I have fallen down the Magnus archives rabbit hole and have decided to merge it with DP.
Jonathan Sims is Dan.
--------------------------------
The GIW tried to purge everything of ectoplasm. The first person they captured was Dan. This ends up with Sam, Valerie, Tucker, Jazz and Danny all being taken by the GIW to experimentation to try and ‘cure’ them.
Vlad goes off the deep end after Maddie gives up her own son to be experimented on. Thinking Danny's dead he takes up cloning again as a way to not be the only halfa.
It takes a while but Dani/Elle gets word of what happened and stages of Breakout. They all end up regrouping at Vlad's which makes them realize what happened.
A fight ensues giving the GIW time to find them especially with emotions powering ectoplasm. With no option left the three end up going through Vlad's portal to the ghost Zone.
Unfortunately GIW catches them about to go through and fire at the portal which then makes it unstable that they get sent to a different dimension instead of a portal to the ghost zone.
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They all end up in the TMA universe with Dani/Elle, Dan and all the other clones reverted to a core state. they're all very confused and their power is still Haywire. their Dimension is still connected to the ghost zone though the people overseeing it are the fear entities which are the only way to get back.
they don't become avatars nor do they realize what is going on. Their main priority is fixing Dani/Elle and Dan. They find out for a while that Danny, as the closest one with DNA, can incubate the cores without him into a hibernation-like state.
Due to their situation they are not actually able to keep Dan Elle/Dani and the clones after a certain amount of time some of it being resources, some of it being trauma and another part is having too many of them together is causing certain people to come out after them.
Ellie goes off with Sam after they realize this and Dan is sent off with Tucker.
Tucker makes friends with an older lady who was unable to have kids and when Tucker dies due to a supernatural incident. he is left in her care.
Everything is mostly the same except for in the background Danny is continuing to incubate the cores and the rest of the group are with him.
Due to the nature of their powers they are hiding from the fear entity cults. Jon/dan has No idea his background due to his grandmother dying before she tells him.
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Valerie later goes off with one of the Clones to raise them and ends up being killed by one of the Cults that are trying to steal power for a ritual.
This leads the Clone(Atlas)To try and find any of their family and stop the cult that killed Valerie.
Jon did a DNA test in uni which then pops up for Atlas when they try to figure out their family. Valerie didn't quite tell them their history but made vague mentions of the fact that they were not an only child and that the power is biological.
There are 8 kids including Dan and Ellie but only about 3 pop up in the DNA test.
Atlas then tries to get into contact with his siblings. The easiest one to get in contact with is Jon due to the ability to give statements as well as a social media post from his promotion telling Atlas where he is.
Atlas pops up just before the season 1 finale or somewhere in season 2 when Jon's in his paranoia spiral.
—-------------
If anyone wants to write anything about this I would be eternally grateful. this has been stuck in my head for the past 3 days.
[ID: digital drawing of Jazz Fenton from the hips up with one arm wrapped around herself and the other holding a silver tape recorder up to her mouth, talking into it. She's wearing her teal headband and pants, and a black sweater over a light collared shirt with green oval lapel pins joined by a chain. Her eyes are glowing, pupils subsumed in light, and her expression is tightly drawn. She's surrounded by faint, glowing eyes of various size, all focused on her.]
@crossoverdanuary 2025, Day 1, Podcasts: Archivist Jazz
It is finally time!!! Oh, I had so much fun doing this event!! Everyone was nice and fun to talk too (when I actually talked in the server lol) and getting to gush about TMA with my writer and other people in the server was so much fun!!! Yall are in for a treat cause her fic is turning out so good!!!
The fic by the lovely @kinglazrus :
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Written for Ecto-implosion 2023! Inspired by the amazing art of @ghozteevee, which you can check out here!
You do not need to have listened to the Magnus Archives to read this fic. It is beta read specifically for DP fans who have no knowledge of the TMA universe or its characters.
