#fanphic

Having a wide range of children that filtered in and out of his house didn’t help in tipping him off either. Especially ones that acted a lot like the ghost in question.

A missing slipper would be blamed on a new pet Damian must have acquired and was attempting to hide in the mansion. Broken vases blamed on rambunctious children tearing through the house playing a game that required leaping off the walls. Disappearing snacks were also blamed on his very active household. Flickering lights were blamed on the mansions age. Cold spots also blamed on the fact the the mansion was massive and a furnace can only do so much at times. A passing black haired child could be a good number of his children based purely on height.

The ghost could have gone a lot longer without being noticed if they hadn’t shown any activity the week all his children were out of the mansion.

He knew that Damien was at his friends house for the night, that Dick was back in his own city and wouldn’t have time to visit during the week. Duke was on a vacation with his friends, enjoying a much needed rest, Jason mentioned being out of town for that week, Barbara was planning a party for her friends, also out of town. Cass and Steph were on a girls week tour out of the city, and Tim was with the titans for a couple of days.

Bruce was all alone.

Or so he thought.

He first saw a mop of black hair walk past him in the middle of the night, and he wished Tim a good night before realizing Tim wasn’t at the manor. When he spun around to check, the child has disappeared. He blamed it on a lack of sleep and moved on.

Then the snacks kept disappearing. Even the ones Bruce had managed to hide. Ones that none of his kids knew of.

One room in the manor was especially cold. An empty spare room. Cold even on a hot summer evening.

What finally tipped him off was when one of the sturdiest vases he owned tipped over behind him and shattered. And a small ‘shit’ was whispered behind him.

He didn’t do anything at first.

He mostly began to just observe, try to catch what else this ghost had been doing. He could tell it wasn’t malicious in any way. Nothing flew off a shelf in anger, there was no wailing or screaming, and so far nobody was getting hurt. He considered calling John.

But the idea was dismissed as John was more likely to anger the ghost of Wayne Manor than help them.

He noticed little things, how he could tell when the ghost entered the room just by how the temperature would drop. The small sighs from empty corners, soft chuckles when Bruce put on comedic television, how close the ghost was just based on the temperature, he even began to notice the ghost was helpful at times. He once complained about losing his keys and 5 minutes later, it was on his side table.

He also noticed at night that he could hear sobs. Soft, contained, a fear of being heard but unable to stop. Times when he would enter a room and the temperature would rise as the ghost quickly moved somewhere else.

Bruce figured the cold room he discovered was the one the ghost favoured. That was the one he heard most of the sobs coming from.

The ghost was much more active during the night than they were during the day. But there were times in the late afternoon that Bruce would notice the change in temperature, the soft hums of something buzzing, and then the cold sitting right next to him.

He saw the ghost the one morning he didn’t hear any crying, opening the door to the spare room and peeking in.

There was a shape in the bed, familiar black hair peeking out from the edge of the blanket, a soft rise and fall of the mound as the stranger slept.

But ghosts didn’t breath.

They didn’t sleep.

He didn’t know a lot about magic.

But Bruce knew the dead didn’t sleep or breath.

So maybe they didn’t have a ghost.

Bruce stepped silently into the room, years of experience keeping his steps light and soft. He got closer to the bed, and eventually he got a clearer look at the stranger.

Black hair, like so many of his kids, pale skin, with strange freckles lining his cheeks that seemed to shin slightly green in the dim light. There were scars too. Lots of little ones on his cheeks, a few on his lips and eyebrows, all healed.

Bruce lightly sat on the bed next to the child, who luckily didn’t stir just yet. He gently reached out, placing a hand on his head and running it through his hair.

“Five more minutes, Jazz…”

Bruce froze, then slowly retracted his hand. He took his time standing up and leaving the room, carefully closing the door behind him to be sure not to wake the boy.

He turned around to see the Alfred watching him, a smile playing at his lips, “shall I get the papers, sir?”

Bruce nodded, “how long have you known?”

Danny woke up groaning for several variably unpleasant reasons.  The sun was shining directly into his eyes, he was hungry enough to eat an entire pig all by himself, his core - that’s what Toby called it - felt like his legs after a day of running from Dash before the accident, and he was pretty sure his room was a balmy 50°F.

About average for a school day.

First thing was first: stretching and a hot shower.  Even turned up as hot as it would go, it felt warm at best.  Danny phased the water off of himself before he’d finished turning the shower off.  He bundled up in a white long sleeve covered in red and blue stars with his longest socks before heading downstairs, rubbing his arms.

When he got down to the kitchen, Danny was met with Jazz pouring over a book.  He shot a text to Tucker and Sam to let them know he was about to eat and beelined for the fridge.

“Hey Pep-step, why’s the A/C on so high?”

“It’s set to 69 degrees, as usual, because dad is about as mature as you are.  Feeling cold, Spangled Star?”

Danny snorted, looking at everything on the shelves.  “Feels like Halloween night in here.  Ya think it’s safe for me to eat the ectoweenies?”  The animated sausages growled at him, but Danny bared his teeth – four of which were canines twice as long as natural – in a grin at them.

Danny could feel Jazz’s stare on the back of his head, but he decided to follow the internet’s amazing advice: if it’s not text, it's not real.  Jazz could give him all the weird looks she wanted, but Danny was trying to enjoy his summer and that meant as few awkward talks as possible.

“I did suggest you eat ecto-contaminated food, and doing just that clearly gave you a major boost of energy.  Please at least cook them though?”

“Well duh, cold meat tastes weird without ice cream.”

“Oh god, do you still mix up your food like that?  Danny that’s absolutely disgusting.”

Danny ignored Jazz’s fake gagging noises with all of the maturity she claimed to have while he grabbed the Tupperware the weenies were in and quickly tossed them into the phase-proof air-fryer, ignoring all of their snarling and slapping down the few that managed to nearly escape.  The ecto-weenies cooking, Danny went back to the fridge and pulled out some ingredients, humming a Dumpty Humpty song to himself while he prepared an omelette.  Glancing at Jazz, he arched a brow to match the Look she was giving him.

“What?  I’m eating my normal greens and my ghostly greens, isn’t that amazing of me?  Since, ya know, some of us actually know how to cook in this house.”

“I know perfectly well how to cook, Danny.”

“Oh yeah, sure you do.  I meant from scratch, not microwaving things, but we can call that cooking.”

Jazz glared at him and Danny chuckled, oiling up his pan.  Danny turned the shells of the eggs intangible and tossed them in the trash once the contents hit the pan, and he stirred carefully.  When he looked back at Jazz – head turning further than humanly possible, because why not – she was once again nose deep in her book.

“It appears Axiom labs is patenting nanobot technology.  That’ll be an amazing revolution for so many aspects of life!  Nanobots would make an amazing surgical tool!”

“Mmm, yeah, if they can get the controls right.  Fixing up a human body is delicate work, and I feel like they’d focus on the 3D printing aspect of it first.  Oh stars, you know Mom and Dad are gonna make their own if they find out.”

“True, but don’t you mean when?  Mom does still read publications of research papers and breakthroughs.”

Danny shrugged, nodding as he chopped up his veggies while the spatula kept mixing up his eggs.  A shiver ran down his spine and frost collected on the blade of his knife.  “Yeah, but they’d go for a bugbot design for variety, and they’d start at least a centimeter big.”

When Jazz debated him on the pros and cons of insectoid minibots, he knew that whatever it was she wanted to talk about wasn’t going to be fun.  She saved the unpleasant conversations for when Danny had a full stomach, or at least as close to full as he could get.  At least he’d get to eat his breakfast before he froze that too.

He shivered and pulled the spatula away from the pan just in time.  The green glow had flickered to blue in a wave, and everything sticking to the spatula went rigid as steel.  It hissed when he put it back in the pan, along with he vegetables, but that was fine.

Jazz described some kind of medical procedure in polite amounts of detail while Danny devoured his food.  The ecto-weenies tried to bite back, but their teeth was made of cooked flesh instead of something sharp.

Once Danny finished his food, he descended into a fit of shivers, blue light covering everything he saw instead of the usual green when his powers acted up.  Even his sweater felt like a fridge, and Jazz eyed him with enough concern that he felt worse for it.

“I-I guesss Cole’s little l-l-lesson on thec old really shook me up inside.  Guess I need to ask him how he keeps warm when his fa-fashion is so breezy.”

