Danny is having a great day! The skies are green, the clouds are green, okay almost everything is green 'cause he's floating through the Infinite Realms, but that didn't change the fact that it is a lovely day!
He had heard of this badass city spirit that, according to Ember, was "absolutely metal". Apparently, she had this whole insane goth aesthetic that he just had to see and since he's on summer vacation he figured he would take the time to check her out! Maybe make a new battle buddy and maybe, if she's chill like that, he could bring Sam and Tuck to meet her!
He starts to slow as he gets closer to where her lair is supposed to be. There's something funky in the air. A vibe, if you would. A weird vibe. It's not a bad vibe or a good vibe, just A Vibe™. Also, he's now thought vibe too many times that it's starting to sound weird.
Not the point! The point is, there is a vibe. And this vibe is coming from somewhere nearby.
Danny starts to turn to try to find the source when what feels like a supersonic, interdimensional punch just socks him right in the gut. It sends him flying and twisting through the air disorienting him before the trajectory suddenly reverses as if he's being pulled into a vacuum (or a thermos).
He tries to gather himself. He doesn't know which way is what, he just knows that being yanked towards whatever is going on is gonna be a big ol' nope from him. A no thank you. A not today, satan! He very much does not volunteer as tribute. He, in fact, volunteers to be let the fuck go, thank you very much.
He pulls and pushes and tries to fly as hard as he can, but the suction is too strong. He finally looks behind himself and sees the tear in reality. The other side looks like a void of nothingness.
Oh. This is gonna suck, isn't it?
He has only a moment where he allows the panic to overtake him. Only a moment for fear to fully rock through him, for him to question if this was it, before he is pulled into the darkness.
It feels like when you're in a chair and you think you're going to fall backwards. Like when you miss a step going downstairs. Danny thinks he should be screaming, but he's in the space between heartbeats. He is everywhere and nowhere and is traveling too fast and not going anywhere at all. He thinks it lasts forever, but it also never was.
He feels gravity slam into him all at once. He feels too big and too small, and everything is too loud and too quiet, and it's pitch black wherever he landed. He tries to keep his panic at bay, but he still feels all twisted around and his whole sense of self feels wrong.
He tries to sit up and hits his head. He reaches out around him and feels that panic bubble up. He's in some sort of box that's just big enough for him and is lined in some sort of soft fabric. Satin or silk, maybe? He's also got a small pillow that whoever trapped him in here was nice enough to give him.
Well, this is fine. This is no worries at all! He's Danny Phantom! The OP Ghost King! He just needs to phase through... aaand... he... He can't access his powers.
Okay.
Okay.
No need to panic.
No need to freak out.
No need to worry about his heart beating faster than it has in two years. Or to worry about how he's hyperventilating, and he can't seem to stop even though he hasn't really needed to breathe in that long either.
He closes his eyes (even though he couldn't see anything before anyway) and tries to calm himself. He goes through some exercises and grabs onto his handy dandy unhealthy coping mechanisms in order to shove everything into a box, and put that box in another box, and shove that box so far down inside himself that he won't even be able to send it to himself to smash it with a hammer. What he can do is smash himself out of whatever box he is actually in.
First, he has to take stock. He has on a jacket, what feels like trousers, and really uncomfortable shoes. Is he in a suit? Why is he in a box in a suit. Never mind. Don't answer that. It's not important right now. What IS important is he is also wearing a belt with a belt buckle that feels sturdy af and has some sharp edges.
Danny quickly takes off the belt and wraps it around his hand, tying the buckle so it was easy to hold. He starts slashing at all the fabric around him. Once it's out of the way he starts blindly feeling the top of his box. It has a weird curvature and there's what feels like a seam halfway through it.
So, that's a bit of a bummer. It might be stronger with that extra seam there. He was hoping to punch his way through, but it might be thicker than he thought.
He's going to ignore exactly why there's a seam in the center of the box. A box with a curved lid. A box with a person in it. A box with fancy silk lining and a more comfortable than he expected pillow under his head and the fact that he was wearing a suit. He is going to ignore all that. Because if he doesn't.
If he doesn't.
Then he's going to have to consider what this all actually means. And he is NOT buried alive. He just simply isn't. That isn't something that he's going to be dealing with right now inside this box with too little air and absolutely no powers.
What he IS going to do is wrap some of the extra fabric around his nose and mouth. Then he's going to shove all the rest of everything in his way as far down below his feet as possible before he tries to punch his way out of the problem as usual.
The first punch using the belt buckle as an impact point is surprising in how loudly the lid cracks. So, he may not have all his abilities, but it looks like strength is still in play. Nice.
