Danny is feeling a bit chilly, but that doesn't stop breakfast conversations from getting heated. The plan to find and help Elle is going smooth as ice, but the day may go up in flames thanks to a furious pair of ghosts casting a shadow over Danny's day.
Welcome to Chapter 5 of A Phantom Adopted! Find it also on ao3
A gift to @floralflowerpower and @five-rivers
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.
“I know exactly who to make plans with.” Gridlined grin in place, Technus flew through the web at nearly the speed of light, making a trip from Ohio to Wisconsin so trivial as a step.
A devil and a priest go on the hunt, while a late fee collector and his cousins withdraw from attempting to teach a 15-year-old baby. discussions are had, plans are made.
Ao3
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.
#
This here is for @floralflowerpower, @ebonyheartnet, and @five-rivers ! I hope you enjoyed! Have a lovely December and feel free to toss out conflicts I can shovel onto Danny's plate if you think I've been a touch too nice to him.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Danny Phantom, Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character, OMC/OMC/OMC, OMC/OMC, Danny Fenton & Tucker Foley & Sam Manson, Danny Fenton & Jazz Fenton
Characters: Danny Fenton, Tucker Foley, Sam Manson, Original Male Character(s), Jazz Fenton, Toby Lumano, Valdan Lumano
Additional Tags: rewrite time babes, no betas we die like Danny, lots of fun gays from my catelogue of mostly unplayed dnd player characters, high energy ectoplasm means evolving beyond a 20 level limit, semi responsible adults, Canon-Typical Violence, Violence, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Season/Series 03, the Fenton's A+ Parenting, off screen murder, Discussions of the Afterlife
Summary:
The crew of the Rose Pheonix, a spell jammer that's ventured perhaps further from its planar system of origin than first intended, winds up getting involved in the affairs of one 15-year-old Danny Fenton and his friends. Watch as chaotic men with ridiculous powers attempt to help this chaotic teenaged mess with ridiculous power.
I felt that @floralflowerpower should be the first to hear that I have decided to post chapter 1 of my wonderful rewrite, so enjoy my friend.
It was a bright summer day in Amity Park, Danny Fenton was in the grove - no one wanted to say “Amity Park Park” - doing a handstand while braced against a tree.
“See? I told you I could do it.”
“You’re not using your powers to float into that position, are you?”
“Sam, I am offended that you would imply that I, of all people, would cheat at things with levitation.” Danny laughed, flopping down onto his belly in the grass. “Appalled, really, how dare you?”
Laughing, Tucker ripped up a handful of grass from his side and sprinkled it down into Danny’s bird’s nest of hair.
“No, of course, you are the most noble in character there is. As we have seen, you are a superhero through and through. Complete with bedsheet cape.”
Danny groaned while his friends laughed and shook his head. “Alright, listen.”
“You, wearing black and white alone, looked at me and asked if I was willing to wear bright primary colors, Danny.”
Sam patted his shoulder blade and Danny rolled his eyes.
“A ghost asked a goth to wear bright colors. You shall never live that down.”
“There are pastel goths,” Danny countered with a pout. “I checked, there are goths who wear bright colors. It’s a mindset, not a fashion statement.” Tucker draped yet more grass on Danny, who turned to stare at his best friend and deadpanned, “Dude that’s kinda gay.”
Tucker snorted and laughed himself back into the tree they were sitting in front of. “H-how exactly is that gay?”
“Grass, in flower language, represents homosexual love,” Sam supplied.
Tucker covered his heart with a hand and gasped loudly.
“Oh goodness me, I, a bisexual nerd, cannot be gay good sir and madam, that is simply unacceptable. Truly, this is the end of my world.”
“I will write you a gorgeous eulogy seasoned with memes,” Danny said, patting Tucker’s thigh as the latter flopped over, putting on his best ‘dying’ act.
A chill completely at odds with the summer sun shining down on them went up his spine and out of his mouth as a cloud of icy mist.
“Shit.”
Danny braced for impact, a dome of green light erecting itself over the teens just in time for five missiles to strike it and explode.
When the smoke cleared and Danny transformed in a flash of light – pale skin tan, snow-white hair, glowing green eyes, black and white jumpsuit, all the staples of half-dead teendom – Danny locked on to his attacker. A large, mechanized man with flaming green mohawk was grinning down at him like a predator baring teeth to prey.
“You’ll have to survive to his funeral first, whelp, and I assure you that’s not happening. I’ve gotten a few upgrades since last we fought, and The Hunt is on.”
While Skulker popped out a new cannon, Danny turned to check on his friends, both of whom were pulling out their own Fenton ecto-pistols.
When he turned back there was an explosion of golden light and the screeching of tearing metal, and Skulker was missing half of his mech before Danny could even quip at him. Danny dropped his shield, turning to stare at the source of light with everyone else, and found his jaw had dropped very literally to the ground.
Something that could be a bear mixed with a goat, an electric eel, and at least three kinds of birds was aiming a bow at Skulker, an arrow made of golden light already knocked and shining brighter with every second. Each feather was a different color, oscillating in intensity, but overall, it was both hard to look at and impossible to look away from.
“Hi there,” the ghost said with a voice that could have been a thousand people speaking in tandem. “You are going to leave in the next five seconds, or I am going to traumatize these children by showing them just how one Ends a ghost. Four. Three.”
Danny had never seen Skulker fly away so fast, especially with only one turbine to boost himself. He couldn’t even blame him, not with the burning fountain of energy beating their kaleidoscopic wings in front of him, aiming at Skulker until buildings were in the way. Danny charged up an ectoblast of his own even as the arrow dissipated.
“Well, that was impressive. I’ve never seen anyone make Skulker experience common sense before. Who are you, exactly?”
“I’m Toby. You alright, kid?”
The ghost turned to Danny and all the animal features melted into each other until Danny was looking at what could almost pass for a regular human being. Blond hair, brown eyes, some weird old-timey robes, and a single pair of feathery wings that reflected the light catching them like crystal glass.
In the next moment, Danny was being dragged into a tight embrace, cut off from the world by arms and feathers alike, and he blinked several times, tense as a bowstring.
“I’m gonna need you to back up before I zap you,” Danny said with his hands up and a buzz traveling from his chest toward his fingertips.
The ghost backed up, hands held up where everyone could see them, and wings half folded around him like a cloak.
“Apologies, my response to seeing kids almost getting hurt is to hug them. I should’ve asked first.”
“That’s very true,” Sam said with narrowed eyes. “Who are you, exactly?”
“Yeah, we don’t get many new ghosts around here who know how to speak English,” Tucker said. “Or any who help us.”
The strangely human-looking ghost took a deep breath, eyes glowing from brown to golden-orange, and clasped their hands together in front of their face.
“Well, that explains a few things I’ve observed of you in the past two minutes. Right, so, first thing’s first; hi, you kids can call me Toby Lumano. He/him and all that.”
Danny shook the hand extended to him, ignoring the fact that a hand was held out to all three of them. “Danny, Phantom currently.”
“Tucker Foley, genius and future multi-millionaire.”
“Sam Manson. What exactly did you observe of us?”
“Well, most children back where I come from don’t have deadly weapons on them at all times, and I assume that whatever that gun is, it’s dangerous if not deadly.”
Tucker arched a brow, the grip he had on his pistol loose.
“I’m impressed that you know what a gun is. You look like you’re from a history book - or maybe a religious one.”
Toby snorted and laughed, his wings glimmering like a sea of rainbows woven together rather than feathers. He has to right himself after tilting back a bit, like how a laughing fit can send Danny literally spiraling away in his ghost form.
“I mean, I’m sure I’m in some religious text but I highly doubt it’d be in this world. I’m not exactly from this Realm after all. But yeah, my… aunt? My in-law, let’s call her that cause I lost track, she invented guns in our world.”
“That must make for some awkward family reunions.”
“That is, possibly, the least awkward thing that could come up with a family dinner, actually.
“Anyway, I also see that you, Danny, have the most intense ‘fight me’ aura I’ve ever seen. If all you’ve ever met are hostile adult ghosts then that makes sense.”
Toby tilted his head, wings unfurling just a bit as he raised a hand to his chin.
“You’ve got that Still Warm feel to you, like you’re only recently dead. Which makes the rumors about you impossible, of course, cause I’m pretty sure none of you are even close to being adult humans unless people look a lot younger per quarter of their life in this Realm.”
Danny shook his head, looking around to see if anyone had come close enough to watch them, and in a wave of light morphed back into his human self. He gestured at himself with a grin and a wave.
“I’m gonna assume the rumors you heard were about me being half ghost, and they’re true.”
“I’m sorry: auras are real? I thought that was just some nonsense that hippies made up.”
“Tucker, we deal with ghosts and magic and shit, please don’t be so surprised. Auras as a concept are older than the 1970s, by the way.”
Toby chuckled and shook his head, the ghostly light wrapped around his form spreading out to cover them all. The air was fresher, filled with the scent of wildflowers and decomposing leaves, green things growing from dead things. Danny swore he tasted cranberries, and watched as flowers grew and blossomed under Toby’s feet.
The honey-gold and leaf-green light retreated back to outline Toby and Danny reached out to grab it.
“That, my little chicks, is what we call an aura. The light that comes off of a ghost and usually makes you feel some kind of disturbed? That’s the outer layer of their being, expressing themself upon everyone their light touches. Honestly, I’m surprised that you don’t know that, how long have you been liminal?”
“How long have I been what now?”
Danny shook himself all over, trying to decide how he felt about Toby’s aura shoving feelings all over him.
“I think he’s talking about you being half ghost.”
Tucker whipped out his PDA, tapping away at the screen a bit before looking back up at Toby.
“We’ve never actually heard a term for it before other than Sidney Poindexter calling Danny a halfa. No offense to Poindexter but that’s a really dumb name.”
“Yeah, ‘half a ghost half a boy’ is a pretty weird way to put things, like humans can only be boys and everyone else is a ghost.”
“Well, where I come from it’s called plane-touched, and we’re a bit more varied than just being part ghost. I’ve gotta say, the only other kind of plane-touched I know about that can change their whole look like that on command are Aasimar like me. You give me vibes similar to my husband though.”
“As much as I’d love to go into detail about all of this, We should probably take this discussion somewhere a bit more private than the open park,” Sam hissed. “This is supposed to be a secret, remember Danny?”
“There’s nobody nearby, Sam, I checked before morphing.”
“I don’t see a morpher or a zord, Danny.”
“Well, if you’re keeping this a secret then yeah, you should probably find somewhere secure to talk about this at.”
Toby reached into his pocket and produced an amber stone embedded in a copper ring. He handed it to Sam with a smile.
“When you feel like you’ve got a private enough area, just tap that twice and when it glows, speak into it. I’ll hear you, and I can come to talk with you again then. For now, I’ve got some things to figure out around here.”
Toby winked and unfurled his wings, vanishing from sight with a single beat.
“We have murdering to do.”