Summary
It’s been over two years since the accident and things are good. Except the main thing keeping Amity safe is a shaky deal between him and the ghosts. And Jazz can barely stand to be around him. And sometimes he can’t remember who he is. But everything is good!
And then the sky cracks as the universe shifts, and with it, Danny Fenton’s chest is carved open. His vision shatters into light and shadow as the space around him splits, filling him with spiders, and hornets, and the deep below, and oh so many things that push against his skin from the inside but still cannot break through.
Chapters below the cut
Ch 1. The binding of the ties: There is something waiting to meet you, but it can wait a while longer.
What if instead of becoming a half ghost, Danny became a Vast Avatar with the accident. His desire to be an astronaut means that he probably had a good concept of infinity and how much space there was in the world which would help him in the Dread Power business. You can spin the ectoplasm and whatnot as End aligned making the Fentons heavily End touched. Maybe Jack and Maddie have an idea about the Entity business but choose not to tell Danny and Jazz. Lots of ways you can spin the DP ghost canon/fanon to fit the TMA verse if you so desire.
Now because he was End touched, one would think that Danny would have become an Avatar of the End. But he wasn’t thinking about death and that fear when he died. Sure it was in the background, but the foreground was preoccupied with Space. One of the big regrets Danny has in Fanon is that he can’t become an astronaut anymore because of the biological changes of becoming a half along with the anti-ecto acts. So taking this, it’s not a stretch that one of his biggest regrets, maybe even fear, was that he would never explore the stars. Well the Vast would happily swoop him up and claim him since the End isn’t known for bring very proactive.
Maybe the reason that Danny can make the thermos work in the first episode isn’t because of ectoplasm or the good ol’ smack-it-till-it-works treatment, but because he’s putting some of the power of the Vast into it. This would make it so that the thermos leads into Danny’s Domain and not just a cramped holding zone. Either way, Danny remains pretty blind to the Entity world because no one thinks to tell him about them or those that do assume that he’s already had the debrief.
This could tie into the main series in two ways that I can think of. One, when Jon comes into Amity when he has to come to the US. Or two, Danny and Mike Crew meet and commiserate over litchenburg scars. There are probably other ways you can take this but those are the two I think of.
Written for Ecto-implosion 2023! Inspired by the amazing art of @ghozteevee, which you can check out here!
Masterpost | AO3 | Next
WC: 5016
The binding of the threads
There is something waiting to meet you, but it can wait a while longer.
—✧✦✧—
There is a hand attached to an arm attached to a body. It stretches up, fingers splayed into the darkness, forming a skeletal silhouette against the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, straining against the limits of blood and bone. Limits that exist only in the mind encased in the skull wrapped in the flesh of the thing. But flesh is not the right word. It is not flesh, which is soft and fatty and alive; it is skin, thin and pale as paper, stretched over jutting bones.
Sometimes, when the hand turns like so, the star’s glow seeps into the matrix of jagged veins branching out across its palm. There is no blood in these veins, only light, which creeps from the hand to the arm to the body to the heart of the thing.
The hand drifts, turning its scarred palm toward the window, where a spider is hard at work. The web has yet to take proper form. Currently, a single thread stretches from the top left corner of the window down to the bottom right. The spider dangles from it, lowering itself to the sill as it weaves the second strand. Its squat, brown body is illuminated by the rising sun.
Does it see itself reflected in the window with its many eyes? If so, does it recognize itself? Does it, too, sometimes forget what it is? Perhaps. But it doesn’t need to know what a spider is to be a spider. All it needs is to weave its web and feast on any unfortunate creatures that find themselves trapped there.
Wind buffets the spider, making it sway back and forth. Its legs tremble as it reaches out, but the window is too far, and the breeze keeps pushing the spider away.
The hand reaches, and the body follows, tumbling out of the warmth of its bed. Paint flakes away under the bony fingers as they dig into the windowpane and lift. A mouth attached to a throat attached to empty lungs falls open and breathes in the brisk morning air.
