brain that he wouldn’t mind revisiting more consensually.

She’d leaned over his desk, “hey, do you have a pencil?”. And Danny’s only-slept-for-eight-minutes-and-twelve-seconds brain became a fireworks factory. A portal bursting open right between them, connected directly to the city aquarium. Aka one of the places they once went on a date to… talk about awkward, oh my Ancients. Really unfortunately, it connected to the inside of one of the aquarium tanks, not just the open viewing area where people could walk around, meaning that water surged out of the portal and all across the classroom floor instantly. A stingray flapped out onto Mr. Lancer’s desk, literal fish outta water moment right there. The teacher immediately rushing to get the thing in some water, while panicking a little bit about it dying on him. Though Danny thought the guy should be more concerned about the fact that the class was currently flooding, and that there had been a sudden portal, but Lancer was well known for being pretty unflappable in times of extreme stress and weirdness.

Valerie blinking, “…you okay?”.

Danny, soaked to the bone, holds up a pencil, wheezing and spitting out some water and seaweed, “number two?”.

She’d snags the pencil and mutters under her breath, “I hate this fucking town”.

Danny’d obviously tried training, that was the obvious course of action always. Heck, even meditation, which helped until he got annoyed at said meditation; Danny was not a sit down all calm and zen type.

He written a little journal titled Portal Thoughts & Oopses. Entries included such wonderful events, such as:

Angry: opened hole into sewer. Smelly, -2/10

Said “I could eat a horse.” Portal to petting zoo. Horse offended, 1/10

Sad: opened portal to rainy alley. Rude, 1/10. Sad playlist plus rainstorm opened portal to even rainier alley. Universe piling on, 0/10

Mild annoyance at homework opened portal that ate only page three. Teacher unconvinced, worth a retry, 2/10

Laughed too hard at own joke. Portal launched juice box into ceiling fan. Very messy, but also very funny. 4/10

Stubbed toe. Opened portal directly under self. Stubbed same toe again elsewhere. I actually broke my toe. -3/10

Hungry: opened portal into bakery again. Bought croissant, 8/10, croissant was very buttery. Hungry at 2 a.m. Portal to bakery again. Clerk now calls me “Doorboy”, 7/10

Sneezed twice. Opened two portals. One into other portal. Nearly created self-devouring geometry. Terrified math teacher, was hilarious 8/10

Startled: accidental moon glimpse?? Need follow-up, was awesome. 1000000000/10. Recreated when said phrase “need space”, zero regrets and new favourite phrase 100000000000000/10

Embarrassed blush event in chemistry. Portal projected donkey sounds for seven seconds. Extremely embarrassing, -6/10

Told Skulker to “take a hike”. Sent him onto mountain trail with map. Efficient and pissed off Skulker’s tinman ass, 9/10

Said phrase “this is going nowhere”: created hallway loop. Kwan kept running through it laughing, 6/10

Panicked during pop quiz created six tiny portals around pencil tip. Wrote in cursive at impossible speed. Finished 10 minutes early but still failed, 4/10

Angry shower singing opened portal to neighbor’s bathroom. We both screamed, -5/10

Tried keeping calm while lying. Portal emitted loud buzzer noise. Interesting moral stance, 2/10

Sleepy. Rolled over into portal. Woke up in hammock store, had good enough nap that Nocturne showed up to comment on it, 111/10

Startled by cat. Cat startled by portal. Both reached ceiling, 2/10

Accidentally said “what’s cooking?” near cafeteria. Portal to the set of Hell’s Kitchen. Gordon Ramsay furious, risotto excellent, 15/10

Whispered “drop dead” at video game boss. Controller fell through portal into antique shop. Tuck was pissed, -4/10

Frustrated with tangled earbuds. Portal untangled them by removing one earbud entirely. Missing still, 1/10

Overconfident mood. Attempted stylish hero landing via portal chain. Landed in recycling bin, -1/10

Had mild panic attack realizing I may never fully control this. Tiny portal popped out a neon yellow ecto-cake pop. Comforting yet sassy, 2/10

Jazz had opinions on the whole issue, of course she did, she always had opinions. Her pointing at him, “your power doesn’t lack control. You lack brakes”.

“That feels personal”.

“It was meant to”.

She told him to try meditating more, or journaling, or to stop focusing on a good pun over avoid a punch; massive fuck no to that last one. Never.

Then Leonardo Da Pinchi scared the bejeesus out of her by scuttling quickly across the living room floor, holding a knife in one of his pinchers. Her smacking Danny after he smirked and snickered at her, “now who’s the one that needs calming breaths”.

Then Vortex decided to be an ass and assault the town with unpleasant weather patterns again, basically holding the city hostage beneath a permanent thunderstorm.

“You will all kneel before my reign!”

Danny, crouching like a gargoyle, whispers to himself, “okay, okay, no panic. No jokes. Calm center. Steady mind”, pausing and adding, “though kneeling is rough on the knees”. A hint of a portal flickers, Danny glaring, “nope. Not today, Satan”; and zips off into spectral battle.

Lightning cracks across the skyline, Vortex cackling while little tornados rip around throwing cars and people, at least most folks are running away, and what cars aren’t already up into the air are trying to get away as fast as they can. Danny’s dodging lightning bolts and palm sized storm clouds, the occasional miniature sun. The streets goddamn chaos, some people are trapped on buses, a lot of children are crying, the ghost sirens are going off only to be swallowed by all the thunder.

Valerie, as the Red Huntress, is trying to redirect people, block lightning bolts and over aggressive hail, attempting to fire back at the ghost only for her blasts to get eaten up by tornadoes and spat back out at buildings or her; she’s clearly more than a little bit frustrated. “Phantom! Would you hurry up and deal with this asshole!”.

Fuck. “I’m trying!”.

Last time he basically only beat up this guy ‘cause he stole the dudes powers, weather powers he no longer has. So yeah, this is one of those moments where he gets a little bit scared. meaning… a bunch of fucking portals pop up, twenty to be exact. They erupt across the street like mirrors punched into reality. One swallows the next lightning blast and redirects it harmlessly into the harbour. Another opens up beneath some civilians, dropping them gently into a lobby at a nearby hotel. Another sends some mini storm clouds off to a pet adoption fair.

It’s pandemonium with a crap ton of paperwork for dear mayor Vladdie to do… meaning the guy is going to get back at Danny for all of this bullshit one way or another. Betcha that guy is really regretting ever bringing Vortex to this town so badly right now.

Danny floats in the center of the madness, breathless, and for once, he doesn’t fight the portals; he aims them. Not perfectly, not elegantly, but rather instinctively. Sometimes his powers just be like that; his intangibility, invisibility, and gravity nullification were the one’s most notably like that. He just… knew how to do it as long as he went along with his body, instead of trying to logic it out.

He flies in through one, out through another, rebounding off of a billboard, zips through a third, and lands feet-first on weather assholes back. Smirking at the small, “oof”, from the ghost. Danny grabbing onto the guys lightning bolt horn things, “forecast says…”, sending the shock of his ghost stinger, “…scattered unemployment”; throughly shocking the ghost to high hell.

The rain stops as the steaming ghost slumps over some, people start cheering before he even finishes getting the ghost into his thermos. He’s so totally going to have to have a word with the Observants about letting their little piece of shit storm god ghost out again.

Later on, in the school field under clearing skies, Valerie finds Danny in civilian clothes. He’s covered in debris and feeling way too sore to bother getting up. Her looking down at him and crossing her arms, “you disappeared during the attack”.

“Yup. I was… around”.

She smiles, “funny, that’s exactly what Phantom would say”.

Danny freezes, “uh”, and a tiny portal opens beside his head, revealing a llama in some distant field… the llama stares judgmentally.

Valerie snorts, chucking some food into the portal, the llama looks pleased. “Relax, Danny, you absolute shit kicked dumbass. You suck at fighting weather phenomenons”.

Danny groans, lifts his head up to bang it back down into the grass, ending up sticking his head down into a new portal instead that’s underwater. Jerking his now very wet hair back up, “fuck, goddamnit”, shaking his hair and eyeing her, still not moving from his spot on the grass, “how long have you known?”.

“You once returned a library book while hanging upside down, Star also watched you do it by the way. She also saw you screaming into a toilet, why you did that in the girls washroom I don’t know. And she saw you eat a ghost, which, why?”.

“Right”. WOW Danny really fucked up that secret keeping, goddamn.

She rolls her eyes, “subtle as a dead skunk”, shrugging a little, “your dumbass non-existent self-awareness got me my friendship back though, ain’t no point hiding my suit if she knows about your suit, so I guess thanks”.

He groans, and another portal opens up, raining flower petals from somewhere tropical.

Valerie shaking her head before stepping closer, kneeling down, and flopping over to lay on the grass next to him, “can you control those yet?”.

Danny looks at the pulsating green tear in reality, the impossible stars inside it, the chaos humming under his skin. “Control? No, fat goddamn chance”, he grins, “buuuuuut, I am getting the hang of making an entrance”.

Then he takes her hand, uses his feet to push his back upwards against the grass, dragging her along with him limply, and they fall through one of the portals in the grass.

They emerge on top of a table in a bakery three blocks away, Leonardo Da Pinchi the crab was waiting, clicking one claw and waving around an Oreo cookie. And, of course, Star’s there in a work uniform, trying to catch Leonardo Da Pinchi.

Danny scrabbling up off of the table and grabbing up the crab, holding him up above his head away from Star, “hey! You leave Leonardo Da Pinchi alone!”.

Valerie sitting up on the table slowly, “why does the crab have a name and how do you know it’s the same crab?”.

Star puts her hands on her hips and glares at Danny, “he or she keeps stealing all the Oreo cookies, either it goes in a boiling pot or take your weird crab home, get it out of here”, sighing, “it’s weirder that you named a normal crab, than the fact that you did that”.

Danny blinks and lowers his hands, holding Leonardo Da Pinchi to his chest. Then the fucking dick pinches his nipple, which of course startles him into making another portal… one that he immediately yeets Leonardo Da Pinchi through. Looking to the portal comically horrified, “what no! That was a claw-some throw but I was only trying to sidestep the drama, not relocate it!”, scrambling through the portal, shouting, “I’m gonna claw it a day! And- oh hey he’s good! Thanks for catching Leonardo Da Pinchi, Skulker!”.

The ghost can just barely be heard through the portal shouting, “just get this thing out of my suit! My poor wires and- ow! That’s my eye!”.

Star grumbling, “I didn’t mean to portal the poor thing literally inside of a ghost”.

Valerie and Star eye each other before the former gets off of the table and joins the other in walking towards the portal, grabbing Danny’s legs, and yanking him back into the bakery. At least the portal closes. Valerie points at him, “you can”, sighing heavily, “‘claw’ it a day here”.

Danny pouts, “but what about Leonardo Da Pinchi?”.

Star huffing, “you said he’s fine, he’s happier wherever he is and not at my job, that pays me quite nicely but probably won’t if I just let a crab run around free range”.

Danny sighs and slumps into a chair, “fine, I guess the aquarium is an okay place”.

Valerie patting him on the shoulder, “and you can even visit him whenever you want”. Star shakes her head, walks off into the back, and comes back out with some pastries on plates and sets them down in front of them.

Danny eyeing the food then Valerie, “is this a goddamn date now?”.

She smirks and rolls her eyes, “what do you think, ghost boy?”. A chair immediately falls down through a portal.

Star glares, “I will take back the food if you do that again, control yourself, oh my zone”, and walks off muttering about witting ‘chair disappeared due to ghost shenanigans’ report.

Danny very awkwardly takes a bite out of the iced bread thing, Valerie laughs very meanly at him.

End.

Apparently they call him Phantom, supposedly he has a first name too but it was 'really awkward, so no one likes to talk about or think about it'. At least Phantom is a hella cool name, so that's a win for him; especially since his power set seems pretty gosh darn spooky. Him standing on a random rooftop, making green energy stuff pulse in his palms, the feeling of the energy running through his arm is awesome. The rain pattering down on the jumpsuit he's wearing, the thing is almost embarrassing body tight yet felt so aggressively like his. He might not know much be he knows for damn sure the suit is stupidly important and valuable to him, part of him. At least people waving at him, cheering, and the occasional ask for an autograph makes it pretty clear he's some kinda hero/celebrity.

Jumping up into the air a bit when a piece of paper smacks him in the face, he just stays floating there as he looks at the paper.

MISSING PERSON Danny Fenton, 17 Black hair, white shirt with a red dot, bizarre hair style, usually carrying backpack covered in band pins. Last seen three days ago.

Below the photo, this 'Danny" stares up with a lopsided grin that makes something in Phantom's chest ache. Phantom tilting his head at it, “do I know you?”, the ache sharpens.

He folds up the paper carefully, tucking it into the seemingly bottomless pockets his suit apparently has.

Three days.

Three days ago was also the first thing he could remember... weirdly coincidental... maybe whatever messed up his own memories also caused this boy to go missing? It was more of a lead than anything else he's gotten so far after waking up in an alley in a glowing jumpsuit, white hair dangling in front of his eyes, and head ringing like cathedral bells. His powers were intact; at least the ones he knows about anyways. Reflexes sharp and obviously well honed. None hero name -because surely he has one, a... civilian name- unknown. Face unseen, as in literally; he's tried multiple mirrors and his face is just this jumbled blurry mess, even pictures it's the same, blurred all to shit. He couldn't even say what shape his nose is, or if he has full or thin lips, what about freckles or scars? No clue, none. Past erased clean as a wiped hard drive.

Everyone he's run into has had their own theories.

Dr guy went with 'trauma-induced dissociative fugue'. Cop or detective girl thought it was a 'mind wipe from one of your enemies'. And random street guy said 'alien nonsense', but that guy was eating toast, just plain toast, and for some reason that makes Phantom really not trust his judgment on anything.

Phantom had his own theory, of course, but someone was missing, and for reasons he couldn’t explain, finding Danny Fenton felt more important than finding himself.

He starts with Danny's school, with Casper High.

Casper High’s secretary looks over the counter at a six-foot spooky teenager carrying a stack of missing-person flyers, “you need to sign in, Phantom or not. Unless there's about to be an invasion, but I doubt that since the sirens aren't going off”.

“I’m here to investigate”.

“You need to sign in".

Well, he guesses he'd rather a school take visitors seriously than not, all things considered.

He stares down at the clipboard.

Name: _______

He writes down Phantom(?)

Purpose of Visit: _______

He writes down Teen stuff

The secretary sighs the sigh of a woman who had seen everything except this exact kind of nonsense. Either Phantom was typically more informative when he came to the school or he typically never really came here. Well his memories are fucked right now so she'll have to deal with his vague bullshit.

Danny's locker was number two hundred and fourteen, Phantom knew that before anyone even told him for some bizzarre reason. Blinking and shaking his head, muttering to himself, “how did I know that?”.

A girl with purple braids leans against the neighboring locker, “because it says two hundred and fourteen right there, Sherlock”.

He looks up, “right”, but he's pretty sure he did not look at that.

“No, but seriously”, she narrows her eyes, “you doing good there? You’ve been acting weird. Weirder than normal ghost levels of weird, anyways”.

Thinking and knowing he's a goddamn ghost is very... strange. That rather meant that he's dead, that at some point he died. “You know me?”.

“Not personally. You rescue things dramatically. Hard to miss”, she jerks a thumb at Danny's locker, “you looking for Fenton too?”.

“Yup”.

“Poor guy. Vanished right before chemistry midterm. Honestly iconic”, she spins the combination lock absentmindedly. Left twelve, right thirty-two, left seven; and the locker clicks open.

Phantom's stomach drops a little, unsettled deeply for some reason, “how did you know that?”.

She blinks, “he tells everyone because he’s terrible at secrets”.

Inside there's textbooks, a half-eaten granola bar, three pens, and a notebook covered in doodles of ghosts; Phantom picking it up. The first page reads: Hero Names That Don’t Sound Dumb

Night Glow

Spectral Pulse

Phantom (actually decent?)

Laser Chad (funny)

His glove tightens around the spiral binding, whispering, “no way”. Maybe this kid knew him intimately? Perhaps a sidekick? Even more likely then that whatever messed up his head, also disappeared the kid.

The girl tilts her head, “what?”, startling him a little.

Shaking his head at her, “nothing", and flips through the pages. Sketches of suit pieces and random tech that looks similar to the thermos on his belt. A list titled How to Talk to Girls Without Sounding Like a Documentary Narrator or Losing My Pants with no entries beneath it. And one page, near the back: If I ever lose my memory, note to self: check under bed. The actual fuck? Well if this kids got something to help himself with memory loss, maybe it'll work for Phantom too. Can't hurt try. Phantom looks up sharply, “where does Danny live?”.

She looks at him like he's insane, "okay... something is definitely wrong with you if you're asking where goddamn FentonWorks is, probably the easiest house in the entire town to spot and one you've definitely been to a bajillion times".

Phantom blinks, well shit, "uh, brain fog?".

She snorts, "more like brain loss", waving him off, "just go outside and go looking for the Fenton parents. They're bound to be out looking for their kid, and might be desperate enough to actually asking for your help by now".

Why does Phantom get the feeling that the reason they haven't asked him already isn't because of their own egos/wanting to find him themselves, and more to do with them not liking him very much?

It's... impressively easy to find the Fenton parents, since they were shouting at the Box Ghost guy demanding 'it' finds them Phantom, slightly concerning. But they were also Threatening the guy with something the large father called a 'Fenton sphere-i-fier', Box guy is definitely afraid of this device. Considering Phantom still hasn't figured out if the annoying Box Ghost is just a pest or a villain, he'd rather not le these people do who knows what to the guy. So he floats over cautiously, "why are you harassing folks to find me?".

The pair round on him immedicably, looking both on guard and relieved. The man beaming, clearly less concerned by Phantom than the woman, "Phantom!". What a loud guy, zone damn. "Finally found you!".

The women then putting a hand on the man, "Jack, sweetie, let me do the talking". Cool, guy's name's Jack. "Phantom, you know this town, teenagers, and all the frequent ghosts; where’s our son likely to be”, wringing her hands out a bit, “the police say there’s no evidence of abduction, and we can’t find any trace ectoplasmic signatures-”.

Jack jumping in, shaking a fist, “if there was one we’d be chasing down that dare spook for daring to touch a hair on our Danno!”. That nickname feels bizarrely comforting, yet embarrassing; strange.

The woman nodding and patting Jack’s arm, “of course”, looking back to Phantom, “he’d never just leave. He’s a good boy. Messy, but good. Have you found anything? Is he trapped somewhere? Brainwashed? In a sewer?”

Phantom blinks, “probably not a sewer”. If he is then Phantom’s really up shits creek without a paddle, seeing as he has no clue where the sewers even are. Also if he was in a sewer he could just… get out in his own, unless he’s being held hostage or is actively tied up… or he’s dead and this shit ain’t gonna have a happy ending. Phantom clearing his throat and rubbing the back of his neck, “how about, uh, you show me around his room and see if I pick up on anything?”.

Jack beams, “Mad’s can totally show you! While I keep looking for our boy!”, and runs off with a scanner thing without getting approval. ‘Mad’s’ shift and shaking her head after him before looking back to Phantom and narrowing her eyes, clenching and unclenching her fists, “you will stay in my sights at all times, you hear me ghost”.

Oh yeah the Fenton’s do not like him… for some reason. Regardless Phantom nods readily, “yeah no problem”. She glares a bit more before rushing off, in the direction of the Fenton house hopefully… otherwise Phantom’s just walking into a trap.

His eyes drift around the living room, family photos line the shelves, there’s crazy odd contraptions, a bunch of ghost themed needle point… oh and the place reeks of the green stuff, ectoplasm, that he and all other ghosts apparently, seemed to be made out of. But the photos get his attention much more than the smell or the tech. There’s Danny at age eight missing front teeth. Danny at thirteen holding a science fair ribbon. Danny at sixteen awkwardly short in a poorly fitting suit, there’s some skinny old guy in the background glaring specifically at the suit. Every image punches the same strange bruise inside him. Then he spots one from last year, Danny in a white shirt with a red circle, smiling beside a display case, inside the case sat a thermos. The exact same kind as what Phantom has on his belt.

Mad’s smiles a little though clearly still tense, “yeah he was the only one would could ever get those thermoses, that you keep stealing, working right”.

He was using stolen beat? Or… just gear he was given without parental approval… Either way she leads him up to Danny’s room.

Teenage bedrooms always are archaeological sites; he doesn’t need memory to know this. Dirty cups, socks with growing colonies, cables breeding in corners, a… very strong scent of blood and ectoplasm. He’s pretty sure he even sees a blob of glowing green moving and chewing on something in a corner. But more than anything this room feels like his, like it was something he was… what possessive of? Territorial perhaps? Weird.

And something is pulling him towards the bed, or under it really. Phantom crouching beside the bed, muttering to himself, “check under the bed”; and lifting the dust ruffle. There’s a shoebox, and inside a journal and a cracked thermos.

His hands tremble as he opens the journal, jumping a little when the thermos basically explodes and a bunch of wispy looking ghosts flood out of it.

Mad’s jumping, “what the! Oh some darn ghosts are behind this- wait how’d you know to look…”. Phantom’s honestly not paying any attention to her.

If you’re reading this and don’t know who you are, congratulations, disaster happened. Phantom stops breathing. My name is Danny Fenton. Yours too. We are the same person. The room narrows to a pinpoint, but he keeps reading anyways. If memory loss happened, it’s likely because of head trauma or some dumbass ghost. You’ll probably think I’m missing. I technically am, but also you’re standing there reading this, so relax. And just slow down that internal vibration to change back, or give yourself a good startle He sinks to the floor, as rain splatters against the window. Also: tell Mom I’m sorry about the toaster and thank Clocky for the heads up, they told me to write this. A laugh escapes him, cracked and startled, then another, then he’s crying and laughing all at once, darling sideways onto the floor clutching his stomach.

He had been searching rooftops, interrogating suspicious individuals and ghosts, pinning maps with red string, while the missing boy wore his own face that just has a really shitty reflection.

He wasn’t two mysteries.

He was one idiot.

Mad’s actually smacks him one, his bodies vibrating tingling sort of skipping, “what are you- Danny- you- what?”, she sounds to be closer to the ground now. Fuck the thermos of ghosts was probably supposed to distract her or make her run off after them, since she obviously didn’t know about Danny being Phantom. She was so worried about him being missing, and not wanting to leave ‘Phantom’ alone in her house, that she didn’t take the bait and well…. If he can put two and two together quickly, so could someone else. Also… he’s pretty sure he did that form changing thing due to laughter, stress, and being whacked. At least it feels like somethings are coming back…

Across from her sits the city’s mysterious ectoplasmic teenage vigilante; one part menace and one part a begrudgingly acknowledge hero. Now he was just… her son.

This somehow makes less sense.

She looks from the thermos he’s fiddling with to Danny’s face to the thermos again, as if one of them might apologize.

Danny giving a tiny, nervous wave, “hi”.

She inhales slowly through her nose, “don’t you ‘hi’ me”.

“That’s fair”.

“You have been missing for three days”.

“I know”.

“I filed reports”.

“I know”.

“I cried into a lasagna”.

“I did not know that”.

“You would have if you answered your phone”.

He looks down, “that’s also fair”; he didn’t know he even had a phone though so…

Then she sits down hard herself, sighing heavily, “I knew you were hiding something. No teenager eats that much ecto and remains ordinary”.

He grumbles, “and whose fault is that? Not that that’s the why”.

She makes him some coffee. He can’t remember if he likes coffee, but Danny apparently does because he drinks three cups pretty much automatically.

Maddie -because that’s what her actual name is- or rather mom, sits at the kitchen table with both hands wrapped around a mug she’s so far forgotten to actually drink from. Her pointing at his face, at his previously green eyes, “what was that”.

“It’s… complicated?”.

“No. Wrong answer. Try again with nouns”.

He swallows, “it’s infused ectoplasmic genetics that’s bonded to all my systems?”.

“That was worse than complicated”.

“Right”.

He rubs the back of his neck, “okay. Um. I’m, like, well, the ghosts all keep saying-”, doing air quotes, “-‘halfa’-”, dropping his hands and continuing, “so half one, half the other? Heh”.

“You’re what”.

“Uh, half and half?”.

Her eye twitches a little, “like the dairy product”.

He’s barely able to resist smirking meanly, clearly he likes messing with people, “but worst tasting, probably”.

She fully glares this time, “with how much ectoplasm is in you, definitely worse”, rubbing her forehead, “and I guess this explains why we’ve never been able to decontaminate you”.

“Sure”.