Cole turned around to see his husband touching down on the deck of the ship, his wings ablaze with bloody fire, and let the cloud he was making dissipate. In just a few steps he was wrapping Toby up in his arms, unflinching at the heat of wings draped over his shoulders and back.
“Who we killin and why?”
Toby took a moment to breathe in the cool breeze and sharp aftertaste of lightning that wafted off of Cole, letting himself relax ever so slightly.
He pulled back and looked at Cole, then Duncan and Leico who were also on the deck of the ship. Toby sighed and leaned on Cole, who rubbed his back right between his wings.
“Right, there was, I think, a war forged around here who fired a bunch of explosives at a child! You know that plane-touched kid Valdan told us about?”
“Oh right, we’re rare in this realm, huh?”
Cole’s face scrunched up in confusion, his hair a bundle of grey-white clouds that spilled off of him and into the ether and he arched a brow.
“I thought the Plane-touched around here beat up the tyrant ruling the place when he woke up?”
"I didn’t exactly ask about what must’ve sucked when I half blew up the metalhead.”
Toby groaned and rolled his eyes, pushing up and off of Cole to stand properly.
“Now, we have to track the bastard down.”
“I’m surprised you let him escape you, rather than just chasing him out of the kid’s sight and ripping him apart there.”
“Tempting as that sounds, Duncan, I’m sure Toby was a bit more preoccupied with making sure the kid was ok. Was he?”
Toby nodded, offering Leico a thumbs up.
“Not a scratch on the kid, he was ready to blast me when I turned down the whole, ya know, angel thing.”
“Oh, you mean the thing where you transform into a horrifying amalgam of beasts that is also in part a frequency of light? Gosh, I can’t imagine why the kid would be scared of that.”
Cole snapped his fingers and orange water rained down onto the horned gunman. He glowered and steam rose from his body, horns glowing a far more vibrant orange than the water.
“Anyway, the kid has a couple of human friends who are in the know but they made it clear that his status as plane-touched - or liminal, I guess is what the locals are calling it - is a secret. Now, who here knows a bunch about the soul and wants to come with me when the kids call for answers?”
“I’d say Valdan knows more about the soul than I do, he did a lot of necromantic research to try and figure out how to restore a soul. Actually, where is he?”
“He’s with Apo, looking for a library anywhere nearby in this endless green ocean. Don’t give me that look, The Pheonix is keeping track of them for thousands of miles.”
Leico sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a count of 10, he shoo’d Duncan in Toby’s direction.
“You two go hunt down that war forged, I’m sure you’d love to bring back the parts for study. I’ll be here, making sure David eats and comes out of his workshop.”
“How many times do we have to tell you that it’s called a laboratory?”
“As many as it takes for your reaction to stop being funny.”
After having a small debate about where they couldn’t go and why, team Phantom finally ended up at the indoor roller rink that was partially destroyed by a giant ghost crab a while ago, and sat down at a table that Danny cleared of debris with an ectoblast or three.
“Ok guys, I think this is a good enough place to call him up.”
“Are we sure it’s a good idea to call him at all?”
Sam held up the ring she’d kept in her pocket, turning it about and tracing the odd symbols etched into the outside and inside of it.
“He took down Skulker pretty fast and it usually takes you a good half hour to do that, Danny.”
“Skulker specializes in attacking Danny is all, Sam. We’ve got the weapons to handle pretty much any ghost we normally deal with, and Danny took down the king of ghosts. I’m pretty sure he can handle anyone else.”
“Plus, Toby wrecked Skulker pretty bad. If he wanted to fight, I’m pretty sure he would’ve started a fight.”
Danny condensed his ectoblasts into one ball of ectoplasma and stretched it out into a pole.
“Imagine all the cool stuff he could show us!”
Sam shrugged, turning the ring around in her fingers again.
“Shockingly, you make a solid argument. Alright, I guess, let’s see what he has to say. You ready to take notes, Tuck?”
“Got my camera and mic ready, I’ll transcribe later.”
Nodding, Sam tapped the ring’s gem and watched a pink light shine within the amber.
“Hey, Toby, we’re ready for some answers.”
For a couple of moments, nothing happened and Sam wondered if there was a connection issue between Earth and the Ghost Zone.
Then the sound of wingbeats filled the room and Toby appeared above the rink as though landing from a long flight, another man in his grasp that landed solidly on the ground when he let go.
“I’m not used to casting that multiple times in the same day, that’s kind of a rush. And nauseating. Hi kids!”
Toby waved while the other man dusted off his long, studded leather coat, patting himself down slowly and turning to flick Toby behind the ear.
“A warning would be much appreciated, feather duster. Those books better be in good condition when I get back to them or you will be fighting the librarian for me. Are these the kids?”
“We fight ghosts literally all the time, I’d say we’re a bit more than just kids. Who’s this?”
“Is he single?” Tucker did his best to muffle the grunt that came with Danny’s elbow digging into his side. “What, valid question.”
The blond in the coat, face covered in freckles and eyes a dark green, bowed at the waist with a flourish of his hand and rose with a grin.
“The name’s Valdan, and to answer the quickest question first,: married, yes. This idiot that can’t decide what animal he is happens to be my cousin in law, and he tells me you might have questions for me about the soul and ectoplasm and ghosts. Why exactly he went to me, I can’t say.”
“You’re practically a necromancer with all the theory you’ve dug into.”
“Call me that again and I’ll be frying your wings in oil. Wonder how they’d taste?”
Danny snorted and shook his head. He waved at the odd pair and arched a brow.
“There’s so many questions to ask.”
“I’ve got one to start us with: What do you mean spell, exactly? Do ghosts have magic ontop of the other ghost powers now?”
“Anyone who can do magic keeps the ability in death, usually. I’m not dead though, I’m Deathless.”
“Debatable, but that’s how local spirits call him and his hubby. The deathless are - to generalize, ghosts - that were simply born that way by way of ghost parents. That’s not how you happened, though, is it?”
“No,” Sam said, gesturing at Danny. “This is a recent thing, it’s been since about… March of last year, so 14 months.”
“Yeah, god, we’ve been doing this for over a year now, haven’t we?”
Tucker slumped a bit in his seat and sighed.
“Feels like it’s been like this forever and like it happened yesterday.”
Toby stared at them all like they’d each grown extra limbs in odd places – Danny even checked to make sure he hadn’t done that while feeling both old and young at the same time due to how little time had actually passed – before zipping over to Danny and holding his hands just over the teen’s face.
“Oh my gods, you’re a baby.”
Danny gently pulled Toby’s hands away from his face, a brow raised.
“I am a teenager, thank you. What, is 14 infantile to angels, feather man?”
“You’re only 14 months dead, Danny, that makes you a baby ghost.”
Laughter filled the rink. A snap of Toby’s fingers and flowers began growing in Tucker’s hat, and seeds appeared above Sam, growing into flowers as they fell all over her. Valdan stumbled backward in the face of a powerful breeze.
“If you’ve had regular interactions with that metal head, no wonder your aura’s all aggro.”
“Skulker’s not exactly the worst of the ghosts we’ve had to fight over the months,” Danny said.
“Oh yeah, that’d have to be either Walker, Spectra, or Vlad. It’s really a toss up between Spectra and Vlad, if you ask me.”
“Vlad wants to kill Danny’s dad because he sees his mom as a trophy that was stolen from him, while Spectra tried to kill Jazz just to depress an entire school so she could feed on the misery to look young.”
Sam brushed away the flowers and weighed two in her hands.
“Yeah, those around the same level of grossly evil.”
Toby’s wings ignited at some point while Sam was talking, and the sunlight streaming in from the hole in the roof grew somewhat brighter.
From his belt Valdan produced a throwing knife that he flipped in the air before chucking it into the railing behind him. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a book and a pen, his smile all teeth.
“Tell me, please, a list of all the adult ghosts who have attacked you, children? I’d like to have a discussion with each of them.”
“If we give you their names, do you promise not to go slaughtering them all? I don’t need to know ghostly body language at all to know that flaming wings come from a place of anger and imminent violence.”
“There’s also the knife buried to the hilt in metal, I’d say there’s that too.”
“When did you read a thesaurus, Danny?”
“Sam, I’m insulted: I know tri-syllabic words. I can even say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
Valdan took a deep breath in through his nose, held it a beat, and let it out of his mouth.
“I promise not to slaughter all of the ghosts you inform me hurt you in the past few months, yes. Names?”
When Tucker listed off names, Valdan wrote them down with an inhuman speed, and Danny exchanged a look with Sam, worried about how exactly that deal might be loopholed around.
“Right,” Toby chirped while Valdan slammed his book shut, “I’m here to answer some questions of yours, not just ramble about myself and assemble a… list of people to talk to. Got any?”
“So many that I don’t even know where to start.”
“Well, before you do start lemme say that our crew has only been here for like, a week or three, on our little voyage into the infinite unknown. I’ve been feeling kinda different since we got here, honestly, and my wings bursting into flame with my anger is… different to say the least. So, some of my answers may not exactly apply to your Realm.”
“Which is why I’m here, because unlike some people, I like to go out, make some friends, learn things about the local after lives. I’ve done enough research that I believe I may be able to answer some of your questions.”
“Hm, well, you mentioned a husband a while back, Toby. Tell me more about queer ghost history.”
“Right, see that’s one of the things I meant. I have no idea about the history of uh queer relationships in your Zone. Back home nobody really had any problems with it, but back home people were too scared of Cole to really voice their objections about some pretty basic social things.”
“Like?”
“Well, Tucker, Cole doesn’t like to wear clothes. Recently, after traveling through all the charged ectoplasm to get in your general area, he’s learned how to turn his lower half into a cloudy tail thing. Yeah, like that,” he said, waving at Danny when he turned his own legs into a tail. “And so he compromises by doing that. Sometimes."
Danny blinked a few times before clearing his throat.
“Will I age normally?”
His voice was quieter, smaller, than it was when Toby had first encountered the teens. The druid’s face softened ever so slightly and he shrugged.
“Well, if you’re half human like I think you are then you’ll probably age the way I did. Up to physical adulthood and then you’ll stop, or at least slow down so much that it feels like you stopped. Mom won’t tell me if I’m actually aging anymore or if I’m just like this forever.”
“Is your mom liminal too? I guess you’d be more a quarter ghost than half if she was.”
Tucker tapped his chin in consideration and Toby chuckled, shaking his head.
“Ma is the god of the forest I was born in, and Mom is her archdruid. Well,” Toby shrugged, pointing at himself, “one of her archdruids.”
“Archdruid, like in dungeons and dragons?”
“I… feel like you’re referring to something specific in your world, Tucker, so I can’t say for sure. Druids like myself revere, protect, and draw our magical power from nature. We understand that there is no true divide between sapient beings and the rest of nature. And so, we do things like this.”
Just slow enough that they could see it but faster than any of the teens could process, Toby transformed into an owl and flew silently around the room in a circle. They all watched him fly in awe, Danny shocked that even he couldn’t really hear the clearly visible beating of Toby’s wings, and when he landed and reverted to his original form, they all clapped.
“Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here who knows how long. Anymore questions?”
“Uh, well. This one’s kinda heavier than I usually get, since I’m usually floating.”
Toby snorted and Sam groaned, rolling her eyes.
“What happens when the other half dies? Actually, will I really ever go all the way?”
Toby winced, his wing rising up to partially hide his face. He winced again, lowering his wing, and shrugged.
“Right, uh, I’m an Aasimar, and I never quite died, so I can’t say that I ever died. Valdan?”
Valdan had retrieved his knife
“There’s not much on Liminals in your neighborhood of the Infinite Realm, but as far as I’ve read from the Far Frozen people’s library… Well, you said that being liminal is a new thing for you, which I can only assume to mean that you died somehow.”
Plants of all kinds grew in the cracks of the walls and floor, forcing them even wider open, and something in the air felt distinctly angry to Danny for a second. Valdan paid the plant growth no mind.
“I’ve heard rumors that you beat the high king of your Ghost Zone, which means you’re incredibly powerful for being a toddler, and you’ve never experienced any sickness related to being liminal?”
Danny shook his head. “No, but Vlad did.”
“Then that means that your ghost is so intricately connected with your material body that both will likely sustain the other ad infinitum. You’ll probably be like Toby and just stop aging once you hit your prime.”
Toby deflated a bit, the glow from his wings dimming and the colors leaning toward blue and purple.
“Age is the culprit for most deaths that aren’t murder.”
“And … if I do get murdered?”
“Then I steal some diamonds and resurrect you, but for the point you’re asking about: Aasimar go to whatever outer plane their patron is from - in my case, I’d be pulled to Arborea if I was successfully murdered.”
He snorted at that, shaking his head.
“Genasi like Cole and I think Teiflings get processed through the court of the Dread Queen to decide where their souls go much like everyone else in my planar system. You’ll most likely just be a full on ghost if you get murdered.”
“Ok, sorry, I know we’re talking about dead serious business here.”
Tucker accepted Danny’s high five and the shove from Sam with a grin. Then he pointed at Toby with his PDA stylus, then Valdan.
“I need clarity though. The fuck you mean with that Marvel multiverse bullshit bomb you just dropped in our laps so casually?”
Toby snorted and laughed so hard that he doubled over.
“Oh, wow, ok. The multiverse is, I suppose, marvelous, yeah. The Infinite Realms is… the earth beneath the foundation of reality. It’s the basis for everything there is."
“There are, as the name implies, infinite Realms out there. Everyone has their own names for them, I suppose. What many older ghosts here would call our Realm, we call the planar system back home."
“Right, yeah. All the planar systems out there can be travelled to through the Infinite Realms, though it’s a bit harder in most places to get that far. Especially considering the cosmic jellyfish.”
“The what?”
“I’m not comfortable talking about them. Next question?”
“Uh…”
Danny scratched his head, brows furrowed, as he tried to process all of that.
“So, circling back to a simpler one: how do you see with those big bright bonfires on you?”
“I’ll be honest, these aren’t usually physical without my putting in an effort. I’m unsure how to make them go back to how they were.”
Toby’s wings curled up around him, sparkling almost mockingly.
“The Zone is a lot brighter though, so, ya know.”
“Do you not know how to transform?”
“Considering that animal thing you did, I’m shocked at that. Also, can you teach me how you did that?”
Toby cocked his head to the side like a bird, his gaze laser focused on Danny, and he grinned white and bright. He held out a hand to Danny, walking closer.
“Think you can transform for me? I need to see it again.”
Danny shrugged and morphed back into Fenton, but when his transformation ring passed over Toby, the man pulled back, taking the ring with him. It swept over him like a wave and tinted green. When the transformation finished, Toby was standing more solidly on the ground, his wings nowhere to be seen, and staring at his hands.
Valdan’s eyes were wide as saucers and he circled around Toby, poking and prodding him.
“Danny, this is fucking awesome. I thought I knew all there was to know about changing your body but this is something else. I’m how I was before we went on that trip together.”
Toby bounced on his feet and clasped hands with Valdan, pulling him into a hug with a slap to the back for both of them.
“This is so-”
A crash was followed by screams outside and Danny’s ghost sense went off, drifting toward the noise. He sighed and held out his hands, taken immediately by Tucker and Sam. “Of course, I can’t get one conversation in. Toby, you… are a bird.”
Toby was, already, flying out of the hole in the ceiling, having not even bothered to revert to ghost form. Valdan was similarly out of the nearest door in moments, and he shouted over his shoulder.
“He does that!”
Danny shrugged and flew through the wall, not bothering to check for where Toby had disappeared to.
“Well,” Sam drawled, “That’s new. I didn’t know anyone but Vlad was mixing animals together, Danny.”
“Well, these things could be from Vlad, so who knows?”
Danny set them both down on the sidewalk near the problem area and his fists and eyes started glowing like torches.
“Ok, do I wanna know how a hawk and a squid met and made you guys? Or is this one of those ‘the universe was young and how bodies are supposed to look hadn’t been decided yet’ dealios?”
The large birds with octopus bodies for heads shrieked in indignation at Danny’s perfectly valid question, and Danny rolled his eyes. The creatures dove for Danny and a blade made of ice slid right into the center of the swarm, cracking into a shower of shards that had the hawktopi scattering. They were pursued by five knives that sang with power and flew all on their own.
“Figured you’d want some help, though these things are roughed up enough that I doubt you need it.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen any ghost but me bleed, but I’ve also never used a bladed weapon like that before."
Danny fired off a volley of ectoblasts at the swarm while it regrouped, knocking them out of the air where Sam and Tucker could catch them on the ground.
“How are you talking to me as a bird?”
“Have you never seen a bird talk before?”
Toby, despite being a peregrine falcon, managed to look like a little shit as he circled around Danny’s head.
“I’ll be honest, I’m not sure, cause I couldn't do this back in my planar syst-”
A tentacle swiped at Toby and ended up hitting yet another octohawk that was trying to grasp at him before getting sliced by one of the animate knives, and Danny edged away from the other liminal. “Don’t be fucking rude!”
Ice outlined every detail of Toby’s body and spread out in a swirling cloud of raw cold for 10 feet in every direction, followed by an indignant screech that had Danny covering his ears. The Hawktopi were, probably, somewhere under the mounds of ice that surrounded the spots they had occupied when Toby attacked them. That hardly mattered, of course, because they became hailstones that shattered on the ground a second later.
“Oh my god, the third liminal I know and you’re a fucking pokemon.”
“The hell is a pokemon?”
Toby cocked his head to the side when Danny laughed, still surrounded by ice and hail, snowing his way over the ground below.
“So, do you guys fix up the city after these fights, or is that something I’m gonna do new for the place?”
“You can fix things with magic?”
Danny blinked and smacked himself in the face. “Of course you can, that’s half of the things people fantasize about having magic for. Dude, if you can show me how to do that I’d be beyond grateful.”
“Well, from what I can sense of you, that should be pretty easy. Hold on.”
Toby dove, the wind whistling with his speed, and he landed as his human self, wings still hidden and his personal snowstorm fading away.
“You’re like, clearly attuned to the sky and I’m pretty sure you’re a weather spirit by nature, so I can teach you some things pretty easily. Hold on.”
Toby’s eyes began to glow a vibrant forest green and the cracks in the pavement where the ghostcicles had fallen were slowly sealing themselves up. Danny, meanwhile, scratched his head and looked at his friends for any help with understanding the adult suddenly in the group. They both shrugged, and Sam spoke up as usual.
“What do you mean Danny is a weather spirit?”
Toby hummed, leaning on Valdan when he caught up to them.
“How about you tell us about the second liminal you met before me and I’ll tell you?”
Valdan muttered something in a language none of them recognized, scrubbing a hand down his face.
Danny, meanwhile, rubbed the back of his neck and looked around at the street around them.
“We’re constantly under surveillance here, so I’d rather we go somewhere a bit more private to discuss that. Maybe a rooftop?”
“I can teleport us wherever it is you want us to go, just describe it to me.”
With veritable stars in his eyes, Danny excitedly described the observatory on the hill in the park in more detail than most people could describe their friends. Valdan listened closely, nodding as Danny spoke, and energy wove around the group with a soft hum that rose to a loud buzzing as Valdan’s hand rose.
A snap of the fingers and the world fell away and twisted in on itself before unfolding around them all.
Danny held onto Sam and Tucker, who clung to him in turn, all of them wobbling and swaying on their feet in different directions. Danny had never been so sure that he was going to loose his lunch as he was at that moment, but he powered through it with will that defied even death.
“This… is not the observatory.”
“No,” Valdan said far too steadily, “I imagine that’d be it over there? I can miss, at times, when I teleport somewhere I don’t really know.”
“You know what, I don’t care, this is close enough. Danny, tell him about Elle.”
“Yeah, ok.”
Danny sat down in the grass, letting his transformation wash over him and waited for his friends and the adults to do so as well. He ran a hand through his hair and stared out at nothing and everything at once, before focusing back in on Toby and Valdan.
“Ok, so Vlad Masters aka Vlad Plasmius, like we mentioned before, wants to kill my dad and marry my mom and tried to get me to join him in his senseless quest to do so. He eventually got fed up with my saying ‘no’ all the time, I guess, cause he apparently got to cloning me without even asking permission.”
As Danny spoke, the temperature dropped steadily and the sunny sky grew cloudy, then overcast with thunder rolling in the distance. Sam and Tucker had a great deal of practice ignoring the signs of agitation in Danny, but they’d never seen the whole sky change and the plants around them grow faster, thorny vines rising up in the grass where they didn’t belong.
“...and then she flew off dramatically into the sunset. I don’t actually know where she is.”
Valdan steepled his fingers, leg bouncing and the rest of him eerily still. Toby transformed into a bird and flew off, much to the teens’ bemusement. Valdan cast his eyes to the sky and mumbled something in a different language that none of them understood than the one before.
“Between the seven of us on The Rose Pheonix, there are five people capable of using healing magic, myself and Toby included. It sounds very much like this Elle decided she’d rather see how long she can go without dissolving and then do so far away from you, than make you watch her die since you were so kind as to not kill her when you had the chance and it would have been, pragmatically speaking, easier.”
“Oh shit,” Tucker whispered, holding onto Danny’s hand even as the grip made his joints pop.
“I’m going to discuss with the others the possibility of doing our best to help her, while also going to the Far Frozen in case they can help, since they had the only source of information in the area on liminals. Will you help us convince her to come with us, so that she can live a long, healthy life?”
“Yes, absolutely! Holy fuck, I never even thought about that.”
Valdan nodded, his leg still bouncing, and took another deep breath.
“Good, alright. On the brighter side, your story tells me that you’ve got the kind of mechanical technology that my husband and my brother in law would salivate over, so if any of you are interested in learning how to make magic stuff, or at least getting magic stuff, you’ve got the chance of a life time.”
