The First Settling Ch. 1
DannyMay Day 2: Teeth
This is also posted on Ao3!!
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The moment the bell rang, Danny slammed his book shut.
Mr. Lancer cleared his throat. “Alright, class!” he shouted. The room was awash with the din of students packing up for the day—zippers pulling open, bags rustling, chairs screeching against tile—but Mr. Lancer’s voice was loud and clear. “Read chapters five and six of Frankenstein tonight! I expect to see papers discussing the contents of each chapter on my desk by next Monday.”
Dash groaned loudly, knocking his head on his desk. “But I have—“
“Football practice, Mr. Baxter. Yes, I am aware,” Mr. Lancer said. “If you somehow cannot manage it, I can allow you to turn it in a day later. Trust that I will know if you spend your time frivolously.”
“Yes, sir…”
“Does that count for the rest of the team?” Kwan asked.
Mr. Lancer nodded. “Of course.”
“Do you hear this guy?” Sam muttered to Danny’s left. Danny looked up as she leaned against his desk, backpack held loosely over her shoulder. “Dash is going to need that time, stupid jockey.”
Danny snorted, standing up from his seat. He stowed Frankenstein in his bookbag, and zipped it shut. Maybe it’ll be gone the next time I look inside.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said, rubbing at his jaw. His teeth had been rather sore today. “But I also wouldn’t be surprised if he made it somehow. The guy has better grades than me, and he does sports and extracurricular activities all week long.”
Dash wasn’t known for his spectacular work ethic, to the surprise of literally no one that met him. He was going the tried and true path of letting his sports career carry him into a decent college. It seemed to be working well for him so far, except for how his grades were going in an endless loop of ‘acceptable’ to ‘poor.’
Danny guessed Dash’s grades were back in the ‘poor’ category, once more. He looked forward to when Dash’s coach decided to come by and pound some fear into his blonde head. It was a spectacle the first time it happened, it was sure to be the same the next time.
Someone jostled his shoulder from behind. “He’s not the one skipping out on classes every week, though,” crowed Tucker. “Mr. Cool Guy, tryna collect up on all the detentions, yeah?”
He missed so much class time because ghosts attacked him during it.
What else was he supposed to do? Let them hurt people? Let them destroy the school? Do nothing but watch as his parents arrived to capture and bring the ghost back home to dissect, study, and subsequently kill them because they were clearly unequivocally, undeniably evil?
He scoffed at the thought.
Unless he wanted to wait for his parents to show up, it was up to him to put an end to the disruption—but it all came at the cost of his grades.
Before he’d died, they’d been decent. More than decent, even! He was a Fenton—he practically came preinstalled with 5+ scientific intelligence and a stubborn need to see things through. Whatever struggles he’d encountered before the Ghost Portal, he’d slammed his head into them until they made sense.
But he couldn’t do that, now. Not when most of that energy was going into figuring out how to function as a high school student and the ghostly Danny Phantom at the same time.
His hands curled into fists.
Couldn’t they see that?
“No need to nag me about it, Tuck,” he snapped, rounding on Tucker. “S’not like I can avoid most of it.”
Tucker’s ears darkened with blush, and he looked away. “I know,” he said. “That was—sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Sam slapped the back of Danny and Tucker’s heads, and they both jolted forwards. Danny grunted and gripped his skull, the impact jarring against his teeth. His overly sore, sensitive teeth. Had that much force really been necessary?
When Danny looked up at Sam, she was twisting a strand of her dark hair around her finger. “You two need to knock it off,” she said coolly.
Tucker slumped against Danny’s desk, and moaned dramatically. “Oh, my head! You wicked witch…” he cried. “I said sorry! What more do you want from me?”
“To have tact,” Sam said, purple eyes half-lidded. She pursed her lips, and met Tucker’s gaze. There was a light in them that meant bad things for Danny’s sanity. “Or, better yet, how about we talk about your horrid eating habits?”
Danny could see where this was going. He didn’t care for it. He wasn’t going to weather out another of Sam and Tucker’s food philosophy debates, not if he had a choice in the matter. Danny put on his backpack, and coughed loudly.
The concerning light in Sam’s eyes had spread to Tucker’s, who’d begun staring at her like she had murdered his pet dog. His teal eyes shone madly.
Sam would rather die than eat meat. Tucker would rather die than eat plants. Both of them were violently opposed to the other’s cause.
He, unfortunately, was often caught in the crossfire.