She narrows her eyes, “Danny… why were you searching for yourself? Why’d you disappear?”.

He absolutely flushes at that, “kinda seemed to have lost my memory for some reason, bits are coming back though so, like, I’m vibing now?”; especially since there’s no missing kid for him to go floating around looking for.

She stares at him for a beat before shaking her head, muttering, "unbelievable", looking at him, "you could do with being just a little bit more responsible, you know". Danny just rubs at his neck so she continues, "how did... you become like this, Danny?", her frowning, "was it us? Did we cause this? and- oh I... should call your father", promptly getting up on slightly shaky legs to grab the landline and give Danny's... dad a call.

He winces, he... doesn't really know? right now? but he feels like it's not their fault. In fact, something in his gut is telling him that it's his own fault. Blinking, "I don't really know right now, but I think it was my own fault; however it happened".

"-yeah, yes, he's fine- yes we foun- hun- he's home- don't worry, okay?", turning back to look at Danny, "do you have any idea how or where? Was it the lab, you think?".

That makes his entire left arm twitch and tense a bit, yeah... yes, the lab... sounded right. Blinking at her, "I... yeah the lab sounds right". Watching her as she walks over to what he knows is the lab door, having hung up the phone, her waving him over.

All it takes is spotting the portal to know that that's the where, his where, where he died. Sorta died at least, from the seams of it. Him going over and touching the metal, feeling his mom's eyes on him all the while. He can see her squeezing her arms in his peripheral vision as she talks, "the portal did this? I...", she frowns, "I'm sorry, Danny".

Him jumping in immediately, "don't be, I might not be all there memory-wise, but I definitely know I like being the way I am. And I can tell this thing, the portal, is important and personal to me", smiling at the thing a little, "I like it".

He can practically hear her blinking, she blinks so hard, "you... like it?".

Danny nodding immediately, "yeah. The other-side touched me, and I sort of… woke up, I guess. Woke up spooky-wise anyways”.

“Woke up”.

“Yes”.

“Like a dog?”.

He snorts and laughs a little, “scrappier than a dog”.

That at least gets her to laugh a little too, looking at the portal again, "scrappy is an understatement".

"DANNO! MAD'S! DANNY!".

Both of them jump, his mom turning to the stairs quickly, "WE'RE DOWN HERE, JACK! DANNY'S OKAY!", tilting her head down, "just... less okay than we've always thought he was".

Danny wincing, "I'm fine, I swear", blinking, "well, besides the memory issues".

She eyes him, "being half ghost, half dead, isn't 'being okay', Danny".

"It is for me, I think".

His... dad coming barraling down the steps, rushing over, and scooping Danny up into a bone crushing hug, "DANNY-BOY!".

Danny patting on his arm, "dad, can't, breathe"; the response is automatic but he’s fairly sure breathing isn’t really necessary. So his dad’s bone-crushing hugs must be really common place.

His dad laughs once more before putting him on the ground, clapping both his shoulders and bending over to be more at eye level, “now where on earth have you been, son? You have been on earth right? If any ghosts yanked into the ghost zone I swear!-”.

His mom puts a hand on dads shoulder, “relax, he’s been closer than either of us could have ever guessed”, looking to Danny, “because someone doesn’t tell his parents things he very much should have”.

Danny blinks and then gestures to one of the… many specimen jars, “uh…”; sure he doesn’t really remember why he didn’t tell them right now, but he can make a damn good guess. And she winces, so clearly it’s a bit obvious to her too, dad just looks at them both confused.

Dad scratching his head, before hugging Danny again quickly, “well no matter that, our boys okay!”, letting go and nodding firm to himself, “he can be as secretive as he wants so long as he’s being safe!”; mom glaring at him for that.

“He defiantly wasn’t being safe”.

“I definitely wasn’t being safe”.

The two share a little look before both look back to his dad. Danny wincing, “uh”, crap fuck, how does he transform? Back to Phantom? Spooky self? Opposite of calming the tinglies? Sure why not. Closing his eyes and forcing the feeling, there’s a flash of light…

“OH!”. A loud smacking noise makes Danny open his eyes, seeing dad’s hand on his forehead. Dad laughing, “this so should have been obvious! Phantom’s a Fenton! HA! That even rhymes!”.

“Jack! Is that really what you’re concerned about?”, mom sighing, “wonderful. Danny, could you continue explaining your nightmare”.

“Considering the memory loss, there’s really not much to say. Other than-”, gesturing at himself, “-I haven’t actually been missing? Just didn’t remember being myself…”.

Dad knocks on his head, “you must’ve taken one heckuva hit for that to happen. You good otherwise?”.

Danny quirking an eyebrow, “I think? And things are coming back so…”.

Mom sighing and looking at dad, gesturing at the portal, “apparently the how is the portal, he doesn’t know exactly how right now”, looking at Danny softly, “just that he believes it’s his fault and not ours”.

Danny rubbing his neck, “I pretty positive it was my own fault”.

Dad… also rubs his neck, must be where Danny got the habit from, “so our portal turned you into…”, he gestures vaguely, “Spooky Superman”, frowning, “that… can’t have been fun, Danno”.

Danny just shrugs, he’s distinctly sure it wasn’t, just the thought makes him arm twitch and a hint of… phantom (ha) pain flash by. “I don’t know right now”, pointing at his dad, “and I think it’s more like Green Lantern”.

“Spooky Superman”.

“Sure”.

Dad smirking a little before frowning, “and you decided not to tell us? It’s not like we wouldn’t love you, kiddo. Being a little spookier or not”.

Mom frowning and eyeing dad a little, “it… is a little, unsettling”, then smiling in a way that does seem slightly forced, “still our kid though”, and turns that smile on Danny, “definitely should have told us”.

Danny suddenly feels a little self conscious about his glow, but he doesn’t want to make her feel bad by changing back right now. Rubbing his neck, “I tried”.

“When?”.

“Uh multiple times I think?”, tilting his head, “once during… breakfast, way back before I was doing this whole running around superhero thing. Another time I think sis I tripped me”; right he has a sister, orange hair and overbearing? He thinks? Yeah overbearing sounds right.

Dad blinks and laughs a little, “I think I remember that too! The blender exploded!”.

Mom looking to dad, “right that old one that we made to be powered on ectoplasm, since we had such a good source all the sudden from the portal”, frowning and then eyeing Danny, “it was supposed to pull from the air and got overloaded”, blinking at Danny, “it must have been absorbing from you”.

Danny shrugs, “I was probably stressed and, I don’t know, still forming? that sounds right, so yeah it probably overcharged from my stuff”; an actual ghost, half ghost or not, definitely gives off more ectoplasm energy or whatever than the portal does.

Dad laughing more heartily and clapping Danny one on the shoulder, making him sort of hover forwards a bit before getting his feet back on the ground. “Got the Fenton knack for explosions from me!”.

Danny smiling a little at him, “technically, I got it from the portal. And in fairness, the blender was old”.

Mom quirks a judgmental eyebrow at him, “that blender was younger than you”.

He winces, and forces down that tingling to change back, feeling gravity fully again feels… odd honestly. He’d prefer not to. “I think I also wrote you a note one time?”. Both of them twitch a little from his sudden change.

Mom sighing, she does seem more comfortable now though, “you mean the note that said ‘Gone out. Do not open shed if growling continues’?”.

“Yes?”.

“That was not communication. We thought you trapped a ghost and wanted to deal with yourself”.

Danny nods sadly, “valid”.

Dad shakes his head, still smiling, “what’d you change back for? That’s very bright”, and chuckles, “guess you were dealing with ghosts yourself though. Like a Fenton!”.

Mom narrowing her eyes, “but with more injuries and getting shot at, letting us shoot at you”.

Danny rubbing his neck, “rarely? Injuries matter less for me?”.

They both glare at him for that, which is fair, he doubts any parent wants their kid going around getting hurt, and he feels like he probably gets shit kicked a lot. Mom crossing her arms at him, “when I told you to apply yourself more, this is not what I meant”.

Dad looking to her, “well in a way he is following in the family business”, grinning, “meaning we really do have someone to properly pass everything down to”, snapping his head towards Danny, “we could help! Join in! Wouldn’t that be fun!”.

“Jack! He needs to be safer about it first and explain things more and deal with this memory issue”.

Danny chuckling awkwardly, “if it’s anything, I definitely didn’t plan all of whatever I’ve been doing. Kinda seems more like an unavoidable part of being all ghostly”.

Mom sighs and shakes her head a little, “no child ever plans to become municipal folklore”.

Dad sticking up a finger, “well ghosts are combative so fightin’ makes sense, especially with getting our ghost hunting genes!”, his expression softening, “you really lost your memory?”.

Danny nods, “woke up in an alley. Didn’t know my name, didn’t know where home was. Everyone kept calling me Phantom so figured that was my name. Found out someone named Danny was missing”, his voice cracking slightly on that last word.

Mom ruffles up his hair, smile more soft now, “you poor idiot”.

Danny flushing, “I know, I’m a dumbass”.

“You searched for yourself?”.

“I made maps”.

Dad laughing loudly, “you interrogated yourself by proxy!”.

“Yup, that’s what I did”.

That gets mom laughing too, shaking her head it him, “I’m sorry. That’s terrible”.

“It’s also kind of funny”.

“It is deeply funny, sweetheart”.

He starts laughing too, tired and relieved and a little shaky, “what’s worse? I’m pretty sure this isn’t even the first time I’ve gotten the memory wipe treatment”.

Mom smacks him one of the head, “Danny!”, but she’s still laughing. At least they all head back upstairs to get something to eat and sit down. Her pointing at him as they get up the stairs, “just so we’re clear, you do not vanish for three days again”.

“Ideally”.

Dad butting in, “definitely no fighting ghosts on an empty stomach”.

Danny whining a little, “dad”.

Mom rolling her eyes, “and no more getting your memory erased”.

“I didn’t do that on purpose”.

“Intent is irrelevant”.

“Yes, mom”.

She nods firmly at him, opens the fridge, and begins pulling out leftovers, “you’re eating. We’re eating”.

“I already had coffee”.

“That is bean water”.

She slaps lasagna onto a plate, giving dad significantly more. Looking at Danny, “And after this, shower”.

“I showered yesterday”.

“You were missing yesterday. That does not count”.

He accepts his plate, “so are you… really going to be okay with all of this?”.

She eyes him, eyes him in a way that’s searching, like she’s looking for the green eyes and the white hair, “no”.

Danny wincing, “honest”.

Dad jumping in again, “hey but it’s really neat! And know we know for sure that Phantom really was always a good fellow”.

She looks at dad, “Jack, I am horrified; you should be too; he, at least to some degree, died”. Dad does wince at that, which is fair. Her looking back to Danny’s “and I’m confused. A little mad at you being so reckless. Proud, yes. Insanely scientifically curious. And possibly developing a stress rash”.

Danny has to force down a little laugh at that last bit, “also honest”.

Her sighing, looking down, then back up, “but you’re my son”, ruffling his hair roughly, “if life hands me a teenage semi-ghost vigilante, I’ll make do”.

He smiles down into the lasagna, taking bites slowly. Bits and pieces were coming back, so that’s good; objects seemed to be a pretty solid way to jumpstart the memories, and one memory could lead into another like a snowball.

The dent in the desk was from some failed tinkering. The scar on his knee from vaulting a fence because he forgot he could fly. Purple-braids girl’s name is Emilie. She’s from biology class and his friend… Sam likes her because most of the student body is afraid of the girl. He definitely remembers dying now, almost would rather not. But… it’s an important part of him, who and what he is. Very weird to feel protective of his own dying. The first time he realized helping people felt like oxygen, the word Obsession basically mentally smacking him with that one; that’s a need and he knows it instinctively, a… non-human one.

Mom puts her folk down and folds her arms at him, “so”; dad just awkwardly takes more food and continues eating away.

Danny quirking an eyebrow, “so?”.

“Are you going to keep ghost fighting?”.

Danny doesn’t even really have to think about it, he’s pretty sure he can not stop even if he wanted to. It was… tied to Obsession and instinct. “Yes”, he doesn’t really succeed at keep the hint of a growl out of his voice. Rubbing his neck, “just maybe with more support? And occasional non-school time naps?”.

His dad muttering between bites, “so this is why the teachers keep saying he sleeps in class? Huh. Wonder if it’s his biology or just too much nighttime hunting? Hmmm”.

Mom points at Danny, “good. Also, you are grounded for disappearing”, turning to point at dad, “and you, no testing biology till our son at least has his memories back and sorted. No getting over existed”.

Both men flush, Danny coughing, “I was protecting the city?”.

She turn back on him, “you were missing”.

“Technically, I was present in a different form”.

“Grounded”.

He considers arguing his point more only to get interrupted by his ghost sense. Him glaring at his pale visible breath, “oh goddamnit”.

Both parents immediately snapping, “language”.

Danny huffs a little but gets up, “uh gotta go to- wait never mind”, shaking his head, muttering to himself, “old habit? Yeah, old habit”, looking at them as he goes to put away his dish, “there’s a ghost”.

Dad jumping up excitedly, “you have a built in ghost sense! Man that’s awesome! Would love to have that!”.

Mom sighing and getting up herself, “fine. Do you know who? And do we need to bring specific weapons?”.

Danny blinks, “I wait- no, I don’t need parental supervision!”; oh Ancients the idea of his parents ‘supervising’ him like goddamn chaperones in front of some other ghost would be so embarrassing. Transforming almost absent mindedly.

She puts her hands on her hips and bends down towards him, slowly standing up straighter as he floats up into the air some, “you don’t have all your memories, we just found out you’re doing this, you’ve been missing for days, and you very much aren’t safe when you get into fights. Danny”.

Him sagging and whining, “but mom, noooo. Knowing my luck gossips gotten around and it’s gonna be the- that-”, waving a hand around, “-whatever motorcycle guy dude wanting to mock me”.

“Actually, it’s both of us”.

Danny and his parents all jump, turning to look at the doorway. Punk sleeze bag biker and punk biker girlfriend both smirk at him from the doorway. Biker guy snickers, “so you really did lose your memory, punk. Ha, get wrecked. What’d you do, get throttled by your ex one too many times this week?”.

Punk girl giggling with a hand over her mouth, “yeah totally heard about that thing you have for getting tied up and tasered”.

Danny screwing up his face a bunch, “that- oh zone that was one time! And it was not consensual!”.

Biker girl smirks, “your lack of memory might say otherwise”.

Danny snarling playfully, “I’m gonna steal that bike and make you eat the exhaust pipe”, and zips out after the two ghosts, who obviously ran off immediately. The two already on guys bike and waving at him as they rev the engine and blow down the road, Danny zipping after them.

His dad shouting, “I’m getting the gav! Darn he’s fast!”. And Danny just barely hears his mom shouting, “you better be home by ten!”.

“It’s midnight!”.

“Then you’re already late! And buy a new toaster!”.

Thankfully, even with his dad’s driving, his parents do not manage to catch up with him before he’s managed to successfully soup -and remember the names of- Johnny and Kitty. Kitty telling him quickly that she hopes he gets better, with Johnny agreeing ‘only because it’s more fun to race someone who actually remembers getting their ass kicked’, right before he souped them. Him turning around to see the gav driving up slowly, him shaking the thermos a bit to signal that things were already dealt with.

Dad sticking his head out, “you good kiddo?”.

Danny glances around a little before zipping over and phasing into the vehicle, he’s pretty damn solid on not wanting the town to see Phantom him getting on with his parents just yet. Floating in the back, nodding, “yeah. Those two are obnoxious friends, depending on the day”.

Dad making a quick, “huh, didn’t know ghost could make friends”, before turning the vehicle around to go straight home.

Mom quirking an eyebrow at Danny, “you’re… friends? With a ghost? Or pair of ghosts I suppose”.

“I… think I’m friends, or kinda friends at least, with most of the ghosts that show up often”.

She blinks harshly, “they’re damaging the town and fighting you?”.

Danny shrugging, “humans dance, ghosts fight”.

Dad laughing, “yeah that sounds about right! Now you need to go to bed, though you know we’re gonna be picking that brain of yours as soon as it’s all modern you again”.

Mom nodding, “you’ll be extra grounded if we catch you sneaking out, and we absolutely can differentiate your ecto-field from others, so we will know if it’s suddenly detected else where”.

Danny just pouts as they get home and they usher him inside, why did he get the feeling that this is one of the reasons why he never told his parents about his situation? Fuck.

End.

By the time Danny turned seventeen, he had learned three things.

First: always carry spare sleeves.

Second: never wave too hard.

Third: if your left hand falls off during algebra, act offended, not surprised.

It had started two years earlier with the whole half dying… thing. Yeah that. With him walking into a busted portal at the egging of his friends who said it’d be cool with the optimism only idiots possess. Because yeah, dying was tOtAlLy SuPeR cOoL. Great idea guys. He fucked up, the portal turned on, and a whole ass nother dimension moved against gravity and reached for him; the ectoplasm of the Infinite Realm surging in through him like something recognizing a home.

He remembers screaming. He remembers his skin turning neon and translucent for a second. He remembers waking up in a hospital bed with every monitor screaming back at him.

The doctors had said there was no burns. No remnant electricity. No ecto-radiation they could measure. They called it contamination, his parents called it integration, then quietly everyone stopped using words for it at all.

Because the electricity, the ectoplasm, had not stayed on him. It had gone in him. Became him. Bound to his very genetic code. He, of course, knew this better than anyone else. Sadly he couldn’t exactly hide it fully, it changed him just a little too much. It threaded through his muscles in microscopic filaments. It lined bone, turning it such a dark green that it might as well have been black. It replaced portions of connective tissue with something slick, unstable, and ‘alive’. MRIs showing glowing strands where ligaments should have been. The only saving grace was that it was so bizarre that it distracted both the doctors and his parents from looking too deep into other things. Like Phantom showing up right after Danny’s little accident, or how sometimes ghosts seemed to know Danny Fenton. It also kept his parents specifically from wondering why Danny’s appearance didn’t change at all. They were pretty set on him being at least slightly a hybrid but managed to miss that logically that should have meant visible outward changes. The doctors were too confused too frequently to come to that conclusion themselves.

That didn’t mean there was no physical changes that he couldn’t hide, namely his eye flashing problem. Way too much shit annoyed him to hide that, especially at school; so his folks wound up having to properly ‘inform’ the school and Danny just sorta let all his classmates come to the ‘Danny’s a goddamn sorta ghost but he’s not dead so really he’s just a major freak’ conclusion in their own time; which took a while but still happened. Him being ‘a dork’ and clumsy and ‘meek’ kept anyone for even considering that he was the ‘cool’ and ‘witty’ and ‘bold’ Phantom.

At least the effect on his ligaments only seemed to make him flexible; that was kind of cool actually. Being able to bend and twist in ways that made others gag or let him fit/crawl into places he couldn’t have before. His folks took quick advantage of that, even while half-heartedly warning him to not over do it just in case. Testlauf tried to convince him to get into gymnastics; obviously he wasn’t going to put even more on to his plate so he turned that down. Good thing too, because over time he noticed that things seemed… loose, his body parts were loose; like his body wasn’t as firm or solid as it should have been even in human form.

In fights, in ghost form, it was fine. In fights, his bodies solidity being more of a suggestion than anything was useful. Making a donut of his stomach was a great gag, one that literally made people gag. But… being in ghost form, being without gravity, made the looseness not… loose. His parts stayed where they were supposed to be, the same eventually didn’t apply when gravity was in effect. When he was human, and that was a problem. It was making him wrong, wrong in a way he just couldn’t put a finger on. Like he got to keep his human bones and organs, but didn’t get to keep his joints and ligaments, his connective tissue. All the less solid aspects of the human form had, in him, changed to ectoplasmic goop that was only getting goopier.

The first dislocation happened opening a jar of pickles of all things. His shoulder sliding out of socket with a wet thunk, arm dangling six inches lower than it should. Danny had stared at it in the kitchen mirror for a solid five minutes, trying to figure out what to do and how to do it, or if his arm would just fix its self like his body sometimes did now. It did not fix itself -damn- and his mom nearly fainted when she walked in; which shocked him just enough to realize that this kinda hurts. Unsurprisingly his mom popped it back in place, scanned his ectoplasm levels, and then promptly took him to the doctor to ‘make sure’ she’d set his shoulder right.

The hospital staff knew him pretty well by then, kinda hard to forget the freaky weird kid who should have died and got contaminated with an otherworldly substance, after all. And after all the check ups and with them noticing all the other injuries and bruises that Danny had acquired in a very short amount of time; he barely managed to avoid his parents figuring out where they actually came from, and avoid the hospital staff accusing his parents of abusing him. Dr. Paredes telling him to relax even while not sounding relaxed at all, then looking to his parents, “you’ll probably have a better chance at trying to reduce it”, scratching his head slightly, “we’re officially going with the ectoplasm causing some internal bruising and being rough on his bones”.

Danny hissing at him, getting a shoulder popped back in had hurt more than it had had any business to, plus he was just a little annoyed, “my shoulder fell out because of pickles”; talk about embarrassing.

“That’s going in the chart”. His parents nodding and writing their own notes, muttering about ‘progression’ this and ‘worsening’ that. He tried to ignore them… thankfully his parents agree with the idea that all the ectoplasm is just being hard on his contaminated bones and contaminated muscles….

But it only worsens from there. His knees could separate if he stepped off of curbs too hard. Fingers slipped out from their sockets, making them look overly long and dangling, if he stretched them too much. His jaw once unhinged during a yawn, and he had to guide it back in with both hands. At least Sam and Tucker found that last one pretty funny, but him speed walking through the hallways with his jaw somewhat dangling open wasn't exactly easy to hide. It wasn't any major gossip at first, just small 'Fenton's a freak' stuff and the occasional 'didn't he have some kind of accident not too long ago?'; not good but manageable and nowhere close to exposing him. Of course, his parents and the doctors overseeing his recovery took much more note. According to his parents, the ectoplasm inside of him was constantly pooling around his joints and dissolving the remaining ligament fibers. But hey, at least it wasn’t painful, right? It was just his body sucking and fucking with him in ways that were getting progressively harder to hide.

The doctors try a few things to help, but no braces hold for long, sutures tear free, artificial tendons fray after days, and his body rejects any replacement material the ectoplasm dissolving it to nothing. Even his folks, with all their genius and tech, couldn't really figure something out that actually works. He even tries going to a ghost or two but well.... Danny's body was significantly more biological and physical than any ghosts, so they didn't really know what to do with him. Simply spending more of his energy or draining ectoplasm out of his system just wound up straining his core, his body right back up to its normal levels in a short time. The doctors kinda gave up on him around that point, largely just leaving his care up to his parents; a blessing and a curse, since they were negligent enough that he could largely get out of check-ups.

At least for a while, things stayed largely the same with his body being weird, giving him time to adjust to a slightly loosey goosey body. Wearing compression garments under hoodies, tape around his wrists, neck brace on the particularly bad days. That last one was the biggest issue, seeing as a goddamn neck brace was super fucking noticeable, but it was a hell of a lot better than his head just goddamn falling and rolling around barely attached to his neck. School gossip was not nice on him, at least his whole dropping beakers problem from the earlier days led to most just thinking he was super clumsy at first. Sometimes Dash would try and take credit, saying he gave Fenton a good beating. Either way, the whole student body whispered about him even more, because teenagers can smell strangeness like sharks smell blood, and Danny was only getting weirder by the day. The fact that there was ghosts frequently all the time now, and that ghosts had more malleable bodies, is what really lead to the student body all coming to the ‘Danny’s, like, kinda ghostly, isn’t he?’… well that and his stupid eye flashes. He’d debated trying to head it off, convince people there was nothing ghostly about him besides some mild contamination, but if shit was gonna keep getting worse that would fail spectacularly. So… he leaned into the ‘half ghost’ idea, and steered the gossip away from anything remotely close to his Phantom identity; so long as everyone continued to believe Phantom was a full ghost and so long as no one realizes Danny could basically shapeshift, he’d be fine… barely. Thankfully all the random incidences did actually help that, since Phantom wasn’t floating around having his spine suddenly misalign or nose nose fall off of his face mid-fight; meanwhile Danny absolutely was.