Toby appeared to grow out of nothing back into view next to Valdan, and the clouds dispersed ever so slowly. Valdan took no visible notice, and Sam wondered how one could get so used to the weather shifting at a whim.
“A deal’s a deal, Tobes. Gonna tell em about the jolly giant?”
“Right. Ok, sure. Well, anyone who uses magic has this… thing in them. Like, a metaphysical center where the magic sits in between our souls and our bodies. Everyone can only use so much magical energy at once, and that's where it all builds up.”
Toby walked over and gently poked Danny’s chest in the center and his finger shone for a second, sending a vibration up and down Danny’s being.
“Ghosts all have much the same, but for something … older, more primal I think than magic. Regardless, yours has the same feel as weather spirits and elementals that I’ve encountered.”
“And you’re sure it’s… weather?”
“I am married to an embodiment of the storm, Danny, I know weather magic when I sense it.”
Toby ruffled Danny’s hair and stood up, crossing his arms.
“As a matter of fact, he’s probably the better person to teach you how to use your powers. I can introduce you all to him if you want?”
“He’s not the only one. How have you been fighting for 14 months and you’re still so skinny? I’m putting together a workout routine for you and I expect you to follow it to the letter if you wanna actually build up some muscle so you can defend yourself better.”
“Huh… that sounds like a good idea, but I think for now we should probably stop and process all of this or else our brains are gonna explode. Mine is, anyway.”
“Yeah, this is wild. Can we just, bench this for later?”
Toby clapped his hands and then pulled Valdan up to his feet.
“Sure can do, kids. That ring I gave you has like, five charges a day so use it wisely. Doesn’t recharge until the sun comes up.”
“It has been… an informative and interesting time, meeting you kids. For now, I think we’ll go chat with the people on this list you gave us. Buh bye now.”
Valdan waved, Toby transformed, countless wings made of fire that scorched the earth beneath him, and in a beat of those wings they were both gone.
Local half dead teenager unaware that reasonable adults find the idea of children being jailed horrifying, learns to vibe with electricity
@uwuplasmiusuwu @floralflowerpower
“I would like to know why too, actually,” Jazz said slowly, rubbing her temples. “I don’t think you told me about that.”
“Oh, yeah, remember when you were having a melt down about being wrong about dad?” Jazz cringed a bit and Danny chuckled. “Like it was the first time you’d ever been wrong in your life.”
“What about your dad was she wrong about exactly?”
Danny turned his attention back to Cole and let out a deep breath.“Ok, so, dad was showing me the Specter Speeder™ and Mom came down to ask if he’d remembered their anniversary around the same time that he shoved me into the driver’s seat to show off the controls.”
“Of course he did, why wouldn’t he?” Jazz sighed, rubbing her temples.
“Mom banged on the Speeder while yelling at him for literally always forgetting their anniversary, and that somehow activated the propulsion system. I dunno why.”
“Percussive Maintenance works on prototypes, sometimes,” Tucker said, snorting. “Especially with Fenton Tech.”
“Or Technus,” Danny said, getting a laugh out of Tucker and a groan from Sam. “I was uh sent jettisoning into the Ghost Zone for the first time ever and I was absolutely terrified. Saw this colossal giant skeleton in a white suit and he gave me a warning about how ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it’ and that the Speeder was an unauthorized vehicle or whatever and I gotta say: terrifying experience, 0/10, would not recommend. Backed right back into the lab.”
“Did either of your parents notice that you were gone?” Toby asked with a raised brow and Danny shook his head.
“Nah, they were too focused on Mom yelling at Dad.” Toby wrote something down in his notebook but Danny couldn’t imagine what. “So a few days later Mom went to go visit our aunt Alicia in another state and brought up a divorce – which turned out to just be the anniversary of our Aunt’s divorce but I was freaking out thinking that our parents were gonna break up and Tucker was no help.”
“Hey, I was right, they weren’t gonna divorce and you didn’t need to worry,” Tucker said, crossing his arms.
“You were still pretty bad about it,” Sam said, patting his shoulder. “It’s ok, with how you flirt with women, I don’t think anyone expects you to be tactful.”
“Excuse me?”
“Anyway, Dad went after Mom, I cleaned up the house while Jazz had a nervous breakdown about being wrong for once about Dad, and when I got to the lab I uh. Started using my ghost rays to organize the place.”
Cole barked out a laugh and Toby snorted, laughing himself into a little ball on the chair. “You- you shot the trash into the can?”
“I shot a lot of things into a lot of places,” Danny said, coughing into his fist.
“You can’t tell me you aren’t like your folks ever again,” Sam said, “cause shooting the lab clean is something your dad would do and you know it.”
“That suggests Dad would clean the lab without Mom telling him to do it,” Jazz said “But yeah, that’s what he’d do.”
“Well, now I’m a little embarrassed to say what happened next,” Danny said, crossing his arms and scowling at his traitorous friends and sister. “Since y’all think this is so funny maybe I should turn it into a stand up routine instead, I’ll be the next John Mulaney.”
“No, please,” Toby said, clearing his throat but still grinning wide. “Please, continue. What happened while you were shooting the trash around in the lab?”
“Well… Dad had left the portal open,” Cole’s hair froze once more into spikes, the rainbow he’d been flaring out with his laughter gone in an instant. “So, I accidentally shot the present he’d gotten to apologize to Mom with into the open portal, and after like a day of freaking out about it I decided to go in and get it back. I had a camera and mic on me so that Sam and Tucker could see where I was going and talk to me the whole way, but there were some uh complications.”
“Complications arose from flying into the afterlife, alone,” Jazz deadpanned. “I would never have guessed such a thing might happen, Danny, truly this was completely unforeseen.”
“When Danny met up with the Box Ghost,” Sam said before Danny could defend himself in any way, “he asked ‘what are you doing here?’ and Boxy asked where he thought the ghosts went when he emptied the thermos into the portal. Which, an incredible point. Where else would the boxed up present go but to the box ghost?”
“Alright, that’s fair, I guess. But before I could just grab the thing and go, ghost cops raided the place and arrested me and Boxy,” Danny grumbled. “We got taken to jail and put in prisoner jumpsuits – black and white stripes and all like some old movie. Walker – the giant skeleton who was now only like, 7 feet tall instead of 700 – told me he was, ‘Judge, executioner, jury, executioner, and if needed your Executioner’. He apparently really likes that part.”
Toby hummed and the clouds overhead grew thick and dark. He rolled his hand, and Danny’s legs turned into a tail while he started flying in a circle around the group. “So, I get into a little fight in the cafeteria cause a bunch of ghosts I’d dealt with were in there – Technus had his weird mech on, Skulker was there, so was Desiree, the Lunch Lady, and Boxy. I reminded them that I just tossed ‘em back in the Zone, not in the prison, and we came together and planned a riot.”
“You know, if you tried diplomacy a bit more you’d probably have less recurring fights with ghosts,” Jazz said, making a note.
“During the fight?”
“After. We’ll talk about that later, please go on about Walker.”
Danny stuck his tongue out at her and tossed a ball of goop at her shoes. “This is around the time when we went in after him,” Tucker said before he could go on, and Danny arched a brow at him. “We used what the Fentons called their ‘real world item locator’ to find the present and presumably Danny, though I was also following the signal of the headset. Signals just got… kinda funky.”
“We got lost and I tried to ask Princess Dora for directions,” Sam said, “she flipped out and went dragon on us, so we flew away fast as we could. The chase ended when we flew through a rock and found out that Earthly objects can just go through anything in the Zone.”
“That makes a little sense,” Toby said, “you were in a world built on belief and expectation, and regardless of how they’re able to manifest here in this world, you’ve undoubtedly got the deep seeded belief that ghosts are intangible, right?”
“Well, yes, before the portal opened everyone just sorta knew that ghosts can’t touch things,” Sam said, “what’s that have to do with it?”
“Well, if you went in believing that ghosts can’t be touched, however in the back of your mind it was, then you went in believing that you couldn’t touch the ghost world either. Perception is reality in a world made entirely of ectoplasm, since it’s the basis of reality in the first place. Entire worlds can be, and often are, dreamed into existence there. A strong belief can be powerful in the Infinite Realms.”
“When Tucker and Sam got to me in the prison, I realized that I should just transform back to human and I changed, grabbed the present, and left. I got the present back to Dad, but the Box Ghost was in it for some reason.”
“I think the Box Ghost uses boxes on Earth as portals,” Tucker said, eliciting loud groans from his friends. “How else would he get here so often?”
“He was probably just hiding in it,” Cole said with a laugh. “If he’s getting his ass beat by a child on a regular basis, he can’t be strong enough to go opening portals like that.”
“Well, reality is pretty thin around here,” Toby said, running his hand through the air. With a snap of his fingers the air went completely still, making it harder for the present humans to breathe it in and out. “I can almost feel it tangibly, so it stands to reason that someone of relatively low power could weave a corridor through it if they had the right tool for their personal use.”
“Hon, the air is my thing.” With a wave of Cole’s hand the air flowed again, a strong breeze sweeping over everyone, and Toby cleared his throat. “Sorry ‘bout that, he gets dramatic sometimes.”
“Says the man who teleported us here with thunderous gravitas.”
“Speakin’ of thunder, I’m in the mood to do some training, and that’s what I’m here to do.” Cole shot a few feet higher into the air and Toby shrugged. “Danny, you said you zapped a guy before, yeah? Do you remember what it felt like to do that, or should I try something weird?”
“How weird are we talkin’, here?” Danny returned his tail to legs and rose to meet Cole in the air.
“Daniel James Phantom, you get this goop off my shoes this instant.”
“Yes mooom.” Danny waved a hand in Jazz’s direction and the goop flew off of her, splattering on the ground.
“Well, I’d be connecting with your core to try and stimulate the parts of it that feel similar to mine. I’ve got plenty experience with electricity.” Cole aimed far from the group and in a blinding flash and roar, the air smelled like it’d been burned, and there was a patch of grass a hundred feet away that was on fire. “So, I should be able to help with that.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to see again,” Danny muttered, blinking spots out of his eyes. “Holy shit, man, give a guy some warning next time!” Danny shook his head and squinted at Cole. “This wouldn’t let you like, read my mind or anything, would it?”
“I don’t know how to do that,” Cole said, “but if I did then yes. I don’t though, and if I could read your mind I’d’ve probably done it by now.”
“He would, he doesn’t like wasting time at all.”
“That’s… honest of you, at least. Ok, I guess. Sure.” Danny held out his hand to Cole, who grasped it firmly and closed his eyes. A feeling not unlike being overshadowed passed over Danny, something Else slipping into his very being and following the flow of energy back to its source at the center of his chest. “That’s weird.”
“Think back to that shock you let out, kid, that should help.” Cole didn’t remember all the details that his cousin had gone on and on about, but he did remember Valdan telling them that when you thought about doing something, your brain prepared to do exactly that. Thinking in words had your throat moving, and – there, Cole felt Danny’s core let out a small shock and grasped it, feeding to it his own memories of zapping people. For a moment he wasn’t there at a cliffside, but in a city, grasping a cable and sending a shock back to sender, watching a triton wail in pain. Cole let go, pulling back into himself, and shook his head. “Shit, that was a trip.”