Danny’s teeth hurt. He wanted to go home.
“I’m heading out,” he announced. “You guys have fun with your food argument… without me.”
The concerning light flooded out of Sam’s eyes. Tucker remained infected.
“Are you sure?” Sam asked, face creased with concern. “We can still walk together. Tucker—” Sam jabbed her elbow into Tucker’s stomach, and he curled over. “Tucker will behave, promise.”
“No, I won’t,” Tucker muttered. “OW! Sam!”
Danny ran his tongue over the back of his teeth. No one specific spot hurt when he applied pressure on it—the ache was a uniform, steady thing across his entire mouth. It sort of felt like a bad cavity, but dispersed through all of his teeth instead of concentrated just around the cavity. All around, a distinctly uncomfortable sensation.
Could ghosts even get cavities? What did that mean for him, being half of one?
Vlad would know, but there was no way Danny would ever bother asking him.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said absently. His tongue glided across the tips of his canines. They pricked the surface of it pleasantly. “I won’t be doing much talking this afternoon anyways. I just want to get an icepack and go to bed with it.”
Tucker gave Danny a perverse look, then flinched. He glanced back at Sam, confused, when he realized she hadn’t hit him yet. Then, Sam decided to plant her elbow back in his side. Tucker wheezed and fell to the floor, eyes squeezed shut.
“Oh, c’mon, Sam!” he groaned. “He was asking for it!”
“No,” Sam said. “He wasn’t.”
He really wasn’t, Danny agreed. He also felt that comments like those deserved repercussions, and kicked Tucker’s foot as he walked past. Tucker cried out in pain, and threw himself further onto the classroom floor. He cried out in actual pain a moment later, when he could only assume Sam kicked Tucker’s fallen body much harder than Danny had.
“See you guys later,” he called back.
Only a few students remained in the room, most having left as soon as class was released. In the front of the classroom, Mr. Lancer was slowly cleaning off the whiteboards. He kept an amused eye on Sam, Tucker, and Danny as he did so. His tidy handwriting was scrawled across the boards, which he’d filled as the class discussed the previous two chapters of Frankenstein.
As Danny walked past his desk, the man nodded at him. “Have a nice rest of your day, Mr. Fenton.”
Danny nodded. “You too, sir.”
His teeth clacked together, and briefly, he wondered if all his teeth had cracked at once. His hand flew up to inspect his jaw. Danny felt along it gingerly, then winced when even a light press sent a dull ache through his teeth. Message received, he thought sourly. Seriously, what was going on with him?
“Mr. Fenton,” Mr. Lancer said, putting down his dry-eraser and giving Danny his full attention. “Are you feeling okay?”
Danny blinked. “Ah, yes, sir.” Mr. Lancer gave him a disbelieving look, the wrinkles on his forehead growing more pronounced. “I am,” Danny insisted. “It’s just—well—” he motioned at his mouth. “My teeth. They hurt.”
Mr. Lancer’s expression cleared. “I see. You are at that age, aren’t you,” he said to himself thoughtfully. “You might see about asking your parents to bring you to have them looked at. Dealing with wisdom teeth too late is never fun.” Mr. Lancer touched his own jaw with an expression that spoke of unpleasant recollections.
Danny rubbed at his face. He hoped that wasn’t the case. If he was lucky, it would be a cavity and nothing more. Cavities filled him with dread as it was. Wisdom teeth, he feared, would make him feel ten times worse.
“I will, sir. Thank you.”
“Of course,” Mr. Lancer said. “I’ll see you next week, Mr. Fenton. I quite think that you’ll enjoy this weekend's Frankenstein reading.”
I think not, Danny disagreed.
Something about Frankenstein, aside from its antiquated writing style, left him with a growing sense of disquiet. After reading the first four chapters, Victor Frankenstein’s motives—and the results he was sure to promptly receive—hit a little too close to home.
Victor Frankenstein, and his creation crafted from corpses. Jack and Maddie Fenton, and their half-dead son, unknowingly killed by their careless hands. He was a being not entirely unlike what Victor wanted to make—a boy trapped in a state between life and death.
I guess that’s what happens when a Ghost Portal opens on you, he figured. Most dead people aren’t flooded with the energy of the ghost realm upon their deaths, so…
Mentally, he shook aside his thoughts. As unusual as his death might be, that was beside the point.
