#constellaj

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No promises,” Vic added with a grin.

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

the premise/start of the episode is similar to its canon counterpart. danny needs to pass an important physical exam and is paired with dash as a fitness buddy to help prepare for it. however, instead of jack just blasting phantom, a ghost, and an innocent bystander outside the house with the shrink ray and promptly fucks off to not deal with the consequences of that, the shrink blaster is introduced early on to danny as a prototype still in the works. it is then left in the lab until it is needed later and the set up for the actual fitness buddy stuff comes into play.

the real deviation from micro management happens when skulker attacks the duo. danny randomly shouts to scatter in opposite directions to throw the ghost off as a thinly veiled excuse to have a place to transform and promptly bolts...... except dash doesnt run in the opposite direction like he was supposed to. danny gets to a secluded area and starts slowing down, like half a second away from going ghost, before being pushed by dash to keep running with skulker following close behind.

while still running for their lives, danny is just like???? why the fuck did you follow me i said scatter????? to which dash promptly says “dude that ghost was definitely chasing you and there’s no way you can out run it, you would’ve been toast.” to further prove the point, danny is unable to shake dash off his tail and actually is struggling to keep up in human form, to the point where dash is practically carrying him while occasionally tossing him ahead to force him to run without falling behind.

danny, realizing that he wont be able to turn into phantom anytime soon, decides “okay change of plans, we’ll do this the human way” and steers dash towards the direction of fentonworks to get ghost weapons instead. they eventually hit the lab and danny starts grabbing ectoguns and starts blasting at skulker who is putting up quite the fight. dash, seeing the struggle, tries to help too. he grabs some guns of his own, but being more unfamiliar with the tech, he grabs a lot of duds or stuff not fully loaded. in his frantic panic, one of the guns dash grabs ends up being the unfinished shrink blaster.

before danny can stop him, the blast goes off but instead of shrinking only the target, it malfunctions and hits everyone in the room and a couple of weapons here and there. the shrink explosion knocks everyone back quite a bit so they’re far away from the gun and idk some bullshit about jack coming in to be like huh that’s weird and taking it somewhere else. shrunken shenanigans ensue.

if danny couldnt get away to transform before, he DEFINITELY cant now (how is he gonna explain disappearing and then having a mini phantom show up lol). so he an dash are stuck together. they grab all the tiny weapons they can and set off, having tiny happenings and that all along the way similarly to canon. the only difference is danny more discreetly using his his powers and covering it up by saying it was fenton tech. it leads to some funny stuff and danny trying to badly lie through his teeth.

this episode builds on both dash’s character and how his view on danny starts to change. this event is sorta the kicker to his whole redemption arc in the nasty reboot timeline, having moments/seeds somewhat sown before this but never full on sprouting until this moment. dash has seen danny hold his own in a fight before, but only in teams, with his friends, and behind weapons (i.e pirate radio) up until this point. as their weapons start to lose ammo and supplies (and, unknown to dash, danny’s powers) dash starts to REALLY see how resourceful and charismatic danny is on his own. all other possible factors are removed here, its just pure, unfiltered, human danny fenton baby!

even when dash has his breakdown similar to canon, the kid he picked on for years still extends a hand and helps him out of it. even when the goal seems so far away like they’ll never make it, danny tells him to press on and keeps moving forward. even when they’re at their wits end and dash cant for the life of him figure out a way out of the situation, danny still!! somehow!!!! does!!!!!!! all these little moments make dash start to fall in love appreciate the skillset and merits danny has all on his own. (theres also like themes of danny learning how to properly balance/maintain both of his lives and learning he has valuable skillsets as fenton too instead of being a useless half in this reboot. dash’s validation is a small part of what encourages danny into realizing his worth. because, hell, if your bully thinks you’re doing alright then thats gotta mean something, right?)

the climax of the episode is when danny is backed into a corner by skulker with no ammo, no powers, and no significant physical strength. but even so, danny decides to go off the deep end by launching himself at skulker and starts smacking the shit out of the ghost with nothing but an empty ectogun and blind gremlin rage.

(exactly like this lol)

in the struggle, danny is doing surprisingly well (which dash absolutely notes in awe) but then at one point, skulker points a weapon in prime position to shoot danny without him noticing. dash panics and rushes to pull fenton off of skulker, but danny, upon realizing what dash is doing, takes opportunity and latches onto skulker’s head trying to pry it off with dash’s combine strength (much to dash’s confusion).

basically, danny manages to rip skulker’s fucking head off (dash is horrified until danny shows him the actual ghost and how his body was just a suit) and sucks up skulker into a spare thermos. the two then use the suit to jet pack them up onto the welding table in the ops center where jack had been tinkering with it.

the shrink blaster had its final fixes implemented in it now, with a reverse switch as well, so danny and dash easily changes back to normal. they share a bit of a moment, similar to phantom and dash in canon. but instead of dash ruining the moment this time, its danny who simply states “well the adrenaline has worn off so i should probably tell you my leg is most likely fractured” before collapsing onto dash. at some point during the tussle with skulker, danny’s leg apparently got scrunched pretty hard to the point of being broken but danny was being too feral in the moment to react right away.

(again, as stated in a previous ask, my shitpost jock protection squad au took various elements from this plotline in the reboot so there will be overlap but its not canon)