“This is… awesome!” Danny called up green sparks to his hands and emerald arced between his gloves while energy buzzed beneath his skin. “Holy shit, is this how you feel all the time?”
Cole grinned, ruffling Danny’s hair. “I’m stronger than you, so yeah but more. Oh, what’s with that look kid? Think you can prove me wrong?” Cole darted back, arms spread, and smirked. “Go on, show me!”
“Don’t think I won’t, old man!” Power built up in Danny’s chest and ran down his arms to his hand, pointed at Cole. The air screamed as green lightning flew from his glove and struck the cloud man in the chest. “Ha!” Cole laughed right back, sunlight peeking through the clouds above them, and Danny charged his hands up. “Don’t think that’s all I got!”
Team Phantom and the Lumano Clan discuss, separately this time.
Jasmine Fenton was a good person, as many people would agree, and as such did not deserve to be startled by gremlin-like little brothers phasing their heads through her walls. Thankfully she had only one of those, and so her startle was only a tiny bit, followed by a scowl.
“Danny! Can’t you knock?”
Danny laughed, falling into her bedroom with each breath, and flopped onto the floor. Jazz rolled her eyes and nudged him onto his back with her foot.
“Ok, sorry, you’re right. I finally got you though!”
“Ah yes, a jumpscare, truly the height of being frightening. Was there something you wanted to talk about, Danny, or was this just to tell your friends you managed to scare a single person in your whole life?”
Danny clutched his heart and curled up with a few more laughs and Jazz smiled.
“Oof, friendly fire there. Yeah, big news actually and we felt like you should probably be filled in cause you’re smart and all that.”
Danny picked himself up by floating until he could get his legs under himself and Jazz couldn’t help the fuzzy warmth in her chest, knowing he trusted her enough now to use his powers so freely in her presence. It wasn’t too long ago that Danny would overact normalcy around her the same that he did for their parents, and while Jazz had been determined to wait that period out, it still hurt to be put in the same boat as them.
“Ok, I assume Sam and Tucker are in your room and I’m not letting Sam and her nature-covered boots all over my nice clean floor.”
Danny pointedly looked down at papers strewn about near her desk and Jazz turned him around by the shoulders.
“My floor is without dirt upon it, Danny, I’ll not have your friends change that just because Sam feels the need to rebel against her parents when they aren’t even here.”
“Gosh, tell me what you really feel.”
“Ah, but this is about your big news, not views I have the good manners to keep quiet about little brother.”
Once they were in Danny’s room, door closed firmly, Jazz took a seat on the bed next to Danny, with Tucker on his other side and Sam in the spinning desk chair.
“Ok, so what happened today that I need to know?”
“Well,” Sam said, fingers steepled in a triangle like some rich supervillain. “Today we met a ghost who was appalled at the treatment other ghosts give Danny and decided to purge them all.”
“He specifically swore not to slaughter them all, Sam,” Danny all but pleaded. “Maybe his magic binds him to his word?”
“Dude, he said, and I quote,” Tucker said, pulling up his PDA to read from, “’I promise not to slaughter all of the ghosts you inform me of that have hurt you in the past few months.’ There’s so many loopholes in that.”
“But the spirit of the deal-“
“Isn’t the deal, Danny.”
Jazz shrugged when Danny turned a betrayed look her way.
“Sorry, that left way too many openings. I’m not sure a ghost can truly be destroyed anyway, though, so do you really need to worry about that?”
“Besides, he promised you and Sam that, dude, I gave him the list.”
Tucker laughed as he was shoved nearly off the bed and shook his head.
“I’ve got to say, that’s suspiciously serendipitous, Danny.”
Jazz leaned back, crossing her legs and drumming her fingers against her arm.
“What does he get out of swooping in and dealing with all of your enemies for you? You might’ve given him a list of allies to rally together into an organized force to attack you with.”
“He’s a liminal like me, for one thing.”
Danny grinned and Jazz’s eyes widened slowly.
“He said that Danny’s basically a toddler in ghost years and so he’s just absolutely horrified that he’s being basically hunted down for brawls by adult ghosts.”
Sam caught the pillow that Danny threw at her, and Jazz just barely managed to dodge it herself when Danny phased through the return throw.
“He put on the kind of fake cheery tone that you only hear from someone ready to explode, and his wings lit up again.”
“Ok, Tucker, wait. Start from the beginning, please.”
#
Valdan watched Toby burn his way across a massive purple rock floating in the void, slashing it apart with his claws and smashing it to bits with hooves, tails, and all manner of weaponry gifted by nature to its beasts. Even upon reaching the coveted arch-druid status, Valdan had rarely seen him act like this.
He couldn’t blame him, of course. The ectoplasm around him buzzed with the whisper of notes to a war song that could bring down fortresses and rally armies out of civilians. He balanced a knife on his finger, daring the tip to pierce him, and watched the flames dance off the blade.
A warm hand pressed against his back, heat pouring into muscles that relaxed like thawing ice, and Valdan hummed, leaning into Duncan at his side.
“Is everyone back, yet? I’m not talking about this over dinner, that’s for pleasant things.”
“Well, I think Apo and Cole are back from chatting with the dragon princess, and they’re only a little charred, so I think that’s everyone.”
“Right, well, someone’s gonna have to reign in mister Wrath of Nature over there. I’m not doin it.”
“Lazy bones,” Cole calls out as he jumps off the deck of the ship that was still taking the shape of a somewhat standard sea vessel. Valdan can’t hear what they say to each other, doesn’t need to, but soon enough Toby is his human looking self again, and the both of them are on the deck.
It doesn’t take long to gather everyone below deck in their little meeting area, there were only 7 of them after all. Still, Valdan paced a bit, eyes narrowed as he thought.
In a trip around the table all the weapons that could be removed had been placed in a neat pile in the corner, which did nothing to ease the tension in the room.
“Right, so. We’ve got a handful in our lap, damn that compassion of ours. The kids provided us with a lovely little list of problematic poltergeists that attack their little hometown. They isolated for us three particularly bad pests but summarized only two of them. Both of these threats need to be eliminated as soon as possible, but I imagine we’re gonna have an easier time finding one than the other two.”
“There’s also another plane-touched child that particularly needs our help and isn’t gonna get that help from anyone else on their material plane. She’s a result of the only adult plane-touched round here being a total scum bag.”
Apogo sighed, waving a hand to make sure he had their attention. Valdan braced himself for the speech that would come at some point in the conversation.
“Hold on now, look. I know that whoever’s on that list needs a good ass kicking, obviously, but are we gonna go around destroying souls just like that?”
“I don’t think any of us have the magic to destroy a soul, Apo. Well, unless the weird power boost we’ve been getting from being here between Realms has gifted me the illustrious power of eating them. We just shoot them in the core and they’re souls floating around in the void.”
“Deprived of their senses and unable to control their movement. I’m not saying we don’t take out the worst of them, I’m sure you’re about to tell me something irredeemable about these two ‘worst child fighters’ but maybe we should get a bit more information from them before we go on a bloody campaign?”
“Oh absolutely, just from the hilarious names given I suspect most of these people aren’t a major problem, we can handle them in an afternoon or two. But, well, I took your weapons away cause I don’t want you to blow holes in the ship when I tell you about this Vlad Masters guy.”
“We have developed self-control, Val, what could he have done?”
Simply because he was the one to say that, Valdan kept his eyes on his brother while he relayed everything Danny told them about his clone. He did, however, have the tact to keep a hand on one of Apogo’s shoulders through the tale.
With the powder keg of magic in the room, Valdan wondered if he should’ve had this conversation on the deck.
David drummed his clawed fingers against the table and closed his eyes. His other hand was occupied with holding onto Leico’s, more to keep him from leaving than comfort. Leico himself was looking rather ready to call on his precious goddess to smite the man in his stead, but Valdan knew he wouldn’t. That would be too easy.
“So, the misery demon lady will die first, I think. Easier target, no clean-up really needed. While Leico and Duncan track her down, Valdan I want you to find where Vlad lives, see how easily we can turn his environment against him. Toby, you head to the Far Frozen and see if they can help, learn some new medicine stuff even. Cole, how do you feel about training a kid with weather powers?”
“I feel like I need to know what you plan on doing, David. Don’t forget to let everyone else in on your master plan.”
“Oh, I’m going to learn the new technology of this place’s prime material plane, maintain our ship so it doesn’t fall apart, and prepare to commit murder. Perhaps you and I can even go out and socialize, find some of the other ghosts on that list of Valdan’s so that we can judge them ourselves. When we take down this Vlad Masters, we should raid his laboratory so that we have all the relevant data on Elle needed to help her.”
“Until then, how about we eat ourselves some dinner, yeah? We’re all stressed, and acting without thinking is going to get us nowhere. Besides, I have a feeling the kids are gonna call us again soon anyway.”
“Of course, Lei, you always make the best food to get over rage with.”
That night, while everyone else was getting much needed sleep after a patrol around the city and several smaller ghosts captured or sent on their way, Danny took to the roof of the Ops center, staring up at the stars. He looked down at his hand, curling it into fists over and over.
Danny has questions, Toby has answers, and ghosts feel a need to interrupt. ao3
“Well, before you do start lemme say that Cole n I have only been here for like, a week or three, on our little vacation from our home universe. I’ve been feeling kinda different since we got here, honestly, and my wings bursting into flame with my anger is… different to say the least. So, some of my answers may not exactly apply to your Realm.”
“Husband?” Sam arched her brow, smiling. “Tell me more about queer ghost history.”
“Right, see, that's one of the things I meant. I have no idea about the history of uh queer relationships in your Zone. Back home nobody really had any problems with it, but back home people were too scared of Cole to really voice their objections about some pretty basic social things.”
“Like?”
“Well, Tucker, Cole doesn’t like to wear clothes. Recently, after traveling through all the charged ectoplasm to get in your general area, he’s learned how to turn his lower half into a cloudy tail thing. Yeah, like that,” he said, waving at Danny when he turned his own legs into a tail. “And so he compromises by doing that.”
Danny blinked a few times before clearing his throat. “Will I age normally?” His voice was quieter, smaller than it was when Toby had first encountered the teens. The druid’s face softened ever so slightly and he shrugged.
“Well, if you’re half human like I think you are then you’ll probably age the way I did. Up to physical adulthood and then you’ll stop, or at least slow down so much that it feels like you stopped. Mom won’t tell me if I’m actually aging anymore or if I’m just like this forever.”
“Is your mom liminal too? I guess you’d be more a quarter ghost than half if she was.” Tucker tapped his chin in consideration and Toby chuckled, shaking his head.
“Ma is the god of the forest I was born in, and Mom is her archdruid. Well,” Toby shrugged, pointing at himself, “one of her archdruids.”
“Archdruid, like in dungeons and dragons?”