There was the time his kneecap launched sideways enough to actually cut open his skin during gym, staining his shorts and splattering a bit of blood across the ground. The time he sneezed and partially detached an ear, as in it actually came off of the side of his head. Charlie, sitting next to him at the time, had screamed. Danny had been very thoroughly embarrassed and grinned reassuringly too hard, causing his nose to slide down his face in a streak of sinew and blood, making Charlie vomit; at least Sam got some damn good practice at reattaching ears... Then there was the time in history class, his right foot came free inside his shoe spraying a bunch of blood at the ground, and he had to hop to the nurse’s office carrying it in his fingers by the laces. It took some serious doing to keep the blood and strips of his muscle inside of his shoe. He also absolutely wrecked his pants, but he didn't have much of a choice but to use it to tie around the end of his ankle, had to do something to catch the dripping blood and flesh, to hide the dangling bits of sinew. The janitor was pissed at all the streaking he left in his wake. While the nurse had been horrified, and he'd barely been able to get her to call his parents instead of the hospital. Would have been so much better if the teacher just had not noticed it at all; then Danny could have snuck to the bathroom and just reattached his foot…

So at that point he knew he had to be at least a little more proactive, so he developed rules. Never run, it was too easy now for his legs to fall apart on him; and it would be pointless to run anyway, since his knees and hips and ankles and toes all fucking up and falling apart would just result in him face planting and making a gory mess. Never genuinely clap, his fingers would literally fly off, and no one appreciates the weird kid's disembodied finger flying into their cafeteria soup.

The first time that happened, his finger landed in Elizabeth's soup bowl just the wrong way so that his fingernail hit the rim and popped off, flying off of his disembodied finger and stabbing her in the chin. Never sleep curled up, his back would wind up having basically rearranged itself; thankfully, a quick transformation got it mostly sorted back out, but he’d still have to twists around and dislocate his shoulders to pop it all fully back in place.... But most importantly, never let anyone see how long it takes to reassemble yourself; he wanted as little eyes on him and his weirdness as possible. The last thing he wanted was the government, the G.I.W., getting involved and coming to conclusions he'd really not want them to.

His best defence really was his humour, people take shit less seriously when people make jokes about it, no matter how fucked up it is. When someone asks if he's okay after his elbow slides backward during lunch, a quick, “yeah, factory recall", got them rolling their eyes at him and waving it off. When Dash calls him broken, Danny just smiles and removes his own thumb to throw at the jerk. Dash could be surprisingly squeamish, though he probably shouldn't have tempted the jock, since the guy often just tried to push to see just how far Freaky Fenton would go.

So Danny just kept on keeping on like that for a while, even managed to desensitize the school enough that spotting him shambling down the hallway chasing after his eye that had popped out of its socket got written off. The janitor did shout at him a lot, though, and yes, Danny did pity the guy a little. He learned not to be too rough on his body lest it pop apart on him, in human form, anyway. Things stayed together better as Phantom.

And sure, maybe he shouldn't have gotten too complacent, but Danny has never claimed to not be a bit of a dumbass.

Getting woken up in the night not by a fight but rather by his body was annoying and extremely concerning. The sounds of soft pops, gentle knocks, a limb settling somewhere it shouldn’t; his arm resting across the room like it had gotten bored and left. Him blinking at the limb, "the actual fuck", is all he could really think to say. What was even the point? Then, furrowing his eyebrows, noticing that his breathing sounded like it was whistling? Looking down at his chest, poking and prodding at it with his one attached hand. His ribs weren't in the right spots or even shaped correctly. Sighing and getting up to get his detached limb, it'll be easier to fix his chest if he's got two arms. So much for a restful night of, well, of rest; fuck he’s tired,

Of course, that morning is when he finds out about the leaked videos, because that's exactly how Danny's luck goes. Apparently, a classmate had filmed him stumbling after getting bashed into a locker; his shoulder, wrist, and hip separating in sequence like a puppet cut from strings, then quickly getting dragged back into alignment by writhing green threads under his skin. Danny hadn't even really noticed that, just that his body had fixed itself up for a change... didn't do it very well since he still had had to realign stuff, but still.

Then there was the one recorded by the kid who walked into the bathroom with Danny shoving his septum back into his nose, blood absolutely covering the mirror and sink. Frankly, recording in a bathroom was rude.

And there was multiple angles of last weeks gym class where his hamstring snapped and started flailing and wiggling around under his skin, him slapping at the writhing ‘snake’ under his skin did nothing to make him look less unhinged. That shit looked straight out of the Alien when he was living it, even more so on video….

At least the one where his pointer fingers joints all exploded and he thusly stabbed himself in the eye with a scalpel in science class, was just more so funny and disgusting. Not to mention it wrecked the whole frog dissection thing, Sam applauded him for it and went on a rant about how that’ll hopeful get the dissection requirement removed. Danny had made a joke about how they should just dissect him instead, multiple people shouted about how he did that to himself enough as it was.

A very short loopable one of him telling the math teacher ‘my skeleton was roaming’ and that ‘my rib is under my skin and heading west’.

There was a whole ass compilation of him turning his head too fast and various things popping off or out. An ear, an eye, his lips, nose or part of his nose, his whole jaw twice, the one time he managed to turn into a pole and clothesline himself hard enough his tongue shot out. At least the other compilation of him ramming himself into hard objects to pop back in dislocations is mostly just funny, especially since it was edited to match the We Will Rock You stomp/beat.

One of the times Danny actually got pissed off at Dash, his eyes glowing green, and pushing up his arm sleeves and compression sleeves, then pushing up his arm skin. Just fully tearing the skin off around his wrists and shoving it up to his elbows like fabric. Punching Dash in the chin with his exposed red muscles intertwined with green, and visible green black bone. Fuck he did not realized anyone had recorded that… he really screwed himself over doing that.

Millions had watched the videos.

So, of course, that got the G.I.W.’s attention, thankfully even his parents distrusted and even outright hated the G.I.W. by this point. Small miracles. Still, he couldn't really refuse giving samples without basically going on the run for the rest of his life, definitely not an option. They wanted blood samples, tissue samples, and long-term observation. At least Danny folks were able to tell them to go pound pavement with the last one, Danny absolutely would have fucked off to the ghost zone otherwise. And hey, his control over his own ecto energy was good enough to keep his samples from being too ghostly. Meaning the G.I.W. just grumbled about how he 'must have been infected with experimental ectoplasm by those crazy scientists', while his dad went off blabbering about types of ectoplasm in a million ways that were all utterly useless for the men.

Danny went to ClockWork after that, desperately hoping the ghost wouldn’t just riddle him. Danny didn't even get a chance to ask.

ClockWork humming and watching some forest in some other time, "your ectoplasm is merely trying to repair catastrophic injuries by replacing damaged tissue. It's behaving as it should. It’s still trying to help you".

Danny, whose kneecap had been taped in place with sports wrap literally half an hour ago, laughs so hard his jaw comes a little loose, "yeah well, I'd like it to stop trying to be damn 'helpful', any pointers?".

Silence.

“Can I at least get it to stop a little bit? Is that even an option?”.

ClockWork shook their head, turning to Danny, "surely you didn't expect not to have any growing pains".

Danny blinks at him, "growing... pains?".

"You're almost eighteen, are you not? And many years dead, well grown into your powers".

Danny stares for a bit before tilting his head back, "oh Ancients, goddamn it", he was 'maturing', 'fully stabilizing', 'becoming an adult'. Guess his ecto just didn't know what to do with all of his human shit, even though its had years to adjust in Danny's opinion. Danny went home thoroughly annoyed and with an amused mentor; sometimes Danny swears ClockWork enjoys Danny's misery.

Weeks later, the degradation had clearly accelerated. His wrists no longer staying attached for full days. Vertebrae slipping enough to send lightning pain down his legs. He had to start wearing a rigid frame under his clothes just to keep himself 'stacked' correctly.

Then came the hand incident.

He's sitting on the school roof for lunch, where nobody but his friends would bother him, when Sam climbed up carrying fries and two sodas. “You skipped lab, pretty sure your grades are way too shit for you to be doing that, Danny".

“Was trying to secret eat some breakfast salad and my teeth fell out into it, and when I fished them out of my food, my radius stabbed through my wrist and popped out onto the floor". A goddamn fair reason if you ask him.

She shrugs at him, “fair, and congrats on discovering the worst croutons ever”, and plops down next to him.

They talked about nothing for a while. Wind. Finals. Whether pigeons were government employees. Then Danny reaches for a fry, and his hand detaches at the wrist and plops down into Sam’s lap.

They both look at it.

Danny closes his eyes, “please throw me off of the roof".

Instead of appeasing Danny's mild suicidal ideations, Sam just picks up the hand carefully, turns it palm-up, and high-fives it against her own. Danny snorts and starts laughing immediately, which of course, makes his other shoulder dislocate. Sam just shakes her head at him and sets it for him, "your body is such a goddamn mess".

Danny rolling his eyes and standing up, wiping rooftop dust off of his pants with his one hand, "yeah, yeah, yeah, be glad I'm the only one here getting puberty from hell. Now give me back my hand".

She smirks at him, "no", and yeets the thing off of the roof. Someone below shrieking while Danny glares at a very smug Sam.

Danny shaking his head at her before walking over to the edge of the roof to look down, one of the freshmen is basically foaming at the mouth unconscious next to his squirming hand, a small pool of ectoplasm and blood pooling around it. Lovely. And then, because once again Danny's luck is shit, both his knee caps pop out sending him over the edge of the roof and crashing into the ground below... at least he gets his hand back pretty quickly this way, regardless of the person shaped blood splat he leaves behind.

Things absolutely were not going to improve from here…

Mr. Bell calling names in his next period, “Danny Fenton?”.

“Here”, he raises his hand a little too enthusiastically, and his forearm detaches at the elbow with a neat little clack and remains upright for a moment, hand still raised, while the rest of the arm drops into his lap; blood slowly dripping down his half arm.

The room goes silent for a beat until someone in the back whispers, “…did his arm just salute separately?”.

Danny sighs, picks up the half of his arm, and slots it back into place like annoyed furniture assembly.

Mr. Bell glances at his attendance sheet, “marked present, I guess”.

Then, not even twenty minutes later, Kayla taps on Danny's desk, “hey, can I borrow a pencil?”.

“Sure", but of course, as he reaches into his backpack, twists just a little wrong, three fingers slide out of their sockets like uncorked party favours. Dangling down by lightly glowing green and red strands of gore. Fuck him entirely.

Kayla stares... Danny stares. One finger slowly pointing toward the pencil pouch all on its own. Kayla taking the whole pouch with a quick, “I’ll just… keep this side of the desk", and whispering, "what the fuck, man. Why is he more disturbing than the full ghosts". Whelp, apparently him being ‘disturbing’ was actually helping hide his shit… who would’ve thought.

Kwan basically shoving pizza in Danny's hand when he gets out of class, "you're only getting one piece, but it's still damn good. Please don’t do anything weird".

Danny glares and makes a point to bite into the slice hard enough that his jaw dislocates sideways with a wet pop. Cheese stretching from the pizza to his now-misaligned mouth like industrial cable. Kwan gags immediately, "oh come on, why, man?".

Two freshmen at their lockers scream. Danny just calmly grabs his chin, shoves upward, and everything snaps back into place. Chewing once, muttering, “needs more sauce, some ecto maybe”.

Kwan sighing, “you’d be the only one able to eat it then”.

“More pizza for me”.

At least he makes it too gym without any further incidents, Tetslauff blowing her whistle immediately, “laps! Move!”

Danny, unsurprisingly, only manages to jog exactly three steps before his kneecap shoots sideways and pings off of the bleachers; blood absolutely spattering out sideways after it. He collapses with a sigh, "someone wanna get that?".

“NURSE?!”.

Danny huffing and shouting back, “don't bother! It’s just my kneecap!”.

Emily picks the body part up with two fingers only, “do I… just hand this back to you?”.

“Yes, please".

“Gross”.

“Correct”.

She snorts disbeleivingly at him and then bends over laughing, "you're a goddamn human ghost jigsaw puzzle".

Danny pointing at her, "hey, I'll have you know I'm a very nice Lego set, worth at least three hundred dollars".

Tucker handing him one of their little med kits, "you and I both know that Vlad would pay so so much more than that to have you".

Testlauff shakes her head at them, "laps, Foley. Fenton, just head to your next class before I have to get the janitor to do anymore hazard cleaning of my gym".

"You could just let me stop doing this class".

She laughs once, "ha! As if I'm letting you off that easily. Now get, and take all your parts with you".

Of course, it's paired work, Danny getting stuck with Derek, one of the school's wannabe hard-ass 'tough guys'. The guy huffing, "don't slow me down, ghost freak”. Danny shrugs, and his shoulder rolls forward, detaches, and slides halfway out of his sleeve with a soft crunch; Derek making a sound usually only heard from startled goats.

Danny pushing it back in, quirking an eyebrow at the guy, “you were saying?”; it took so much effort to not smirk very meanly at the try-hard.

Derek quietly does all the measuring and calls Danny 'sir' for the rest of class, much to Danny's own amusement.

Star snags his sleeve as soon as he leaves the classroom, looking him up and down quickly, "good, you're put together, quick we need some pictures for the yearbook".

Danny glares, "thanks for jinxing me".

She rolls her eyes, "whatever, just smile please? And keep your teeth inside of your jaw".

"Now you're just giving me very tempting ideas". Regardless, he does a little -gentle- pose by one of the art walls, throws a peace sign, and smiles... the connective tissue at the corner of his mouth giving way with a tiny tear, and the right side of his smile keeps traveling another inch towards his ear which then slips free and lands on his shoulder just as she takes the picture; blood dribbling down the side of his face.

Star looks at him slowly, "goddamn it, Danny".

Danny smirks, "you want a fidget toy?".

"No! Put your ear back on and let's try this again".

"Or...", Danny rolls his wrist, "just take it again quick before anything else resigns"; Danny takes his ear off of his shoulder, wipes off the bit off blood, and fluffs his hair to hide where his ear should be and some of his over exposed teeth. She glares but takes another photo anyways and sends Danny on his way.

Of course, the second Danny turns to walk away, someone texting and walking slams right into him, the impact causing both wrists to disconnect at once. His hands dropped to the floor, one still clutching his disconnected ear. The girl groans, "oh god...", trails off and slumps, passing out.

Danny managing to catch her under the arms with his stump arms, glancing around, "Star? you still there?".

Star walks up next to him, bending down, "give her here you problem".

Valerie just goddamn appears outta nowhere, "Danny, you really gotta learn to keep your hands to yourself".

"Hey fuck you, give me a hand or two".

"One of these days I"m going to start carrying around fake hands just to give those to you when you ask that".

"Please do, that would be hilarious".

"I hate you".

Danny doesn't even bother going to home ec, not like he'd be allowed to cook anything anyway, and he needs to reattach his hands... and ear. Fuck his life so much. He's just gonna hide out in the library, away from any books he might accidentally get bloody.

He winds up sneezing halfway through getting his second hand back on properly, the force dislodging one of his ribs enough to produce a sharp thunk against the chair. The librarian sighing, “Danny”.

“Sorry”.

“Take your skeleton outside if it can’t behave”.

He snorts and carries himself, somewhat literally, out into the hallway. So much for that plan. Frankly, he'd just go home if the school wouldn't phone his parents... Bathroom? Yeah, that's probably for the best.

Does the bathroom idea turn out to be a good idea? Yeah, it absolutely does, since apparently there was a reason his body was being such an ass today. Sitting on the floor with his back against a stall door, and twitching, feeling a sort of internal full body pull. Every green filament inside him seemingly tightening at once. His joints aligning, his spine straightening, and for the first time in two years, nothing seems to slip when he twists his waist back and forth testingly after a few minutes.

Alright, cool, nice, time to see if his bodies chilled its tits.

Standing up... no slight pain, no looseness. Smacking his wrist hard on the wall, it pops off... damn. But... the strings of red and green connected to it retract his hand back to his wrist. Blinking, "whelp, that's fucked up but useful? I guess?". Shaking his head and wandering his way over to the mirrors, there’s green lines glowing faintly beneath his skin like constellations. Lifting his hand up and flexing his fingers, pushing it further and basically just breaking all his fingers, watching them snap back to their proper shape after a bit. Fucking weird ass ghost puberty.

He shakes himself out and beelines out of the bathroom to find his best friend.

Throwing an arm over him at the guys locker, "hey Tuck, guess what?".

"Who's causing issues now, your parents, Vlad, Skulker, Technus, or Lancer?".

Danny pouts at him, "hey I don't just use you for your tech skills. Slap me like you mean it".

Tucker quirking a very judgmental eyebrow at him, "do you want your jaw to go flying across the hallway? Who are you trying to torment?".

"Oh, come on, man, just whack me one".

Tucker gives a long suffering sigh but spins around and absolutely open hand clobbers the side of Danny's face. Danny just grinning wildly at the guy when his jaw does not go flying. Tucker blinking, "holy shit nice dude". Danny smirks, lifts his hand up and uses the ectoplasm in there to bend all his fingers at their joints at different angles. Tucker smack him again while gagging, "you ass!". Danny only snickers and lets Tucker keep beating him; he can absolutely hear someone mutter about how ‘holy shit ghost boys not popping apart’.

Thankfully, the next day is finally a normal day, normal in that he’s not failing apart every goddamn ten seconds. Apparently that makes more than a few people nervous, seeing as people keep giving him cautious side eye like they’re just waiting for his spooky ass to do something disturbingly fucked. Hell, Danny was almost tempted to do shit intentionally just because of all the looks.

But he refrains and makes it through second without incident. Then, of course, the second he steps out of class he slips on some spilled juice. Multiple people gasping, groaning, cringing, or quickly looking away; obviously expecting the usual avalanche of limbs and now knowing they’re going to have to deal with his shit. Instead, Danny bends his body backward unnaturally, joints flowing like liquid hinges; and catches himself one-handed against the floor, spine curving like wire, then rising back up smoothly. No popping, no falling apart, just inhuman spooky contortion.

Dale near the lockers muttering at him, “what the hell are you now, because that is not a goddamn ghost thing what the fuck?”.

Danny flexes his fingers as faint green lines move beneath the skin, nodding to himself and giving the jock a decidedly creepy smile, “version two point oh”.

Dale blinks, “does that mean that like, are you, I don’t know, fully dead now then? Or did you just die again? Pop a body part off one to many times?”.

Danny snorts and shakes his head, “no, I’m just an adultier half dead idiot”.

“Congrats on not being a child? I’m leaving”.

And surprisingly nothing else happens before lunch. Sam munching away on her kale, “so, happy to finally figure out how to glue yourself together”.

“Har har, yes”.

Then Dash shows his ugly mug, the jock slapping Danny’s tray hard enough to splash chili onto his hoodie.

“Oops”, speaking with all the sincerity of a snake wearing a tie, “did your freak reflexes miss that?”.

Sam sets down her fork and rolls her eyes, “Dash, go develop as a person somewhere else”.

Dash of course ignores her, “what happens if I hit you harder? You scatter like a toy?”.

Danny looks at the chili dripping from his sleeve and gets a… very mean idea. Slowly, deliberately, he reaches across with his right hand, grips his left forearm just below the elbow, and twists. There’s a moist metallic clack and his left arm comes free. Multiple people muttering, “oh fuck”. Dash taking one nervous step backward. See at least Dash had a good sense for when Danny was going a do something fucked up.

Danny standing, holding his detached arm like a club. Green filaments dangling from the socket like wet tinsel, faintly drip his weird blood mixture onto the floor. “You know”, grinning, “the funny thing about detachable limbs is range”.

And Dash’s bravado evaporates out through his pores, “you’re insane, Fentwirp”.

“Nope”, Danny beams, weighing the arm in one hand, “but I am left-handed”; and cocks back to throw the limbs at the jerk- but then a hand shoots in from nowhere, seizes the detached arm by the wrist, and yanks it cleanly from Danny’s grip.

Jazz has one hand on her hips, still in her uni clothes, hospital clearance badge still clipped to her chest, dark circles under her eyes. She’s seemingly come straight from a twelve-hour study and work expirence day, looking ready to fight a God -that god being Danny- in a parking lot. She tucks Danny’s arm under one shoulder like confiscated sports equipment, “No, bad Danny”:

Danny blinks, “Jazz, what are you doing here?”.

“Picking you up for your appointment, that mom and dad have successfully remembered you’re actually supposed to be going to”, she glances at the crowd, then at Dash, then back to Danny, “and apparently preventing felony assault with a humerus”.

“It’s technically radius-ulna plus hand”.

“Do not get anatomical with me”.

Dash points shakily, clearly still trying to act a bit tough though, “he was going to throw his arm at me!”.

Jazz stares at him before sighing, “and yet, Dash, I know you’re the one who walked over here”. Dash opens his mouth, she raises one finger, he smartly closes it again.

Danny reaches for his arm, “can I have that back?”.

“No”.

“It’s mine and I need it”.

“You needed it five seconds ago”. She tucks the arm more securely under her shoulder and grabs Danny by the collar with her free hand. “Come on, you pain”.

“But Jazz”.

“Walk, before I decide to go get a thermos”.

“I have one arm”.

“You have one arm available. Move or it’s thermos time and I mean it”. She marches him off through the cafeteria while students part and stare at them.

Sam snorting from the lunch table and shouting, “text me if she gives it back!”

Jazz shouting back over her shoulder, “no promises!”.

As they reach the doors, Danny twists back to glare at Dash, “I’m gonna arm whack you next time“; not remotely surprised when Jazz smacks the back of his head with his own detached hand.

“Try not to lose anything in the waiting room?”.

“I’ll do my best to remain conceptually whole”.

“You were born annoying”.

“I improved through hardship”.

She parks and Danny unfolds himself from the passenger seat in stages, like a camping chair! Sure he seems to be more put together now but there is a such thing as not testing his luck… too much anyways. Same reason he’s still wearing the neck brace, his neck fucking up tended to freak people out way more than anything else.

Danny waves at the toddler stared openly at his neck brace, and the way his left shoulder sits a little lower than the right. Of course, three fingers shift out of alignment and then snap back; the toddler goddamn claps.

Danny’s decided he likes the kid.

Of course the kids mother moves to the far side of the room; away from Mr. Spontaneously Turbo Fucked Fingers.

At reception, the nurse smiles professionally, “Name?”.

“Danny Fenton”.

She sighs, “a Fenton?”, then addresses him again, “reason for visit?”.

“uh, general structural collapse?”.

The nurse does not laugh, she just keeps on typing.

They call him back after about twenty minutes and one minor wrist separation that Danny did to himself out of boredom.

Nurse Patel takes his vitals, “pain today?”

“Define pain”.

She looks over her glasses, not taking Danny’s shit, “on a scale of one to ten”.

“Biomechanically or spiritually?”.

“Number”.

“Two”.

She nods, “improvement. Any new symptoms?”.

“My left hip clicked the alphabet last night”.

“Anything else?”.

“I think things are a little more settled now”.

More typing.

She wraps the blood pressure cuff around his arm, him watching it inflate. Okay… either he can let these people know just home better his body seemed to be or he could pretend to still be a somewhat falling apart mess. See the later will get less tests and less questioning. So… he ‘lets’ his forearm detach at the elbow with a moist clunk and slide halfway out of the sleeve; the cuff continuing to squeeze the lower half independently.

Nurse Patel closes her eyes for one full second, “I’ll note patient has… mobility”.

“That’s generous”.

She hands him the detached portion, “hold this”.

Dr. Kessler enters with scans, coffee, and the expression of a man who deeply both wished he’d never met any Fenton ever AND wished he could ignore the hippocratic oath, “Danny”.

“Doctor”.

“How have we been?”.

“Plural”.

“Accidentally force fed anyone your body parts recently?”.

“Hmmmm, maybe?”.

Dr. Kessler sets the films onto the lightboard. Danny’s skeleton looks like it has been assembled from memory. Joints sitting slightly apart, shoulder sockets shimmering with a green haze, ligament spaces were threaded with filament-like lines where no lines belonged. The doctor taps the image of Danny’s knee, “this patellar tendon appears to be replaced by… something braided”.

“That’s my better knee”.

Dr. Kessler sighs, “let’s do a range of motion exam”.

Danny stands in the center of the room. “Raise your arms overhead”. He does as he’s told, and ‘lets’ the right shoulder dislocate with a crack and rotate backward far enough that his elbow points at the ceiling.

Dr. Kessler winces, “lower them”.

“I can’t with this one”.

Jazz, sitting in the corner, doesn’t look up from her phone, “use your other hand”. Danny rolls his eyes but grabs his own wrist and folds the arm down manually.

“Bend forward”. Danny bends and ‘lets’ two lumbar vertebrae slip with a series of wet pops, shortening him by nearly an inch.

Dr. Kessler murmuring, “interesting”.

“It never is when you say that”.

“Walk heel-to-toe”.

Danny takes three steps before ‘letting’ his left foot rotate ninety degrees, continuing walking anyway.

The doctor nods, “adaptive”.

Jazz sighs, “stubborn”.