Jazz sighed, shaking her head as she closed her book.  Danny felt that excellent puns were not grounds for the Dissapointed Look Jazz hit him with, especially not as he shook the table trying to warm himself up.  He floated up to the kitchen light and grabbed the bulb, pleasantly surprised that it didn’t hurt.  That was probably a bad thing though.

“Danny, Tucker tells me that 2 weeks ago, you met a clone of yourself, created by Vlad, who you turned over to the side of good before letting her fly off dramatically into the sunset.  Elle, apparently?  Who you neglected to tell me about.”

“Uh, yeah, I just didn’t think you really needed to know about her?”

Jazz narrowed her eyes and the bulb was room temperature at best now.  Fuck.

“In my defense, it never occurred to me that she hadn’t figured out something from Vlad’s lab on how to stabilize herself.  Ghosts are held together by the will to live.  I never exactly imagined anyone losing that, let alone Elle.”

“Danny, do you even know where she planned on staying?  How old she is or appears to be?  Does she know how to get a house or apartment?”

Danny sighed, shrugging as he rubbed his arms up to his shoulders.  He turned on the stove and held a hand over the flames, soaking in the heat as much as he could.

“She looks like me, if I hadn’t transitioned, and I’m pretty sure she’s got copies of my memories or something, but she’d only be a year old at most and I dunno how to do those things, so she probably doesn’t.  I dunno how to survive on my own, Jazz, I barely know how to get by with you guys.  What was I supposed to do?”

Jazz threw her hands in the air, whisper-shouting now – their parents must’ve been in the lab then.  “You could’ve told me!  I could’ve helped, I could've had Tucker forge her some documents and use my and Sam’s connections to get Elle into an adoptive home, safe from our parents at least, with gear to keep her safe from Vlad!”

Jazz’s eyes were misting up now and Danny wasn’t sure what to do.  He’d dimmed an active lightbulb with his hand and the stove’s flame was flickering even as it grazed his skin.  Danny had no intention of finding out what touching skin would do.

“Danny this isn’t the same as when I insisted that I’m more of an adult than Mom and Dad, or when I threw myself into trying to help you guys ghost hunt.  I can in fact help you and your friends with things as a person with more life experience, who is actively looking toward the future!  I’m your big sister, I’m supposed to protect you, to help you!  Please, just… let me help.

“Please.”

Danny focused on the cold spreading through his body in waves, imagining a frosty blue fog, and demanded that it retreat back into his buzzing core.  The cold receded for a moment and Danny rushed over to pull Jazz into a tight hug, rubbing her back.  Jazz squeezed back, and he did his best to ignore the warm heat of tears hitting his sweater.

“I’m sorry, Jazz.  I promise, from now on, I’ll tell you when I think I need help.  Stars know I’m in over my head all the time.  I just got used to trying to deal with it all with just me, Tuck and Sam, but I’m gonna do better from now on.”

Jazz sniffled and nodded, and for a long moment they just held each other.

The doorbell rang and they pulled apart, Jazz wiping her tears away and turning to the stairs.

“You let them in, I’ll go up to the Ops scenter so we can get started on searching for Elle.”

Danny nodded, turning off the stove and dumping his dishes in the sink before he went to the door.  He didn’t need his folks yelling at him on top of this emotional morning.

#

When the four of them arrived at the observatory using the freshly remade porta-portal, Sam called out to Toby, and they all braced for a needlessly dramatic entrance.  What they got was a small bird flying in from the roof and growing quickly into a man, who looked a bit different from last time beyond the layers of clothes he was wearing.  A feathery mess of hair that was now black, brown, red, and blond instead of the simple blond of the past couple of days, and when Danny squinted, he could swear that Toby’s eyes were both more than one color, and still different from each other.  Tucker whistled at the sight of him and Danny rolled his eyes, waving.

“Well, you certainly know how to dress up for an occasion.  Did you do something to your hair, or is there an optical illusion going on?”

Toby laughed and leaned against one of the somewhat intact glass cases in the lobby.

“My appearance changes a lot, shifting around with my mood and the environment.  The Liminal Plane doesn’t exactly have a sun and it’s generally pretty cold, so I was a bit bulkier, hairier, and pale in there.  This is about what I usually look like.”

“That’s so cool!  I can stretch myself out and open holes in my body in ghost form, think you could teach me how to do that shapeshifting thing in human form?”

Toby shrugged with a warm smile on his face before he cleared his throat and waved at the others.  “Incoming.”  Danny managed to cover his ears and close his eyes just in time for a CRACK to fill the air and shake the building, blinding light shining right through his eyelids for a second that took ages.

“Hey, some of us have eardrums that don’t regrow after a good night’s rest!”

“You do not need to teleport like that, I know you don’t!”

Cole held up his hands in surrender, rolling his eyes at them all as if he was the one who got his ears fucked up.  Danny was mildly surprised the man wasn’t deaf from his own magic.

“Alright, no more thundersteping between planes.  Anyway, you got the location for this Elle girl?  We should get to saving her as soon as we can, an I don’t like our chances of scryin her without teachin Danny how to scry.  We’ve never met her and that makes it hard.”

Tucker held up his PDA with a smug grin and Danny first bumped him.

“No need, I’ve connected my PDA to the Fenton Tracking Satellites and found Elle myself.  We’ve even got a spare porta-portal that we can use to get to her.”

“We were just waiting for one of you to get here so that we could go from finding and convincing her to go to actually getting to this Far Frozen place.  We can get to Elle in minutes.”

“Man,” Tucker said, looking over at the porta-portal in Sam’s hands, “The Fentons really aren’t focusing on the right aspect of their inventions.  This could cut down on the need for most planes and trains, get us into space - the possibilities are endless, and so is the cash flow!”

“I never thought of it like that… I could start building a moon base tomorrow!”

“Focus, boys.  We’ve got a kid to save, yeah?”

“Sam’s right, as usual.  Let’s-”

A power chord screeched through the air and shook the building so hard that pieces of the ceiling fell and Danny’s teeth rattled.  He split in three, grabbing his friends and sister to phase and fly out of the building immediately, and to his relief Toby and Cole were both outside with them in a blink.  Looking up, Danny couldn’t help but be confused and irritated.

Ember Mclain hovered above the observatory, her pupils and iris swallowed up entirely in green, her hair a dark violet that burned hot enough to distort the air around her.  Somewhat nearby, Technus was surrounded by a hurricane of stolen technology, and Danny watched in horror and bubbling rage as the telescope in the observatory was ripped out of the building, alongside the control consoles, melding together into legs, a torso, and arms.  A 30 foot tall mechanical insect built itself in front of them, leveling the observatory to nothing, and Danny growled as he rose up and merged two of his duplicates into one, leaving the other near his friends to keep them safe - and slip on his Fenton phones like the rest of them were doing.

Danny flew up to just between both the mech’s face and Ember, hands blazing green. “Gotta say, I never expected the wannabe pop-star to team up with an idiot who thought he could cont-”

Light, pain, and the duplicate was gone.  Danny practically froze from the echo of being electrocuted into goo and raised a shield around him and his friends just in case.

“You!”  Technus’ robot pointed down at Cole, Toby taking a few steps back from his husband.  “You killed our man!  Do you know how hard it is to convince someone to re-form after they get mauled like that?”

“You killed our boyfriend and he’s barely pulled a core back together!  It’s time you go quiet, forever!”

Cole held his hand out and a hammer with a spike coming out of one end of the head appeared in his grasp.  Violet flames engulfed him, and the grass beneath and around him lit up.

Cole laughed, and with a swing of his hammer, a wave of blue light swept out and hit Ember and Technus both, covering them head to toe in ice.  “That guy that wanted to skin a kid and mount his head on a wall?  That’s who you’re pissy about?”  

“I have to say, y’all have no taste.  That’s no excuse to go trying to kill my husband though, bad taste in men.”  Toby got down on all fours as his clothes melted into his body and he grew, slamming down a paw as his tail flicked behind him.  In the blink of an eye, Toby was a fucking triceratops, just as big as Technus had made himself.  He charged, and with a crunch of metal, punched right through Technus’ mech, which fell on its back with a loud yelp from the ghost inside.

Toby followed up his assault with a stomp onto Technus’ leg and Cole flew so fast his body smeared through the air like a cloud and slammed his hammer into Ember’s gut with crack.

Danny sucked in a breath and flew up to where he’d have a clean shot on Technus and fired off four ghost rays at him and Ember both, managing not to hit the Lumanos.  “When the hell did you guys get this strong?”