“I… feel like you’re referring to something specific in your world, Tucker, so I can’t say for sure. Druids like myself revere, protect, and draw our magical power from nature. We understand that there is no true divide between sapient beings and the rest of nature. And so, we can do things like this.”
Just slow enough that they could see it but faster than any of the teens could process, Toby transformed into an owl and flew silently around the room in a circle. They all watched him fly in awe, Danny shocked that even he couldn’t really hear the clearly visible beating of Toby’s wings, and when he landed and reverted to his original form, they all clapped.
“Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here for who knows how long. Any more questions?”
“Uh, well. This one’s kinda heavier than I usually get, since I’m usually floating.” Toby snorted and Sam groaned, rolling her eyes. “What happens when the other half dies? Actually, will I really ever go all the way?”
Toby winced, his wing rising up to partially hide his face. He winced again, lowering his wing, and shrugged. “Right, uh, I’m an Aasimar, and I never quite died, so I can’t say that I ever died. We’ll have to find someone with a bit more info around here to ask them about that later, but uh. Well, I can take a guess?”
Danny shrugged, gesturing for Toby to continue, and he cleared his throat, floating a bit off the ground. “Well, you said that being liminal is a new thing for you, which I can only assume to mean that you died somehow.” Plants of all kinds grew in the cracks of the walls and floor, forcing them even wider open, and something in the air felt distinctly angry to Danny for a second. “I’ve heard rumors that you beat the high king of your Ghost Zone, which means you’re incredibly powerful for being a toddler, and you’ve never experienced any sickness related to being liminal?” Danny shook his head.
“No, but Vlad did.”
“Then that means that your ghost is so intricately connected with your material body that both will likely sustain the other ad infinitum. You’ll probably be like me and just stop aging once you hit your prime.” Toby deflated a bit, the glow from his wings dimming and the colors leaning toward blue and purple. “Age is the culprit for most deaths that aren’t murder.”
“And … if I do get murdered?”
“Then I steal some diamonds and resurrect you, but for the point you’re asking about: Aasimar go to whatever outer plane their patron is from - in my case, I’d be pulled to Arborea if I was successfully murdered.” He snorted at that, shaking his head. “Genasi like Cole and I think Teiflings get processed through the court of the Raven Queen to decide where their souls go much like everyone else in my planar system. You’ll most likely just be a full-on ghost if you get murdered.”
“Ok, sorry, I know we’re talking about dead serious business here.” Tucker accepted Danny’s high five and the shove from Sam with a grin. Then he pointed at Toby with his PDA stylus. “I need clarity though. The fuck you mean with that Marvel multiverse bullshit bomb you just dropped in our laps so casually?”
Toby snorted and laughed so hard that he doubled over. “Oh, wow, ok. The multiverse is, I suppose, marvelous, yeah. The Infinite Realms is… the earth beneath the foundation of reality. It’s the basis for everything there is.
“There are, as the name implies, infinite Realms out there. Everyone has their own names for them, I suppose. What many older ghosts here would call my Realm, we call the planar system back home. It’s a wild place to explore, in all my 270 years I haven’t seen all of it.” Toby looked somewhere past them all, wistful. Fluttering his wings, the liminal cleared his throat.
“Right, yeah. All the planar systems out there can be traveled to through the Infinite Realms, though it’s a bit harder in most places to get that far. Especially considering the cosmic jellyfish.”
“The what?”
“I’m not comfortable talking about them. Next question?”
“Uh…” Danny scratched his head, brows furrowed, as he tried to process all of that. “So, circling back to a simpler one: how do you see with those big bright bonfires on you?”
“I’ll be honest, these aren’t usually physical without my putting in an effort. I’m unsure how to make them go back to how they were.” Toby’s wings curled up around him, sparkling almost mockingly. “The Zone is a lot brighter though, so, ya know.”
“Do you not know how to transform?”
“Considering that animal thing you did, I’m shocked at that. Also, can you teach me how you did that?”
“Transform how, Danny?”
When Danny demonstrated, Toby’s eyes widened and his feathers appeared to grow fluffier than before. “Wow, that’s amazing! I thought you just had an illusion up or something but this is a full-blown transmutation of your whole body.” Toby grabbed Danny’s hand and grinned. “Do it again.”
Danny shrugged and morphed back into Phantom, but when his transformation ring passed over Toby, the man pulled back, taking the ring with him. It swept over him like a wave and tinted green. When the transformation finished, Toby was standing more solidly on the ground, his wings nowhere to be seen, and staring at his hands. “Uh… are you ok?”
“Danny this is fucking awesome. I thought I knew all there was to know about changing your body but this is something else. I’m how I was before Cole and I went on that trip together.” Toby grinned, bouncing on his feet. “This is so-”
A crash was followed by screams outside and Danny’s ghost sense went off, drifting toward the noise. He sighed and held out his hands, taken immediately by Tucker and Sam. “Of course, I can’t get one conversation in. Toby, you… are a bird.”
Toby was, already, flying out of the hole in the ceiling, having not even bothered to revert to ghost form. Danny shrugged and flew through the wall, not bothering to check for where Toby had disappeared to. “Well,” Sam drawled, “That’s new. I didn’t know anyone but Vlad was mixing animals together, Danny.”
“Well, these things could be from Vlad, so who knows?” Danny set them both down on the sidewalk near the problem area and his fists and eyes started glowing like torches. “Ok, do I wanna know how a hawk and a squid met and made you guys? Or is this one of those ‘the universe was young and how bodies are supposed to look hadn’t been decided yet’ dealios?”
The large birds with octopus bodies for heads shrieked in indignation at Danny’s perfectly valid question, and Danny rolled his eyes. The creatures dove for Danny and a blade made of ice slid right into the center of the swarm, cracking into a shower of shards that had the hawktopi scattering. “Figured you’d want some help, though these things are roughed up enough that I doubt you need it.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen any ghost but me bleed, but I’ve also never used a bladed weapon like that before.” Danny fired off a volley of ectoblasts at the swarm while it regrouped, knocking them out of the air where Sam and Tucker could catch them on the ground. “How are you talking to me as a bird?”
“Have you never seen a bird talk before?” Toby, despite being a peregrine falcon, managed to look like a little shit as he circled around Danny’s head. “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure, cause I couldn't do this back in my planar syst-” A tentacle swiped at Toby and ended up hitting yet another octohawk that was trying to grasp at him, and Danny edged away from the other liminal. “Don’t be fucking rude!”
Ice outlined every detail of Toby’s body and spread out in a swirling cloud of raw cold for 10 feet in every direction, followed by an indignant screech that had Danny covering his ears. The Hawktopi were, probably, somewhere under the mounds of ice that surrounded the spots they had occupied when Toby attacked them. That hardly mattered, of course, because they became hailstones that shattered on the ground a second later. “Oh my god, the third liminal I know and you’re a fucking pokemon.”
“The hell is a pokemon?” Toby cocked his head to the side, still surrounded by ice and hail, snowing his way over the ground below. “So, do you guys fix up the city after these fights, or is that something I’m gonna do new for the place?”
“You can fix things with magic?” Danny blinked and smacked himself in the face. “Of course you can, that’s half of the things people fantasize about having magic for. Dude, if you can show me how to do that I’d be beyond grateful.”
“Well, from what I can sense of you, that should be pretty easy. Hold on.” Toby dove, the wind whistling with his speed, and he landed as his human self, wings still hidden and his personal snowstorm fading away. “You’re like, clearly attuned to the sky and I’m pretty sure you’re a weather spirit by nature, so I can teach you some things pretty easily. Hold on.”
Toby’s eyes began to glow a vibrant forest green and the cracks in the pavement where the ghostcicles had fallen were slowly sealing themselves up. Danny, meanwhile, scratched his head and looked at his friends for any help with understanding the adult suddenly in the group. They both shrugged, and Sam spoke up as usual. “What do you mean Danny is a weather spirit?”
“Oh, well, anyone who uses magic has this… thing in them. Like, a metaphysical center where the magic sits in between our souls and our bodies. Everyone can only use so much magical energy at once, and that's where it all builds up.” Toby gently poked Danny’s chest in the center and his finger shone for a second, sending a vibration up and down Danny’s being. “Ghosts all have much the same, but for something … older, more primal I think than magic. Regardless, yours has the same feel as weather spirits and elementals that I’ve encountered.”
“And you’re sure it’s… weather?”
“I am married to an embodiment of the storm, Danny, I know weather magic when I sense it.” Toby chuckled and dusted his hands off, the crack in the road gone. “As a matter of fact, he’s probably the better person to teach you how to use your powers. I can introduce you all to him if you want?”
“Huh… that sounds like a good idea, but I think for now we should probably stop and process all of this, or else our brains are gonna explode. Mine is, anyway.”
“Yeah, this is wild. Will you be here for us to talk to again later?” Tucker hummed. “How do we contact you?” Toby simply transformed, his wings springing forth and golden light spilling all over the place with fresh air that a city like Amity Park didn’t normally enjoy in its wake. A feather was plucked from those shimmering wings and handed to Danny, Sam, and Tuck, before Toby waved and flew up above them.
“This has been fun, kids. I’ve gotta go… talk with the people on this list you gave me. Bye!” With a beat of his wings and a flash, Toby was gone, and Danny sighed loudly.
Tucker looks into the Forgotten Realms, the Lumanos make a startling discovery on Earth, and everyone meets up for once
Danny was impressed with his ability to get a full 8 hours of sleep, but that really was only because he didn’t have school of any kind to go to during the summer. He woke up at 11, Tucker already in his room and doing stars knew what on the tablet that Sam had gotten him as a gift, with the caveat that he not name this one. Needless to say, it was a hard fought battle for Tucker not to address the tablet by the name he had undoubtedly given it regardless, but he was managing so far. What he was doing on it in Danny’s chair, however, was a mystery almost as great as why the Observants went after Danny instead of Vlad.
Danny phased through his top blanket and floated into the air, stretching until the joints in his spine popped loudly, putting a cringe on Tucker’s face. “Dude, that noise is disgusting.”
“You stay in my room long enough for me to wake up, you suffer my wake up actions. Besides, its hardy the grossest sound you’ve ever encountered. Have you heard yourself with soup?” Danny laughed, grabbing up a blue and purple galaxy shirt with stars sprinkled over it and a cat’s face printed right over the heart and some shorts. “Lookin up Doomed cheats?”
“I should do that later,” Tucker said, nodding to himself while Danny floated upside down to look over his shoulder. “I’m actually looking into some D&D sourcebooks to find out what all we might sorta know about Toby. I was right, by the way, Aasimar are from this game.”
“Begs the question: which came first, the game or the world?” Danny grabbed his underclothes and saluted Tucker as he landed. “Be back when I’m clean.”
“I might be too old to hear you for conversation by then.” Tucker laughed and Danny focused on his pillow, spreading his energy around it. With a flick of his wrist, the pillow went flying and Tucker caught it with his face, flopping over with an “Oof! Hey, how’d you do that?”