Then comes palpation; doctors always want to poke things. Dr. Kessler pressing lightly along Danny's collarbone, the bone 'suddenly' springing upwards beneath the skin like a tent pole, stretching the flesh in a sharp ridge. Danny snorting when the doctor jerks back. Danny clearling his throat and trying to seem sheepish, “ah. It does that when startled”.

“How does a clavicle become startled?”.

“Hostile touch?”.

Jazz actually laughs into her sleeve, while Dr. Kessler cautiously pushes the bone flat again.

“Any numbness?”.

“Sometimes my right hand forgets it belongs to me”.

“Any weakness?”.

“My jaw fell off chewing cereal”.

“That is not weakness”.

“It felt unsupportive”.

Dr. Kessler pinches the bridge of his nose, “any changes in the ectoplasm filaments?”.

Now Danny could bullshit the guy and say no, but it was visually noticable and bound to get caught on camera sooner rather than later. So Danny rolls up a sleeve and beneath the skin, thin glowing threads move slowly around his forearm musculature, tightening and relaxing like something thinking. Something sentient, because it was. It was his ectoplasm, his mind was in every ectoplasmic molecule of it, the same way that it was in every mortal molecule of him.

The room goes very quiet, even Jazz lowers her phone. Dr. Kessler leans closer, “can you make them move intentionally?”.

Danny flexs, the filaments contract, and his detached ulna shifts audibly back into alignment with a click.

Nurse Patel, from the doorway, whispers, “nope”, and promptly leaves.

They finish up with recommendations, the doctor rubbing his forhead, "continue bracing and avoid impacts”.

“Define impact”.

The man sighs, “everything”.

“Harsh”. Plus Danny 'aviod impacts' was a fools game and litterally never ever going to happen. Even ignoring his Phantom extraciriculars, he bashed into and got bashed into constantly. There was literal video evidence of this.

“Hydrate. Sleep. Report sudden changes”.

Danny nods and, largely to be an ass, lets his left ear detach at the upper cartilage and flop onto his cheek; blood running down his neck. Dr. Kessler stares at it for a long moment, Danny intruptting the mans mental anguish, “anything else?”.

The doctor slowly wrote one more note, shaking his head, "condition remains dynamic".

Jazz stands, grabbing a gauze pad, and smacks it onto Danny's ear, “come on, Ikea Skeleton”.

“That nickname is ableist”, pointing, "but congrats on making a creative insult for once".

“You are literally modular, Danny”, she marches him out with a sigh.

In the waiting room, the toddler waves again, Danny obviously waving back and 'letting' his whole hand come off this time; the toddler, like a badass little champ, cheers.

Jazz eyeing him in her car, "is it really still this bad? I thought you said you'd sorted yourself out?", bleeding concern for him.

Danny waving her off immediatly, "yeah, yeah, it's just better the normal person doctor thinks I'm still a mess", smirking and fingergunning at her, "the less I'm consatnly falling apart the less people will notice that, and the more they'll notice everything else".

She eyes his fingers and relaxes a little, driving off, "well considering you didn't just make your fingers explode or snap apart or collapse or fly off, you must be better". Danny fingerguns again purely to make his middle fingers and thumbs break and twist around at the joints, blood beading up around his nails. She scowls at him, "you're disgusting, keep your gore to yourself".

"Never".

Did Danny continue to treat his family, his freinds, his school, and the town as a whole, to his twist it bop it pull it body? Obviously he does. They hate most seconds of it and he loves efvery second of it. It's also very funny when someone asks him as Phantom if "ghosts just pop apart all the time, like the Fenton kids half ghost ass?", and Danny got to make a show of looking disgusted and saying "Zone no, I don't know what in the Realms his ecto did to him to mess him up like that. I blame the human shit or maybe expirencing grvity just really sucks. Definitely seems like it does". Thusly furthering the divide between human Fenton and ghost Phantom.

End.

Paulina has always considered herself to be a scholar of three subjects: good lip gloss, hallway politics, and gossip. The first two come naturally to her, while the third requires a little bit more discipline. You have to know when to look bored while listening. And to master the slow blink that said I am absolutely not paying attention while your ears vacuumed up every word in a ten-foot area. Then, of course, you have to understand that if you carry three shopping bags and a pink iced drink, people assume nothing is going on behind your ears and eyes. People underestimate Paulina constantly, and that's exactly the way she likes it.

So when she was browsing earrings at Amity Mall on a thursday afternoon and heard the phrase ‘half a’ said like it was one word and about a person, she nearly dropped a rhinestone hoop into a potted ficus. 'Half a' what?

The voice came from the service corridor beside the food court. Low, urgent, male, “…I’m telling you, if the town finds out Phantom's is half human, a... what was it? A 'halfa' as the ghosts call it, there’ll be panic".

And Paulina had frozen behind a kiosk selling scented phone cases. Phantom? Her darling, wonderful Phantom? Defender of Amity Park? Her glowing-eyed ghost prince? Subject of at least six fan edits Paulina had saved for 'research purposes'?

Half human?

Another voice hisses back, "keep your voice down, you fool. We know he has genetic relations to someone here, someone human, but that's all we know”, scoffing, "since this messed up town's hospital won't let us access any further files".

'Genetic relations to someone'... To someone 'from here'. Someone from Amity. Someone human. Paulina slowly lowers her sunglasses despite being indoors.

No.

No no no.

This was not gossip. This was god-grade gossip. Ancient treasure gossip. Nuclear gossip.

She peeks around the corner. There's two men in white suits -G.I.W. agents, clearly, ugh- standing near a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. One's holding a metallic briefcase, and the other has the haunted expression of someone trying to figure out how to trap someone untouchable.

Briefcase Guy huffs, “…the human genetics must be how the creature can stay in our world for so long, especially without losing any power".

“I know that", responds Haunted Guy, “I’m worried whether or not finding this genetic relation will help us and our cause, or hinder it".

Briefcase Guy waves the other off, "of course it will help us, what person would want to be related to some half-ghost abomination? All we have to do is find them and threaten to tell the press what monstrosity they helped create. Besides, who cares if we upset the feelings of some freak that decided to bang an ectoplasmic manifestation".

Paulina gasps softly, those awful men were planning to try and hurt her wonderful Phantom again! She obviously can't and won't stand for that! But how? Telling him, speaking to her lovely man, would obviously be an option... but how much good what that even do? No, she needs to know the very thing these jerky G.I.W. agents want to, she needs to know Phantom's human parent. Oh mi god, she can barely believe he has human family! So cool! She bets they're really cute or beautiful or handsome -gender depending- Oh, but that's not the point right now, she has to figure this out. Both because she has to get ahead of the gossip, but also to protect her man.

The men turn, and she snaps upright and pretends to inspect a keychain rack with the intensity of a fashion designer. After a tense moment, the door shuts behind them, and Paulina relaxes a fraction. She stands motionless for three full seconds, then she spins on her heel and speed-walks to the bathroom.

Wait! If Phantom is half-human, and has a human parent, then that means she totally could have babies with him! Oh, this is the best mall trip evar.

By four pm, Paulina has convened an emergency summit at Glamour Bean Café with her two best friends, Star and Lindsey. After all, she needed reinforcements for gossip this juicy, especially if she's gonna protect her man!

Star starts fanning herself, shrieking, “he’s WHAT?".

Paulina grins meanly to herself, enjoying the shock she's causing, “half human", leaning back dramatically, "meaning somewhere in this city there is either an unknowing ghosts lover or the weirdest PTA parent alive".

Lindsey stares, “how do you know this isn’t fake?”.

“Because when do those G.I.W. men ever actually whisper secretively about anything? They only whisper like that for three reasons", counting on her manicured fingers, “affairs, the Fenton's getting on over on them, or ghost stuff they need to keep quiet”.

Lindsey hums and nods, “that’s… weirdly solid logic".

Star grabs Paulina's wrist, “do you think he went to high school here?”.

Paulian's eyes widen, “oh mi God".

The table goes entirely silent, then all three scream at once. They! They might be going to the same school that Phantom went to or currently goes to!

The next morning, Paulina arrives at school wearing determination and heels with no practical purpose but just the right amount of sparkle to not clash with her skirt. She surveys the student body, looking for anyone who might seem even slightly ghostly. Slightly like Phantom.

If Phantom was half human, then maybe he had relatives. Maybe he had lived here. Maybe he was younger than people thought. Maybe he was someone in town.

Maybe…

A student.

She marches to the yearbook archives. The librarian eyeing her, “need help?”.

Paulina nodding quickly, “Yes, I need records of every transfer student who seemed emotionally unavailable and constantly dead tired”.

The man blinks at her, “that is… not a searchable category”.

“Then we do this manually”.

By lunch, Paulina’s suspect list included:

Erik, a pale boy who always wore hoodies in summer

The Rowan twins who never blinked enough

Jessie the soccer captain with suspicious cheekbones

Jeremy Pell, because no one could naturally have that jawline

Her chemistry partner Noah Mercer, who once crushed a calculator by accident

Danny, the school freak

She pauses, Danny Fenton… quiet yet very witty (witty like Phantom maybe), weirdly strong (ghost strength?), kinda glowy in fluorescent light (very ghostly), sleeps in lots of classes (sleep deprived from ghost fights?), and Dash has claimed to have seen his eyes flash green before (extremely ghostly)… Danny also had once said ‘your living snacks are mediocre’ after trying some soya fried rice (implying eating dead/ghost food).

Paulina slowly lowers her fork, now that she thinks about it… didn’t she see him literally walk through a trash can!??

No.

No way.

Scanning the room and finding that messy mop of black hair… ink black, yeah definitely too dark to be normal, right? Right. And across the cafeteria, Danny looks up; like he knows someone’s staring specifically at him.

Their eyes meet and he immediately looks very concerned. Interesting… yes it could be purely that she’s the one staring at him, rather than the other way around.

After school, Paulina corners him near the bike racks. “Hiya, Danny”, tone sweet as can be.

Danny blinks and rears back, “Paulina?”.

Paulina tilts her head, “so, quick question”.

He narrows his eyes and leans even further back away from her, “…why are you smiling like that?”.

“Are you half ghost by any chance?”. Sometimes it really was best to be blunt and straightforward, to give people as little wiggle room as possible.

He drops his backpack, stands in silence for a while, then sputtering a little, “I- what, um, I’m sorry?”.

“Don’t play coy with me, Danny. You once caught a falling vending machine”.

“It was tilting”.

“You know three dead languages”.

“My parents literally study all things dead, languages included”.

“You don’t ever seem to sweat”.

“I moisturize”.

Paulina leans in, she’d have a hard time believing Danny wore matching socks, nonetheless actually moisturized… “you called the anti-gravity park a return to normalcy”.

Danny’s face manages to drain of colour, becoming even paler than he always is, “I like a good joke?”.

She quirks an eyebrow at him, “I’ve seen you walk through a trash can”.

For one heartbeat, something flickers behind his pupils, spooky green light. Sure it could be written off as just the ectoplasm that’s in him from the contamination but… she’s betting that it’s ectoplasm from him being half ghost, not some contamination. Heck! That contamination story was probably just a cover up.

He screws his face up, glances around, mutters, “fuck I thought no one saw that shit”, shakes his head and looks back to her, “can we talk somewhere private?”.

Oh she absolutely has caught him. She smirks at him, putting her hands on her hips, “I knew it”.

He rubs his forehead and sighs very loudly, “after all these years, damnit, fuck my life”. She only giggles at him in response as she grabs his wrist and begins dragging the dumb boy off. Next question, is he related to Phantom or is he Phantom.

They sit down on the bleachers, the sky slowly turning a shade of violet. Danny stares out at the field for a long time, “so what do you think you’ve figured out?”.

She smirks a daintily a little, “that you’re half ghost”. When all he does is quirks an eyebrow at her, she rolls her eyes and adds on, “so either you’re Phantom. Or you’re, like, Phantom’s sibling or cousin or something but more human-looking”.

He scrunches his eyebrows, “and why do you think Phantom’s involved either way?”.

She flips her hair and huffs, “because he’s half human, and ‘related’ to someone in town. Add in that you’re definitely half human, either you’re him or related to him and the Fenton’s only adopted you because you look human and he doesn’t”.

“… I’m not adopted”.

She shrugs, he could just not know, it’s not like Danny looked anything like the rest of the Fenton’s, “you look nothing like them. But say you’re not, then one of them fucked a ghost, probably unknowingly. Absolutely scandalous”. That actually makes him choke and start laughing. She taps her chin and looks up to the sky, “and maybe they’re so against Phantom because they’re ashamed of the twins they created, especially the one that looks like a ghost”. He bends over wheezing even more. Is she trying to get him to slip and say something he wouldn’t normally? Yes, yes she is.

He wheezes some more, wiping a tear from his eyes, “Ancients, I could never even imagine them with anyone other than each other, Jesus fucking Chris-”, then blinks very harshly, snaps up straight enough to make her jump a little, and stares at her flat and serious, “why do you think Phantom’s half human”.

That… feels almost like he’s threatening her, which she can understand. The G.I.W. make it super obvious that any info about Phantom that isn’t already public becoming public could be, like, super dangerous. And normally she might hold something juicy over someone’s head, she wouldn’t risk Phantom’s safety like that. Whether Danny’s Phantom or just a sibling. Twirling her hair a little awkwardly, pouting, “over heard some of those G.I.W. jerks saying he was”, tilting her head and making a point to seem less sure, “something something halfa? And related to someone it town?”, huffing and sticking her nose up in the air, “they don’t know who so obviously I had to figure that out first. Get ahead of the drama, you know”, smiling and looking down at her hands, shifting a little, “and… I’d rather them not know, since they’re so mean to him”. One thing about gossip, if you’re in the know and you’re good, you can manipulate the truth. Hide certain parts, make other parts worse, fudge the truth.

Danny… actually growls at her making her jump a little again, before he flops backwards, back smacking into the bleacher seats behind them, and thunking his head down on it, “ugh. This day just keeps getting worse. Fuck me”.

She blushes a little, gotta shoot her shot right? “I mean, if you are Phantom, I wouldn’t be opposed”; and at least she gets him to start laughing again. Him being freaky and serious isn’t super useful to her.

He rubs a hand down his face, sighing loudly, “well… at least they don’t know the who, I guess”, pushing himself to sit back up. Putting his elbows on his knees, watching the empty field, “… Phantom doesn’t have any siblings”.

Paulina absolutely squeals immediately, she knew it! He totally is Phantom! They all go to school with Phantom! He even thinks she’s cute! Phantom thinks she’s cute! Lunging at him, throwing her arms around his neck, and squealing a little more, “I knew it!”, knocking them both sideways. He just lays there glaring at her so she puts her elbows on either side of his chest, and places her chin in her palms. Grinning down at him, “so, you’re Phantom”.

“Yeah”.

“You’re Fenton”.

“Yup”.

Her smirking at him, “you failed gym twice”.

He blinks and huffs a little laugh, “…that did happen, twice”.

She snorts cutely and sits back up, “that is the most shocking part”. Really how does someone that can pick up a bus fail gym??

Danny blushing a little, still laying on the bleachers, “I don’t like sports, and I don’t care enough about gym to put in any actual effort”.

She shakes her head at him, “ridiculous”, fiddling with her hair again, “so…”.

He sighs and pushes himself up onto his hands, leaning back, “the answer’s no, Paulina. I’m really not interested nowadays”, frowning, “and as much as I’m not a fan of someone I’m not even friends with finding out, the G.I.W. is more of a concern”.

She shrugs a little, damn, well, she did rather expect that. Can’t blame a girl for trying. “Well, we could be, friends that is”.

He rolls his eyes, “yeah I’m not super into a ‘friendship’ based on your weird crush on half of me or hero worship”, pointing at her, “and for your information, neither of my parents ‘fucked a ghost’, hilarious mental image though”, looking back out to the field, “though, I suppose I don’t really have to worry about the G.I.W. since I’ve made sure they’ll never suspect Danny Fenton”, frowning slightly, “still though”, shaking his head and eyeing her, “and I guess you’ve gotten questions and if I don’t let you ask them you’re just gonna pester me, so?”.

Huh, sounds like he’s already got the G.I.W. handled, weird to see competence from Danny Fenton of all people. And she can so totally see Phantom in him now. The jawline, muscles hidden under loose clothing, the hairstyle obviously. “Why do you protect everyone? It’s not like anyone treated you well at first”, huffing, “even if I always loved it. So cool”; so hot.

He blinks, “not what I expected but, because I could? Because Amity’s my home?”, rubbing his neck and look back to the field, “because it’s instinctual, to fight”.

Paulina would never stick her neck out for a bunch of ungrateful jerks, hmpf. Crossing her arms, “well if you ask me, none of these dumb people deserved help”.

He rolls his eyes mutter, “self absorbed as ever, I see”.

She shakes her head, really, this town so did not deserve him. She did for sure! The rest of these losers? Definitely not. “At least being territorial, or the instinct whatever, makes more sense. I hate it when people step on my turf too”; like when Dale gets a little too into how the cheerleaders were doing their choreography, or when Delhia snagged a rarer fashion drop than her. Absolutely awful and unacceptable. Frowning a little, because that will have a better affect than seeming vapid, “and if the town knew about this ‘half’ thing, someone would try to stop you or hurt you, and you’d get pestered so much”.

He snorts, “oh like how you’re pestering me now?”. She only rolls her eyes at that, there was no way she wasn’t going to chase a good story. Not a chance. Rolling his eyes, “those men… my parents, they aren’t kidding about the things they want to do to me. I’m not stupid enough to take genuinely dumb chances”, smirking a little, “unless it would be really really funny”.

Paulina’s more than aware that those agents and the Fenton’s wanted to do a bunch of really nasty gross painful things to Phantom… to Danny she supposes. Stupid jerks. No parent would hurt their own kid though, nope not a chance. Parents love and protect their darling kids; way have kids otherwise. So silly. Even if Danny’s were kinda crazy. The G.I.W. though… yeah no, acab. “Well”, smiling slightly, “your secret is safe with me”. He quirks an eyebrow at her so she rolls her eyes, “just because I have the gossip, doesn’t mean I’m gonna go spreading it”, her smiling even more and putting a finger up to her lips, “some secrets are more useful kept close to the chest”.

He blinks, “really?”, shaking his head, “I mean, I’m not too surprised, but still”.

“Obviously”. She absolutely notices him seems to relax slightly, her adding on, “in exchange, you owe me so many details”.

“…Details?”.

Pointing at his face, “ghost gossip, ghost boy”, ticking off on her fingers, “suit fabric. Hair routine. Can you survive in space? Are there hot single ghosts? Why do you always do flying poses; is that instinctive or rehearsed? What are ghost royals like? Can you get drunk? Do ghosts think you’re cute too? Does the Box Ghost really have a kid? Is Plasmius dating the mayor?”.

Danny screws up his face before bursting out into laughter, bending forwards and holding his stomach. “You’re are unbelievable. Vlad!-”.

She rolls her eyes, “I prefer iconic”; going basically entirely ignored.

Danny wheezing, “-Vlad! Dating- Ancients!”, wiping tears from his eyes, muttering, “he would so be self absorbed enough to do that, oh my Ancients”.

Paulina stills and turns her head slowly to stare at him. ‘self absorbed enough’ to date Plasmius? That doesn’t… oh! Oh mi god! Danny and Vlad have an obvious rivalry, and so does Phantom and Vlad! Did the man know about Danny/Phantom? Definitely seems highly likely. And Phantom also clearly has a more personal rivalry with Plasmius too! Would that mean that… if you ignore the echo they do sound similar. Oh mi god. Is Vlad a half ghost too! Is he Plasmius?!?!? And he’s Danny’s uncle right? Does this just run in the family? “Oh mi god just how many half ghosts are in your family!”.

Danny coughs extremely hard, choking a little, “I- what?”, then going a little wide eyed, “fuck”, putting his head in his hands, “he’s so gonna try to beat my ass and I’m gonna feel obligated to let him, I’m a moron”, rubbing his hands down his face and looking at her, “forget I said anything weird about Vlad? Who is not actually related to me, by the way?”.

She blinks at him disbelievingly, “so it’s just by chance you’re both half ghosts? I’m not that stupid, Danny”, and rolls her eyes.

Danny blinks very harshly, “please don’t tell him you know? Or how you do? I don’t want to deal with that?”, dropping his head down and groaning, before looking back to her, “my… parents are not very, uh, safe, with their tech”.

Paulina tilts her head, “I don’t really get it?”.

He glares a bit, “half ghost means half dead, and my parents aren’t very careful with their very dangerous and very temperamental tech. Figure that out yourself”.

She absolutely cringes at that, even she knew not to ask ghosts about the whole ‘how’ crap; and as much as she loves some good gossip, that kind of gossip was super not the fun kind or the kind she’d go spreading around. Talk about a way to make so many enemies. Looking away from him and twirling her hair some, “yeah no, I’m so not gonna push on that one, your parents are, like, super duper reckless”. It was obvious anyways that what he’s saying is that both he and Vlad had some kind of accident with Fenton tech… ouch.

He huffs very bitterly, “tell me about it”.

She just nods, not really sure what else to say now. Also, though, not a chance is she going to confront the mayor or try to get something out of him for her secrecy. She could tell from a mile away that man was dangerous. Even if all of Danny’s spats with him makes the guy seem like more of a joke. Looking up at the sky… the first stars were starting to appear. One of them even winks, or maybe that was just Paulina deciding the universe has excellent taste in drama. “It’s going to be a beautiful night out”.

Danny hums curiously before looking up too, “yeah, yeah it is. Mercury is supposed to be visible tonight”. What a nerd. “And the answer is yes, yes I can breathe on space”.

She absolutely smirks at that, “sweet”.

“Yup”.

End.

Look, okay, Danny gets why basically all of Amity decided to lean into the whole, “most haunted town in America! Come see real unalive ghosts!” thing. Money doesn't grow on trees and as good as Vlad is at swindling and blackmailing the government, the guy can only get so much government funding. And Vlad’s only willing to foot the towns damages bills himself so much… and he pesters the hell out of Danny every time he has to dip into his own savings.

So yeah, cashing in on the ghost problems was a great way to deal with things… technically anyways. The problem? Tourists were reckless dumbasses and Amity tour guides -like all Amity Parkers- have basically no sense of self preservation. Meaning random out of towners wound up in the middle of his ghost fights or thinking something isn’t as dangerous as it is. Heck one guy was so busy taking photos of goddamn Boxy that he walked into one of the unrepaired road craters, he broke a leg, and then Boxy harassed the ambulance because of it being square. “Of course the vehicle that allows life to continue on IS SQUARE ALL GREAT THINGS ARE SQUARE! LIFE SAVING VEHICLE OF CUBEULAR DESIGN!”; a paramedic had to smack the man with the spare tire.

And don’t get him started on people not fleeing from Skulker and his rockets and trigger happy fingers. Though the tour guides usually just yell, “purple backed gorillas!”, at him; pisses him off every time and Danny is a big fan of that. There was even a significant amount of purple backed gorilla plushies and keychains in the various gift shops, often feature Skulker getting people up by said gorilla. Ten outta ten merch design, honestly.

Eventually though… someone’s gonna fucking die, and then suddenly people might be cautious of vacationing or touring here; meaning funding will dry up a little defeating the entire purpose. So he needs to find a way to get that to not happen, and… watching Jurassic park gives him a damn good and damn insane idea.

Gyrosphere.

Yeah, a goddamn Gyrosphere, but durable enough to take him being bodily thrown into it or getting shot by a missile or kicked around by a skeleton army. Hell, that could become an attraction. Problem is how. Obviously he could pass the idea off to his folks, but they were way too likely to weaponize his little idea, or give it some kind of unhinged feature that goes horribly wrong for him somehow. Similarly he couldn’t exactly trust Vlad to not make the thing somehow mess with him. Tuck and Technus could both technically be viable options, but there’d be a serious question of if whatever they made would actually be safe; it would work but that might be it.

So who else does he know that’s good with tech and doesn’t want to horrifically beat his ass. Valerie didn’t quite count since she was really only good with her own tech, which wasn’t what he was looking for here. Now her father on the other hand… good with tech and programming, could draw up a mean blueprint, wasn’t crazy… The man, at least to some degree, built that whole protective field around Amity in Dan’s fucked up future, so hyperdurable ball vehicle should totally be doable!