Danny dropped his shield and his friends scattered, each of them popping off a shot at Ember.  Two of them struck true, the other sailing just over Cole’s head.  

Ember shrieked and struck another chord on her guitar and Danny hissed from the noise, flinching to cover his ears.  Cole, however, raised his weapon again with a war cry that bled from human voice into rolling thunder.  In two strikes, Ember was knocked back several feet and her flames flickered back to blue for a second.

Technus’ mech popped open its shoulders and 12 little missiles flew out of its silos, slamming into Toby from above.  “Foolish beast of a man, I, Technus, shall not be defeated by a mere dinosaur!”  Toby took a few steps back, then slammed his front paws into the ground.  The ground next to the right shoulder of Technus’ mech burst up into the air like a fountain and rocks rained down on the mech, eliciting loud and angry cries from the ghost in the machine.

Deeming Technus dealt with, Danny circled around Cole and Ember, firing off a couple of shots, once of which even rang true, followed up with a volley of shots from Sam, Jazz, and Tucker.  “You said you got Skulker to re-form, what’s the big deal?  He’s still around, isn’t he?”

“Barely!  If Skulker didn’t have a sanctuary, he’d’ve been gone for good!  Say, you big ol windbag, let’s see if we can’t point all that rage elsewhere.”

“Shit - Cole, don’t listen to her music!”

Ember was already playing, though, and Danny hissed as many swears as he knew when Cole went rigid, then relaxed entirely.  Cole turned burning red eyes not on Ember or Technus, but on Toby.

“Let’s make it even: you take out your husband and we’ll call it an even deal for taking our boyfriend.”

Cole pointed the head of his weapon at Toby and a bolt of lightning struck the triceratops in the back of the neck, thunder rolling afterward.  He followed that up with a dive and a swing that cracked something.

“Not this again!”  Toby growled as he transformed into a ball of fire, which twisted up into a pillar of flames, engulfing Cole entirely and all but slapping at the man.  Cole growled, flying backward and Toby swiped at him again, leaving several flames all over his husband.

Technus’ mech raised a hand and fired off a laser that completely covered Toby and Cole’s bodies, and Danny was certain he never wanted to hear fire scream in pain ever again.  He shivered, first from horror, and then from cold that was welling up inside of him and spreading to every inch of his body, twice as bad as it had been in human form.

“I-I d-d-don’t have time f-for t-thi-this.”

Danny flew up at Ember, deciding that if nothing else she would either burn away the cold or get swept away by it.  He focused, dragging that cold to his hands the same as he did for the heat of his ectoblasts, and an icy beam of light slammed into Ember, chilling down her hair from violet to blue and back at its normal size.  Frost spread over Danny’s suit, and he dropped several feet in the air while he shivered.

“Aw, looks like you could use some help warming up there, dipstick!”  Danny’s vision became nothing but blue waves as flames washed over him, and his problems flipped extremes pretty immediately.  He screamed, flying up high to try and get away from the heat, but the flames were on him they were in him.

Danny heard that unholy screech of flames in pain and a sizzle like water striking a pan, followed up by the charging whine of machinery and the buzz of electrical discharge.  It was impossible to follow whatever the hell was going on though, what with the being on fire bit.

“ENOUGH!”

Well, it was hard not to understand that at least.

Thunder roared all around him and rain pelted Danny in sheets, dousing the flames and forcing him to go intangible.  When he reoriented himself, he saw… well he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.  He knew that he sensed Toby, above him and around him, but that was largely impossible because Toby had sofar only turned into animals and a walking bonfire.  Whatever it was above Danny wasn’t any dinosaur he’d ever heard of.

A being carved from clouds, wind, rain, and lightning, taking on the shape of a gargantuan serpent with multiple sets of wings cut through the sky, stirring up a storm in its wake like tidal waves in the ocean.  Danny flew down to the ground, certain only that he didn’t want to be a notable target, and he split once more to grab his loved ones, pulling them away as fast as he could.  When he was certain they were far enough away from Technus and Ember that whatever this was wouldn’t mistake them as fellow prey, Danny stopped, wrapping them all in a green bubble that rocked against the howling winds.

The Serpent coiled around the area that Technus and Ember were in, and opened its gaping maw to roar loud enough Danny was certain he’d go deaf.  They all looked away as pure incandescence painted everything white, and when the flash faded, Danny couldn’t even see Ember.  Then the coiled mass of thick cloud slammed down onto Technus’ robot, and it shattered into countless pieces, shaking the whole park - and probably the whole town.

There was another flash, this one of blue-green light, and Danny couldn’t feel Ember either, though Technus felt like he was just as everywhere as Toby did.  Alarming, but something he’d think about some other time.  He had bigger problems, and he wasn’t sure how he could even fight something like this.

They got away, the cowards.

“Oh, cool, the storm snake is talking,” Tucker said, clinging to Danny’s arm with a death grip.  “Cause we needed it to talk too.”

I heard that.  I have one more thing I need to do before I relax, though.

Danny would like to simply never hear thunder and wind and crackling lightning forming words ever again so long as he lived, really.  Of course, he was at least a bit surer of what his ghost sense was trying to tell him now.

“Guys, I think that’s Toby.”

“Toby can turn into the Leviathan?”

“I dunno, Jazz, he just.  That’s Toby!”

The air buzzed with energy that built and built, growing thick enough to feel against Danny’s shield, against his skin.  Power swelled all around Toby and exploded in a wave that swept away his storm clouds, rainbow light bathing all of Amity Park.  In the same moment, there was a flash, and Toby was at the very least the same size as he had been when they’d met.

Cautiously, Danny left a duplicate with his friends and flew invisibly over to check on the Lumanos.  Luckily, it looked like they were physically fine, and neither of them tried to kill him when he turned visible again, so that was a plus.  Still, that left the question.

“What the fuck was that?”

They looked at him like deer caught in headlights for all of a moment, before shrugging.  Cole grinned and said the most nonsensical of words.

“Toby somehow managed to turn into a copy of my sire.  They don’t have a gender, but that was the part they had to play in, ya know, me being born so I call them my sire.  I’m impressed though, I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I didn’t know it either… I just transformed the way Danny showed me, snapped you out of the charm, and… reached for something to end the fight with.  I was just so fucking mad that they’d turn you against me like that.”

Cole rubbed Toby on the back and Danny cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck.  “This is the most haunted city in the country.  Ghosts sometimes do the whole ‘mind control’ thing, though it’s rarer than I expected it to be.  You were uh… joking about that storm snake thing being your parent though, right?”

“Nope.  Dad was an adventurer too, after all.”

Unsure what the fuck that meant, Danny decided he didn’t want to know, and used the porta-portal to skip the distance between the Lumanos and his friends.  Toby patted Danny on the shoulder, muttering something in a language Danny couldn’t figure out for the death of him, and a surge of warmth flooded Danny’s body, and in seconds he felt absolutely amazing.

“Whoa!  That was pretty great!  What can’t you do?”

“There’s things… apparently fewer things than I remember, but things.  Healing is a trick of the trade though.  Everyone ok?  I know that storm was probably a lot and I’ve never really made one that big before.”

There was a chorus of “Yeah”s before Toby relaxed, leaning on Cole and hitting him with a similar wave of gold-green magic.  Sam cleared her throat, flexing and relaxing her fingers.

“So, what exactly was that last thing you did?  I know it cleared out the storm, but it looks like you also fixed the Observatory and the park in general, and the air’s never been this fresh before.”

Danny floated a little higher and saw that not only were there no signs of Ember torching the grass, but everything was better than it’d been when they arrived that morning.  He saw bees and butterflies and wasps flying all around flowers that he knew weren’t in the park before.

“Well, I figured that since I was feeling powerful beyond my least reasonable assumptions, I reached out to the local earth, plant, water, and air spirits, as well as the memory the land had of the animals nearby.  Then we cast Wish together, and I think that’s what exhausted me out of Elder Tempest form.”

Cole narrowed his eyes at Toby, tilting his head to the side.  “When did you learn how to cast Wish?”

“Oh, you know,” he said, waving off the question, “Valdan’s got a lot of books on him.  I don’t read em all to you.”

“As amazing as all of this is,” Jazz said, pitching her voice just slightly above the crazy magic men’s volume.  “I do believe we still need to go find Elle and bring her to a doctor’s appointment?”

The Lumanos nodded, and Cole patted Danny on the shoulder, frowning slightly.  He shrugged, and gave him another pat.