“A guess, observation, and mad skill.” Danny gave Tucker finger guns and backed out of his room, heading to the bathroom. After a quick shower and brushing his teeth, Danny kicked his door open, making Tucker jump in his seat, whipping out his lipstick laser, and Danny cackled. “Nice reflexes, Tuck. Maybe you should work on your situational awareness.”
“I could say the same for you, Danny.” Jazz neatly dodged the backhand Danny sprang on her without thought, grinning down at him with a smugness that only siblings could achieve. “Here I thought you had supernatural senses.”
“I guess paying attention is important no matter how sensitive you are,” Tucker said with a snort. Danny rolled his eyes and let them glow, the green light enveloping his bedding as he telekinetically made his bed. “So, do you wanna try a game tournament over at Sam’s, get beaten at skateboarding at one of the skate parks, or look into the roots of your super hero style? I know we’re gonna do something cool today, but Sam picked yesterday and it’s your turn now.”
“Well, right now I wanna eat some food that isn’t contaminated by ectoplasm,” Danny said, turning to Jazz who offered a thumbs up.
“I finally convinced Mom to get a fridge for samples only put down in the lab, and finally convinced dad to use the right fridge for the right thing. Our food should be ecto-free.” Jazz stumbled a bit when Danny all but tackled her in a hug but she smiled and returned it all the same. “I know, I’m amazing.”
“What amazes me is the fact that your parents needed to be told to keep their dangerous chemicals in their dangerous laboratory. Aren’t they like, bleeding edge engineers and stuff?”
“Yeah, but everyone’s got their blind spot, Tuck. Our folks lack common sense, to make room for all the inventive genius.” Danny let go of Jazz to escape the ruffling of his hair and grabbed his bag from beside his desk. “I think I’ll go with asking Toby and Cole stuff, Tuck. It’d be a waste to not learn whatever I can from them while they’re here.”
“I suggest we put together a list of things to ask them, then.” Jazz pulled a notebook out from behind her back and Danny shook his head. “Oh, don’t give me that, you have a thermos clipped to your belt loop.”
“Yeah, cause I need that wherever I go, Jazz. But fine, let’s make a list, we can do that while we cook. C’mon Tuck.” Danny pulled Tucker up by his arm, ignoring his friend’s protests about research into the Forgotten Realms.
While they perfectly recognized that they needed to make connections and do some research into who could do what in order to help them manage providing Danny some mentorship, as well as his friends, the Lumanos also knew that they could get more information on the people on their little hit list by asking Danny, Tucker, and Sam. So, they decided that rather than making nuisances of themselves before they made any friends in the Infinite Realms, they should explore what the attached material realm was like. Toby planeshifted back to the park where he’d met the kids and Cole opened a Gate next to him. When Toby touched down upon the grass, though, he realized that he should’ve come in mortal form. His mortal flesh required that he cast Commune with Nature purposely, voluntarily. Ectoplasm, so attuned to channeling the spirit, did not.
Through the grass, Toby could feel not just the plants rooted together in the park but the trees on the other side of the planet, the heartbeats of every beast that crawled and swam and flew across the world. Toby was, in an instant, connected to the Earth’s biosphere, to its consciousness, and he could hear it screaming, could feel the pain that it felt. In a flash he was flesh and blood again, held up only by his husband’s arms, and vision blurred beyond comprehension with tears. He fell apart for a moment in Cole’s arms, trying to shake himself of the overwhelming presence of an entire planet’s ecosystem.
“Hey there little bird, we can go. We don’t have to stay here if you don’t want,” Cole was saying to him, rubbing his back and trying to pull him out of it. It warmed his heart to have Cole comforting him, but Toby cringed at the thought of just leaving this world behind.
“No. Thank you, love, gods I’m so lucky to have you.” Toby gave Cole a kiss and they stood up together, the druid shaking himself off all over and wiping the tears from his cheeks. “We can’t… I can’t leave this place, though. Not how it is now. Cole, the whole planet is crying.”
“I guess we’re saving this world too, huh? You’ve got a thing for being the hero, doncha?” Cole poked Toby’s cheek and he laughed, shaking his head.
“Yeah, I guess we do. Think we can convince Queen Persephone to let us bring the guys here? I know Valdan at least would jump at the chance to help upheave an entire global order.” Toby huffed a laugh and stood up properly, shaking himself off.
“Regardless, I’m certain we can get Valdan over here. If we want the others, we’ll have to have any semblance of manners though, and actually ask the Queen.” Cole shuddered, rubbing his shoulders. “I don’t like visiting her, she makes me feel like it’s a disappointment that I haven’t died and fallen under her domain yet. Not even in a malicious way, like she has a sweet home all prepared for me and it’s a shame I haven’t come to rest.”
Toby patted Cole on the shoulder and leaned up to kiss his forehead. “Don’t you worry about that, love. I’ll talk with her when we get to that. You can focus on other things.”
“Like teaching that kid you found how to change the weather?” Toby chuckled and shrugged.
“That, hunting down child fighting assholes, making cloud art, there’s so many options.”
Danny would deny that his love of space guided him to his decision about where they should meet up for this discussion, regardless of the teasing Jazz, Tucker, and Sam threw his way. Jazz drove them to the abandoned, somewhat demolished by missiles Observatory, since Danny couldn’t carry them without stretching his arms out in a way that had Tucker comparing him to Mister Fantastic. “Dude, I’m way better than Mr. Fantastic. I actually care about people, for one.”
“Ok, so you’re Monkey D Luffy, then?”
“Sam, please, I don’t eat that much.”
“Maybe you should, little brother, you’re rather undernourished. Have you considered actually trying Mom’s food?”
“The ecto-contaminated food?” Danny stared at her, eyes wide with horror. “The shit Dad puts in the prototype microwave ‘improvement’ that reanimates?”
“You are ecto-contaminated, Danny, and I’m wondering if you need to ingest ectoplasm along with regular food.” Danny instinctively looked around them, worried about being overheard even inside of the car while they drove out to effectively the middle of nowhere by now. “With all the activity in your day to day life, you shouldn’t be so skinny.”
“Even my own sister is calling me scrawny now, I simply cannot escape Tetslaff’s judgement.” Danny let invisibility slowly roll over him from head to toe and Sam and Tucker laughed their heads off while Jazz smiled and shook her head. “Jazz, almost all of the exercise I get is in ghost form, and I don’t think I have cells in that form, let alone muscles that can be built up and shit.”
“Can’t you just make your skin invisible and then we could test that hypothesis?”
Tucker gagged at the suggestion and pointed his PDA’s stylus at Sam. “That’s absolutely disgusting, why would you even say that? Did you get high before this happened or are we simply being cursed with vile visions by a temperamental witch?”
“I’m not a witch, Tucker,” Sam said, rolling her eyes. “If Danny’s right then we won’t see anything gross, and if he’s wrong then you can look away and I’ll confirm or deny. How’s that you big baby?”
“Nosocomephobia doesn’t make Tucker anymore of a baby than your love of anime makes you some basement dwelling weeaboo, Sam.” Sam narrowed her eyes and Jazz’s smile grew just a bit. “I have friends, you have friends, people talk. Really, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, anime is growing more popular in mainstream western media these days.”
“Please don’t remind me, it’s less cool if it’s mainstream.”
“Why Sam,” Danny gasped, a hand on his chest. “Doesn’t that mean you’re letting the crowd tell you what is or isn’t cool, based on what they do or don’t like? That doesn’t sounds very independent of other people’s opinions to me.”
“That’s true,” Tucker said, arm up and ready to block the swat from Sam. “You did only seem to hate Ember’s music because she was popular, Sam. Her music is pretty amazing with or without the hypnotism planted in.”
“I’m pretty sure Remember by Ember was made a flop in my mind because I had to listen to you screeching it to the tune of three cats fighting to the death. Oh wait, that was your attempt at singing.”
“Move over, Spectra, we’ve got someone with a sword in her mouth already,” Danny said, whistling at the sick burn.
Tucker clutched his chest and slumped against the car door. “What a blow struck by a dear friend. How ever shall I survive?”
“Maybe you’ll reincarnate again and this time you’ll be responsible with the scepter. It’s a good thing you put it away in the museum.”
“Right, totally, I put it back in the museum.” The car was quiet for a moment while Tucker tapped away at his PDA, suddenly very interested in something on his screen.
“So what happened with this scepter that Tucker put back?”
Sam stared hard at Tucker for a long moment before turning her attention to Jazz. “Ah, well, it turns out that Tucker is the reincarnation of the Pharoah Duul Amon, who was also a sorcerer. The scepter allowed Tucker to do some absolutely bonkers shit, like drag the entire class into a pocket dimension modelled off of ancient Egypt, as well as wipe all of their memories of the event.”
“But not the emotions that came with the memories – Tucker, you did put that thing back in the museum, right?”
“It’s mine, so I don’t see why a museum should have it. Neither does it, apparently, cause it just reappeared in my room one day surrounded by sand that was a pain in the ass to clean up. It can’t exactly do all that stuff that it did before, like animating pictures and stuff. I think making and undoing a pocket dimension drained the charge on it.”
Danny, returning to visibility, sighed and twisted his head around to look at Tucker in the seat behind Jazz without moving his torso an inch. “Leave it to you to drain the battery on a magical scepter within a day of getting it.”
“I’m gonna need you to put your head right the fuck back where it was just now or I’m gonna have to kick it in place.” Danny stuck his tongue out and turned the rest of himself to fit with his head. “Close enough. And excuse you, I’ve been amazing with the batteries on all my girls. I’ve simply never built a whole dimension with my thoughts before.”
“Ok, this all has fascinating implications that I’d love to get into later if you’ll let me,” Jazz said, slowing down the car. “We are, however, here, and I think we should focus up a bit.”
“Of fucking course Tucker has something cool like a magical pre-incarnation who he inherits a magical scepter from, because fuck me and my goth aesthetic, the normal techie gets the magic he probably doesn’t even want.” Sam’s grumbling was, to the average person, practically unintelligible. To Danny, who had preternatural hearing, it was practically in his ear even as he phased out of the car and went ghost above it.
“Maybe these guys can show you how to make your own magic thing, Sam. After all, Duul Amon put together his scepter and even Freakshow probably made his.”
“I’d much rather Freakshow wasn’t the one who made that staff, actually, cause if he did then can’t he do it again?” They all shuddered, and Tucker put away his PDA while Danny phased into the building. “Yeah, sorry for bringing that up.”
“No, that’s actually an important thing to consider, Tucker. We’ll come back to that.” Jazz pulled out her phone, typing away rapidly while the doors to the Observatory slid open. “Ok, now to get down to business with this angel of yours.”
The team walked inside, heading into the room with the actual telescope itself, and Tucker pulled out the feather he’d been gifted, snapping it in two. The air buzzed with energy and mist poured from Danny’s mouth like a fountain was turned on. A flash filled the room with an explosive BOOM and no less than 10 feet away stood Toby, with a blue skinned man floating by his side, an arm twice the size of Dash’s wrapped around the druid’s shoulders with a small tornado for a tail. Echoing across the entire observatory was the man’s deep voice, kaleidoscopic eyes locked on all three of them at once somehow, “Boo.”