The breeze flows into the room, pulling the spider in. It finds purchase, finally, on the hand attached to the thing.
The thing blinks. It stares at the jagged curve of its fingers digging into the window pane, whose wood has cracked and splintered. When it pulls away, slivers drag out of its fingertips. It barely even stings, but it’s still something for the thing to feel. It breathes again, filling its aching lungs.
The spider waits patiently for the hand to lower it to the sill. Its legs twitch, almost like it’s waving, and it goes back to its web.
—✧✦✧—
The alarm that drags Danny into awareness is not his own. It isn’t loud enough to startle, but the steady ringing digs into his mind and hauls him back into his body. He blinks, not out of any real necessity, but because he’s made a habit of reminding himself to do it, particularly when he’s at home.
According to his phone, which lies on the nightstand next to his bed, it’s just after six in the morning.
Danny groans and tips his head back, pressing his hands against his eyes. Sunday morning, his last chance to sleep in on the weekend, and he’s awake at 6 a.m. The sun hasn’t even fully risen yet, although it’s well on its way. The sky is growing lighter, and it looks like it’s going to be a clear, warm day. Which is sickening, since it’s almost October.
He could go back to bed, but who is he kidding? He wasn’t sleeping, anyway. Might as well see what all the noise is about.
The lab door is already open when he gets down to the first floor, and his parents’ voices float through it. As Danny descends into the basement, he catches the tail end of their conversation.
“I don’t know what could cause this,” his mom says, in a way that is not at all foreboding.
“Most of these are pretty scattered, but look at these two,” his dad answers.
His mom hums. “That’s obviously the portal, but this other one? That’s somewhere in Polter Heights.”
“We could ask Vladdy about—” His dad turns just in time to see Danny reach the bottom of the stairs. “Oh, Danny! Come to see what the fuss is about?”
Calling the jumble of equipment his parents are standing in front of a computer is a bit of an oversimplification. While there is a regular keyboard, it’s embedded into a console, which is as wide as Danny is tall, that’s covered in all kinds of dials, switches, and blinking lights. Four monitors are bolted to the wall above the console, two of which always show the same thing: a radar of the Ghost Zone, or at least the area immediately surrounding their portal; and another that covers all of Amity Park.
The city radar is lit up in a way Danny’s never seen before. White spots flicker in and out all over the screen, seemingly without reason, but after staring for a few seconds, he notices a pattern. While the lights dance over the whole city, more appear in the south-east. The longer he watches, the easier it is to draw a line around the active area. An oval that covers almost a third of the city, and at one end is their house, Fenton Works.
Danny spots it easily because it’s one of only two lights that aren’t fading. While the others appear at random, shining for less than a second before they fade, the light over Fenton Works holds steady. Another solid light marks the other end of the oval.
“What’s happening?” he asks. His ghost sense hasn’t gone off, which must be a good sign. He looks to the portal embedded in the furthest wall of the lab. The doors are firmly shut, and the warning light above it is dim.
“White spots are areas of densely packed ectoplasm, usually portals, although these aren’t very bright. So, if portals are forming all over the city, they’re either very weak or very small,” his mom explains. “But this shouldn’t be happening.” She points to the spot over Fenton Works. “Natural portals have complex signatures, but the Fenton Portal, as a stable point, has a unique signature that we can isolate from other portals. We had to calibrate the city scanner to ignore our portal because it kept setting off the sensors.”
“Maybe it’s broken?” Danny suggests.
“Danny.” His dad has never sounded so disappointed. “Fenton Tech doesn’t just break.”
But no technology is perfect—Tucker would kill him for saying that—and Danny opens his mouth to argue. Nothing comes out, though. He’s “borrowed” his parents’ equipment enough times to know how well it works. They might have a lot of mishaps in the testing phase, but once a piece of Fenton Tech is done, it’s done. “Okay, fine, it’s not broken. But wouldn’t that many portals be, like, really obvious?”