Look, Damon likes Phantom probably more than most these days, considering the ghost was basically his daughters coworker… her one coworker that wasn’t insane. Similarly, Damon liked Danny more than most too, being one of his daughter’s close friends… her one friend that wasn’t something of an egomaniac or narcissist. But Phantom approaching him about ripping off Jurassic Park and building actual Gyrospheres with Danny’s input? The idea seemed overly reckless but… the ghost had a point in that it wouldn’t make the tourists any more reckless than they were already being. His daughter said that they also shouldn’t be trying to encourage the recklessness, but Phantom countered that with pointing out that eventually someone’s gonna get themselves killed. Even Damon couldn’t disagree with that, same went for his Valerie.

As for Danny Fenton’s involvement? It would be good to get the ol’ Fenton inventive genius input. And so that at least one Fenton would know what’s up with the devices in case of emergency. There was also a good point about how Danny could give a more ‘physically normal’ human input on the design, though Phantom had laughed a little at Valerie for the comment.

So now, here he is, with Danny, creating real life Gyrospheres. Really it shouldn’t work, at all, but with a little bit of Fenton tech know how and being heavily encouraged by someone attempting to steal Ember’s guitar as a souvenir; it’s coming together.

Sure when Phantom had first shown up and asked, “what if we put tourists inside a hamster marble and let them roll through spectral fist fights”, Damon had thought that even his egg sandwich was judgmental; but it was actually working.

He stands at the end of the designated work table with a stack of sketches on one side and empty coffee cups on the other. This is why Phantom came to him -outside of him not being insane- engineers were not hired for style, they were hired for nerve. Pushing one to the centre of the table and unfurling it across the polished table.

A perfect transparent sphere, nested with internal gimbals so the passenger cabin stayed upright while the outer shell rotated freely. Twin electric drive hubs. Redundant battery systems. Impact-dispersal ribs hidden in the frame. Climate control. Internal restraint seats. Emergency beacon. Auto-return navigation. Goddamn cup holders and a spot to attach a persons phone or personal camera. Shaking his head a little, Danny might not be his parents but he was nearly as crazy, adding cup holders before penetration resistance? Ridiculous.

Shaking his head at it before grabbing up the remote and clicking through to the next slide showing Phantom blasting at bits of glass, which thankfully held up. And generally if something can handle Phantom, it can handle everything else. Granted the ghost hadn’t gone so far as to use his Wail on the ball, but well… damn near nothing could survive that. The mayor funded a whole fleet of them anyway, mayor Masters even gave Danny an actual non-backhanded compliment for once even if the man had also grumbled about how ‘things like this’ reminded him of who Danny’s father was…

So Damon, and by default Danny and Valerie, got a warehouse space for prototyping. He handled all the diagrams, programming, more common sense design features, and figuring out how to make it work. Danny also worked on the how of it, the more ghost specific needs, access to ectoplasm (although Phantom also helped in that regard), and actually building the thing. Valerie was mostly just helping build, but she also had a good eye for when something just wasn’t stable enough… or where something Fenton-related was going to be weird/explode. None of the Fenton’s operated on real world logic, and that included Danny; eggs had to be banned from the warehouse. Danny’d tried to use them to see just how shock resistant the glass was and they wound up with a buzzard egg glass fusion monster…

Things were coming along though, steel skeletons hung from ceiling chains, curved transparent shell segments gleamed beneath work lights, hydraulic arms hissed, and welding sparks fell like angry fireflies. Thankfully Damon was the one organizing everything, and reorganizing when he came here after his actual job… if Danny was left to it it’d be a mess.

So as it was, Damon didn’t have a lot of free time, but it would be worth it if this did actually prevent someone from getting seriously hurt. Yes the money was… significant too, but he cared more about the people. He had to redesign the internal gimbal system twelve times so riders wouldn’t tumble like socks in a dryer. He added shock absorbers after Prototype Three rolled downhill into a koi pond. Prototype Four trapped Danny inside it for six hours. Prototype Five worked beautifully until the voice assistant malfunctioned and drove directly into a wall. Prototype Six caught fire… green fire, Danny said something went wrong with the ecto-coolant semi gloss to protect against ghost fire.

But eventually… and months later, the first full-scale model stood in the hangar. Seven feet tall, crystal-clear shell, smooth light green seating cabin suspended inside like the yolk of some expensive egg.

Damon sipped his coffee watching Danny circle it slowly, grease on his hands, and shadows under his eyes. Watching him place a palm on the shell; like he was the one who did the designing. But at least it was Danny and not his parents. Danny chuckling at it, “you ridiculous thing”.

Damon’s daughter nudged him, “should we stop him from testing it himself?”

Damon shakes his head, “no, you know Danny. He’d just do it sneakier”. Plus, everyone in town knew Danny was weirdly durable, result of that serve ecto-contamination most likely, so technically he was the best test pilot choice.

Danny climbs in, seals the hatch, straps himself down, and powers it on. The cabin stabilizes with a soft whir, screens light up green, and the sphere rolls forward.

So far so good.

He steers through the obstacle course of concrete fake ghost, ectoplasm pits, steep inclines, and fake fallen debris. The outer shell spins wildly while the cabin stays level and serene; the coffee in the cup holder barely ripples even. Damon can’t help grinning over his bizarre not-so-little creation.

Then the braking software fails and the Gyrosphere shoots through the hangar doors, down a service road, across a field, and into a potted plant. A bunch of blob ghosts exploding out of the potted plant, instantly giving chase to the sphere with Danny driving the thing away from them laugh. Witnesses later described seeing the transparent ball pursued by a gang of angry blob ghosts; and inside Danny had been screaming about how at least they couldn’t get in.

So they fixed the brakes, and when that test run went smoothly… Vlad got mass production working on them with all that money of his. And thankfully… the things end up actually being a hit, tourists adore them, children press sticky hands to the shell while ghosts duke it out in the skies, couples kiss inside them, the tour companies start using them in advertisements about getting to be part of the action. Though every single one was stamped with a ‘warranty void if taken into the ghost zone’, purely to avoid anyone being that reckless.

Was Danny pleased with himself? Yes, yes he was. Watching as the Box Ghost runs/flues away in fright being pursued by a rolling green tinted orb, “I! THE GREAT BOX GHOST! SHALL NOT BE TOUCHED! BY THIS CLEAR CYLINDRICAL MONSTROSITY!”. The tour guide inside looks like he’s having the time of his life and the three people in there with him are recording on their phones and egging the guide on; they take out a stop sign though.

The Gyrospheres had honestly only increased property damage, since him and Damon had made the things practically indestructible, meaning that now all the tourism was both making the town money and costing it money. Too late to stop all of this now though.

The ghosts, besides good ol’ Boxy, had also taken a liking to the people filled balls. Kicking the things, hitting them like baseballs, seeing if they could scare the people inside. Cujo picked one up in his mouth and refused to drop it for two hours, at least that had been with Amity Parker’s, who had been more than fine with being able to call out of work because of being in a ghost dogs mouth. A couple of people were actually using them as work vehicles now, since they were less likely to get crushed than regular vehicles.

YoungBlood spent a whole afternoon putting them into giant sling shots and firing them at Danny. Ember had commented that Danny should make them capable of zero gravity so they could get really involved in the fights, Danny had replied that the moment he does that is the moment the government seizes them as dangerous technology. He did have to stop his parents from trying to take one into the ghost zone though, since they absolutely did have the know how to make the Gyrospheres capable of flight and propulsion.

Plasmius floats up next to him, arms crossed, “Daniel”.

Danny smirks to himself, still watching the Box Ghost feeling from the orb, “Vlad”.

The man sighs and rubs his forehead, “I don’t know whether to congratulate you on making the town less of a death waiting to happen or for making the town somehow even more of a lawsuit waiting to happen”.

“You say that as if anyone could actually sue the town, you, or me”.

“It’s not for a lack of trying, Daniel”.

Danny blinks and snickers more, “oh shit, did you have to blow someone’s house up as a warning?”; he’s not remotely surprised when the man smacks him over the head for that.

Vlad shaking his head, “you know all the ghosts are just going to use this as an excuse to involve ‘bystanders’ even more”, inspecting his claws a little, “not that I care, but I doubt that’s ideal for your so call ‘reputation’”.

Danny snorting, “yeah I did help make people snack balls basically, if a chompier ghost shows up anyways”, pointing at Vlad, “and don’t pretend you give a shit about my rep, or that you think my rep is remotely salvageable outside of... Amity...”.

The two of them watch as a tour bus gets grabbed by the Box Ghost, "YES! I! THE BOX GHOST HAVE FOUND SOMETHING IN A TRUE AND PROPER SHAPE! FEAR ME!", and throws the bus at the Gyrosphere, the Gyrosphere skidding down the street, bouncing off of a fire hydrant that starts spewing water into the sky, and crashes in threw an office window followed shortly by the bus basically impaling the building. People are screaming from the bus, laughing and screaming from the Gyrosphere, and swearing from inside of the office building.

Danny's eye twitches and he sags with a sigh, "oh goddamn it".

Vlad huffs, "and think, all the towns buildings have been reinforced, meaning all that building would have gotten is some denting if it, you know, hadn't been bashed by indestructible giant people-filled soccer ball".

Danny puts his head in his hands before flying off towards the destruction. Guess all the buildings will need to be further reinforced, and all the road signs, and probably the roads. How has this actually somewhat made things worse? But also, way was anyone still using the tour buses? Just use the damn Gyrospheres! Danny glaring at the tour guide driving the bus as he pulls it out of the building, "why?".

The guide shrugs, "we got 'em, we might as well use 'em"; Danny could only sigh as he went about getting the Gyrosphere unimbedded from inside the building as well.

The Box Ghost puts his hands on his hips, looking and sounding incredibly smug, "I! AM THE FIRST TO DAMAGE YOUR LAIRS BUILDINGS IN A WHILE! PHANTOM! THAT MEANS YOU MUST FEAR ME! FOR I HAVE PROVEN! TO BE SUPIEROR! AHAHAHAHAHAHH! HAHHA! AHHAHHAH! HAHAHHAHA!".

Danny grinds his teeth a little, "Boxy, I'm going to kick your square little ass".

"IT 'TIS BETTER THAN A ROUND ASS!".

"Only you would say that, you ridiculous ghost".

One of the tourists mutters excitedly, "I got the box crazy fella saying 'round ass' on camera, that shit's gonna go viral". Danny... hates tourists, he really hates them.

End.

GHOST

Chap. 1:

I Tried To Belong In Your Flesh And Bone World

Wes knew he wasn’t a normal kid, especially since everyone else was apparently completely blind to the obvious. But there was signs that something else just wasn’t right with him, physically. At first he just thought he might have been born with some weird condition, one uncommon enough that it wasn’t diagnosed when he was young, and since whatever it was didn’t really seem to be hindering his life he chose to ignore it; also he was far too focused on exposing Phantom for needless distractions.

He should not have ignored it.

The first sign was the silence. Not the normal kind. Not the soft hush of late-night streets or the way the house went still when everyone else was asleep. This silence was… an absence, he supposed?

He noticed it when he tripped during yet another ghost attack where he’d been chasing after Phantom to try and catch video proof of his transformation, or of him saying something that was too obviously about his human life. Anyway, he had hit the pavement hard, shoulder first, breath knocked loose. He’d braced for the pain for a second, there should’ve been pain. Sharp, blooming, undeniable. Since he was pretty sure he hit his shoulder hard enough to dislocate it.

But there wasn’t.

There was just a sort of delay, as if the world had to buffer for a second. Leaving him lying there, staring at the cracked sidewalk, waiting for the hurt to arrive, but it never did. He was also seemingly entirely uninjured, which wasn’t right; he was positive he should’ve had at least one very nasty bruise. Yet… nothing.

And it left him wondering when was the last time he could actually remember getting hurt? A singe from an ecto-blast perhaps? Or that ache in his bones from getting hit by a ball of a more physical chunk of ectoplasm? He… can only think of ectoplasm-related examples.

“Dude, you good?”, Kwan had asked him later, kicking Wes’s shoe.

Wes had just responded automatically, still mentally trying to figure out what seemed so off, “yeah”. He’d tried stabbing himself with a fork he found, that hadn’t hurt either… and the prongs bent rather than actually stabbing through his skin. All he had had to show for the attempt was a row of indents that refilled and smoothed back out in a few seconds… it was probably one of the more unsettlingly uncanny things he’s seen before. It was just… a subtle wrongness; much worse than all the ghosts and their dramatic head spinning or popping off limbs. It was like he was a stress ball with freakishly strong bones…

Kwan had squinted, “you look… weird”.

Wes had muttered an absently annoyed, “gee thanks”.

But Kwan clearly hadn’t been joking. He had leaned in closer, with the same look Wes often had when he thought he’d spotted something supernatural about human Phantom again. “No, seriously. You’re doing that thing again”.

That had thrown Wes off a little, “what thing?”.

“You freeze. Like… like your brain crashes for a second”.

Wes had laughed it off; because what else was he supposed to do with that kind of comment?

Because the alternative was admitting that sometimes, when people talked, their words arrived in pieces. Syllables snapping into place a fraction too late. Like subtitles catching up to bad audio.

Because the alternative was admitting that sometimes, Wes could hear something else underneath it all: a faint ticking that he was starting to think wasn’t normal. It was like his brain and body weren’t quite in-sync.

Phantom winds up having to save his sorry ass three days later; as much as it annoys Wes, Danny is actually good at the whole wannabe hero thing.

The sad thing is it wasn’t even a big fight. Just some second-rate level five ghost tossing cars around like tantrum confetti. Wes had simply been in the wrong place, wrong time, and it was entirely his own fault since he’d been following Phantom around. He’d been so focused on Phantom that he didn’t even see the car coming.

One second: street and Phantom up in the sky picking a spectral fist fight.

Next second: metal screaming towards his skull.

Yeah, he was absolutely going to die. Perhapshe’d spent way too much time and effort trying to expose Danny and not enough actually living his life.

Then there’s a blur, and a hand, and then of course the impact. And, stupid goddamn self sacrificial Phantom had thrown himself in there, both of them getting absolutely clobbered by the car.

Danny wasn’t fast enough though, only getting badly nicked, mean while the car crumples against Wes’s body like it had hit a wall or something harder than a wall; knocking him into the ground, literally indenting into the road.

Danny stares at him, looking probably more baffled than Wes has ever seen him, and Wes has seen a lot of Danny’s baffled expressions. Danny blinks, “…you should definitely be dead. Like, as in dead dead”.

“You tell people that a lot? Since you’re so slow?”. Oh zone Danny’s rubbing off on him, he’s using wit to distract from the fact that he is freaking the fuck out, holy shit he should be a pancake. A very dead pancake. How is he even talking? He doesn’t even feel short of breath for someone who should have a crushed rib cage. And he’s getting that… lagging again, Phantom’s voice not lining up with his lip flaps. Even his movements look choppy…. Oh damn Wes’s head should be splattered apart right now. Just a massive mess of brains on the road.

“Hey fuck you, Wes”, Phantom frowns at him more, and fully drops from the air to land on the ground; though to Wes it looks more like he teleported from one spot to another. “Dude, your arm…”.

Wes blinks and glances at his arm, lifting his head and arm out of the dent he made in the road; his arm didn’t hurt so… the sleeves completely torn open, not surprising considering the car. There’s no blood, or forbid exposed bone. What there is is a lattice of sleek black metal, faintly glowing in an… ectoplasmic way under ripped open skin that looks too uncomfortably close to rubber as it’s thicker than he thinks skin is supposed to be. Wes’s stomach drops, what the hell?

Okay. He… this is something he needs to figure out, without Phantom being all weird on him. So he does the only thing he can think of and books it. Feet hitting pavement in perfect, rhythmic impacts. Noticing that it’s… too perfect, too even. No stumbles, no slips, no favouring one leg over the other. He was just crushed by a car and yet he’s running like an athlete…

Phantom sputtering, “W-Wes wait! Goddamnit!”, then sighing very loudly. Wes barely hearing his last comments of, “good going, Fenton, you scared away your stalker and not in the good way. Fuck my life”.

Wes books it all the way home, bursting in through the front door, eyeing the picture frames on the walls. Now that he’s thinking about it, he can’t quite remember the last time he talked to either of them. Moving to the closet to grab fuck tape, wrapping it around his arm to seal the wound shut; he probably can’t get infections…

Shaking his head and heading down to the basement; he’s been told, more than once, that the basement was off limits. But maybe where he wasn’t supposed to go would be where he’d get answers, answers about why the heck there’s glowing metal in his arm. About why he’s so durable. About way the world stutters some times. He’s looking for something, anything really.

The door’s locked, because of course it is. Perhaps he could go snooping through his dad’s study for the code, he was damn good at snooping. But… his hand sort of twitches, taking a shot in the dark he takes a mental back seat and stares at his arm and hand moving of its own accord; typing in the code for him.

What the actual fuck. Perhaps he should have dragged Danny along, he was the one good at actually dealing with weird shit. Wes just studied weird shit, namely Danny; but he never tried to actually deal with weird shit beyond trying to tell other people about Danny’s weird shit.

The basement- or rather the lab lights flicker on with a low hum. Okay… alright, this is just great. Guess his parents were mad scientists or something. Wonderful. Danny was supposed to be the one with crazy scientist parents, not him. And he knows he’s gonna have to tell Danny’s Phantom ass about this, because ugh, again the guy was actually good at the hero thing and it would be pretty stupid of him to hide crazy scientists from him. Partly because he didn't want to deal with Phantom being legitimately pissed off at Wes when he did eventually find out, and partly because he'd feel like shit if he knew about this and did nothing and someone got actually hurt. He wanted Phantom to be honest with the town, he wanted people to stop calling him crazy for speaking the truth, he wanted Danny to actually help the town with its ghost problem by being actually honest with everyone including all the anti-ghost morons. How Danny could just sit on the bombshell that was halfas, he does not understand; obviously ghosts were more like humans when a ghost could be literally half human. But what Wes did not want was for people to get hurt.

Moving to stand in the middle of the room, “okay Wes, use those detective skills of yours and find this places secrets”; approaching a computer and typing away. It’s ridiculously easy to hack in, as if whoever- his parents or parent didn’t expect anyone to be able to get down here to even try hacking in. Which was stupid considering how often people/ghosts literally phase through walls in this town.

Unless… unless the walls down here where ghost proof… That’s just more concerning though.

Multiple screens light up around him, showing images of… himself. Dozens of them. Dozens of him.

Blueprints. Schematics. Cross-sections. His face peeled back in layers of wires and green-tinted steel.

PROJECT: WES WESLEY UNIT

PURPOSE: PSYCHOLOGICAL DISRUPTION PROTOCOL

TARGET: DANIEL JAMES JANUS FENTON PHANTOM

Almost annoyingly, stupidly, the first thing his mind goes to is noting Danny’s second ‘Janus’ middle name. Before shaking himself off and staggering back from the screens. Lifting his hands up and staring at them, “I… what”, he feels like he should be shaking but he’s not, of course he’s not, he probably can’t, “I’m… a project”.

What..

How…

How should he even begin to deal with this? What should he do?

Clenching his hands and stomping back over to the computers, he has to look into this. Needs to know if his thoughts are his own. If his interest and drive to expose Danny is actually his own and not just something programmed into him. Has to know if any part of him is human, alive, at all.

There’s lots of files, videos, documents, programs. The files and programs he’s least likely to be able to make quick sense out of, he doesn’t exactly know how much time he’s got to snoop, so he goes for the videos first. Frowning, muttering to himself, “find the one timed around when I’m first sure I have real actual interactions with people, people other than my- the Wesley’s. Shit are the Wesley’s even real people?”, grabbing his head and roughing up his hair in frustration before clicking away some more.

The closest video is around two years old, clicking open the player and sitting down in the chair; putting his elbows on his knees, fingers to his mouth, and staring at the screen.

A man appears on screen, a man Wes recognizes immediately, it’s Vlad… Wes feels like he could smack himself, this should have been so goddamn obvious. Of course the person who made a crazy mad scientist lab and possibly built… well, built him, was the towns semi-local mad scientist. Zone he’s stupid… though, the man might have… have programmed him to not think of that.

Oh god, his mind absolutely isn’t just his own. Has been messed with.

Glaring at the man in his stupid rich suit and sharp smile. The kind of face that had never once been told ‘no’ by any one other than a goddamn teenager. Leaning over Wes’s body- his body just… laying on a metal table. The man nods to himself, “looks like Its activated properly. Excellent”, laughing lightly, “ah how wonderful it is to be a father, again”, standing up straight, “hopefully this one turns out more… agreeable”.

Wes recoiling in disgust, though this confirms that… his ‘parents’ his memories of them, are fake; absolutely fake. The last thing he wants to be is agreeable to this bastard, but now he seriously has to question if he actually has a say in the matter. He’s going to have to look into the program files, have to find out if he’ll ever be forced to act against his own will. Find out if he’s thoughts are just programs or actually something of his own at all. Does he even actually exist?

He really should have just dragged Phantom with him, this is his villain/uncle/god father after all… and apparently Wes’s ‘father’ too, ugh that’s disgusting and frustrating.

Watching video Vlad walk back over to the computers and type away, muttering to himself, “that boy is far too empathic, too protective. That tiresome instinct to care for others. You’ll pester him just enough for him to notice you and get attached, get protective. And you’ll keep an eye on him, oh yes you will”. The video ends and Wes clicks to another. He… wasn’t even made purely for the nut job to see if he could, he was made to be a problem for Phantom…

This time there’s just Vlad, watching the a screen, watching a video feed from the point of view of someone walking, talking to Kwan about the basket ball season and then, Wes can hear his own voice, “you know the only reason Danny gets down from the basket ball hoops when you guys string him up there is because he can float, right?”; with Kwan rolling his eyes at the viewer. Vlad… had or has a video feed to his goddamn eyes. Even the real experiences he’s had aren’t fully just his…

There’s videos of him laughing, hanging with friends, crawling through bushes to track Phantom, the handful of times Phantom’s had to save his sorry ass… Vlad often zooming in on Danny’s face in those scenes, commenting on the annoyed yet fond expressions he makes; Phantom looks notably both more fond and more comically annoyed over time.

Then he finds a video of the lab again, except this time it’s a video of himself talking to Vlad and he doesn’t remember this at all. Video Wes is angry and clearly arguing with the man.

Vlad is eyeing him, “I gave you memories. Personality. Flaws. You’re quite convincing, really. Even you believed it. That’s the beauty of it”.

Video Wes shakes his head, “No. No, absolutely not I remember things. My childhood, my-”.

Vlad cuts him off with a scoff, “fabrications, obviously”, rolling his wrist nonchalantly, “every scraped knee. Every birthday. Every moment carefully written and installed”.

Video Wes narrowing his eyes, “and my feelings? My emotions? Did you fuck around with all that too, you bastard?”.

Vlad looks genuinely interested then, “an emergent side effect. Fascinating, honestly”, crossing his arms and shaking his head, “and really what is it with this tone? Why do all of you have to always wind up so defiant”.

Video Wes laughed darkly then, even sounding a bit broken, “so what? Am I just…”, gestures wildly, “a bomb? A trap? A mild annoyance? And you deserve nothing but defiance, you piece of shit”.

“So crude”, Vlad shakes his head, “you’re a knife. And that boy will pick you up all by himself”.

Wes leans back in the chair and rubs his forehead, glancing around the lab for a camera; he shoots the thing with his personal ecto-gun the second he spots it. Staring down at his knees, on screen him had said ‘bomb’… was there a literal bomb in him? Was he built to goddamn explode, he… that was impressively messed up actually. Eyeing his hands and really looking at them, trying to think about his friends hands and how they look… the ‘veins’ aren’t quite right, there’s no peach fuzz, skins too even actually. It’s all just something pretending to be skin very, very well.

On video Wes snapping, “I won’t? you know, I might think he’s a shit head dick who should stop lying to people, but I’m not going to hurt him”.

“Oh my dear boy, you will, whether you want to or not”.

Wes flinches and gets up, starts pacing a circle in the lab floor. Okay, okay, that’s… that’s not good. That’s horrifically bad. It… that answered how much say he had.

None.

Fuck all.

Diddly squat.

“Damnit, no”, grabbing at his hair a bit, “no, no, no”; and his breathing -however it is that he actually breathes, is there even any point to him breathing? He’s not organic, he doesn’t need the oxygen- picks up rapidly. Sharp and shallow. Bending over and wheezing, “okay, it’s okay. Zone this is fucked. I- okay but the… the feelings aren't programmed”, wheezing again, “and I’m panicking, people panic. Humans panic. And I am definitely panicking. I’m doing a human thing. Okay, okay”.