He and the being Victor was creating were not entirely alike, but still. Frankenstein had the signs of a story that ended in tragedy. With what similarities there were between the tales of himself and what he knew of Victor’s creation, he did not want to see where—or how—its story would conclude.
“Goodbye, Mr. Lancer,” he said instead.
Mr. Lancer laughed. “Yes, yes,” the man said, waving him off. “You may go.”
Danny nodded and left the classroom without a word.
—
Danny was about halfway home when a stream of icy vapor slipped from his mouth.
He slowed to a stop on the sidewalk, and stared blankly at the next street sign. “Why now?” Danny groaned, burying his face in his hands. He was so close to home. So close to his bed and a nice, relaxing nap. But, no—a ghost had to decide to make trouble.
Not a day went by that Danny didn’t wonder if he was the unluckiest soul in the world.
Danny strode over to the signpost and kicked it, perhaps a little bit too hard. His foot throbbed violently and he hissed, baring his teeth together—then he yelped at the sharp ache that seared through his mouth. Too much pressure, he scolded himself. Too much!
A pedestrian eyed him strangely, and he averted his gaze, blushing.
He needed to go and deal with this ghost.
Even if he really only wanted to rest, if he didn’t return the ghost to the ghost zone, then someone with less benevolent intentions would do it for him instead. The ghosts who invaded Amity might wear Danny down to his very last nerve, but he’d never wish them dead like his parents did.
Except for Vlad, maybe. And Spectra and Walker.
His parents could be incredibly oblivious when it came to anything but their work, and that included their relationship with Vlad. Even if the man flirted with his mother while Danny’s dad was in the same room, he and his mother would do nothing but laugh about it.
Spectra and Walker were pretty terrible, too. Spectra preyed on the fears and insecurities of children, completely unabashed. Warden Walker’s purported brand of law enforcement, taken a degree or ten too far.
All three of them would deserve what came to them, should they be captured, nonetheless Danny wasn’t anywhere near comfortable with any of them being killed. Especially if it was because of what they were, rather than for everything they had done.
But even then, who was he to act as their judge, jury, and executioner? And, more horrifying still, what happened to a dead ghost? The idea unsettled him.
If someone couldn’t live safely in their afterlife, then what sort of afterlife was it?
Danny slipped into an alleyway between buildings. It was narrow and dark, and smelt strongly of wet pavement from a rainstorm that had passed by earlier in the day.
The moment he was sure nobody could see him, he reached for his ghostly heart. His… core, so to speak. Though he’d tried before, he’d never been able to explain how it felt to his friends. Three months of being half-dead, and still, he remained wordless on the matter.
Danny didn’t know if this core lay within him, as solid and real as his heart was, only that it was there. Perhaps it only became physical while he was a ghost, or maybe it always existed in him, simultaneously there and not until he shifted forms. All he knew, really, was that it radiated a deep chill that pervaded throughout his entire body. Not that he noticed at first, though.
According to Sam and Tucker, he was a blessing in the summertime, which had confused him. Then Jazz shoved a thermometer in his mouth, and he discovered he had a naturally low body temperature.
Danny pulled at his core and transformed. A ring of white light formed around his waist and separated in two, before sweeping over his body from head to toe. When the rings vanished back into the ether, or wherever they came from, he was wearing a black and white version of the hazmat suit he’d died in, and his hair had bled into a stark white. It was quite the opposite to his normally dark hair.
It was a strange sensation, shifting from a living, breathing human body to a ghostly one. Who needed flesh, blood, and bones if you could have ectoplasm instead, right? In this form, he had no heartbeat. His skin was pale. His eyes were an eerie, ectoplasmic green. Danny jumped in place for a moment, shaking out his arms by his sides.
So weird.
Nothing about this felt wrong to him. It was perfectly natural, actually, and the more he thought about that, the more uneasy he became.
Man, this was weird. Months of this and it was still so weird. But at the same time, everything was just as it should be.
This is so weird.
“Okay then,” Danny muttered, shaking his head. His jaw twinged from the movement, and he frowned. Hopefully he’d still be able to fight like this. He didn’t want to be knocked out of commission because a ghost socked him in the teeth.
Either way, he would do his best to try and be quick. His bed was calling for him.
It was time to find this ghost.
A cold breath shuddered out of him, sharp and clear on his tongue, and he stiffened. His ghost sense. That had felt—closer. Much closer than before. He glanced around, rising off his feet to drift over the ground.
But from where?
“Phantom!”