His parents blink at him.
“Have you not looked outside?”
Apparently not, because they sprint across the lab and charge past him up the stairs. He follows them up to the front door and, as he already saw from his room, the sky is bright and clear.
“That can’t be right,” his mom says.
“Maybe it is broken,” his dad says, in the same tone one might tell a child their beloved pet is dead.
Danny gives him a consoling pat on the back. “Sorry, Dad. Maybe we should shut off the alarm?”
With the front door open, the noise spills out into the street. It shouldn’t be loud enough to bother the neighbours, but Danny rather enjoys it when the police don’t come by to deal with noise complaints. It happens so frequently that he’s on a first-name basis with most of the officers in the area.
He also likes not having a headache, and if the alarm goes on any longer, it’s going to drill a hole right through his brain.
“Okay,” his mom says. “We’ll take the RV and see if we can find anything. Danny, can you tell Jazz we’re out when she gets up? She wanted me to look over her paper on cellular processes, but I don’t know if I’ll have time now.”
Danny stiffens. “Jazz is home?”
“Last night. You didn’t see her?”
“I was out. Why is she home?”
“Honestly, Danny. You need to pay more attention to things.” Because Danny’s the one who doesn’t notice things, yeah. His mom shakes her head. “Her roommate has family visiting. She offered to give up her room for the week so that they wouldn’t need a hotel.”
“Right. I’ll tell her.”
At half past six, Danny shoves a note under Jazz’s bedroom door. He waited a whole half hour for her to wake up; it’s not his fault that she didn’t before he had to leave. And he does have to leave, right now. He has a lot of important things to do that aren’t here. What a shame.
—✧✦✧—
Danny’s best friend Tucker enjoys a lengthy waking-up process on the weekend. He knows this from the many sleepovers they’ve had since preschool. First, Tucker becomes aware that he is no longer asleep. It happens slowly today, as he clings to a fading dream, the minutes slipping away. Second, he searches for the most comfortable position, turning first one way, then the other, flipping his pillow, and tugging his blanket up to his chin and kicking his feet out at the bottom. All without opening his eyes. Then, he snuggles as deep into his bed as he can and dedicates himself to its warmth for as long as physically possible. This can last anywhere from ten minutes to an hour, maybe longer.
Tucker’s record so far is three hours wasted just savouring this quiet time.
Today, he gets three minutes before Danny moans from the beanbag chair beside Tucker’s bed. “Jazz is home.”
Tucker awakens with a shout. He thrashes, tossing his covers away, and rolls to the opposite side of the bed, shouting again when he tips right off the edge.
Danny hears this all happen, but his gaze is locked on the Dumpty Humpty poster taped to Tucker’s ceiling, tracing the edges of the cracked-egg logo. Breakfast would be good right now.
“Danny!” Tucker pops up on the other side of his bed. “What—when did you get here?”
“Uh...five hours ago. Angela took your stash, by the way.” Danny waves toward Tucker’s desk.
The stack of plates and cups piled on the corner had been impressive, although nothing compared to the hoard scattered around Danny’s room. It’s a good thing food tainted with ectoplasm doesn’t grow mould, otherwise his room would be a biohazard.
Actually, never mind. He’s enough of a biohazard as it is.
“You owe me twenty bucks.” Danny glances over at Tucker, who is crawling back onto his bed.
His sleep shirt is a baggy t-shirt covered in black roses. Not Tucker’s, then, but something he stole from their other best friend, Sam. His shorts, decorated with constellations, aren’t his either. Danny had wondered where that pair went.
Tucker sprawls across his bed, flaunting his stolen goods. Not that Danny’s any better. He’s pretty sure the sweatpants he wears right now are Sam’s, based on the cut. And he doesn’t own a hoodie that’s the same eye-straining blue as an old Windows error screen with a sad emoticon face on the chest, but here he is, wearing it.