But the stupid ticking is so goddamn noticeable now, he can’t ignore it if he tried. Putting his hands over his ears and muttering, “just, just stop”. Of course it doesn’t, and he can’t force it to; since it was coming from inside him. Dropping a hand and staring at it shaking, the shaking… is too consistent. It’s less shaking and more twitching, controlled micro movements. “I… I don’t want to be a damn thing. Something someone built for a reason that- that I didn’t choose”.

He… he should get out of here. Find Phantom, and actually ask the idiot for help or- or maybe not. What if Vlad was watching him, watching through his eyes right now? What if Vlad already set in motion whatever he’s planning? Vlad was a ecto-scientist, and a deranged lunatic, he absolutely could make something to genuinely destroy Danny.

Wes rushes up stairs, grabs a jump drive, checks it for bugs, and rushes back down to stick in the computer. Downloading what he can and leaves the lab, almost running up the steps, breathing still wrong but moving. Everything was wrong, everything might not be real. It was suspect, every memory and every thought; he’ll have to literally investigate himself to see how much was real, how much was errors, and how much was just Vlad. At least he knows the feelings aren’t Vlad, that’s not much of a comfort but it’s something. It’s enough, not really, but he’s got to make it work.

Without what Vlad made, he doesn’t exist at all.

Now… now he’s got to figure out what he was… designed to do, how to stop it, how much of him was real, how much Vlad knew about what he’s doing now.

Did Vlad want Danny exposed as Phantom? Why? Or was that always just him? Did Vlad just make him to be a ‘friendly bomb’ but abandoned the idea when Wes started playing investigator because it was more interesting or amusing to the nut job? Did this body have an automatic expiration date? Is he going to… well not die but stop?

Not die.

He can’t even goddamn die.

He’s not alive. Not a being.

The thought that Danny’s probably thought that same things sometimes jars him out of his own head a little.

…

He needs a secured computer.

Phantom finds him sitting on a rooftop mildly twitch shaking and glaring at a laptop Wes stole from Tucker’s locker. If anyone was going to have secured tech, it would be the techno geek sidekick. Wes also knows the guy has a bajillion laptops and pdas and earpieces; since everything got destroyed so frequently. This won’t even be the first time he’s stolen one of the guys laptops.

Phantom landing gently on the roof, “Wes? Buddy? You good?”; oh god he’s talking at Wes like he’s a terrified little kitten or something and is freaking Danny out. “You kinda ran away there? Why’d you do that, bud?”.

They’ve never been ‘buddies’, Phantom’s never called him buddy. How is this concerning the dumbass ghost more than… than Wes or Vlad through Wes or whateverthefuck trying to expose him. Zone he kind of wishes he could stab himself in the leg and actually see blood. Grimacing at the laptop screen, “wouldn’t you run?”.

Phantom blinks, Wes can practically hear him blinking, why is everything so loud now. “If you’re asking if I would run away from probably one of the only people that could actually help with whatever? No, no I- wait shit-”, Phantom glancing to the side, “-I totally would do that. Fucking hypocrite”, looking back to Wes, “uh, did you… at least figure out why your bones are glowing metal?”.

Wes can’t help the flinch that jerks his entire body, glaring harder at the screen. Wheezing a little, “I don’t know-”.

“So the laptops for figuring it out the-”.

Wes scowls, interrupting Danny, “let me finish, zone damnit you’re an ass”, rubbing a hand down his face, “this is- ugh”.

Phantom audibly blinks again, “o-kay”, and cautiously starts walking over.

Wes tensing a bit, blurting out, “I’m something built to hurt you”, mostly in hopes to get the dumbass to stay away in case he… he what? Blows up. He shouldn’t be dealing with this. He should be a normal kid, worried about basketball ball and hyper-fixating on Wikipedia; not wondering if his metal body was a bomb.

Phantom does stop, thankfully, one not shit thing in this shit day. “Ancients fucking Christ, did that shit head clone me again but weirder”.

Wes pauses and eyes the half ghost, “again?”. That was new, he didn’t know about that, Danny’s been cloned before? Is that what Vlad had meant by ‘hopefully this one will be more agreeable’?

Phantom shrugs, “Vlad’s crazy crazy”.

Wes gritting out, “I’ve noticed”.

Phantom pointing at him, “so that’s a yes on Vlad and a probable no on cloning”.

Wes… Wes should stop even mildly attempting to keep Danny out of this, lost cause. “Not clone”. He’d be a shit clone anyways, they look and sound nothing alike, that’s without even touching on the lack of powers…

“Okay”.

Phantom’s still looking at him like he’s going to fall apart, Wes is still twitch shaking, but at least he didn’t come closer. Wes taps away on the laptop, playing that video.

“-I might think he’s a shit head dick who should stop lying to people, but I’m not going to hurt him”.

“Oh my dear boy, you will, whether you want to or not”.

Phantom blinks, “so definitely definitely Vlad. Also, did you seriously confront Vlad? Are you insane?!?”.

Wes grimacing and grumbling, “a year and seven months ago apparently”; and that long ago he hadn’t yet realized how dangerous, and insane, Vlad was. The Wes of now wouldn’t confront that man alone, that was a suicide mission for anyone other than Danny, Maddie, or Valerie.

“Huh?”.

“I don’t remember it”, Wes grimacing deeper, “he deleted the memory”. It was… it was so utterly fucked that his memories could just be… deleted like that. Gone. Lost. Forever. A file folder a mouse moved into the trash bin and then cleaned out. He is a little bitterly proud of himself for apparently figuring everything out so fast. Obviously Vlad did… did something to him to block him from finding out as easily or as quickly or the same way again. Altered what he could see, or altered the way he can think. Maybe just blocked him from thinking certain things without altering how he thinks. Curling and uncurling his fingers a few times to try and not throw the laptop in frustration.

Do his emotions even work like human emotions? How would he even know? How could he?

He can hear Danny blinking again, “that’s… that’s new and that’s fucked up”, sighing and sitting on the rooftop a good distance away still, “so robot then”. Wes’s twitching gets a little worse, glancing at Phantom to glare violently. Phantom puts up his hands pacifyingly, looking more nervous of Wes than he ever has before, “okay, android then, better? I call Red that all the time and she don’t mind”.

That makes Wes pause, right, Valerie, the Red Huntress, she was filled with nano bots, practically half machine. It’s… not the same, not even kind of. She was still a person. A human being. First and foremost. He just… he wasn’t. Clenching his hands, “just shut up, Danny”.

“Shutting up is not one of my skill sets”.

“I’m going to steal all your shoes”.

Phantom actually grins, it’s a wobbly grin but still a grin, “good”.

Wes rolls his eyes, damn that stupid ghost hybrid. He’s… trying to help and it’s working and that pisses Wes off just a little bit. “He has a video feed to my eyes, by the way”.

“That’s… not ideal”.

Wes’s hands tighten on the laptop enough to make it creak, it takes some serious restraint to not just… hurl the laptop at the idiot. But he’s not twitching so frequently now, just once every few seconds, like clockwork. Not randomly, in a timeable pattern. Artificial.

“So why tell me?”.

Wes blinking and looking to the now frowning half ghost, taping a bit to replay the video. “-I might think he’s a shit head dick who should stop lying to people, but I’m not going to hurt him”. Phantom just blinks at him so Wes glares hard, “why would I want to blow you up? Fuck you”.

Phantom quirking an eyebrow, “you’re literally always doing something that could get me dissected so…”, shaking his head, “so he, what, wanted you to explode while I was rescuing you or something? He’s had a millions chances to set that off or whatever”.

Wes grumbling, “wasn’t supposed to have emotions, he’s interested”.

“Oof that’s rough, feelings suck. Vlad being interested also sucks”.

Wes can’t even figure out if he agrees with that first bit. The… feelings are all he’s sure are his, but it’s… they’re… it’s not great feeling things. Things he’s not meant- not built to. That’s probably why he has lags or glitches, the twitching. Does he even want to feel if he’s not even alive? Shaking his head hard, “yeah… yeah”, frowning, “but the emotions are all I know are mine”.

Phantom makes some… noises, “ah- eugh- hmngh- um”, takes a breath, and tries again, “that’s not great either”.

Wes grumbling bitterly, “I probably physically can’t even handle- process emotions”. He was quite literally not designed for it; he’a…. He’s probably filled with errors. Errors he probably can’t do anything about, because what if fixing them or rewriting them or deleting them, deletes him. If he’s just a defective error in a machine.

“Explains why you’re such an irrational git sometimes”.

Wes pauses to glare at Phantom again, “you, are not helping”.

Phantom shrugs, “eh you’re mad at me instead of going down a self destructive existential crisis, so I’d say I am”.

Wes points a finger at Phantom, “that, this, is exactly what Vlad was talking about. So selfless and protective you’ll do something stupid and get yourself blown up”.

“Helping a frienemy isn’t stupid”.

“Yes it is, especially when they’re a walking spy bot and literally a bomb waiting to go off”.

“There’s been lots of chances, doubt it’s an issue”.

“I hate you”.

Phantom shrugs, gestures at the computer, “so let’s make it for sure not an issue”.

“So this is a ‘we’ thing now”.

“Wes, it was literally always a ‘we thing’, regardless of you running away like a little bitch”.

Wes’s eye twitches, irrationally angry, and actually hurls the laptop at the guy this time. Phantom catching it easily, only having to float up slightly, then back down. He starts typing and clicking away immediately and… and Wes feels… exposed, or embarrassed maybe? Violated. Definitely violated.

What’s on there is him, and Phantom’s just… just poking around in it. But Wes refuses to go near him to get it back, especially since Phantom could just fly up out of his reach; so instead he just has a full body twitch and glares at him violently.

Phantom waves him off without looking at him, “I’m not going to snoop or delete shit, shit that I don’t understand. I’m not the tech genius and I’m not that much of an asshole”, humming, “just maybe turn off the internal spyware”.

He… he has spyware, well of course he does, Vlad’s spying through him like a hacked nannycam. Putting his head in his hands, because watching Phantom is just going to rile him up. Wheezing, “I’ve just been unknowingly playing at being real, being human”.

“I know the feeling, man. At least you’re less illegal than me”.

Wes… absolutely forgets about that. Ghosts being ‘illegal’ in ‘the land of the living’. Muttering into his hands, “if the world knew about halfas, about you, that’d probably change”.

“It absolutely would not”.

Wes groans a little, for once he doesn’t really feel like having this argument. Especially because what does that say about his own existence? He’s probably some kind of technological breakthrough. His existence could advance so much technology. But… that… the idea feels like being used as a thing. “At least you know all your memories are real. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually felt anything or if it’s just- just programming pretending really hard-”.

“Okay”, Phantom holds up a hand and eyes him, “pause. Not stopping you just… quick little intermission”, pointing at him, “you, are spiralling.”

“I’m- yeah, obviously”.

“Right, but like, actively. You’re doing the mental equivalent of sprinting down ten different hallways that all end in ‘nothing matters’. We’re gonna slow that down before you metaphorically set the building on fire”.

Wes scowls at him, grumbling, “…I’m not doing that on purpose, and I think I’ve earned being allowed to”.

“Yeah, brains tend to do that. Organic ones, synthetic ones, haunted toaster ones. Doesn’t matter. It just happens to not be a good thing to be doing”, looking back down at the computer, “and- Ancients fuck you really do have a bunch of explosives in you, what the fuck Vladdie”.

Wes just groans audibly at that, the ticking becoming unpleasantly obvious to him again. He… really wants it to go away. How… how much of him is comprised of bomb material? Some prices in his torso? Or all of his ‘bones’? His ‘skin’? Every single time he was around his friends he could have just blown them up.

“Ecto-creaton? Really? Jackass”. Wes looks up when a snowball smacks him in the side of the head, things seem to stop lagging at that; like how a person smacks a tv to make it work right. Phantom continuing when Wes glares at him, “for your information, this might have done a serious number on me, like a year ago? now not so much. Annoying and painful maybe, but it’s not gonna end me”, shrugging and looking back down to the computer screen, “I’d just be Danny soup for a bit and reform eventually”.

Wes hugging his knees to his chest and resting his forehead on said knees, “that’s good, I guess”; he’d still be blown up though, he’d still damage whatever’s around him.

“You only guess that’s it’s good you can’t actually end me?”.

Wes sighs heavily, “marginally good”, and if Danny knows that Wes’s… that his ticking can’t actually end him then so does Vlad. So Vlad probably won’t make him blow up. Probably. “Would… would I survive it though?”.

“I mean… physically? No. Bombs kinda blow themselves up, most of themselves anyways. The ignition or timer might survive, the rest? Naw”. Wes wheezes to himself, while Phantom continues, “but you, as in the person? You’ve got this thing as a back up so, get a new body? A body that’s not just a person-sized spy cam and bomb?”.

Wes exhales heavily, “I hate this conversation and I hate you”, lifting his head and staring out at the city, “who knows how much of me is actually in that, or when I was… was backed up last”, and squeezes his legs a little. The give is… not quite like flesh and muscle and fat; and he’s hyper aware of that fact now.

“Then we give this to Tuck and Tuck figures you out. I suck at this shit and if Vlad, you know, made you able to understand all of this then he’s a fucking idiot. And Vlad, though crazy, is not an idiot. That’d be like making an ai able to write and build itself”.

Wes scowling and turning his head slowly to Phantom, who blinks at him, “huh, well, I guess you are ai. Sam’s gonna hate that”.

Artificial… that’s all he is. This… hurts. He almost feels like crying a little… if he even can cry. Grimacing, “I just realized, I don’t think I’ve ever cried”; honestly, he’s not sure why he felt the need to actually say that. Maybe just to make Danny feel bad.

Phantom winces, “honestly… I could do without crying”.

“What do you have to cry about”.

Phantom quirks a very judgmental eyebrow, “I’m dead? I don’t fit neatly into either species that I’m a part of? The boat load of traumas I have? You try getting cut open without anesthesia and not have nightmares about that shit”; looking back to the computer and clicking a few more things a bit more aggressively than before.

Wes can’t help another twitch, yeah he guesses Danny has gone through a lot of awful stuff. Wes is having a crisis, multiple crises, but Danny’s been through some serious shit. A lot of which Wes has witness and written down… frowning a bit, “right, yeah. And if someone did do that to me, I’d probably just be a bunch of metal and wires”.

“Realistically? Yeah”.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better”.

“Just be glad you can feel. Truths a bitch”, looking up and glaring at Wes, “and not always for the best”. Wes flips him off, and feels a little better for it. Danny smirks, “and you don’t know, the emotions might have overwritten or rewritten the code; if code’s what we’re going with here. And I say this because…”, squinting at the computer, “pretty sure you disarmed yourself”.

Wes frowns, “I tick”.

“Like a clock?”.

Wes rolling his eyes, “yes like a clock”.

“How did you not notice and realize that’s not normal earlier…”.

Wes stands up and kicks some roof dust at the ghost, “oh maybe because I do not have a reference for normal”, pointing at Danny and snapping, “you got to be a human, I! did not! You ass".

Phantom eyes him from the ground, cautious, "that's fair, actually", eyes widening, glancing at the computer and then back to Wes, "and technically, you're only, like, two-ish years old", blinking, "how the hell did no one find you randomly showing up one day weird?".

Wes huffing, "everyone in this town is blind, remember? I've pointed that out nearly every day for... well for my entire existence, I guess".

Phantom chuckles at that and closes the laptop, looking the laptop over, "did you steal this from Tuck? Really Wes?".

Wes scowls, "I know he secures his shit".

Phnatom standing up, "true", and tucks the laptop under his arm and holds the opposite hand out to Wes, "now, since we've established that you're not going to blow up in my arms and I’ve deactivated the remote spy stuff, take my hand. I'll fly us to Tuck's, and he can actually figure this intellectual mess out".

Wes frowns a little, glances down at his torso, then his hands. Looking back to Phantom, "I guess I've got nothing to really lose, do I. Not like I've got a real existing family that'll worry about me. And I won't die if you drop me".

Phantom snorting and rolling his eyes, "no, you'll just leave another person-shaped pothole in the road; which I'll definitely get blamed for. Now come on".

Wes blinks, "'person'-shaped, right", and walks over to let Danny grab him and lift him up into the air. He knew well enough there was no point fighting Danny when he really puts his mind to something. What was the point in even helping him though? He’s nothing, not a being, not a person, not alive. Just circuits and systems.

Phantom doesn't shoot off like a rocket, he takes the flight slow, "you are a person, definitely are. You might not have been meant to be, but you are. Whether you're happy about that, and whether or not you're going to embrace being an android or ai or a machine of sorts, is up to you. Something you'll have to figure out for yourself".

Wes frowns, largely ignoring the wind rushing past them. He's... not really sure what he wants. The sheer idea and fact that what he's not, is human, is alive, hurts more than a bit. Actually owning and openly -with himself- being a... a whatever it's best to call him, feels like he's stabbing himself in his non-existent heart or lungs.

Danny seems to understand his silence, "ignoring it won't work, just saying. And addressing, getting comfortable with, accepting, being this way is not the same thing as being loud and proud about it. The first three you kinda have to do, you'll fuck yourself up real bad if you don't. I would know", Danny shrugs, moving Wes a little as he continues talking, "been there and done that, but you know that, don't you, you weird ass stalker".

Wes stares down at the streets and buildings below them, zipping by. He does know that Danny knows what he's talking about here. He's accidentally, sort of accidentally at least, overheard Danny having more than one breakdown over dying/being dead. And it's not like Danny had any more time to prepare for finding out he was dead than Wes did for finding out he was a goddamn robot.

...

He still doesn't like robot. It's... too soulless, he guesses.

Pressing his lips together, "just so you know, I never kept any of your recorded self fuck ups".

Danny snorting, "gee thanks. I already knew that though, you're a pain in my ass but not a sadist".

"I would have been, if I'd been made to be".

"But you weren't, and you aren't, and now it's more up to you how you're 'made' to be; and that's what matters", sounding a little far off, "regardless, the future isn't as set in stone as you think it is".

Wes... Wes doesn't want to change anything about the... code that comprises him. Doesn't want to accidentally delete or alter something that makes him him. Even if Tucker can make more sense out of it for him, still... It would be too easy to just... destroy his mind. Fix the physical, the bomb issue, and the remote access spyware, trackers, anything like that. Things he shouldn't have to begin with, but does because of a lunatic: a lunatic that he wouldn't exist without. Though he supposes that's not too different from a normal human and their... parents. "... I hate Vlad".

"Welcome to the club, we actually have t-shirts now. Do you want the 'Vlad's a deadbeat dad' version or the ‘Vlad murder attempt survivor’ version or the more standard 'Vlad's a creepy fruitloop' version?".

Wes... doesn't have a good answer for that, so he doesn't respond as they phase through Tucker's window. Wes staggering forwards a bit as he finds his footing, since Danny just let go of him immediately. Danny grabbing Tucker's foot and shaking it aggressively, "wake up, Vlad's sunken even deeper, and we need your tech brain".

Tucker mumbling sleepily, "just take me to his com-", yawning, "computer or whatevers".

"Nope, I brought the problem already. Bomb".

That gets Tucker up immediately, him flailing in his sheets, "WHAT! BOMB! Bomb where!", and looks around frantically; barely even pausing at Wes being in his bedroom.

Danny gestures at Wes, "bomb. He's the bomb", then hands over the laptop.

Tucker shoving on his glasses and opening it up, "congrats that makes no sense, did Wes eat a bomb?".

Wes glaring, "no I didn't eat a goddamn bomb, I'm not stupid".

Tucker shrugging, "it's a fair question, Danny's done it three times now".

"Danny eats forks... have any of you ever seen me eat a goddamn utensil?".

Danny blinks and eyes Wes, "you know, I don't think I've ever actually seen you eat".

Wes opens and closes his mouth, he... he's not sure if he remembers actually eating anytime in the past two-ish years; and everything before then is false, fabricated lies. Scrunching his face up, "oh, oh have I never eaten anything?", turning sideways and gesturing at a wall, "how did I miss that!?!".

Tucker makes a face, "okay, I'm confused", looking to Danny while Wes keeps on making aggressive gestures at nothing, "mind filling me in on why Wes seems to be losing his shit... losing his shit more than he normally is anyways".

Wes turns around and points at him, "shut up".

"Dude, you are so not an example of emotional stability".

Wes twitches again, zone his emotions are messed up, they're definitely wrong or not processing right; and if he tries to fix that, he'll probably just make himself an entirely different person. Phantom cringes, "uh, about that", gesturing at Wes, "Vlad made him, he's two-ish years old, definitely an android not a clone, he's got metal bones and wires and code and shit that’s likely all ecto-infused or ecto-enhanced, he was supposed to blow up and end me at some point when I would wind up saving him in a fight but he developed emotions and Vlad got distracted, and I've now noticed that he squishes more like a needoh than a flesh and bone person".

Wes scowls at him, "thanks, I hate that. Coulda done without that information".

Danny puts a hand to his chest, "gasp! The slueth not wanting new information?!? I'd ask if you're sick, but that'd be impossible", dropping his hand, "and Wes, Vlad probably designed something to make sure you wouldn’t notice your own weirdness".

Wes glares, breathing calming down just a little bit at least, "still".

Tucker open-mouth stares at Wes, who shifts a bit on his feet. Tucker eyeing the laptop and moving his face closer to the screen; Wes is still of the opinion that that feels incredibly invasive. Tucker adjusting his glasses and looking like he's goddamn smitten, "holy shit, okay", shaking his head, "I know I've- hell, we've, mentioned that Vlad's a genius, but this is some truly insane, unhinged, amazing, shit".

Wes cringes, "er, thanks. For the love of everything, stop looking at what's effectively me like some love-sick puppy. I already feel exposed enough as it is, and I still feel ten seconds away from a complete mental breakdown"; and wheezes a little. Turning away to grab Tucker's spinny chair and flopping himself down on it, putting his elbows on his knees and head in his hands; rubbing his face and groaning. He's... he's still way too aware of how wrong his skin is, the way he can actually feel the 'bone' underneath when he's pretty sure that humans can't physically feel their bones from the inside. And the stupid godforsaken ticking... Groaning again, "just... just find a way to make the fucking ticking stop".

Wes mentally bores holes into his hands while Tucker and Danny have a little conversation.

Tucker: "O-kay. Alright. Uh Danny, what's he mean by ticking eactly?".

Danny: "The bomb, Tuck. He means the bomb. Guy needs to be disarmed properly. I already got the remote video feed access to his eyes deactivated, one issue solved, but still... And don't worry about the bomb, it'll just soup me these days".

Tucker: "that's good, Danny-dude. Want me to outright scrap the remote access stuff?".

Wes snaps into his hands, "don't you dare scrap fuck all without explaining exactly what it is to me".

Tucker: "oh yeah, obviously, be a dick move not to. With that, I just mean the tiny access code Vlad put in. Think of it as like a password for a backdoor into your systems. Absolutely zero negatives or side effects with deleting it, just kicks Vlad's access out entirely instead of it just being blocked until he manually resets the password".

Wes sighs and nods into his hands, "fine. I hate this".

Tucker: "I don't know, being a robo-Tucker would be sick as hell".

Danny, sounding very warning, "Tucker... how many times did we all have to have that 'don't be jealous of being a spooky ghost' talk with Sam?".

Tucker: "ah shit, right. Sorry, Wes".

All Wes can really think to say is, "pick any other word other than 'robot'", and groans again. The idea of someone being jealous of this shit absolutely makes him feel sick and disgusted. Like an optional thing someone can just choose to be for fun for a while, meanwhile he's stuck with a metal and rubber body filled with wires and circuits that only has a personality because of a bunch of code and likely errors.

Danny: "Android it is".

Tucker: "uh yeah, Android... Anyway, Danny, there doesn't look to be any code I can mess with to disarm the actual bomb- holy shit, there's a person bomb in my bedroom, why is this my life. So uh, gonna have to do that physically".

Danny: "as in open him up?", the guy sounds physically sick over that.

Tucker: "as in open him up, yeah. Jazz has said exposure could be good therapy, you know".

Danny: "I will feed your PDAs, all of them, to the harpies".

Wes sighs, "is there literally any other option? And could you at least silence the ticking"; if all he can do is get rid of that, he can ignore it, ignore the literal explosive that's a part of the body he's stuck in.

Tucker: "heh, no. Major sorry on that one. And sure, yeah, one sec".

And, as promised, a couple of seconds later, the ticking just... stops. Gone. Completely. Wes blinks into his hands harshly before jerking his hands up and staring at Tucker, "you could have done that from the start, holy shit". It... He... Almost feels too quiet now. How did he never really pay any attention to that constant, incessant background sound before???