Danny barely managed to throw himself out of the way as a net hurtled towards him from above. The mesh crackled with electricity as it collided with the concrete, and he took another step back. His eyes narrowed as a large, hulking figure vaulted over the rooftop to land in the alleyway. Danny recognized the ghost immediately.
He had no hair, not to human standards, anyways—instead, he had a mohawk made of green flames. His false body was made of interlocking metal plates, to protect the much smaller body inside that piloted it. Over his shoulder, he held what looked to be a net launcher.
“Skulker,” Danny said, reluctantly. “Do we really have to do this again?”
Skulker grinned viciously. “Until I am unmade, you will always remain my prey, ghost child. I will skin you for your pelt, and display it for all to see!”
“You failed last time!” Danny snapped. “You’ll fail this time, too.”
Skulker laughed raucously, and it made Danny want to claw his ears out. A voracious, prickling ache built in his teeth, spreading like oil through his gums. He would rip through Skulker’s metal body, reach inside to take the smaller ghost into his claws… bleeding away the ceaseless ache from his teeth till Skulker’s ectoplasm flooded his mouth like fresh blood—
Would that relieve his pain? Or would it make it worse? Did it even matter?
He wanted—needed to make it—
No. Wait. Danny shook his head. No, no, no, that’s not me, he thought. It’s not. Skulker’s cackling filled the cramped alleyway, echoing and echoing, until Danny’s head felt stuffed with cotton. He couldn’t hear himself think. Where did those thoughts come from? What was happening to him?
Finally, Skulker stopped laughing.
“I welcome the challenge!” Skulker exclaimed, hefting his gun up on his shoulder. “Now, come and meet your doom!”
I don’t want to fight you, he wanted to cry. I don’t!
If even the slightest of movements made him wince, he’d be far better off in his bed than fighting ghosts, wouldn’t he?
Yet here he was, because he couldn’t trust anyone to do his job without lives being lost. Between the people with the ability to stop ghost attacks, not one of them bothered to wonder whether or not the ghosts should really be killed for their actions—not one of them was capable of being kind!
Ancients, it all made Danny want to scream.
(And so he did.)
A white-hot livewire of pain tore through his face and neck, and Danny nearly fell out of the air. It burrowed claws into the muscles of his back, and spilled slowly down his spine. A scream spilled from his mouth before he could even contemplate muffling it, and he crumpled inwards.
This—this felt like the—the portal. It was electric, furious, and utterly ceaseless in its mission to drown him in agony. His nails dug into his arms, strangely sharp through his gloves, and he trembled until the worst of it passed. He bit his lip to keep himself quiet.
Gradually, the livewire slowed from a rushing river to a wandering creek.
His suffering waned.
Where—where had that come from? He’d been fine, earlier. Decent. Acceptable. The pain had been irritating, but tolerable. A mild discomfort, if anything at all. But now, his core was sluggish with an exhaustion that had appeared as if from nowhere. Even doing nothing but hovering there, his eyes were heavy. Unconsciousness felt only a blink away.
Had he always been this tired?
Danny forced his jaw loose. He’d been clenching it, though not nearly hard enough to result in what had just happened. Danny would wonder about it, but he wasn’t alone.
I have to keep them safe.
“I won’t… let you,” he rasped.
Skulker watched Danny with a strange expression on his face, as Danny forced himself to straighten in the air. “Ghost child,” Skulker began, lowering his net gun to a more neutral position.
Before Skulker could do anything, Danny fired an ecto-ray at his face. He wasn’t surprised when Skulker propelled himself out of the way with the thrusters in his boots. What did startle him was the way his hands seized with a surge of volatile ectoplasm, and his gloves seemed to glow, suctioning into his skin.
It hurt, of course. The ectoplasm spread like lava through his veins, a wildfire across the plains of his skin. But it wasn’t anything compared to the torment—dimmed as it was—still tearing through his body.
Before his eyes, his gloves were melding into his skin. Danny could feel the two merging, twisting into one till his hands were just as white as his gloves had once been. He could see the distinct shape of each fingertip, where the thickness of the glove would’ve once obscured them. The tops of his fingers were distinctly claw-shaped.
He flexed his hands, core shivering. What… was this?
“Phantom,” Skulker said. “Why are you here?”
“Because you’re here,” Danny spat, looking up at Skulker. “And I need to keep my home safe. Where else would I be?”