“Ugh. Dumbest bet I’ve ever made.” Tucker jerks his chin in Danny’s direction. “I think there’s a twenty under my shoe over there.”
The shoe is behind Danny, under Tucker’s desk. Just the one shoe. As promised, a crumpled twenty is stuck under the heel. Danny unfolds it and starts flattening it against the edge of Tucker’s desk leg.
“My mom didn’t say anything about you suddenly appearing in my room when you weren’t here yesterday?”
“Tucker, I love your mom, but she’s an adult. Adults don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff. Also, I pretended I was asleep.” He would have liked to actually sleep, but couldn’t with how his thoughts kept spinning. Jazz is home. Jazz is home. Jazz is home.
“So.” Tucker’s bed squeaks as he rolls onto his side to peer down at Danny. “Jazz. Have you seen her since…?”
“No.” Danny runs his thumb over a corner of the twenty that refuses to lay flat. “She’s home for a week. Can I crash here?”
“All week? Your parents won’t notice?”
He shoots Tucker a deadpan look.
“Right. Obviously, yeah, if you really need to. But, dude? I think you should try talking to her, first.”
What a novel idea. Amazing that Danny hadn’t thought of that already. Not once in the months since Jazz graduated and moved out, or the half year before that, when he tiptoed around the house avoiding her.
If only they just talked.
“Don’t give me that sassy look,” Tucker says. “But fine, don’t talk to her. At least try being in the same house.”
“Tried that already. Didn’t work out too well.”
“Danny.”
His hands drop into his lap. It’s not that he’s trying to be difficult, but he already knows how it’ll go. He’ll wait until Jazz is somewhere open and preferably facing the door, like the living room or kitchen. His steps will be unnecessarily loud as he approaches, giving her plenty of warning before he appears, but it won’t matter. She’ll still make that face when she sees him.
“One night,” Tucker says. “We can hang out all day today, and you can stay here the rest of the week, but you need to spend tonight at home.”
Danny wants to spit his reply, but it comes out with soft resignation instead. “Fine.”
—✧✦✧—
Just as Danny suspected, Tucker’s parents don’t say anything about him showing up without warning when they creep out for lunch. Maurice, Tucker’s dad, even reaches out to ruffle Danny’s hair, but when Danny sees the hand coming from the corner of his eye, he flinches away. He doesn’t mean to, but it’s instinctual, and he tries to brush it off. Neither Maurice nor Angela comment on it, although surely both of them saw it happen.
Adults just don’t like to see things.
Danny and Tucker spend the day playing video games and scarfing down day-old pizza. He doesn’t hear from his parents, but he gets one text from Jazz.
Jazz | Today 4:56 p.m.
Need a ride to school tmrw?
Tucker reads the text over Danny’s shoulder and slowly raises his eyebrows, as if to say, “I told you so.” Which is ridiculous, because Tucker didn’t tell him anything except that he had to spend one night in the same house as Jazz. But he didn’t say how long that night had to be, and it’s so easy to lose track of time when playing video games.
It’s well into the night when Tucker yawns for the fifth time in as many minutes and rubs his eyes. “Dude, see what happens when you wake me up at ungodly hours?”
He’s sprawled out on his bed again, having given up on the game some time ago. Danny sits beside him, cradling a controller in his lap. He isn’t really playing anymore, just going around shooting things. His only goal now is running down the clock so that he can spend as little time as possible at home tonight.
“I woke you up at 11 a.m.,” he says.
“Exactly. A.m. That was cruel. It’s not even”—Tucker squints at his phone—“midnight, and I’m falling asleep.”
He frowns. The screen goes dark, and he taps it to wake it up again. 11:34 p.m., it reads. Tucker’s head slowly turns toward Danny, whose eyes are firmly locked on the TV.
“Do you remember if there’s a secret on this level?” Danny asks. “I’m only missing one, and I’d really like to finally hundred percent this game.