Tucker winces at him, chuckling awkwardly, "I was distracted by your beauty". Danny smacks Tucker for him at least. Tucker adding on, "also didn't think it would happen instantly, figured you'd need to be plugged in and sync, or update perhaps, first". Wes just glares harder; he hates that those words apply to him now, that they always did.

Danny frowns, "we need to block whatever computer you got this off of, then, otherwise Vlad could just show up and mess with you".

Oh... Wes hadn't even considered that. Standing up only for Danny to hold up a hand at him, "I'll deal with it, you just stay here and watch over Tucker and the you that’s plugged into the laptop", turning to Tucker, "I'll ring you over the Fenton Fones, just tell me how to lock Vlad out of whatever, or remove Wes from it entierly".

Tucker frowning, "if we're gonna remove him entirely from the main hub, he should have a new one, and not a laptop. Not to mention backups, oh zone, so many backups", turning to Wes, "I've got a bunch of heavily encrypted drives in the fake floor tile box in the left corner. Could also upload you into your own locked, closed-off section of the encrypted and very illegal server space I've got. That way, if the physical hard drives and main hub get obliterated into ash, your everything would be retrievable from the cloud".

Wes blinks, he... should have gone straight to Tucker. "Uh, yeah... yeah, that's probably a good idea". Would that… make him functionally immortal???

Tucker gives him a thumbs up and begins typing and clicking away on the laptop. Danny nods at them, pointing at Wes, "remember, there's a you behind all those ones and zeros", and turns, flying out through the closed window.

Wes blinking, looking to Tucker, "I, uh, guess he'd know, huh?".

"I don't know, Wes. You tell me. The guys had more than a crisis or two over how much of him is just ectoplasm and how much of him really survived that whole dying thing; how much of him his ectoplasm changed. All ghosts are is ectoplasm, that's all they've got, all that makes them them. But there's still a person in all that green goop".

Meaning that if what made him him was some code, a bunch of ones and zeroes, he's still more than just that. It's a bit hard to see it that way. Frowning, "yeah, well, someone can't just up and delete his personality with a keystroke, can they".

Tucker frowns, "not with a keystroke, no", turning back to the computer, "but ghosts are a lot more impressionable than the living, especially while they're a child ghost".

Wes hadn't really considered that, thought about that. Still felt less extreme, more maybe just felt less instant, than the deletion threat to him. Walking over to Tucker, "okay, now what are you doing or looking at?".

"Your nudes".

"I'm going to throttle you".

"Oh no, I'm serious".

Wes glares, "I repeat, I am going to throttle you".

Tucker only chuckles, putting his Fenton Fone in his ear and tapping as he gets a ping signal from Danny. Wes opting to just lay on the floor and stare at the geek's ceiling while Tucker walks Danny though things. It's not like Wes could really give any input here, he can't see what Danny's doing... doing to the 'main' Wes Wesley. All paying attention and knowing is going to do is give him another panic attack, or what he thinks was a panic attack.

At least he knows the weirdo trio is good for keeping a secret; he definitely doesn't want this becoming anything close to Amity gossip... And he understands Danny a lot more now, man, he feels a bit like an ass for trying to forcibly out him. He still says it would be better for the town and probably Danny for him to be more of an open secret, but it was messed up for him to have tried to force that. Especially if he turned out to be wrong about the town and his parents reacting positively to the news; like Danny was so sure they wouldn't.

Today has been a truly awful day, an impressively shit twenty-four hours. At least the ticking is gone, being a bomb still or not. The fact that he basically needs an operation, and probably some parts replaced, to fix that pisses him off more than a little bit. He... doesn't think he can trust anyone to do that to him. Breathing in and out, slowly. He should... attempt at assessing himself, at trying to be comfortable or close to comfortable with this body he's stuck with. Oh, and the next time he sees Vlad in a public place, he's going to kick him in the balls as hard as he physically can.

Spreading his fingers out and wiggling them against the carpet, trying to pay attention to the texture; he can't tell if what he feels is what a human being would feel, and there's no way he'll ever be able to actually compare. But his chest rises and falls, there's movement in his chest mimicking a heartbeat, and he's still here; he's still him. For now, at least.

Tucker speaks up louder, "hey, stop fondling my floor and get up here. Danny's good, and you should know, well, know yourself, I guess. Your codes and programs, the works. Also, definitely all your possible backdoors and security flaws; I can set alarms for all that stuff, but you should still keep your own eye on it. Just keep this laptop, it's a solid one".

Wes shoves himself up off of the floor, slouching a bit before shaking himself off, and joining Tucker by the laptop, "yeah, okay. As if I'm going to even be able to understand every word you say".

Tucker smirks, "I'll dumb it down, don't worry. And it's not like I understand your government conspiracy talk, or Danny's space babble, or Sam going off about plant types and care again, or Valerie's weapons talk. Honestly, Valerie would probably be more helpful with your actual physical body than me; I'm a techy, not a mechanic".

"I am not dealing with any more bullshit today". The fact that he even technically needs a mechanic is disturbing enough as it is; he needs parts and service rather than a doctor.

All Tucker does is snort at that. The two spent nearly the entire night with Tucker pointing out this and that, effectively explaining how Wes worked to Wes, and modifying or deleting an alarming amount of very malicious Vlad stuff from his code, programs, and servers. To say he had a lot of spyware would be an understatement, not to mention multiple failsafes that Vlad could have used to basically destroy Wes from afar. Wes ripped out a lot of hair in stress over this, Tucker convinced him to let him look at his hair to see how the heck an android can continuously grow hair.

Chap 2:

‘Cause You Can’t Fight The Clock Ticking Inside

Danny had cleaned every surface twice, then once more ‘for emotional reassurance’, as he put it, though his hands still hovered like nervous birds over every tool him and Valerie had brought. Wes knows Danny well enough to see the half ghosts panic attack coming slowly over the horizon. The table in the center looks improvised but intentional, a patchwork of reinforced panels. At least that was one way to make it clear that these people don’t go around cutting people open…

‘People’, right. He’s… still unsure if people applies to him.

Wes watching Danny as the guy eyes him, “you know you really don’t have to do this, right? None of us are going to give a shit about you having explosives in you. I mean, my blood’s super corrosive, not much different. You’ve got dangerous insides, I’ve got dangerous insides”.

Wes crosses his arms over his bare chest, trying to not look as jittery as he feels. “I don’t want it deciding when I stop existing. When this body does”. If he does have to get a new body it’ll be hard to not feel like it’s just a shell, like it’s replaceable, like he’s just a copy of an old dead artificial kid.

Valerie kicking the door in as she comes back in, “I feel the need to point out that this is fucked up, Danny”, pointing at him as she pulls on gloves, “first, you tell me that Wes knows not just about you but me too. Then, surprise! Vlad built an android and it’s Wes, and he’s understandably not okay with that. And then, ‘oh by the way he’s also kinda a bomb please help because I’ll curl up on the floor vomiting and crying if I have to vivisect someone’”.

Wes grimaces, “I’m pretty sure vivisection only applies to living things”.

“You’re walking and talking, dumbass, you’re as alive as it gets. Now get on the table before my dad gets home”.

Danny hums, “considering how talkative the dead are, agree to disagree”, rolls his shoulders and looks to Wes, “you really sure, man?”.

Wes gritting his teeth, “yes, Phantom. Besides-”, gripping his arms a little tighter, “-it’s not like I can even feel pain or get an infection”. He’s tried a couple of things to try and see if he could at all: lighting his hand on fire, more fork stabbing, dropped a weight on his foot, and so on. Part of him hates his ‘being thorough’ habit, and it wasn’t so much that he needed to know. He just… was hoping that some part of him would feel pain, even just a little, just an insignificant amount.

Valerie grunting, “and just like Danny, you, need therapy”.

Wes snapping, “oh yeah and what would I even tell them? I’m an engineered spy bomb built by a lunatic in an attempt to kill a pseudo god that can’t tell yet if feeling things is all that makes me?!?”.

“Jesus Christ”. Valerie shakes her head and puts case on her ratty stool, filled with small tools.

Screwdrivers… wire strippers… shears, pliers, a lot of lock picks… stuff that would have no business being used in a human body, in a living body, but were applicable to him. She also thumps a large pair of bolt cutters down loudly.

Danny looks like he’s going to get sick. Wes rather wishes he felt like getting sick, he should feel like that. A human would feel like that. Seeing a massive long pair of bolt cutters, knowing they were going to be used in their insides. Instead all he does… is twitch spastically once or twice.

“Right”, Valerie nods, exhaling, “okay. Here’s the situation”, pointing at Wes, “you’re going to lay down, I’m going to figure out how to get the… skin casing off, and hopefully I’ll only have to push things around rather than cut and reattach anything to get at this bomb”. Wes feels almost like he’s pushing himself through sand doing as he’s asked, part of him would like to be asleep, or turn off, however it worked for this metal body, for this but… he’s far too paranoid to not be conscious while someone roots around in his body. Clipping things. Reattaching things. But what if she snips something and he… just stops thinking? Or feeling? Loses a sense? Either way his ass goes on the table, one foot up at a time and lays down, staring at the ceiling and trying to convince himself that he’ll be fine staring up at that for how ever long this winds up taking them.

Danny grabbing the tablet off of her desk and offering it over with shaking fingers, her grabbing it and fiddling with it. Leaning to show it to Wes, the screen showing an almost ghostly map of his own body. Not quite anatomy, not quite machinery… some awful thing in between.

“There’s a dense cluster here”, Valerie makes a circle around an area that’s differently shaded taking up half of his ‘ribcage’ area and near where a belly button would be. If he had one of those. “Me and Tucker agree that it’s for sure not a part of your core systems. It’s… separate. Walled off. Shielded”.

Wes blinks harshly, turning his head away and staring at the ceiling, “bomb”; he… he really does just have a bomb in his body.

Valeria grimaces at him, “yeah”, turning in Danny, “and before you even ask, yes I can at least try to remove it. You’re manning the laparoscope, yes I have one, it would be a nightmare working on my sled without one, and this would be too”. At least that was something that was commonly used on actual people. “Same reason I brought a long bendable grabber claw”. And there goes any mild comfort he was feeling.

She puts a hand on his torso and twitches herself a little, Wes is just pointedly trying to stare at the ceiling and only the ceiling. Valerie muttering, “this is messed up”, before taking a breath and prodding around at his ‘skin’. He’s… he’s really just letting this happen, letting her do this… Her nodding a little, “you’re getting a belly button, so I can see in there better”.

Wes can partially hear Danny cringing, “congrats I guess?”.

Wes breathes out harshly once, “hey Phantom?”.

“Yeah?”.

“Remember what you said about shutting up not being one of your skills?”.

“Uhh, yeah?”.

“Well don’t learn that skill right now”. If he just sits here, lays here, in silence, he’s going to panic. Going to get twitches. His minds going to start running in paranoid hamster circles.

Valerie muttering, “yeah he is the king of distractions”, then speaking up while Wes feels some pressure on his stomach, “alright, I’m going in”.

Danny very awkwardly clearing his throat, “uh right okay, fuck”. The guy is absolutely not watching, not that Wes can truly blame the asshole for that. “So I don’t know if you know this cause you kinda skipped school which I totally get way too much shit going on right? Ha ha! Anyway I totally accidentally borderline flashed the teachers accidentally teleported into the teachers lounge in my underwear and Lancer spit his tea out on Muranda very funny-”.

Valerie whispering, “oh he’s not going to shut up now”, as Wes can feel her make the first incision on his belly and he clenches his fists; trying to make sure he doesn’t twitch. It’s very hard when he can feel a melt snake being shoved in through his skin, each ridge and little texture of the metal standing out starkly in his mind, as it rubs against his pseudo skin.

“-The mystery meat also came alive again I really don’t know why they keep stocking that stuff it attacks people at least once a month but do they stop? NO it’s almost like the teachers or lunch ladies find the meat madness funny or maybe the LunchLady ghost is asking them to do it just to be a dick to Sam which I can at least understand-”

Oh zone Wes hates meatloaf day- the laparoscope taps against something in him, making a high pitched ting noise; harshly reminding him that he’s metal in there just like the scope. His knee twitches and that stupidly embarrasses him. He knows humans don’t have absolute control over their bodies but he kind of wants that right now, just to power through this and then forget it ever happened. Forget that he was ever a bomb encased in metal and pseudo flesh.

“-Pandora’s started teaching Elle proper sword fighting and holy shit you absolutely do not actually know about Elle-”, Danny clearly distracted himself too well because he cuts himself off with a gag. Wes glancing in his direction, seeing him move a bit further away. “Uh ah anyway fuckmeAncients”.

“Oh suck it up Danny, I’ve barely done anything”.

“Shhh. Shush you. I’d make some graphic descriptions of how that probably feels sliding around in there just to piss you off, but then we’d have at least two freaking out teenagers. Anyway Elle, right, total shit sturer and Vlad owes me so much child support but she does keep stealing and giving me all his fancy guy socks so that’s something and the sword fighting is actually going damn well which makes sense because I am damn good with a sword-”

Danny is absolutely making him itch to have his notebooks right now, fucker is dropping lore while Wes is too indisposed to do anything about it. Zone what an asshole. Even if he’s not going to out him now he’s still studying and noting and ‘stalking’ him.

Valerie’s hand moves, grabbing forceps and a knife, his eyes tracking them till they leave his field of vision. He refuses to even attempt at watching this, maybe later he’ll ask for a play by play just… just not while it’s happening. Valerie speaks up either way, “I need more room to work, and I’ve figured out where your skin seams are, it’ll be easier to get things back together if I use that as a guide”.

Wes gritting out, “that’s great”; absolutely not meaning it.

“It actually is, Wes. And damn your skin is tough”. Wes is goddamn aware of that. “Hey Danny?”.

“And the dewfox hunt is coming u- Hm?”.

Valerie hands back the knife, “reinforce that, I’m gonna break it”.

“One ecto-iced knife coming up. Anyway I’m totally going to get at least second place this year-”.

It’s significantly colder when she starts again, and shortly he can feel the thick slabs of his skin pulling up and off of his endoskeleton. The gloved hands are touching… touching his metal and he can’t help the body twitch this time and it feels a little hard to count the number of dark dots on Valerie’s shit Appartement ceiling.

“-the only thing I won last year was the dewfox throwing section and I got my face bitten so many times oh and I think cujo was there shut up Valerie my dog is awesome-”.

Valerie grumps incoherently as he can feel air against internal metal that feels truly utterly wrong. Feels things click and pop and get shoved out of the way, something’s opening over the pressure. Like his body simply opened up too easily. Valerie muttering, “oh wow”.

Wes grimacing, clenching his fist enough that his hands creak like plastic, “what?”.

“Sorry, sorry, that wasn’t helpful. Just, you’re well designed”.

Wes barks out a weak laugh, “that’s- that’s not comforting”, curling his toes and twitching again, “I can feel it so stop admiring and just get on with it”.

Valerie huffs a little, “that’s rough, but be glad because I think your skin might be self repairing enough to not leave a bunch of scaring. Magnetic, at least at the seams”.

Wes is actually happy about that, regardless of having seams being unsettling and yet another thing about himself he never noticed, it means there won’t be any physical reminders of this to weigh him down or catch him off guard…. Or to possibly get seen and questioned by someone else.

Daniel talks a bit loudly like he’s trying to not hear their conversation, “-Blackbeard’s been giving me so much run around with that stupid ship of his again and he’s pissing off all of the dark elves and since they all think I’m bizarrely hot they love the excuse to come pester me and it is very uncomfortable and I’m seriously debating just wafting a bunch of Defted wine vapours over their lands just to get them all absolutely blasted and I’m going to then find Jack Sparrow and bribe him with so so much rum to just pretty please beat the shit out of Blackbeard for me for the love of-”

She moves around some wires or cords, he can’t help but be able to tell because it feels like snakes draping and coiling over his sides… the… the cords are moving in their own entirely. “Great, that’s… Jesus, the cords are trying to reorienting themselves like intestines”. Should he be happy about that or deeply disturbed.

“-I accidentally ate a tube sock that day very dumb tastes like shit pure utter shit which is why I know they weren’t my socks because my socks never survive long enough to get smelly nonetheless taste gross-”

Wes has written down a lot of useless information about Danny but what his socks tasted like was not information even he needed.

Valerie moving well… moving him around a bit more aggressively and quickly, probably trying to out pace his… reorganizing. Her muttering, “and of course it’s wired into his system in a ‘if I go, we all go’ kind of way. Damn”.

Wes letting out a shaky breath, “of course it is”, wheezing, “stop giving me your bad luck, Danny”.

“-but at least I didn’t- hey I can’t control my luck and it’s reach it has the light of a god of death you just focus on me taking a book out of my dads pages and blabbering a bunch fuck my mom made a mean lasagne last night too and I mean mean literally and figuratively it ate part of the table but tasted like probably the best apple pie I’ve ever had not sure how that flavour happened and I’m not questioning it I’m not qualified to my taste buds are fucked-”

And it’s not like Wes was qualified to say either, since he’s pretty sure he’s never actually eaten anything. Where would it even go? He was a mess of wires and metal and fuck knows what else.

Valerie huffs, grabbing a pair of shears, “okay, step one, isolate it. Step two, convince it that nothing is happening. Step three, gently evict it from the premises”.

Wes’s lip twitches, “that sounds like you’re kicking out a rude guest”; trying to ignore all the micro movements and rearranging and the sensation of air where it shouldn’t be.

“If it helps, imagine it’s wearing a tiny hat and being extremely obnoxious. And you better tell me if anything feels wrong”.

Wes huffing weakly, “define ‘wrong’”. What the hell wasn’t wrong with him now?

“New wrong. Surprising wrong. ‘I’ve never felt this before’ wrong”.

“Yeah, I can do that at least. I’m not totally useless here”.

Danny butting in, “and you’re doing totally great, I think, I’m not exactly watching and I’m not going to start to because fuck that fuck no Kitty also got a pet kitty and I find that very hilarious-”.

Wes scowls, “Phantom, I’m lying on a table while someone digs around in me. I wouldn’t call that ‘doing great’”.

“-way too many ducks- hey I’d have to be knocked out so you’re doing great by my standards but I am serious about that too many ducks thing though because why-”

And then there’s a loud click and that godawful ticking starts up again. Wes’s eyes widening but not daring to move, “what was that? Why am I- why is the ticking back?”.

Valerie’s, “shit”, is more than a little panicked, “this thing's worse than I thought”. And Danny starts pacing back and forth.

Should he have just left well enough alone? Not taken the chance with himself? Oh god is he going to blow up now? Wheezing, "work faster".

"I'm goddam trying, Wes", sticking her hand back at Danny, "get over here with the bolt cutters, gonna need your strength probably, and I don't want to waste time".

Wes wheezing a little, "great, cool, love that for me". This was a bad idea, fuck he should have just put up with it and not tempted fate.

Valerie holding the bolt cutter tip where it needs to be while Danny is studiously not looking at what he's doing. The ticking is horribly loud to Wes's mind, then suddenly, all he can hear is static, something in him twitching and swirling and flailing and realigning like some kind of parasite. He can see the bolt cutters falling to the floor and bouncing a bit, but he can’t hear it. Danny seemingly having to restrain whatever he cut, leaning down over Wes to make it stop moving. Wes flicking his eyes to them to do something to keep distracting himself. Now he can’t even hear the ticking to tell if he’s still possibly going to explode; and he can’t even do anything about other than just lay here and try not to twitch shake… more than he already is.

Danny’s studiously staring up at the ceiling, also shaking, pupils so constricted his eyes are basically entirely green. Jack ass was going to have a full on pass out level panic attack on him, when Wes is the one who should get to be panicking here. Wes is the one getting torn open and dug around inside of. And now he doesn’t even have Phantom’s stupid ramblings to distract him at all, glaring at the guy violently. Danny glancing to his face, giving a very wobbly smile and saying something. So Wes makes a point to say, “whatever you’re saying I can’t hear”; and hopes his voice still works… not like he can hear it to tell. At least that gets the guy looking alarmed, grimacing extremely hard in that way that Wes knows he does when he’s about to do something he really really doesn’t want to do, before looking down at whatever state of mess Wes’s torso is and fucking ecto-blasting his insides. Likely melting and fusing his metal, doing who knows what to any circuitry, scorching wires. And-

…

And for a bit there’s just… nothing. Then a blink and Danny and Valerie have teleported to different spots. Valerie staring at his face and, flopping his head from side to side, Danny’s squatting down in the corner, just staring at the floor.

Valerie speaks cautiously, her hands still moving, “you back?”; he can still feel her shoving stuff around. A… clump of cords or tubes -he’s not checking- getting grabbed haphazardly. It would be a lot better if he couldn’t feel things. And… just the fact that it’s not that hard to simply not move around is… starkly inhuman. Phantom’s reactions were more human… his were just cold and mechanical.

But holy shit he can hear again… and there’s no ticking. “Yeah…”, his voice sounds like he just ate a box of nails… or like some asshole just ecto-blasted his insides, “what the, fuck Danny”. At least he knows the guy well enough to know he at least thought he was doing the right thing.

“He did the right thing, so shut up”.

Wes wheezing, “you didn’t, mess up anything else while I was out, did you?”.

She practically growls, “all I’ve been doing is trying to get this crap detached from all your main structures and stopping and restopping the stupid ticking, give me a break”.

Oh great, so the ticking was still an issue, and a more urgent one than it used to be from the sounds of it. And he… doesn’t feel different, he doesn’t think he’s thinking different. So whatever happened and has been happening possibly hasn’t altered him, who he is. Either because the damage done didn’t matter or there wasn’t any actual damage done to circuits and wires and chips. He knows it’s not all in his head and that’s… part of why he hates this. Clenching his fists and glancing at the top of her head bobbing around in his field of vision, “how long was I… out?”.

Danny very audibly flops backwards onto the floor from his crouched position, “like, five minutes. Five very shitty moments I thought I vaporized you”.

Valerie sighing, “and I told you that you didn’t”.

Wes goes back to studiously staring at the ceiling, “he deserves to freak out”.

“I swear if I wasn’t actively holding your insides right now”.

Wes frowning, “it’s not like it’s anything real, real organs”. He’s had some time with this, with knowing that he’s just a goddamn machine, but that doesn’t mean he’s close to okay with it.

Danny wheezes from the floor, “at least you always have sorta organs, mine are always up for suggestion and debate”.

“Kind of hard to think you have an issue with that when you go around ripping your head in half for a laugh, Phantom”.

“Hey some people actually have a sense of humour, Wes”.

“I don’t know if I’d call that a sense of humour or sadism, you body horror freak, Phantom”.

“What kind of loser wouldn’t try to use themselves as a basketball hoop if they safely could, Wes”.

“Who wouldn’t? More like who would! I can’t think of a single person who’d even think to do that, Phantom”.

“So what I’m hearing here, is you know a lot of very boring people. That must really such for you, Wes”.

“More like I know more sane people, Phantom”.

“Oh YeAh BeCaUsE tHe ScHoOlS cRaZy KiD tOtAlLy KnOwS mOrE sAnE pEoPlE, Wes”.

“Says the leader of the weirdo trio, you even named it that! You know you’re all crazy, Phantom”.

“We’re a quartet now, the Defect Quartet, your sleuth skills are lacking, Wes”.

“Say that to my metal that records everything it sees face again, Phantom”.

Wes is glaring sideways down at Phantom, who’s now grinning stupidly at the ceiling. That… that goddamn manipulative jerk, he’s bantering him into self tolerance while he’s being goddamn operated on.

Valerie sounds amused, “if you two are done making out, someone -cough cough Danny- needs to give me something to contain this nightmare”.

Wes would throw something at the stupid ghost if he wasn’t worried about that maybe moving something inside him. He’s seen his… schematics but that doesn’t mean he actually really understands it; especially as he likely literally cannot understand it, due to blocks in his programming to allow Vlad to control him better. And he can’t even do anything about that, him not being good with tech beyond a camera or basic editing is part of who he is; regardless of it being artificial. Something some wacko decided for him.

Valerie adding on, “and preferably before Wes gets too undistracted and gets overwhelmed”.

Wes blinking, “why?”, screw him and his stupid constant inquisitive nature…

Danny shoves himself up off of the floor and waddles over to the side, Wes had actually missed that the ghost was still shaking lightly. This situation was messing him up more than he thought if he was missing things… things that were happening while he hadn’t been ‘knocked out’ or shorted out more likely.

“I think it’s been monitoring your emotions or perhaps whether or not you’re in genuine danger”.

Wes grimacing at the ceiling, “so something worse than a vehicle careening into my skull”. Meaning something that could actually hurt him. Something… ectoplasm based. The ‘trigger’ was probably him being caught in a serious ghost fight. Squeezing his fists, “guess it’s good the ghosts prefer to target their favourite punching bag than bystanders”.