It only takes a few hits before the first trickle of dirt lands on him. Don'tThinkDon'tThinkDon'tThink. He brushes it aside and starts hitting a different point in order to try to expand his exit area. The dirt coats him in little bursts with each impact, and he brushes it off his chest while decidedly not thinking about why there's dirt.
No thoughts, only punching.
Soon he has enough of a weak area where he doesn't think it'll hurt him too much if he forces himself through. He takes a slow, deep breath and punches as hard as he can, fully cracking the lid. The dirt pours in. He shoves it down to his feet as he tries to make the hole bigger and wider until it finds an equilibrium and stops flooding in on him.
He takes one last slow, deep breath and holds it before trying to move as quickly as possible. He grabs the edge of the hole and pulls. The edges bend inward, and dirt comes cascading down. He shoves as much as possible down and around him before heaving himself upward.
Dirt is everywhere. It's in everything. He pulls himself above the casket box and feels everything shift and fall. He quickly finds the box with his feet and does his best to shove off and essentially swim through it.
At first it was all dry. At first, he felt confidence and knew he was going to get out of this.
But now the dirt is wet.
Now the dirt is heavy.
He keeps his panicking thinking down and only focuses on what he has to do. He doesn't think about how far down he could be. Or how far he's already gone already. Or how much pressure the ground was squeezing against him.
Danny just keeps moving and pushing and practically climbing through the dirt. Keep pushing the dirt beneath him. Push it around him. Keep going. He's going to be fine. He's going to be fine. He's going to be fine. He'sGoingToBeFineHe'sGoingToBeFineHe'sGoingToBeFine.
Just when the breath in his lungs starts to burn, his hand breaches and reaches nothing but air. He'd have sobbed in relief if his head wasn't still buried.
He grips the edge of surface and pulls while pushing the dirt beneath him with his feet as much as possible until his head finally breaks the surface. He gives himself one more shove until he is mostly out of that accursed hole and just lays down in the rain and cherishes the lungfuls of air he breathes in.
It's night, and the rainclouds are above, but Danny can still see the moon just beyond them. He tears off the makeshift facemask that managed to make it all the way to the surface with him. The water feels so refreshing even if it almost doomed him to a dirty death.
He feels the rain splatter against his filthy skin and starts giggling, before he starts laughing so hard he has to curl around his screaming ribs. And if he's also sobbing that's nobody else's business but his.
Danny is exhausted. Everything hurts. Though, it hurts more in a "lost a fight with a bus" than a "dug yourself out of a grave" kinda way. He can tell one of his eyes is swollen, and he thinks he might have a broken rib or two. Maybe a fracture in his arm?
What the hell even happened? One minute he's in the realms, getting all the vibes, then getting sucked into the abyss and, then what? The abyss decided since he had died, he deserved a dirt nap? He also lived, thank you very much, though he wouldn't say no to a memorial or something. Or a grave he could get in and out of without powers might actually be nice. But this buried and having to get out the human way was the absolute worst. -1000000000/10 do not recommend.
He finally sits up and looks around. Definitely a cemetery. He takes a moment and takes a deep, calming breath before looking back at the grave he crawled out of... and is instantly confused.
my best friend. has just introduced me. to hunter. and the rest of the bad batch. but especially to hunter. she is. about to find out. just how insufferable. i can actually be.
Danny frowns at the headstone for a while as he feels his bones slowly knit back together. He is very happy to feel his accelerated healing, even if it was down to about 10% of what it used to be.
Jason Peter Todd
He looks at the headstone and then down at the disturbed earth where he had climbed out then down at his own body. He's really hoping it's not what he thinks it is, but he knows his own luck.
He pulls back his left sleeve and doesn't see any of the faint branches that remained of his time in the portal. He looks at his hands and there's different calluses, different scars, and a freckle just below the knuckle of his left ring finger.
These were not his hands.
Which means this was not his body.
Which means....
Realization has fire burning in his chest like acid that bubbles beneath his skin as nausea sweeps through him. His vision starts to fade and pulse as he can't look away from his differently marred skin.
He was in someone else's body.
Danny tries to get out. Tries to do a reverse overshadowing, tries to go intangible, and even tries to do a summoning of himself. Nothing works. He's locked in.
He's stuck in someone else's corpse.
He's hijacked someone else's body.
He's desecrating the dead like this, right? Ancients, what if this guy's family sees him?! What if they think he's actually come back?! Danny is going to be able to leave at some point, right? Then they'd just have to relive this Jason's death all over again!