“Two doctor’s appointments.  Let’s go!  You guys still got the location and shit?”

Tucker quickly scanned through his PDA and pulled up the coordinates again, before putting them into the porta-portal.  They fired off a shot, and a flat circle of radioactive green light unfolded in the air, filled with a void that swallowed up all the light that hit it.  He gestured with his stylus and a grin.

Danny returned to human form, rolling his eyes, and walked through the portal first, since he wouldn’t cause a panic.  Besides, it was his little sister they were saving.

#

Technus seethed from his safe hiding spot in the global net, his anger spawning glitches in the abandoned forum page of some Amity Park native he’d found while frantically fleeing.  Oh what a low blow it had been to be forced into fleeing in the first place.

“I am Technus, I am the Master of Technology!  No tree hugging beast shifter or cloudy brute should be able to bring me harm!  No target of my true fury should be able to make me run!  I even had help!”

The fight - barely two minutes long - played back in the form of a video before him and he ground his teeth at the recollection.  They were two of the most powerful ghosts he knew, they should’ve been able to handle a couple of mere mortals from another dimension!

“It seems that even I, Technus, have allowed my emotions to cloud my judgement and my logic.  This is no mere playfight game of ‘superhero’ with Phantom, these are clearly warriors with powers I do not know the limitations of.  Revenge for what they did to Skulker will have to be calculated, perfectly planned.

“It’s fine guys, just go on ahead without me.  I can handle one giant bat, it’s fine, it’s just a big ol animal, I’ve fought those before.  Stars I’m a moron!”

Danny sighed as he capped the Fenton Thermos, wincing as the motion brought his attention to the acid burns on his arms and leg, and the ice shrapnel that littered his body.  Phasing the ice out, Danny groaned when he found the acid was not, in fact, going to just phase off of him.  Typical.

Before Danny could find the nearest water source, his ghost sense went off again.

Growling, Danny turned around.  Glowing fists raised, he prepared to blast whoever it was apart for trying to kick him while he was down.

“Whoa!  Hey there kid, are you alright?  You look like you just fought a natural disaster - this block looks like it too.  Is that acid on you?”

Danny looked the ghost in front of him up and down, trying to find any threat.  Blue skin, white eyes, white hair, and a sweater covered in lions to go with sweatpants.  Danny didn’t see any theme going on - ah, a lab coat appeared out of nothing around them, wonderful.

“It was actually Batman’s inspiration, cause no normal bat has all those extra features on it.  I think it was one of the only ghosts I’ve met that actually uses being invisible against other ghosts.  What’s it to you, though?”

“Well, I’m a doctor, so when I saw some kid in a costume looking like someone either cut him up or burned him, I thought ‘hey, maybe he needs some help’.  So, if you’ll let me?”

The doctor was holding up a cotton ball he’d pulled from his coat, and Danny arched a brow at him.  After a moment, though, he held out one of the arms burning from being eaten at by acid.

The doctor dabbed the splashed area with his cotton ball and the acid was sucked up into it.  Another few balls were applied to other areas of Danny’s splashed-over self, and he was finally free to start piecing himself back together.

He laughed and swung his arm a few times, giving the doctor a smile.

“Thanks, dude, I didn’t know there were ghost doctors outside of the Far Frozen.”

“Well dying can’t exactly keep you away from helping people forever, can it?  I’m Dr. Cosmos, and this will help you heal up faster.  Your aura’s different from most ghosts that I’ve met, though.  Are you any particular kind of ghost?”

“Oh, I’m a halfa, so I probably register as kinda weird on your ghost-dar or whatever, right?”  Danny reached for the lollipop being held out to him.

It was pulled away, a frown on Dr. Cosmos’ face.

“A halfa?  What’s that?”

“Oh, you don’t know?”

That was new.  Every ghost Danny met seemed to already know what was weird about him as soon as they met.

Danny looked around and saw that civilians were starting to fill the streets again, so he flew up higher, out of earshot of even the most perceptive humans.  Dr. Cosmos followed him up.

“I’m half-ghost, half human.  Sidney Poindexter called me a halfa and we just sorta never looked for a better word.”

“That’s adorable and it sounds like the way my kid would describe it.  Ok, this one’s not the right kind for a bridge spirit like you.  Hold on.”

Danny cocked a brow at the doctor as he rummaged through his pockets and pulled out a faintly glowing lollipop, like the first one except that it was a lot more physical.  He handed it over to Danny, who accepted it easily enough, and waved.

“Well, I’ve gotta go, stuff to do and all.  You have a good day, kid, and don’t go gettin into more fights!”

“No promises!”  Danny waved at the retreating back of Dr. Cosmos before flying off to the school as fast as he could, sticking the lollipop into his mouth.  After all, if it was supposed to poison him or whatever, the doc would’ve stuck around, and Danny couldn’t sense him.

He was even feeling better already, imagine that.

Checking his phone for the time, Danny went intangible to pick up speed.  He probably wouldn’t be thinking about Dr. Cosmos any time soon.

#

The universe proved Danny wrong once more when Lancer introduced the class to a tall, bear of a boy with brown hair, sepia brown, freckled skin, and one brown eye while the other was opalescent.  Danny swore he saw some colors human eyes weren’t meant to see in the new kid’s left eye.

“Class, this is Stefanos Cosmos, an exchange student from Pittsburgh.”

“Hey there,” Steve said with a wave, smiling wide enough that everyone could see his canines were much longer and too pointy to be human.  “My last school was Three Rivers so uh I’m kinda not used to this kinda school, so if I’m weird I’m sorry about that.  Also, call me Steve!”

“What’s so different about Three Rivers?”

“Oh, it’s a Sudbury school, lookit up!  I’ve been told they’re really different from regular public schools.”

“Not a problem, Steve.”  Lancer patted the large boy on the back.  “Your classmates will be doing their best to help you adjust, I’m sure.”  No one missed the look Lancer gave them, and no one even really considered caring. 

“So why is your eye glowing?  Is that a cool contact or something?”  Dale looked interested in getting a set of his own.

“No dude, that’s just cause I’m a bridge spirit.  Wait, sorry, most people don’t know what that means.”

“Holy shit, are you a ghost?!”  

Steve held up his hands with a chuckle when everyone tensed up at that, Lancer included.  He didn’t look the least bit scared though, and his grin wasn’t all that malicious.

“Dudes, chill out.  I’m a liminal spirit, my Dad’s a ghost and my Papa’s still human.  I’m just, ya know, the fun in-between.  This is still all my flesh and blood; I’m not possessed or anything like that.”

There was an entire 2 seconds where nobody said anything at all.  

The room exploded into a chaotic cacophony of overlapping voices as everyone tried to voice their opinion at once.  Danny could pick out a few shouts of ‘that’s fuckin awesome’ and even the delighted cries of fangirls being validated in their dreams to marry Phantom - which, horrible, no thank you.

Still, things were quieter than Danny thought they should be, and when he focused, he realized that there was a layer of calmness washing over him that didn’t come from him.  He couldn’t risk the glow of his eyes to check, but he had a sneaking suspicion that was coming from Steve, who looked a bit freaked out by the explosive reaction.

Danny, personally, was having an existential crisis over the situation and he felt he had every right to have it.  He didn’t know that half-ghosts could just be born.  Sure, Elle was half-ghost from the start, but she was a clone made primarily from ectoplasm, she was more half-human than anything.

“My guys, my dudes, can y’all calm down?  I can answer questions if you want, I guess, but one at a time.  Uh, you?”

“Hi, Lester: what do you mean, exactly?  How does that even work?”

“Well, my dads wanted a kid and dad’s a ghost so his body uh changed to fit.   Can we stop talking about my parents having sex now?  Thanks.”

“So you’re saying that I do have a chance with mi amor, Phantom?  Oh, this is amazing!”

“Oh, oh hey dude do you know Phantom?”

“Yeah, have you ever met Phantom, like in the Ghost Zone?”

“Lord of the Flies, people, settle down!”

It took a few seconds for everyone to shut up, but Lancer’s glare and volume eventually reminded them all that they were in class.  Everyone was buzzing with excitement and confusion, however, and Danny could practically taste it.

Based on the way Steve licked his lips, he could actually taste the emotions in the room, which was nothing short of alarming.