Valerie muttering, “am I a joke to you”, while Danny holds out one of his parents ridiculous looking containment devices… it’s a goddamn vacuum, while looking up at the ceiling still. Valerie doesn’t even question it, frankly that just proves Wes’s point about these people all being crazy. But… at least vacuums do actually get used in many surgeries, just medical vacuums instead of industrial ones; the kind meant for a garage or a shop. Something meant for a vehicle not a person.

“Give me another set of arms and hold the bolt cutters again, no dropping shit this time”.

“Ugh”, at least Danny looks to be doing as he’s told.

Wes is going to wind up with a very rational fear of bolt cutters after this.

Valerie snapping her free fingers in front of his face, “I don’t care how you keep yourself from spiralling, especially since that’s literally a habit of yours, but try not to”.

Wes scowling, “thinking is kind of the only thing I have to do right now-”.

“I’m not fiddling around near where your arm components connect and move so hold a phone over your face or something, I don’t know, pick something”.

“You might think that’s a fine idea here, but I don’t feel like taking chances that are reckless with my own body, unlike some people”.

Danny huffs, “you literally run into fights, fights that you thought you had no real protection in and- oh fuck you’re going to be even more of a pain in my ass now that you know you’re fucking durable, fuck me”, and telekinetically shoves a bumpy cube into Wes’s right hand, “use one of Tuck Braille Rubik’s cubes, I’m sure your sleuth brain can figure that thing out”.

Wes glares at what he can see of Danny, “why the hell didn’t you use that ability to hold things instead of making more limbs like a goddamn spider?!?”.

“I am allowed to forget my less useful powers sometimes, Wes!”.

“How is telekinesis not use full but spontaneously forming new goddamn limbs is! You stupid ghost!”.

“Oh YeAh I’m ToTaLlY gOiNg To MeNtAlLy ThRoW a BuS aT a GhOsT. You know a creature that’s obviously just going to turn intangible? Come on, man”.

“Then throw an ecto-weapo-”, Wes cutting himself off when a harsh jolt and something like pain but not pain, rips through him suddenly. Like energy had pulsed through him from him, like energy had wrapped itself all around his parts and squeezed violently while yanking on his very bones. His teeth snapping shut harshly and the Rubik's Cube exploding into pieces as he crushes it. It’s just… overwhelming. Like every signal is firing at once, a storm of sensation with no clear source. He’s barely aware of his back arching up off of the table, he doesn’t get a chance to wonder why his legs aren’t moving at all though, as one hand grips the table with the harsh sound of metal crumpling and the other winds up grabbing into Danny’s thigh.

Wes is vaguely aware of him nearly knocking Danny over and the guys quiet, “ℴ𝓌, 闩𝓝⼕讠🝗𝓝七丂 ɢᗝᖱᖙᎯⲙﬡ”. While Valerie snaps loudly, “𝜏ɾყ ɳσ𝜏 🅃🄾 ɬαᥙɳ𝓬ԋ Ⴘᗝυᖇ⟆∈𝘭⨍ off the ⲧⲁⲃ𝓵ⲉ ᓰ’𝓿∈ Ꭿ𝘭ⲙ𝖮⟆𝜏 gₒₜ ─████─█ ██ ▙▟ ▜▛!”.

� highly doubts he could open his mouth right now if he even wanted to, everything was just too much. Too much input � too much incorrect input. Colours are wrong, their voices sound wrong and only half make sense. Too m�ch, just too too huc.m eH awnst ti to otsp ot rhyur up nrut fof or untr ish viegrehtyn no hte way i��s�t sudpospe to b.e.

Wes's back thumps back loudly against the table, him blinking harshly at the ceiling and Danny hissing at him, moving his face in front of Wes's, gritting out, "could you, maybe, remove, your goddamn fingers, from my, leg".

Wes can hear the eyeroll in Valerie's voice, "oh grow up, it can't hurt worse than half the shit you've gone through".

Danny snapping, "yeah well, I don't normally, have to just, put up with it and not, punch whoever, in the face".

Wes becomes acutely aware then that his hand is very wet and he can feel shaking squishy material under and in his fingers; he unclenches and jerks his hand away immediately, whatever's all over his hand dripping loudly and wetly onto the floor. Danny sighing, "thank you".

Wes blinks harshly again, he felt.. oddly clean, like someone scrubbed his brain. The feeling makes him more than a little uneasy but he doesn't feel like any of him has actually been messed with. Just like he's been rebotted perhaps, rebotted after having a whole whakcamole of spyware and malicious code and backdoors into his systems and possibly a literal bomb removed from his body. From the machine that is his body. And in that way it... feels more like his, and perhaps that's why he feels clean. Yet he also feels oddly hallowed, like a space that was meant to have something in it no longer does. It, he, feels too fresh. He needs to move or something, anything. Shoving himself to roll over partly on his side, one hand down on the makeshift table to push himself up into more of a slanted leaning, rather than actually lying down. Blinking again, "did you get it out?"; he can properly feel the restraints on his ankles now, so at least he knows why his legs… didn’t move during that ‘episode’ he had.

Valerie snapping at him, "Wes, lay back down, you're literally still open", sighing, "but yes. yes I did".

Wes wheezing a little and staring down at the floor, "just- just give me a sec". Eyes flicking to the hand that's holding him somewhat up, it's absolutely covered in red and green... Phantom- Danny's blood and ectoplasm, or what passed for it. He must have literally torn a chunk in to or out of the guy's thigh. He... doesn't think he ever remembers being that strong, there was probabaly a built-in block to stop him from using more strength than humanly possible. He finds he's perfectly okay with that and would like to keep that. Thank you very much. He doesn't need to be or want to be less human than he already is. A bit of the cords and wirings and metal plates hanging out and sticking out from his torso move faintly at the edge of his vision; a thick black cord drops down more and it feels like he can't see anything else but that. He's twitching badly again and he knows it.

Then Danny smacks him on the back nearly hard enough to knock him off of the table, "the bomb has been vacuumed, and if you keep leaning like that something's probably going to fall out".

Wes turning his head to look over his shoulder at the half ghost, Danny's smile is nowhere close to reassuring, more like he was trying to not have another breakdown and his grin was trying to break free from the confines of his face, "you look like shit". There's a part of him that just wants to demand a shirt, feeling way too exposed, but he... doesn't know how to put himself back together. Doesn't know how all his messed up metal and plastic and electronic pieces all fit together. He would barely even know where to begin; so he doesn't really have a choice. But at least forcing Danny to 'help guide' him back into lying down, makes it feel less like he's letting things be done to him.

Valerie nodding, "good", and quickly grabs the tools and goes back to rooting around in his insides, in his componates.

And laying there Wes realizes there’s a pressure that used to be there but isn't now, "huh".

There's sounds of bandaging unrolling, Danny speaking from the same direction, "what?".

"Just, I can tell it's out. That something with a pressure, that had pressure, is gone".

"Then it sounds like the gaping wound in my leg was worth it", Danny then muttering away from Wes's direction, "and all the nightmares I'm probably going to have tonight".

Wes just keeps staring up at the ceiling, “you know, your stupid ass could have just left me like this”, trying to ignore Valerie yanking and shoving pieces around; even having to push down with her full body weight to get a piece or two to click back into place like Lego pieces.

“Not a chance in hell, Wes. You’re a shit, but you don’t deserve this. And hey, there was no dramatic explosion. Bit anticlimactic, honestly".

Wes snapping his head to the side to glare at the half ghost, "for you maybe, you jerk. I got to feel like someone was ramming me full of every possible sensation in the world at once. That was aggressively climatic".

"But you didn't explode, so...".

Wes is twitching for an entirely different reason now, Valerie growling, "don't you dare launch yourself off of this table to clobber him, Wes", is all that actually keeps him where he is. Stupid Phantom looks incredibly smug at that, even if he's still shaking.

So instead, Wes makes a point to simply focus on glaring as violently as he physically can at Danny for the entire duration of Valerie actually yanking his skin rubber back over his insides. Not... not feeling air in there, on everything, anymore is dramatically more relieving than he had expected; and Phantom's look of pity over him relaxing unintentionally over that only stands to piss him off all over again.

Valerie muttering, "I'm very very glad for these magnetic ass seams, holy shit". Wes breaking his glaring match with Danny to eye her face, her looking at him and continuing, "you're good to get up now, feel free to punch Danny in his pain in the ass face".

"Hey! Don't tell him that! His fist is probably actually harder than my face!".

She turns and smirks at him, putting her hands on her hips, "good, and maybe you should have thought of that before being an ass and riling up someone that needed to lie goddamn still, you tit".

Danny sticking his hands out at her, "but he didn't have a panic attack, now did he? I did good!".

"You nearly passed out on the floor, you did not do good, Danny".

"Let a man have his traumas in peace, would you".

Wes kind of hates, just a little, that all the banter has grown on him over the past two years of his existence. As he pushes himself to get up and eyes his chest; running a hand over it before pulling his shirt back on. It... it doesn't feel the same, there's dips and an emptiness where there didn't used to be, but that's a good thing. Vlad's psychotic machinations aren't forcibly a part of his body anymore.

When he looks up, away from his torso and shirt, the two teens are eyeing him softly... and mildly amused. So Wes just flips them off, then glancing at the vacuum, “I’m guessing you’re going to dispose of that?”.

Danny rolls his eyes, “no Wes I’m just going to lEaVe A bOmB iN a RaNdOm VaCuUm”. Wes just glares so Danny chuckles, “I’m just going to blow the whole thing up, maybe ol’ Vladdie will get a reading from that and freak out that his project went off and then freak out in confusion when he sees you next”.

Wes is entirely on board for this plan, Vlad is officially at the very top of Wes’s shit list. “I’m still fully planing to can him so go right ahead”. Both other teens snorting in amusement at that; Danny grabbing up the vacuum and just disappearing with it.

Valerie pointing at him, “after this shit I’m going to be pissed if you ever start running around doing to me what you do to Danny”.

Wes scratches at his stomach, he’s going to feel off for a while probably, “I don’t really have or had any interest in exposing you. I don’t think that would actually do any good”.

“And exposing Danny would?”.

Wes huffs, “of course it would. He’s literally walking floating proof ghosts and humans are more alike and comparable than everyone seems to think. The ectophobia crap is obviously stupid if you know that. Also just the fact that no one seems to be able to see the obvious is so infuriating, at least you wear a mask”.

“I’ll give you a point on the mask, but Wes, come on, it doesn’t matter if he’s half human when he still looks like and has the abilities of a ghost. It’s no different than a dark-skinned biracial person, it doesn’t matter if they have ‘some white in them’ they’re still treated like they don’t have any”, scowling at him, “if anything they often get treated worse or their parents do or both. All you exposing him will do is take away the safety of his human form”.

Wes frowns at her, he’s still doesn’t agree that people would react so negatively or not care. Sure the guy will obviously get pestered about being the town hero, fan girls and autographs, but he could talk about ghosts with actual proof to back up what he says, instead of everyone writing him off for being a kid. “The opinions and feelings on ghosts wouldn’t be so bad if everyone knew”.

“And that just sounds like victim blaming. Danny ain’t gonna be able to undo literal centuries of bigotry just by existing”.

Danny comes back in then, rolling his eyes, “dude, you can’t lay off with this shit at all can you? The answer is still fuck that shit. How about you go tell the town about your android ass to advance the tech field and see how long you still get treated like a person”.

Wes can’t help the twitch at that, crossing his arms, he really doesn’t think it’s quite the same. “I’m artificial, you’re not, it’s not the same”.

Valerie shakes her head and moves off to start cleaning up, while Danny rolls his eyes, “you’re right it’s not, you can get a new body, a new face, if shit goes south, which it would. I can not. As far as ecto-ology is concerned, you and I are equally artificial”, shaking his head and digging in his pockets, “now stop being a pain in my ass and drink this”, and hurls a jug at him.

Wes snatching it out of the air and staring down at it, clearly labeled as a chemical neutralizer of some kind. “You still haven’t changed my opinion and I really do not think we’d be viewed the same-”.

“-you’re right, I’ll be viewed worse. Because you were made by human hands, well human hands as far as the public knows. Shut up and drink”.

Wes glares at the bottle a little then looks to Danny again, “why?”.

Danny holds up a finger, “‘cause there is one teeny tiny problem”. Wes glares harder so Danny continues, “your bones, or what’s passing as bones, are all coated in ecto-creaton which is basically the explosive material”.

Wes is starting to feel like he really can’t catch a break with all of this, “but I thought-”.

Danny waving him off, “yeah yeah Valerie did get the actual explosive itself out with the timer and everything, but your whole insides are coated in the actual anti-ecto explosive fuel”, sticking up a finger, “thankfully a neutralizer is something my folks have made for that specific chemical so”, and shrugs.

Wes quirks an eyebrow, “so what? Do I have to drink the stuff or get some kind of injections?”.

“We kind of need to get it everywhere, which since you don’t have a bunch of stuff closed off inside of organs it’s doable with you just drinking it. I just gotta shake you around like I’m making a margarita after you do”; and Danny grins very meanly at him… Valerie is also barely resisting laughing audibly at him.

Wes glares as hard as he thinks he can while twisting off the bottles cap, “I… fucking hate you”; days ago he would have been worried about how he’d even get an entire two litre bottle in him but he doesn’t even have a goddamn stomach to worry about here.

Valerie grumbling, “if he throws that whole mess up onto my floor I swear I will beat both your asses”.

“If Vlad built him with a goddamn gag reflex I’ll have a lot of really fucked up questions that I do not ever what answers for”.

Valerie hurls one of her sweaters at the half ghost and Wes shakes his head to himself. At least neither one of them is staring at him now, downing something that would almost definitely kill a human person is… is… he doesn’t know but he doesn’t really want to be actively watched and studied. Well… here’s hoping it doesn’t taste nasty. Putting the bottle to his lips and tipping his head back, the fizzy liquid sloshing into his mouth. His tongue recoiling from the contact but the liquid seemingly chases it around his mouth, filling up his mouth and lapping at his teeth. A thick syrup coating his entire mouth in an instant, slipping between the crevices in each tooth, up against metal grooves on the roof of his mouth that he’d never noticed before. It’s almost itchy, irritating even, like a thousand pinpricks he can’t scratch. He… absolutely has never had anything close to carbonated before, has he? Almost instinctively pressing his tongue up to it, trying to smother the sensation, but that just traps the fizz between his tongue and palate even more, amplifying it into a frantic, crackling pressure. Why do people drink anything like this? This was awful.

…

What’s he supposed to do now though, ‘swallowing’ is not seemingly happening. Has he ever swallowed anything before actually? Tiny streams of the liquid do feel to be trickling down the inside of his throat, but no gulping or surging river of liquid down into him. So he just kinda stands there like that staring at the ceiling for a bit, until the liquid neutralizer starts actively spilling out over the sides of his mouth and down his face. Tilted his head back down and spitting everything out into the bootle, “eugh”.

Danny snorts, “okay yeah it probably tastes like shit but I don’t think you want to get a tube shoved down your throat, so…”.

Wes huffs and glares at Danny, “I fucking tried, Phantom. I don’t think I can swallow”.

Both of them blink at him before falling over laughing at him. Wes scowls at them on the ground, feeling thoroughly embarrassed, “oh shut up”.

Danny wheezing, “how have you never even tried to eat food or drink pop or something?!?”.

“I’m usually busy with basketball or school or homework or harassing your dumbass!”. Plus, since he obviously doesn’t need food or water, being that he’s artificial, a machine, inorganic, he obviously wouldn’t have any physical urge to eat/drink. Easy to forget to do something when you have literally never felt the desire or need to do it.

Valerie rolls over still laughing, “I couldn’t imagine going a day without a good matcha latte”.

Danny snickering and sitting with his knees up, “nothing would separate me from my sweet sweet espresso”.

Wes glares at him, “I’ve watched you down sixty-two espresso shots in four minutes”.

Valerie wheezes, “Danny! That’s disgusting!”.

“It’s not like it’s gonna kill me and I was tired!”, Danny chuckling a little more before pushing himself to stand up. Him eyeing Wes, snickering a little more, “I- oh man that’s so funny”, shaking his head at Wes’s scowling, “but I guess we’re gonna have to look at that. Sit and open up”.

Wes rolls his eyes, setting the jug with his backwash to the side recapped, and crosses his arms as he sits on Valerie’s ratty little chair. Tilting his head back and opening his mouth, pointedly glaring at the ceiling to ignore all of Phantom’s stupid faces… it only kind of works. Meanwhile, Danny grabs his chin, sticking his thumb in Wes’s mouth to hold his tongue down, and shines the laparoscope light down his throat.

Danny blinks and lets go of his face, “huh”, and steps back, crossing his own arms at Wes, “well no wonder you can’t swallow, your throat is literally mostly blocked shut”.

Valerie finally getting up off of the floor and shoving Danny out of the way, “let me see”, making both boys roll their eyes. But Wes studiously tilts his head back and open his mouth again, at least she’s less of a little shit about staring down his throat… then she just shoves the laparoscope down his throat and bonks whatever’s blocking his throat with it, making a loud metallic clang noise and making Wes jerk a little.

Wes glaring at the ceiling, “did you really need to do that?”, it’s… surprisingly easy to talk like this, with someone holding his mouth open and with a bendy metal rod down his neck.

He can hear Valerie blinking, “huh, your throat walls vibrate when you talk, guess that explains all the foam and meshing”.

Wes rolling his eyes, “I get it I get it, I’m a technological marvel, what are we doing about the chemical neutralizer?”.

Valerie hums, “let me try something. Nothing damaging, promise”. Part of him wants to say no but he’s well aware there’s kind of no point. “Danny give me a butter knife”.

Great, now he’s getting kitchen utensils shoved down his throat. Lovely.

The tinking and clanging and scrapping vibrates around in his throat and is distinctly not comfortable. Squeezing his arms a little tighter, arms still crossed, more than a little desperately wanting this to just all be over with. Then he can go home and pretend to not think about just being a walking hunk of metal and plastics and rubber. And probably spiral about apparently not being able to eat or drink even if he wanted to… such a basic human thing that’s just… not an option for him. Never was. And he didn’t even notice.

Then there’s a sharp click, and suddenly there’s a lot more air in his throat than before and he can feel air moving down his neck and into his torso, it’s distinctly unsettling.

Valerie snapping, “Danny, bottle duty, prided it open so take the opportunity for what it’s worth. And Wes can just sit and not make this weirder”.

Wes sits, open mouth, glaring at Danny’s very clearly trying not to laugh face as the guy just starts pouring the bottle down his throat.

It…

It’s probably one of the more bizarre feelings Wes has ever felt and he is seriously baffled that anyone actually likes this sensation. The liquid rushing down, and the bubbles don’t dissolve but rather claw outward as it descends, fizzing against the walls of his throat and leaving behind a tingling trail that feels strangely raw, like he’s been lightly sanded from the inside. A small, involuntary wheeze catching in his chest as the tingle and wetness surges down into his torso. He can feel some of it dribbling off to the sides and going through his arms.

Wes scrunches up his face and hunches his shoulders, feeling some of the stuff pooling all the way down in his feet; grinding and crackling against this insides like something alive and irritated. It’s also incredibly noisy, like rain on a tin roof and static. All Wes can think to do is simply close his mouth and stay scrunched up, glaring murderously at the two teens as they step back.

Danny putting the bottle aside and grinning playfully, “and now, shaking time. I’m going to enjoy this”; and bodily picks Wes up.

Valerie just sighs, “try not to make a mess”, and walks out of the room.

Danny snickers and starts shaking Wes up and down aggressively, shouting, “straighten out!”.

Wes growls back, not wanting to open his mouth because he does not want to deal with this ever again, but does forcibly straighten out.

Danny spends a good five minutes just shaking and spinning him, Wes able to feel the liquid sloshing around throughout his entire body basically the whole time. Hearing the fizz and splashing inside his head is incredibly loud and makes him feel like a bunch of bugs went and crawled into his ears and nose.

Eventually the guy stops, and Wes would put money on Danny having spent more time doing that than he actually needed to. Wes staggering to get his footing and shaking his head back and forth. There’s pale green slimy water dripping out of his ears, nose, the edges of his eyes, and from where all his… body seams seem to be. His clothing is wrecked. Holding his arms out to his sides and glaring at Danny, “I really hate you”.

Danny smacking him on the back, then grimacing, “and I love you too Wes, also, take a shower Ancients”.

“It’s your fault! And you’re cleaning the floor”.

“Damnit”.

Wes flips him off yet again and stomps out to find the goddamn showers. Valerie shouting from the living room/kitchen, “don’t you dare use my towels!”.

Wes throws his hands up in the air, definitely flinging around a bit of the goop, and heads into the bathroom; slamming the door behind himself. He’s incredibly tempted to just squirt body wash into his mouth to try and get rid of the… rough film feeling in there now. It’s not pleasant and he’s hoping it’s not just his new normal now. Even if it’s better than his insides still being coated in an explosive.

He gives himself a really good scrubbing and just sits down on the floor of the shower, letting the water run. Valerie’s dad probably won’t be happy about the water bill but he doesn’t really care about that right now.

The pressure changes every so often and the temperature fluctuates, old building with shitty plumbing, but it was more ‘real’ than his body probably was; less controlled at least. Less calibrated. He still feels oddly emptied out, which he had somewhat expected, and thanks to Danny’s dumbass it’ll probably be a while before he feels remotely clean. But he also still felt exposed and too self aware, physically self aware. Self aware of what his insides felt like exposed to air or when getting liquids dumped all over it.

And he was hyper aware of the seams he had now, as glad as he is to not have scaring, now he knows that’s there meanwhile any sign of being peeled apart and rearranged and exposed is not.

Thumping his head on his knees, “and I didn’t even try to stop it”, it needed to happen, technically, but… just laying there and taking is certainly not human. The feeling of something inside him shifting, adjusting, reacting in ways that didn’t need permission. Like a system doing its job. Like a machine being serviced. Something to be taken apart and fixed.

Leaning his head back against the shower and letting the water spray straight into his face. He’s not even really panicking, not really overwhelmed, just having issues mentally. He differently didn’t feel more human for all of this, actively felt less human actually; to the point Wes’s pretty sure it’ll be hard to really relate to anyone now. His teammates talking about parents he doesn’t have. Kwan inviting him out to eat and Wes brushing him off like he always does, but now it’ll be because he knows he physically can’t. Dale complaining about the bruises and cuts he always manages to get while Wes will never know the feeling. Mrs. Welsche talking about kids he’ll definitely never have. Heck, he probably can’t even age; aging was for organic creatures after all, and he’s not that.

Taking a deep breath and feeling the way his whole chest moves with the motion, and then there’s the fact that he’s… not really traumatized, he thinks, by everything. A dead kid had a more normal reaction to everything than Wes did… not that he’s claiming to be jealous of Danny but still. At least he got to be a person, but all Wes can really do about all that now is try to be himself.

Try to adjust and learn about this body he’s trapped in. Ironically the same shit Danny had to do. Who knows, maybe someone will find out about him and dedicate all their free time tying to expose Wes. Wouldn’t that be just fucking hilarious?

Shaking his hair off and standing up, turning off the water; he should at least go home and rest this whole nightmare off properly. At least Tucker basically gutted Wes’s entire house, so he knows the place is as safe for him as anywhere else in Amity.

Valerie leans against the wall and eyes him as he steps out of the bathroom, “you good? You can crash if you really need to”.

Wes shaking his head immediately, “I’ll pass, I’m going to face plant into my bed and watch bad straight-to-tv movies”.

“How do you even sleep?”.

Wes glares a little, “well I at least turn off or something. I’m not questioning it right now”. His bed it’s probably gonna turn out to have some kind of charging feature in it, that charges him while he’s ‘sleeping’ in it. Tucker will look into it and will probably tell him about it very enthusiastically. Oh Zone these people have turned into his friends, haven’t they. Jesus fucking Christ why is he doing this to himself? These people are all crazy freaks.

… ‘Crazy freak’ says the android that just got opened up to have an actual literal bomb removed from his torso, and had to drink a neutralizer then get shaken around like a fizzy drink… He’s actively weirder than at least half of this group; a group that he’s actually definitely stuck being part of now for sure.

Who the hell else is he going to complain to about shorting out? Or the lagging that’s definitely some kind of processing error? And they won’t be weird about things like him not eating or not going to the bathroom or being bizarrely durable. He’s stuck with these ‘Defects’ now. Especially when Valerie is basically his mechanic and Tucker his programmer… and Danny’s his muse same as ever.

End.