Something resembling bashfulness flitted across Skulker’s face, and he shook his head. “That’s—not what I meant,” he said. “Why are you here, now of all times? You’re Settling. You should be in your lair, not in the mortal realm.”
Danny’s vision was hazy. He wasn’t sure when it had gotten that way. Fruitlessly, he rubbed his eyes. His eyelids felt strange under his rubbery fingertips, far smoother than he was used to them being.
Settling? My lair? “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. It didn’t seem like Skulker wanted to fight anymore. The ghost actually looked concerned, which was unlike himself. “If we’re done now, I’d like to go home.”
“Which one?” Skulker pressed. “The home of the human you’re overshadowing, or your lair?”
Was that what most of the ghosts thought he was doing? Possessing the body of a human for his own sick amusement? “I’m not overshadowing anything, Skulker. This is my body. My home is my home. I am Danny Fenton.”
Skulker stared at him for a moment.
“How long ago was it?” he asked. At Danny’s blank look, Skulker shook his head. His solid green eyes, though without a pupil or iris, flickered with a disturbed light. “It hasn’t even been a year, has it? And yet, we’re all… Ancients.”
Danny opened his mouth to speak, when something in him throbbed. Struck with a heavy wave of vertigo, he wavered in the air. This time, he failed to lift himself back up in time, and grunted as his knees collided with the ground. A bone-deep cold came over him and rippled outward from his core, and he shuddered, suddenly feeling as naked as the day he was born.
He was… cold. More than that, the cold was bothering him.
He hadn’t felt like this since he’d died.
The pain that had spread across his face and neck sparked with vigor once more, and he groaned. Not again.
“Do you know what a Settling is, Phantom?”
Danny pressed his face into his legs. Why was Skulker asking that right now? Did Danny look like he would care? Did he not seem even slightly preoccupied at the moment?
“No, I don’t,” he answered, voice muffled. Danny's gaze rose for a moment, and he jolted upright at seeing Skulker standing before him. Reaching out toward him. “Keep back!” he hissed, dragging himself back by his hands. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.”
His teeth felt wrong in his mouth. None of them had changed shape, beyond the slight sharpness his canines underwent in ghost form. Yet somehow… there was a difference. Something wasn’t as it should be.
He touched his jaw lightly, brow furrowed.
“It’s only going to get more painful, ghost child,” Skulker whispered. “Most ghost your stage remain in the Ghost Realm until they’ve gained more strength, and for good reason. Your core is reaching for ectoplasm it cannot find, so it has begun to take from itself instead. From you. If you stay here, your Settling will strip you bare.”
The more Skulker mentioned this Settling thing, the more curious Danny became about it. It sounded important. Life changing, even. It made it all the stranger that he hadn’t heard about it before, not from any of the ghosts he had encountered and fought.
“You said that it’ll ‘strip you bare,’” Danny stated. “Meaning… I won’t die from it?”
Skulker crouched, and set his net launcher beside him on the ground. Danny eyed him warily as he shook with cold. “No. But it will hurt and take weeks to recover from,” he answered, frowning. “Or months, if you’re particularly unlucky. You’ll need that strength, if you want to continue defending this paltry town. If you stay here, you will be crippled until then.”
Something in Danny shrieked in outrage at that. A growl rumbled in his chest.
While Amity would still be defended if he were forced to take an extended absence, the possibility for death or injury during that period was… uncomfortably high. His parents were clumsy, but competent—at least when it came to ghost-hunting.
He didn’t want them to be hurt if a ghost-hunt went wrong. He didn’t want a ghost to die because his parents killed them.
Danny’s decision had already been made for him, he realized. Deep down, in the part of him that was more Phantom than Danny Fenton, he was certain that his Settling had scarcely just begun. There was more to come, and if he stayed here?
It would be the most agonizing thing he’d ever experienced—excluding his death, of course. Nothing beats having the energies of the Ghost Realm surge into your fragile human body and being electrocuted at the same time.
Oh. And his parents would most definitely discover that he was Danny Phantom.
There was that, too.
Danny sucked in a sharp breath, and forced himself up to his feet. He leaned against the wall of the alleyway for a moment, feeling lightheaded. He breathed deeply through it. If that livewire of suffering from earlier came back fully, set his neck, shoulders, back—all of him, really—entirely ablaze with pain, he wouldn’t be able to pick himself back up.
If he wanted to escape from the human realm, on his terms, he had to do it now.
“Fine,” he said. “Take me to the Ghost Realm.”