“Dude,” Tucker says.
“Can’t take that long to find, right? Half an hour? An hour?” Maybe longer if he missed it and has to backtrack. Wouldn’t that be a shame.
Tucker drives his heel into Danny’s hip and shoves him off the bed.
Danny squawks as he tumbles to the floor. When he hauls himself back up, Tucker is glaring at him. At least Danny thinks he’s glaring. It’s not particularly vicious. Lacks that oomph. It’s adorable, actually.
“One night, man. One night. That’s all I asked for.” Tucker shoves Danny again, this time kicking his shoulder, but he’s prepared this time. He sways, if only to humour Tucker, who smirks for a moment before glaring again.
Like he said, adorable.
“It’ll still be nighttime when I get home!” Danny says. And really, when does it stop being nighttime? Not until the sun rises. That’s a good seven hours away.
“And Jazz will be asleep.”
“Yeah, that’s generally what people do at night. I think you should do that. Right now. You look tired. Let the sounds of virtual gunfire lull you to sleep.”
“Danny.”
Oh. Oh, no, Danny was wrong before. Now Tucker is glaring, and it’s not adorable. It’s scorching.
“I can’t go home,” Danny says.
Tucker doesn’t say anything.
“I can’t be in the house when she’s there.”
He just glares.
“It’s not about me! It’s about her! She doesn’t want—I can’t—”
And glares.
“Okay, fine. Fine! I’m going.” Danny shuts off the console and the TV, then takes a big step away from them—and checks for any other electronics—before changing. The ring that expands out of his chest sparks and snaps. It splits in two, electricity arcing between the rings and his body. His skin buzzes where the rings pass.
It’s surreal to watch the bolts of electricity transform his body, replacing his hoodie and sweats with a black and white jumpsuit, almost bringing him back to the moment he died. The only thing missing is the bloody mess on his left arm.
When the rings fizzle out, Danny turns to Tucker with his hands on his hips. “Happy?”
“Moderately. Good night!” Tucker is probably trying for some dramatic plunge into darkness when he turns off his lamp and throws himself back against the bed, but Danny’s ghostly aura ruins the effect. It illuminates the room in a soft glow.
“You’re still here,” Tucker says.
“Just want you to know how much I hate you.”
“That’s nice. Now go exist in the same building as your sister.” Tucker flaps a hand in Danny’s general direction. He hesitates another minute before finally leaving, phasing through Tucker’s wall and taking off into the sky.
It’s a nice night for flying, though, and Danny never said he would go home right away.
—✧✦✧—
Fenton Works is quiet. Jazz is in her room, waiting for her brother to come home. Maddie and Jack are asleep, exhausted from a day of scouring the city, searching for portals they had no chance of finding to begin with. The third bedroom lays empty, its occupant dawdling somewhere halfway across the city.
So no one sees it when the lights on the computer in the basement change. When the flickering stops. When a dozen faint spots are scattered across the city.
No one sees when those lights converge into two brilliant points, so bright the whole screen goes white before fading into black. And finally, the alarm shuts off.
—✧✦✧—
There is not enough room in all the worlds for the things that want to emerge. Their bodies press against the seams of infinite realities, but they cannot break through. While they are beyond simple concepts like physicality, it would not be wrong to say they thrash, and howl, and gnash their teeth as they push into the void In Between, stretching out, out, out but never reaching the end, because there is no end. And yet, that eternity is not enough.
They are many, and they are one, and they are far too much and need more.
But they were also prepared for this. Not all of them, but a part, one that calls itself they-she-it, calls herself clever, calls itself Mother.
There is not enough room for all of them, but there is enough room for a thread, already cast. As the thread that weaves and binds and pulls and puppets thrusts its way into existence, it meets something not unlike itself.
Another thread, caught in something that is many things but also one. The Beyond stares with holes that are not eyes, opens a gaping maw that is not a mouth, and lets the two threads meet.
It is still too much.