Nope! Nuh uh. Not doing it. He's getting the hell out of here.
Danny comes back to himself covered in mud, frantically returning the earth to look more like the ground was just heavily rained on instead of having someone climb out of their grave.
It's terrible work. Awful, really. There's a big divot from all the dirt that is now inside the casket, but that doesn't matter because Danny is leaving this city as fast as his uncomfortable shoes can take him.
Oh! He still has his shoes! That's nice. They must have been tied on quite tight. He was a little worried about losing them in his climb out of the grave, so he's very lucky to have them still. Yep. Super happy to have shoes. And his makeshift mask that he carefully put into his pocket before putting his lucky belt back on.
Look at all these great things he's got going for him! He can absolutely ignore the screaming agony of his ribs and all the other broken bones. He can ignore that nothing looks familiar outside the cemetery. Each step definitely doesn't feel like glass grinding together. Steps in a body that belongs to someone else. Nope. He's fine. He can do this. He's totally okay. He can definitely see just fine and everything isn't just a bunch of blurry blobs and smears of light and cold and wet and dirty and exhausting and painful...
He's fine.
He's also... airborn?
Ah.
He's back on the ground.
Welp. Pretty sure that last bright light was a car that definitely hit him.
Real nice, Fenton. Successfully dug himself out of a grave to probably die immediately by walking into traffic. He tries to get up. His hands keep slipping and he can't lift up his head. Eventually he lets himself lie there in the rain and grime. He thinks he maybe hears sirens, but they're distant and don't really seem to matter at the moment.
He sends apologies to Jason for not taking care of his body as the darkness takes him.
~(- -)~
When he comes to, it's instantly and all at once. There was no groggy awakening, or slow transition to awareness. He was unconscious and then he was wide awake, taking in more information about his situation than he ever had before.
Medical smell. Beeps of familiar machines. Lying on a table, but comfortable. No restraints, but there's a needle embedded in his hand. There is no rustling of fabric or presence in the room. His heart rate has not changed between asleep and wakefulness.
All of his observations happen faster than he can comprehend. He was asleep, he was awake, and he knew he was in a hospital in a room by himself and somehow his body has automatically controlled his heartrate.
This cataloging of information felt ingrained, something that was almost innate to his body. It felt very strange to Danny, but also amazing. Jason must have been a badass. Or involved in unsavory shit. Or both! Who's he to judge? Not body-snatching Danny, that's who.
His pain isn't any worse than it was before, so he thinks he got pretty lucky with that car. Or he's been here for long enough that his healing has fixed him back up. Which means he should probably gtfo before someone starts asking too many questions and gets the wrong people interested in him.
He tries to keep the heart within him beating slow and steady as he lets himself have a pity party. All he wanted was to visit that ghost. He didn't know where he was or when. He didn't know if he was back in his home realm or in another. How long has he been gone? Has anyone noticed yet?
The full understanding that he just crawled out of a grave engulfed him. He crawled out of a grave. He was hit by a car. He's stuck in someone else's body. He's lost. He's alone. He's the weakest he's ever been.
Horror, loss and fear rippled through him. His vision seemed to waver as his mind tried to protect him from the onslaught of his emotions. He ignored the increased beeping of the machines as his breath came faster and faster.
He wanted to throw up.
He wanted to scream.
He...Wait. That's not just his panic attack causing his vision to do that. The air is actually wavering. Like a heat mirage but made of shadows.
What the actual fuck.
That.
That is a lot of darkness. Just. Shadows pouring from the corner like smoke. It pools and flows into the room before starting to climb until it begins to take form, coalescing higher and higher. It arcs into the air until it bends over towards him. The shadows bubble and ripple until they solidify into a humanoid form.
Their thin, skeletal frame is encased in skin made of grey concrete with cracks like sidewalk and draped in tattered and stained black fabric accented by streaks of dirty yellows, blues, reds and greens. Shadows drip like oil from their head like strangled locks, barely hiding their angular face of too tight skin and black veined yellow eyes. Their legs have too many joints and end in sharpened points. Their arms are too long and wrapped in caution tape splattered with something that was too dark to identify.
"King." They rumble, their voice a multitude. All the voices of the city's dead in one harmony.
He swallows thickly and is about to greet this great city spirit before the words die in his throat. The city's smile stretches too far, with too many teeth shaped from jagged, bloodied pearls. The spirits bones click together as they reach for him.
He tries not to flinch. The chittering of carrion beetle's echo in his head as they laugh at him.
Danny is barely able to take a single breath of acceptance as the city spirit crashes over him, ice filling his veins as she steals him away from the hospital room.