“Antiguos arriba, you guys are wild!  I guess my classmates back in Pittsburg had a lot more time to get used to me, but it was never this big a thing.  Uh, I don’t know who Phantom is or what this Ghost Zone is either.  It’s a big Earth, guys, I only ever really knew the people back home and in a few places my dads took us out to for vacations, like Disney World and the Grand Canyon and - actually, my guys, the Grand Canyon has such amazing acoustics!”

“Hold us, I thought you said you’re half ghost?  How do you not know about Phantom?  Name’s Dash, by the way.”

“Sup Dash.  I dunno how to tell you this but there’s a lot of dead people, and not just humans.  I’ve met so many dinosaurs and ghost cats, though most cats can teleport anyway, they don’t have to die for that.  Unless he did something major, I doubt I’d’ve heard about him.”

“Hey dude, name’s Kwan.  Have you not ever been to like, the Ghost Zone?  I’m pretty sure that’s where the ghosts all usually are.”

Steve scrunched up his face in confusion, staring at Kwan for a long moment before snapping his fingers.

“Oh, you mean the Infinite Realms!  Dad’s been there, but I haven’t.  He said they call it the Infinite Realms or the Liminal Realm over there.  Never heard it called the Ghost Zone, that’s just dumb.”

“Are you so massive cause you’re a ghost?”

“Uh, no, actually.  Not mostly, really.  Abuela has gigantism, she’s like 7’2” I think, so I’m pretty sure this is Papa’s genetics at play.  On the other hand, if it’s a ghost thing then you’ve got Clifford the big brown dog right here.”

“Dude, how tall are you?  You should join basketball!”

“I’m like, 6’6?  I’m not really into playing sports though.  I’m more of a music guy myself.  Actually, Mr. Lancer are there any dance clubs or anything like that at the school?”

“We do, but it is the middle of the school year.  Maybe next year you can sign up.  I do believe that’s enough questions about Mr. Cosmos, class!  You are to respect his privacy and let him tell you what he will on his own time, am I understood?”

There was a chorus of “Yes Mister Lancer”s and Steve grinned.  Danny could swear he’d seen the same smile on his, Sam and Tucker’s faces before, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not yet.

“There’s a seat between Danny Fenton and Dash Baxter over there, Mr. Cosmos.  I’ll make sure you get a study guide to catch you up on where we are.”

Steven nodded and vanished from human sight.  Danny watched him, translucent in the way that only a ghost could be, walk right through people and desks, and plop himself down in his seat before reappearing to everyone else.

Despite Lancer’s best efforts, the chattering only got quieter instead of being silenced.  Danny couldn’t blame them.

#

Valerie Grey was having one hell of a month.  Last week she found out half-ghost half-human hybrids existed, and both her multi-billionaire mayoral boss and the little girl he’d sent her to hunt down were half-ghosts themselves.  She was already going through a worse existential crisis than the very discovery of ghosts and an afterlife dimension gave her - the spite and anger revolving around her ruined life had been a great distraction from the enormity of that - and wondering how a good person could enjoy the screaming agony of a boy her age who had already died.

Now there was this guy complicating things even more.

Val hadn’t even considered whether or not ghosts could reproduce, let alone with humans, and now she felt stupid for not landing at that conclusion with the half-ghost discovery in the first place and wondering where Elle’s - and by extension, Phantom’s - parents were.  According to her radar, something had split off from Steve and was wondering the school, but there was no subtle way for her to check what it was.  Asking him would require admitting that she had a ghost radar built into her nanotech ghost hunting suit that appeared whenever she called for it, and sending off a drone to track it down would mean leaving class again, and she wasn’t looking to lose any more of her education to ghost stuff if she could help it.

Nobody was actually paying attention to Lancer’s lesson though, not fully, not even the nerds.  Everyone was stealing glances at Steve, who was looking around every now and then with interest, though Val wasn’t sure it was possible for him to match everyone else’s curiosity.  She could afford to pay him as much attention as Lancer’s words.  She was listening to the lesson at least.

Other than being well over 6 feet tall and sporting one glowing eye, Steve didn’t seem all that different from the rest of them, his roaming gaze landing on Dash, Kwan, and Dale just as often as it did on Paulina and Star.  He even looked over at Valerie, winking at her with that ring of shifting, rainbow colors.  Class wasn’t much an opportunity to see what someone was like beyond the surface.  Maybe having a human dad to raise him kept the ghostly tendencies at bay?

Phantom cared plenty about his twin though, enough to go back to the torture Val had put him through for her.  The only humans he was seen around frequently were that witch girl Mourner and Jazz Fenton - the werewolf didn’t count, even if Ghouly only changed at night.  Was Phantom all that different from a regular human teenager or would any boy go around breaking the town with reckless abandon after getting superpowers?

Val’s gaze drifted from Steve to Dash, and she imagined him with even basic ghost powers.  She shuddered and thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t ever detected Phantom in the girls’ locker room like she knew she would’ve Dash.  That boy was the last person in the world that should get invisibility, let alone intangibility or flight.

Ghosts weren’t exactly known for their subtlety in Amity Park, even that Biker boy that was constantly arguing with his girlfriend was an obvious spool while flirting with humans, so Val was sure that by the end of the day she’d have a good idea of how dangerous Steve might be.

#

When lunch rolled around, the trio sat at their usual table in the cafeteria, Sam with a salad, Tucker with a whole burger and fries, and Danny with whatever the cafeteria was trying to pass for corndogs and corn.  They really needed to get Danny some actual, proper food.

Danny and Tucker sat on one side while Sam sat on the other, facing them, and arched a brow at the expectant looks they were giving her.  Sam ate a sporkful of spinach and mushrooms, and once she finished chewing, Tucker sighed, tossing one hand in the air in frustration.

“Well, you had algebra with him, anything weird about Steve that you noticed?”

“Other than the size, the eye, and how bright the lights are around him, no.  He’s ahead of us as far as math goes, it looks like, but I only got that from him finishing the work faster than everyone and paying most of his attention to whatever jocks were in the room, especially Dash.”

Sam scowled in clear disapproval as she stabbed a tomato with her spork.

“He walked into class with Dash, whose hair was all over the place and had bruised lips.”

Danny rolled his eyes while Tucker gagged, chin in his palm.

“Guess Dash has been on his best behaviour in front of the new hotness.  Bet he thinks Steve can get him some one-on-one time with Phantom.  I think I sensed him send off a duplicate or something earlier, guess he was scoping out the school.”

Tucker nodded, adding a handful of fries to his burger before he dug into it.  Sam sneered in disgust and Tucker stuck his meat covered tongue out at her, earning a kick from Sam and an elbow from Danny.

After he swallowed, Tucker spoke up in Esperanto.

“This is fucking wild, right?  The fact that there’s a half ghost in our school and he was just fucking born that way?  Oh, Danny, you think he’s got any tips for you?”

“I mean, I guess it’d be cool if he did, but I dunno if I wanna have him anywhere near the house.  Mom and Dad do not need to find him on their own.”

Tucker’s brows furrowed as he set down the latter half of his burger.

“You don’t think they’d try to hurt him, do you?  He’s clearly human just as much as he is a ghost, more so even.”

“I think the Fentons would refuse to believe that half-ghosts can exist, conclude that he’s either overshadowed or severely contaminated, and try to rip the ghost out of him.”

“C’mon Sam, they wouldn’t do that.  Even the Grave Huntress backed out of trying to destroy Elle and helped save her when she found out she was half human.  I’m certain that Mom and Dad would accept me if I explained what happened… what I am.”

“You, their son, they might accept with just an explanation, but the Fentons are anti-ghost bigots, Danny.  They don’t care about facts and logic and evidence, just what their tradition and bias says about whoever it is they hate.”

Danny opened his mouth, brows furrowed and the air around them cold.

“Would you trust them with Elle?”

Danny ate his food, and the table was quiet for a moment.

It was then that Danny noticed the chill he associated with a ghost being nearby and followed that feeling up and around to find Steve descending from the ceiling and flipping right-side up.  Every table in the cafeteria was filled with students and everyone was too absorbed into their food or conversations to notice, save for him and Valerie.

Everyone definitely noticed when Steve split in two, then four, and kept doubling until there were 20 of him.  Each Steve sat down at a different table, next to Val, at the A-list table, with the band geeks and choir kids, and even with Danny, Sam, and Tucker.

“Sup dudes?  I’m Steve, from earlier.  I decided to split off and see all the cool people I can meet, chat with y’all while we eat.  Oh, my original body is on the roof eating the lunch papa made me.  Nice to meet you!”