Reality tears itself open to make room.
The sky cracks as the universe shifts. With it, Danny Fenton’s chest is carved open. His vision shatters into light and shadow as the space around him splits, filling him with spiders, and hornets, and the deep below, and oh so many things that push against his skin from the inside but still cannot break through.
As the tear closes and the acidic light it leaks disappears, Danny plummets. Lightning crackles around him, arcing off his skin in blinding waves, and sinks into the earth when he hits the ground. He lands on something that isn’t hard but isn’t soft, just enough to keep his skull from cracking like the sky. Slowly, the shards of his vision start to mend, darkness expanding, light shrinking into twinkling points.
Eventually, the world settles around him. The pressure in his body remains, making his ribs creak as something pushes from the inside, but the burden on his mind lessens. The static fades, taking with it the sound of fluttering wings, shifting earth, and crackling fire, until Danny can hear his thoughts again.
There is nothing quite like pain to make him feel human again.
“What the hell?” he asks the stars overhead. Not glow-in-the-dark, this time. Real stars, which twinkle at him, sparkling with mirth, and do not answer.
His back aches from the rough landing, although it’s still better than breaking open against the pavement. A line of heat swoops across his torso, stretching over his shoulder and cutting across his spine.
Danny sits up, hissing when his back peels away from whatever broke his fall. The alley reeks of burnt flesh, a smell not dissimilar to Sunday barbecue. He studies his new burn with a sigh.
His jumpsuit has been melted through, and the skin beneath is a blistering white rimmed with red. Second degree, then, widespread but not deep. He probes it gently, mindful of how sensitive the skin is right now, and traces the burn’s path from his navel to up and over his shoulder. Craning his neck, he tries to see where it ends, but it stretches past his vision. He can feel it, though, burning against the small of his back.
Danny touches his shoulder and hisses. While the burn narrows to a point on his stomach, it stretches as wide as his splayed hand when it crests his collarbone, creeping along the curve of his neck and just over the slope of his shoulder. He breathes deeply through his nose, trying to ride out the heat building beneath his skin.
This wouldn’t have happened if Danny had been paying attention. He tries now, raking his gaze across the sky, then down through the alley, searching for his attacker, but it’s hard when the walls keep shifting and the shadows stretch to impossible depths, filled with a void so dark Danny could stick his hand in and lose sight of the limb completely.
But there is no enemy waiting for him.
Not a ghost hunter, then. They tend to follow the motto “shoot and suppress,” and descend upon him the moment he hits the ground. At least that was his experience the last few times he was struck down by a ghost hunter. They could be trying for stealth, but even through the ebb and flow of stone and shadow, Danny knows he is the only living thing awake at this hour.
Although, living is up for debate. Danny is constantly weighing his inhumanity against the corporeal needs of his body, like Anubis weighing the goodness of his heart. What’s heavier: lungs without air or a stomach that hungers? Eyes that don’t blink but still burn from lack of sleep? It’s a balancing act that Danny still hasn’t mastered with his clammy skin and sharp teeth.
Thing, however, is entirely accurate no matter what side the scale tips toward.
And Danny is searching for a thing. While a ghost hunter would have come for him by now, a plain old ghost is more likely to shoot him for fun and leave before he can retaliate. And they must have left, because he doesn’t feel the telltale shiver of his ghost sense.
Danny’s jaw clenches. Someone attacks him in his haunt and doesn’t even have the decency to play the game right. Someone bold, then, or incredibly stupid. Could be a new ghost, but it’s been a while since someone new really tried fighting him, and ghosts don’t usually resort to potshots; they’re a far too dramatic bunch for that.
Someone familiar, then. Confident enough to hurt him, wise enough to flee, and, in all likelihood, friendly enough to rub it in his face when he’s less inclined to beat them for it.
The list of possible offenders is long.
Blisters are already rising along the deepest part of the burn, clusters of bubbles decorating the centre swath. Danny’s hand is hovering just over the blisters when the name pops into his head.