Steve offered his hands to Tucker and Sam to shake, a third appearing in front of Danny.  Danny chuckled and shook, while Tucker held up his greasy palms, a finger covered in barbecue sauce.  Sam shook his hand then scooted over to invite Steve to sit with them properly.  Tupperware, lunchbox, and food tray alike rattled when he sat down, leaning forward with a grin.

“So, what do you guys like to do afterschool?  I was in show choir back home, really hoping there’s room for me in it here.  I like to dance and do a little singing.”

Tucker wiggled his eyebrows and smirked, gesturing with a french-fry.

“Tucker Foley, or TF as in Too Fine, at your service.  I’m in the robotics club, though I only really show up every now and then.  Ow, rude and uncalled for.  You see the abuse I have to put up with?”

Danny rolled his eyes, relenting in his elbowed assault on his dork of a best friend.

“Excuse him, he’s still learning how to talk to people instead of technology.  I’m Danny, Danny Fenton.  I like astronomy and I stargaze whenever I can, though Amity doesn’t exactly have the most picturesque of night skies.  Light pollution, ya know?  I like to play videogames too though.”

“Hardly the only pollution there is to deal with in this town.  Sam Manson, I have a greenhouse I tend to, and I do activist work when I can.”  

Sam pointed at Steve with her spork, eyes flicking between the boy in front of her and the one sitting with the A-listers.  “Word to the wise since you’re sizing up who to and not to hang out with: Dash Baxter, Paulina Sanchez, Star Thunder, and Kwan Ishiyama along with practically the entire football team are all bullies.”  

Steve blinked at Sam, perplexed, and Tucker swallowed down the last of his burger.

“What?”

“Yeah, the jocks are the muscleheads who go around giving wedgies, swirlies, demanding other people do their homework for them and tossing people into lockers.  Only if you’re a nerd, geek, or freak like us though, of course.”

Danny chuckled and leaned on his elbows, corndog eaten down to the bare stick and corn powered through like a champ if he did say so himself.  Steve was gawking at them, which had Danny laughing a little more.

“Can’t forget that if you accidentally piss off one of the girls, or talk back to the meatheads, or even they just fail their own tests cause they don’t learn shit, they go and find you to beat up.  Well, me, probably not you.  You’re good looking and the fun kinda weird.”

Steve frowned; teeth bared just enough to see that he had more canines than he did when he sat down.  Over at the A-list table, Sam noted that Steve stuttered in whatever their conversation was over there.

“Have they killed anyone or sent someone to the hospital?”  

Tucker snorted and shrugged.  “Not yet, no.”

Steve nodded, and his ghost eye changed, iris now a ruby red ring around his pupil.

“There’s a chance to course correct then.  I can fix em, I’m sure of it.  Don’t worry, I’m gonna see what I can do to get their general attitude all fixed up.”

Sam snorted and rolled her eyes, but Steve only looked more determined.

“I’m serious!  I just gotta talk to em and I’ll figure it out from there.  Now, what do you guys actually wanna talk about?  Oh, hey, favorite animal?”

The boys looked at each other and decided to take the olive branch for what it was.

“I like dogs.  Always wanted one but my parents said no.”

“I for one prefer jackals.  They’re just really cool, ya know?”

“Snakes or tarantulas, I can never decide.  My parents wouldn’t let me get either.”

One would expect that a soul-sucking shadow demon would be somewhat difficult for people not particularly well versed in tracking others down to find - even more so considering that Leico’s attempt to scry her failed him.  Still, it turned out that feeding on misery in order to sustain one’s looks made one unpopular, and so finding Penelope Spectra was no challenge.  The irritating part was merely that she had someone with her.

A green blob with red eyes, claws, and a fanged mouth arched a brow that wasn’t there a moment ago at them, looking wholly unimpressed.  A corpse-pale woman wearing a cropped black shirt and black pants covered in green flame accents turned around to look at them both, purple lips pulling back to reveal a smile full of fangs.

“My my, it appears someone went about seeking us out, Penelope.  We don’t get many clients who want us, do we?”

“No, we don’t.  I assure you, gentlemen, that I’ll be perfectly able to help you through whatever it is that you’ve got going on in those little heads of yours.”

Leico reached under his cloak, pulling from behind him a silver mace that hummed with power.  Duncan pulled out his pistol, disabling the safety he’d installed after one too many close calls with drunken family.

“You can help me by sitting still and letting us purge you from existence.”

“You can help me by giving me a moving target.”

Five cracks rang through the air as bullets, engraved with infernal sigils, flew and dug into the pair of ghosts with lightning speed and deadly precision.  Duncan grinned at the pair, 3 holes blasted into Spectra and 2 splatters of goo flung from Bertrand’s gelatinous form.

The grin fell and a yelp escaped him as the blob took on the form of a large cat of some kind, and claws sliced into his tail as Duncan tried to dodge out of the way.  Wonderful to learn that one of his opponents could change form like that, very nice.

“What violent little men you are!  You are men, aren’t you, not a pair of monsters trying to make themselves-AH!”

Bertrand was forced back rather quickly when Leico’s hand, wreathed in blinding grey light, slapped the shapeshifter in the center of his body and over half of it was burned away by the light.  The warbling screech Bertrand made as he retreated was music to Duncan’s ears, and he fist bumped Leico while Bertrand turned into a small bird.  

A crackling bolt of violet light flew toward them and the brothers jumped away, putting some space between themselves.  Grey-violet-green light swirled into a ball in his hand, a veritable maelstrom of color, and scoffed at Spectra.

“May your soul face proper judgment at the hands of the Queen.”

“The only Queen I answer to is myself, you pest!”

Spectra rose into the sky, as much as it was the sky, and raised a wall of ectoplasm.  The bolt of holy light pierced it like a rocket through glass, and with a flare of incandescence and a hellish wail, Penelope Spectra was nothing more than a wispy ball of shadow floating aimlessly through the void.

Bertrand flew after the core, hoping to fly his oil stain of a mistress away from the battle.

CRACK

Metal coated in literal hellfire slammed through Bertrand’s wing, and he lost hold of his falcon form.

CRACK

Pain became his world and Bertrand was reduced to naught but his core, the ectoplasm around him too thick with holy and infernal magic from their attackers to pull into himself, to build a new body.  That was fine, he would be fine, they’d assume this was the worst that could be done and walk away.  Humans didn’t know how the soul worked, after all.

CRACK

Another bullet sailed through Penelope Spectra’s core, and even stripped down to a core himself, Bertrand could feel her screams, fire and shadows exploding into nothing.  He shuddered with a violent sorrow that threatened to rip him apart.

CRACK

Rather than joining his precious Penelope, Bertrand was faced with a far more horrific reality.  Without his core, he was unbound from the ectoplasm that made up the liminal realm, and without it there was nothing.  No sight, no sound, no touch or smell or taste.  The countless senses that being a ghost afforded them, gone.  He simply was.

True destruction would have been a mercy, but demons and priests were not known for mercy when dealing out retribution.

Duncan sighed, checking over his pistol before holstering it.  Taking a deep breath, he let fire rise from within, sealing up the miniscule cuts that Bertrand had managed to land on him, and shook out his limbs.

“That was disappointing.  I expected a fight not 12 seconds of executing a couple of weaklings.”

“They preyed on children, Duncan, what did you expect?   I’m honestly just surprised they managed to nick you.”

“Yeah yeah, rub it in.  I just didn’t know that there’d be a shapeshifter, or I’d’ve backed up a bit more.   Whatever.   Think there’s a bounty we can collect on?”

“What currency would ghosts in a multicultural melting pot of an afterlife even use?  Energy?”

“True, it’d probably be a barter system or IOUs.  Whatever, let’s get back home, shall we?  Truly a riveting tale on how long this took to get to.”

Leico snorted and put away his mace, gesturing at the air in front of them.   The ectoplasm swirled up and out into a shimmering grey-violet disc, resolving into a gateway onto the deck of the Rose Phoenix.  Sharp winds and arctic cold flew out of the Gate and Leico shivered, wrapping an arm around Duncan for warmth.

“Well, if Toby and Valdan got wrapped up with the kid, Dave is dealing with learning the medicinal technology.   Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a fight.  I can feel that place sucking in my heat from here.”

The pair walked onto their spelljammer, leaving Spectra and her assistant to think about what they’d done for however long it took for souls to connect with ectoplasm.  Or however long it took until a lich found them, either or.

#

Jazz rushed over to check on Danny, and after several minutes of making sure there were no bruises, bumps, or cuts, she had to admit to that overprotective sister within that he was fine.  She turned to glare at Cole, who drifted lazily down beside her to give Danny his own cursory once over.  She took a deep breath, and spoke in a near hiss.

“What just happened?”

Cole held up his hands in surrender and shrugged, which did little to soothe Jazz’s building irritation.

“I dunno, probably used up a lot of energy learning a new power and tossing it out at me.  I’m not the best at all this spirituality stuff-“

“You’re literally half air spirit but alright, cous.”

“-I do know how to keep people from pulling on my magic to fill up their own drained supply.  Your brother needs to eat more.”

“Most likely needs more food filled with ectoplasm, it’s incredibly energy rich.  Maybe he should spend some time in the Ghost Zone?  Who knows.”

“As I asked, do you know where Elle is?  I personally haven’t tried my hand at scrying her but I’m rather certain that she’d feel it if we did that and I’d rather not creep her out when we go find her to offer her help.”

“I can try to look for her, I guess, but I’m pretty sure that Elle is laying low to avoid grabbing Vlad’s attention.”

“Who exactly is this Elle person, Tucker?”

“Oh yeah, we never did end up telling you about her.  Save any and all yelling until the end of the explanation or I’m going to stop telling you, got it?”

Jazz took a deep, measured breath, and nodded to Sam.

“Ok, before you start telling that tale, I’ve gotta say I’d find her better if I had the Fenton Finder­­­TM since that could track down her ectosignature.  Buuut, I’d need Vlad’s record of that ectosignature in order to look for it in particular.”

“We should also probably get Danny into an energy rich environment so he can recover faster.  How do you kids feel about seeing our ship?”

“No.  We’ve just met you, it’ll take more than one meeting to establish the trust needed to get us to a secondary location, especially with Danny passed out.  I’m taking Danny home now, we’ll contact you when we’re ready to meet you again.”

“Well, that’s a fair enough point I guess.  After we sneak into Vlad’s place to get some more data, I’ll get back to you on finding Elle if we do before you.  Regardless, you should probably tell us before you go to get her, so we can talk with her as a group - familiar faces and all that.”

“Well now, if it’s breaking into some rich guy’s house to steal information, I can help you out with that.  Kinda my specialty and all that.”

“You don’t have a specialty; you just do everything.”

“Thank you, yes.  So, you guys head back to your place, we’ll figure out what we’re gonna do on our end, and we can meet back… well, how about here?”

“Oh sure, we can turn the observatory into a real homebase.”

Tucker paused as he considered that, tilting his head.

“Actually, yeah, why don’t we do that?”

“Tucker, schemes later, getting Danny in the car now.  Thank you, Toby, Valdan, Cole, for helping us out.  We’ll keep in touch, see what you can teach the kids.  For now, have a good day.”

Tempting as it was to ask just how old Jazz was to be calling the others kids, Valdan knew when to cut his losses.  So he nodded and shook Jazz’s free hand, while Cole picked Danny up and carried him over to Jazz’s… car.

“I don’t like the vibes this thing gives off.  You got here in this?”

“Well if you’re connected to the weather like you claimed then I imagine you wouldn’t be all that pleased near a car.  I’ve tried to convince my parents to make an engine that’s eco friendly and isn’t running on ectoplasm, since that’d just animate the car itself.  They’re not much into making things that aren’t related to ectoplasm.  I might just make a new engine myself, actually, that’s probably a lost cause.”

“Welp, you’ve lost me so I’m gonna go now before you start rambling about machine parts the way Duncan and David do.  Bye.”

A cloud of shimmering vapor and ice swirled into Cole’s hand and flew out to an empty spot a few feet away.  Lightning flew from his hand to the cloud and it compressed into a flat circle of sky blue and toxic green, which swept out to the edges.  On the other side was the deck of a ship, surrounded by a howling blizzard and blinding white snow and ice.  Laughing at the sight, Cole grabbed his husband and cousin before jumping through the portal, which sealed shut behind him.

“Alright, a lot of things happened just now.  Let’s talk about that on the way home.  But first, Tucker, you’re going to tell me about this Elle person.  We’ve got plenty of drive to go before we even get to Sam’s house, so don’t try to say ‘it’s a long story’.”

Tucker sighed and settled down in shotgun, sticking tongue out at Sam when she glared from the backseat.

“Ok, so it all starts with Vlad.”

#

The Rose Pheonix was currently in the shape of a submarine, and David wondered about that.  He did not, after all, instruct it to change into any particular kind of vessel when they approached the massive iceberg that bordered the seemingly infinite Far Frozen realm, having no plans to go into it on the ship – he’d modified his and Apogo’s armor to be perfectly suited for the cold after all.  He would have to check the engines and see how the ectoplasm around them was affecting the mythallars.

Returning his attention to his family, however, David looked them all over and sighed.

“Duncan, didn’t we agree not to have weapons at the table?  Put your guns away before Valdan and Leico see them.  You don’t need em to regale us with how amazing your battle with Spectra and Bertrand was.”

Duncan rolled his eyes but got up anyway, stalking out of the room with a shout over his shoulder.

“It was barely a fight anyway!  Next targets need to be tougher.”

“Next time we need you to kill someone, I’m sure they’ll be a better opponent.  For now, we should focus on finding this Elle kid and getting her the help she needs.  Thankfully, the Far Frozen have agreed to lend us their medical technology and offered their services in actually checking out Elle’s stability issues and all that after we mentioned that she’s the clone of Danny.”

“Apparently they had this prophecy about him beating the big bad King of Ghosts single-handedly, and he did, so they find him worthy of worship or whatever.  Makes me wonder what kind of tyrant that king had to be for that kind of love for a kid ya don’t know.”

“Welp, that’s a whole other thing to look into but let’s keep our priorities straight, shall we?  First we need to find and help Elle, then we track down this Vlad character and see how best to eliminate him from the equation.  After that, I kinda wanna stay here for a bit, their world feels like it’s in need of help to maintain a balance with nature.”

“Before we can take out Vlad we need to find out if he’ll come back as a regular old ghost or if there’s a way to properly purge him, because there’s no reason he can’t shapeshift to look like his living self and resuming business as usual.  He’s a threat to everyone we’ve gone and gotten attached to here, and there’s no guarantee that he isn’t a major threat to Elle too since he made her.”

“Find and help Elle, research and kill Vlad, guarantee he stays properly dead for long enough that the kids don’t have to deal with him until they’re adults, and then we can split up jobs between helping the material world with whatever imbalance it’s having with nature and technology.  That sound good?”

There were agreements all around the table, and the twins walked in setting down food along the table.

“Glad you guys decided on a plan, cause it’s time to eat now.”  

“We’ll start actually working on things after, got it?” A chorus of ‘yes sirs’ rang out in a rainbow of tones and the Lumanos sat down to eat.

#

“Wait, ok, I need you to explain a few things to me again, slowly, alright?”

“Of course, Danny.  Take all the time you need.”

Danny snorted at the pun and crossed his arms, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes to order his thoughts.   When he breathed out, he stared at Clockwork, ignoring the observants for now.

“You’re telling me that when I beat Pariah Dark and destroyed his ring, it jettisoned Amity Park into another timeline and made me the new king?”

“That is correct.  The Infinite Realm both does and does not exist at every feasible and non-feasible point in time, space, and thought.  Meaning no matter where or when you are in the Ghost Zone you are everywhere and when because it all exists at once, while not existing.  What this means for you, Danny, is that when the same thing is pulled into the Infinite Realm from multiple points in the omniverse, it might get shuffled around with other variants.”

“So there’s a whole bunch of alternate timelines and the ghost zone is a hat that multiple Amity Parks got tossed into and the wrong timelines pulled them back?”

“Exactly.”

Clockwork presented Danny with a cookie and he narrowed his eyes at the toddler that was the Master of Time.  He took the cookie and tried a bite, eyes widening when the flavor hit him.

“This is delicious!”

“Thank you.  Your Amity Park is now on a different Earth, within a whole different multiverse, this one referred to by those outside of it as DC, though I won’t tell you why.”

“Wait, wait, hold the fuck up!  Clockwork, am I in comic book land?  Do I now share a planet with Gotham and Central City and Middletown?”

“Would another cookie help?”

Danny nodded and scarfed down a whole plate of cookies, trying to wrap his head around the cosmic intersection between his world and a network of fictional works.   He decided not to dwell on the metaphysical implications and turned back to his own corner of nonsense.