Ember.
Something clicks. Not only in his mind, but in the alley. A single, sharp noise that echoes between the shifting walls and makes Danny flinch. He looks up, not quite sure what he’s searching for now. There’s nothing to see, anyway. Only the stars, dim as they are. He can’t tell if they’re laughing at him anymore.
Danny’s thoughts take a moment to catch up with him.
Ember.
Suddenly, everything sharpens into focus. The alley walls stop moving. The shadows lose some of their depth. The box he is sitting on solidifies. It’s like the world around him had been caught in a state of flux but is now settling back into place.
“Really, Ember?” No answer comes, of course. She saw her opportunity, got her shot in, and now she’s running away before he can retaliate. Danny’s annoyance spikes. Not at the burn—it’s surface-level, after all, and will be nothing but another scar in a few days—but at Ember’s absence. They have a deal. Her, Danny, and the others.
It’s hardly surprising that she, of everyone in their little group, would leap at the chance to ruin his night and leave him hanging. She’ll probably come around in a week or so to crow about it and check out the new scar, maybe sooner.
The whirlpool in Danny’s mind spits out the occasional thought, but does not tell him when he and Ember are supposed to hang out next, or if they even have plans. Something about guitar lessons? When he dips into the eddy, it threatens to drag him down, down, down to where the static and crackling and crushing earth lies.
What time is it? What day is it?
His phone flares to life when he raises it from his pocket, and the sudden brightness in the dark alley sends a spike of pain through his skull. He groans and drops it, pressing a hand to his temples. A few seconds pass before the throbbing fades.
Blurry vision, dizziness, and confusion.
“Concussion,” he mutters, still massaging his temples. Wonderful. Fantastic. Ember not only roasted him, but also knocked a few more brain cells loose. Just what he needs. He doesn’t remember hitting his head, but that’s not a point against having a concussion.
Looks like this outing is over. Even without the concussion, he would probably stop. Breathing deeply pulls at his new wound. Unfortunately, accelerated healing does not spare him from pain.
He snatches his phone from the ground, steeling himself for the brightness, when something skitters across the back of his hand. Danny yelps and flings his arm wide, phone slipping from his grasp. It hits the alley wall with a crack and falls to the ground, dead.
“Really?” Danny scans the pavement, looking for the spider that startled him, but it’s long gone. “I was very nice to one of you, earlier,” he calls. “Shit.”
So much for texting Tucker or Sam for help, although maybe it’s for the better. Tucker will be mad Danny didn’t go home right away. What time is it, anyway? His phone met its untimely demise before he could see. The dark screen taunts him, a web of cracks branching out from the corner. Another soldier lost in the line of duty. It will be missed.
Maybe it’s early enough that he can swing by unannounced.
No, Danny decides. No point bothering Sam with this, and he doesn’t want to face Tucker’s ire again. Ember’s burns are hell for a moment, but the worst will be over by morning. Treating it now would be a waste of bandages.
He staggers to his feet, giving the world a moment to stop spinning, and glances at the box that had broken his fall. It sits just out of reach of the streetlights, in the exact middle of the alley. Weird place for someone to throw it away. The lid is caved in from his landing, but it still holds most of its shape.
“Thanks, I guess,” he says. Great, now he’s talking to boxes. “Enjoy getting picked up by the Box Ghost, or whatever.”
Danny stares at it a moment longer before shaking his head and taking off, leaving the file box behind. It doesn’t matter, though. The threads are already tied.
So what if at the end of ep 200, Jon, Martin, the Fears, and the gaggle of other avatars ended up in the Infinite Realms? And Ghost King Danny popped over because he’s made a habit of going over to make sure that the exodus of entities is dealt with alright. And there’s the fact that there are several new Ancient level entities popping up in his perspective (the Dread Powers). Idk where this would go but there would be shenanigans and misunderstandings and miscommunications no doubt.