“So, this whole king business… is that a good idea?  I feel like after that whole evil future me thing I don’t wanna put on something called the Ring of Rage, in case there are backups.  I broke it for a reason.”

“You destroyed the Ring in order to set free the victims of Pariah’s war raged across the infinite cosmos, releasing even Pacon from his status as the Fright Knight.  Responsibility for nightmares falls back to Nocturne, which I’m sure he’s oh so happy about.”

“Still…”

“The ‘evil’ variant of your future and Pariah Dark are actually much the same, Danny.”

“You cannot-“

“Quiet.  You were saying, Clockwork?”

“Very good use of a royal power, the sugar and energy infusion in the cookies must be working.   Pariah Dark was originally a liminal spirit like yourself, half living half dead.   The Observants ripped ghost and mortal, chaos and order, apart from one another, and crowned the ghost.   Things went about as well as they did when your grieving, angry ghost was ripped from your mortal body, no longer regulated by the brain you’d been adapted to have.”

“So do I have to be completely dead to rule?  Can’t you just wait then?!”

The observants began to wring their hands and shift their weight from side to side, drifting backward slowly.  Danny narrowed his eyes.

“Well… you don’t have to be a full ghost but…”

“It’s tradition!”

“…… What stops me from shooting them both in the eye?”

“Absolutely nothing, your majesty.  We haven’t even discussed the artifacts of power but we have time.”

“Artifacts?  Do I have to wear the crown?”

Danny took a deep breath in, counting with his fingers, and then let it out at a counted pace as well.  Jazz told him that might help him out when he was getting too stressed out.  He had transformed back to human to make sure it worked, as he was certain that the breath controlled a living body a lot better than an ectoplasmic construct.  The tundra surrounding them didn’t bother him nearly as much as it did Tucker, Sam, and Jazz who were all dressed appropriately to weather the elements.

When his pulse had calmed down, Danny clasped his hands together and returned to Phantom form, opening his eyes to stare up into Frostbite’s, who was waiting patiently like the amazing person he was.  Danny floated until he was eye level with the chief and sighed.  “Frostbite, what do you mean ‘you’re the king now’?  I don’t exactly remember getting crowned or being related to Pariah Dark in any way shape or form.  Did he even have a kid?”

“A coronation ceremony could be conducted, yes, but not until after all approved trials have been conducted Great One.”  Frostbite patted him on the shoulder and back, as though this was the part of things that Danny was displeased by.  “In truth, the Infinite Realms hasn’t any particular history of a high ruler controlling everything before Pariah – he declared himself king and conquered his way through the Infinite Realms.”  Frostbite scowled, which would have looked much scarier a few months ago.

“So why keep having a king if you’ve been doing just fine with anarchy so long?”  Sam raised a brow, incredibly grateful for the heating system somehow added into the coats.

“Why Danny of all people?”  Danny shot Tucker a half hearted glare and Tuck raised his hands in surrender.  “You’ve got a lot on your plate already, man.”

“Danny is just a child, regardless of how much responsibility he’s been able to juggle somewhat successfully,” Jazz said.  “Surely there are other candidates?  Adult ones?”

Frostbite shook his head.  “Vlad Plasmius currently holds the Crown of Fire in his possession, and unfortunately we had to come up with a rule to disqualify him from ruling over us on the spot, one that put you in charge in his place.”  With a sigh, Frostbite started walking and everyone followed him with varying levels of reluctance.  He led them into a room that lit up with blue-white light before manifesting a projection of the crown of fire.  “Unfortunately, when Pariah lead his campaign of conquest across the Infinite Realms, he ensured that all were forced to bow to him even after he left their realm for the next.”

The fire on the crown was waved away by Frostbite to reveal a mosaic of crystals in the shape of a crown, and Danny felt his heart sink into his gut.  “No.”

“Nearly if not all Realms have a Core or Heart or some sort of nucleus around which the entirety of the Realm is based.  If one were to take control of the heart of the realm, they would have control over everything and everyone inside of it, and when Pariah completed a conquest he did so by shaving off a sliver of the Realm’s core and adding it to his crown.  Magic is greatly a deal of belief and conviction, and Pariah Dark was determined to become ruler of all, the crown a symbol of his authority over the Infinite Realm itself and all Realms within it, so even with Pariah locked away…”

“The Crown still symbolizes rulership, and with so many Realm Cores shoved together into one thing it’s become integral to all of them,” Jazz whispered, horror filling the room almost tangibly.

“So if we tried destroying the crown, what?  It’d destabilize the realms that are tied to it?”

“Precisely, Tucker, though I fear it may be more catastrophic than that.”

“Skulker talked about Pariah Dark and his artifacts like legendary facts of life.  If enough ghosts in the Zone believe that the Crown of Fire is the heart of the Zone itself…”

“Sadly, yes.  So, we must ensure it falls to someone we can trust not to abuse the power behind it.”  Frostbite put his hand on Danny’s shoulder and smiled at him warmly.  “That someone, Great One, is you.”

Danny smiled back, definitely not blushing while he ran a hand through his hair.  “Alright, I guess I can understand you trusting me but…”

“How was anyone else convinced to trust a child with sovereignty over the whole afterlife?”  Sam arched a brow, arms crossed.  “I’m all for optimism and seeing the best in Danny but if the Realms are truly Infinite then that’s a lot of rulers for a lot of realms that have to be satisfied with his authority.”

“Ah, yes, that.”  Frostbite clapped his hands – paws? Hands – together and the hologram displayed something of a colloseum crossed with a court room.  “The Observant High Council,” he said with a tone that spoke many opinions about this council, “along with others, has been deliberating on the matter.  There are indeed many a realm, and in order to have authority within or over any of them you must gain the respect and loyalty of either the people within a realm or their leader.  To get that, you will likely be put through many trials – both to determine if you are worthy of the crown and to put as many obstacles in Plasmius’ way as possible.”

“So I don’t actually have to take on any new responsibility until I’m ready for it?”  Danny relaxed visibly, his aura brightening up and the room growing a touch chillier.  “Flattered as I am that you think I’m worthy of all this, I’m still 16 and I need to try passing highschool before I go trying to rule an entire universe.”

“Very true, but worry not Great One, the deliberation on what exactly one must do in order to properly earn fealty and sovereignty in the first place shall last a great long time.  We don’t exactly meet up with each other all that often, leaders of the Realms, and distance alone will be quite the factor.  Regardless!”  Frostbite pulled Danny into a hug, blocking out his vision with a face full of white fur.  “I shall happily assist you in any education you require on the subject of leadership.”

“Thank you,” Danny said, muffled.

“Maybe now he’ll focus a little in class,” Tucker said with a laugh.

“Please, Tucker, you think an American school is going to teach Danny how to rule a country, let alone a universe?”

“As much as I would love to argue in favor of academia, yeah, you’ll need to learn from someone with experience for this, little brother.  But first you should focus on your life as a teenager.”

Clockwork turned their gaze from the many screens before them to their sibling, nebulae and stars stretched out across one of their couches. “Thank you, Nocturne, the transfer back to their own universe appears to have gone rather smoothly. You have my thank, and should the opportunity arise without threat to Time, a favor owed.”

“So specific, can a sibling not simply perform a favor for their sibling?” The bone white theater mask that was Nocturne's face twisted into a wicked smile. “It was only a transferal of a few minds from one universe to your little simulation and back. That is hardly worth reciprocation, or strict debt collection.”

“Well, you’ve certainly left me with something to work around,” said the Ghostwriter, floating with his legs crossed while he typed away at his Quantum Keyboard. A mug of steaming hot coffee floated to his lips and he sighed. “Explosive hot sauce? Really?”

“Perhaps I applied a touch of dream logic, so what? It was hardly real to begin with.”

“If you put them back correctly then it was very real to four children. If unchecked they’ll see through it and we may very well have ruined the next little king.”

“Worry not, Andrew,” Clockwork said, patting the writer on the shoulder. “I trust that you can retroactively make sense of the nightmare made real that we put Daniel through.”

The Ghostwriter huffed and rolled his eyes. “Thank you for the confidence, but you should have come to me in the first place for this little trial. Facing a dark reflection of yourself and all you fear is a classic story and the both of you convoluted it near incomprehensibly. For one thing, the explosion should come from the ecto-filtrator, it’s already primed to detonate.” Andrew muttered to himself as he got to work, and Clockwork chuckled to themself.