An impressive 8 hours later saw Danny pulling himself slowly to the conscious part of his mind, letting everything settle in because Summer break meant his only alarm was however loud his parents were being. He took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out slowly. Phasing through his sheets, Danny ignored the sound of keys clacking and filled the room instead with the sound of his joints popping as he stretched.
“That’s disgusting.”
“You stay in my room long enough for me to wake up, you suffer my wake up actions. Besides, it’s hardly the grossest sound you’ve ever encountered. Have you heard yourself with soup?”
Danny laughed, grabbing up a blue and purple galaxy shirt with stars sprinkled over it, a cat’s face printed right over the heart, and some shorts. He leaned over Tucker’s shoulder to look at his monitor.
“Lookin up Doomed cheats?”
“I should do that later. I’m actually looking into some D&D sourcebooks to find out what all we might sorta know about Toby. I was right, by the way, Aasimar are from this game.”
“Begs the question: which came first, the game or the world?”
Danny grabbed his underclothes and saluted Tucker as he landed.
“Be back when I’m clean.”
“I might be too old to hear you for conversation by then.”
Tucker laughed and Danny focused on his pillow, spreading his energy around it. With a flick of his wrist, the pillow went flying and Tucker caught it with his face, flopping over.
“Oof! Hey, how’d you do that?”
“A guess, observation, and mad skill.”
Danny gave Tucker finger guns and backed out of his room, heading to the bathroom. After a quick shower and brushing his teeth, Danny kicked his door open, making Tucker jump in his seat, whipping out his lipstick laser, and Danny cackled.
“Nice reflexes, Tuck. Maybe you should work on your situational awareness.”
“I could say the same for you, Danny.”
Jazz neatly dodged the backhand Danny sprang on her without thought, grinning down at him with a smugness that only siblings could achieve.
“Here I thought you had supernatural senses.”
“I guess paying attention is important no matter how sensitive you are,” Tucker said with a snort.
Danny rolled his eyes and let them glow, the green light enveloping his bedding as he telekinetically made his bed.
“So, do you wanna try a game tournament over at Sam’s, get beaten at skateboarding at one of the skate parks, or look into the roots of your super hero style? I know we’re gonna do something cool today, but Sam picked yesterday and it’s your turn now.”
“Well, right now I wanna eat some food that isn’t contaminated by ectoplasm.”
Danny turned to Jazz who offered a thumbs up.
“I finally convinced Mom to get a fridge for samples only put down in the lab, and finally convinced dad to use the right fridge for the right thing. Our food should be ecto-free.”
Jazz stumbled a bit when Danny all but tackled her in a hug but she smiled and returned it all the same.
“I know, I’m amazing.”
“What amazes me is the fact that your parents needed to be told to keep their dangerous chemicals in their dangerous laboratory. Aren’t they like, bleeding edge engineers and stuff?”
“Yeah, but everyone’s got their blind spot, Tuck. Our folks lack common sense, to make room for all the inventive genius.”
Danny let go of Jazz to escape the ruffling of his hair and grabbed his bag from beside his desk.
“I think I’ll go with asking Toby and Cole stuff, Tuck. It’d be a waste to not learn whatever I can from them while they’re here.”
Jazz once again ruffled Danny’s hair, which he whined about as he flew out of reach. She laughed and smiled like the sun, literally lighting the room up from where Danny could see.
“Good thinking, little brother, putting that brain of yours to good use and actively learning. I’m proud of you.”
The light in the room grew brighter and the heat lessened significantly as Danny beamed at the praise. He shrugged, reclining on the ceiling.
“Well, unlike most of the things in school, this is actually important to my life.”
“Don’t pretend he’s wrong, Jazz, we go to a public school.”
Jazz held up a finger, mouth open with a rebuttal on the tip of her tongue, held that pose for a breath, and crossed her arms. Danny laughed, taking the pillow thrown at his face with grace.
“I suggest we put together a list of things to ask them, then.” Jazz pulled a notebook out from behind her back and Danny shook his head. “Oh, don’t give me that, you have a thermos clipped to your belt loop.”
“Yeah, cause I need that wherever I go, Jazz. But fine, let’s make a list, we can do that while we cook. C’mon Tuck.” Danny pulled Tucker up by his arm, ignoring his friend’s protests about research into the Forgotten Realms.
#
Danny would deny that his love of space guided him to his decision about where they should meet up for this discussion, regardless of the teasing Jazz, Tucker, and Sam threw his way. Jazz drove them to the abandoned, somewhat demolished by missiles Observatory, since Danny couldn’t carry them without stretching his arms out in a way that had Tucker comparing him to Mister Fantastic. “Dude, I’m way better than Mr. Fantastic. I actually care about people, for one.”
“Ok, so you’re Monkey D Luffy, then?”
“Sam, please, I don’t eat that much.”
“Maybe you should, little brother, you’re rather undernourished. Have you considered actually trying Mom’s food?”
“The ecto-contaminated food?” Danny stared at her, eyes wide with horror. “The shit Dad puts in the prototype microwave ‘improvement’ that reanimates?”
“You are ecto-contaminated, Danny, and I’m wondering if you need to ingest ectoplasm along with regular food.”
Danny instinctively looked around them, worried about being overheard even inside of the car while they drove out to effectively the middle of nowhere by now.
“With all the activity in your day-to-day life, you shouldn’t be so skinny.”
“Even my own sister is calling me scrawny now, I simply cannot escape Tetslaff’s judgement.”
Danny let invisibility slowly roll over him from head to toe and Sam and Tucker laughed their heads off while Jazz smiled and shook her head.
“Jazz, almost all of the exercise I get is in ghost form, and I don’t think I have cells in that form, let alone muscles that can be built up and shit.”
“Can’t you just make your skin invisible and then we could test that hypothesis?”
Tucker gagged at the suggestion and pointed his PDA’s stylus at Sam.
“That’s absolutely disgusting, why would you even say that? Did you get high before this happened or are we simply being cursed with vile visions by a temperamental witch?”
“I’m not a witch, Tucker,” Sam said, rolling her eyes. “If Danny’s right then we won’t see anything gross, and if he’s wrong then you can look away and I’ll confirm or deny. How’s that you big baby?”
“Nosocomephobia doesn’t make Tucker anymore of a baby than your love of anime makes you some basement dwelling weeaboo, Sam.”
Sam narrowed her eyes and Jazz’s smile grew just a bit.
“I have friends, you have friends, people talk. Really, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, anime is growing more popular in mainstream western media these days.”
“Please don’t remind me, it’s less cool if it’s mainstream.”
“Why Sam,” Danny gasped, a hand on his chest. “Doesn’t that mean you’re letting the crowd tell you what is or isn’t cool, based on what they do or don’t like? That doesn’t sounds very independent of other people’s opinions to me.”
“That’s true,” Tucker said, arm up and ready to block the swat from Sam. “You did only seem to hate Ember’s music because she was popular, Sam. Her music is pretty amazing with or without the hypnotism planted in.”
“I’m pretty sure Remember by Ember was made a flop in my mind because I had to listen to you screeching it to the tune of three cats fighting to the death. Oh wait, that was your attempt at singing.”
“Move over, Spectra, we’ve got someone with a sword in her mouth already,” Danny said, whistling at the sick burn.
Tucker clutched his chest and slumped against the car door. “What a blow struck by a dear friend. How ever shall I survive?”
“Maybe you’ll reincarnate again and this time you’ll be responsible with the scepter. It’s a good thing you put it away in the museum.”
“Right, totally, I put it back in the museum.”
The car was quiet for a moment while Tucker tapped away at his PDA, suddenly very interested in something on his screen.
“So what happened with this scepter that Tucker put back?”
Sam stared hard at Tucker for a long moment before turning her attention to Jazz.
“Ah, well, it turns out that Tucker is the reincarnation of the Pharoah Duul Amon, who was also a sorcerer. The scepter allowed Tucker to do some absolutely bonkers shit, like drag the entire class into a pocket dimension modeled off of ancient Egypt, as well as wipe all of their memories of the event.”
“But not the emotions that came with the memories – Tucker, you did put that thing back in the museum, right?”
“It’s mine, so I don’t see why a museum should have it. Neither does it, apparently, cause it just reappeared in my room one day surrounded by sand that was a pain in the ass to clean up. It can’t exactly do all that stuff that it did before, like animating pictures and stuff. I think making and undoing a pocket dimension drained the charge on it.”
Danny, returning to visibility, sighed and twisted his head around to look at Tucker in the seat behind Jazz without moving his torso an inch.
“Leave it to you to drain the battery on a magical scepter within a day of getting it.”
“I’m gonna need you to put your head right the fuck back where it was just now or I’m gonna have to kick it in place.”
Danny stuck his tongue out and turned the rest of himself to fit with his head.
“Close enough. And excuse you, I’ve been amazing with the batteries on all my girls. I’ve simply never built a whole dimension with my thoughts before.”
“Ok, this all has fascinating implications that I’d love to get into later if you’ll let me,” Jazz said, slowing down the car. “We are, however, here, and I think we should focus up a bit.”
“Of fucking course Tucker has something cool like a magical pre-incarnation who he inherits a magical scepter from because fuck me and my goth aesthetic, the normal techie gets the magic he probably doesn’t even want.” Sam’s grumbling was, to the average person, practically unintelligible. To Danny, who had preternatural hearing, it was practically in his ear even as he phased out of the car and went ghost above it.
“Maybe these guys can show you how to make your own magic thing, Sam. After all, Duul Amon put together his scepter and even Freakshow probably made his.”
“I’d much rather Freakshow wasn’t the one who made that staff, actually, cause if he did then can’t he do it again?” They all shuddered, and Tucker put away his PDA while Danny phased into the building. “Yeah, sorry for bringing that up.”
“No, that’s actually an important thing to consider, Tucker. We’ll come back to that.” Jazz pulled out her phone, typing away rapidly while the doors to the Observatory slid open. “Ok, now to get down to business with this angel of yours.”
The team walked inside, heading into the room with the actual telescope itself, and Sam pulled out the ring once more, tapping the gem and calling out to Toby. The air buzzed with energy and mist poured from Danny’s mouth like a fountain was turned on. A flash filled the room with an explosive BOOM and no less than 10 feet away stood Toby, with a blue skinned man floating by his side, an arm twice the size of Dash’s wrapped around the druid’s shoulders with a small tornado for a tail. Echoing across the entire observatory was the man’s deep voice, kaleidoscopic eyes locked on all three of them at once somehow, “Boo.”
Danny’s fear was a tangible thing that coiled around his every limb and held him frozen in place for all of 3 seconds, power racing to his hands to unleash the biggest blast he could manage in order to get the threat before it could get him.
A sigh joined the echoes and Toby slapped the man beside him upside the head, much to the ghost’s visible – and soon audible – amusement.
“Stop scaring the kids.”
“Ok but their faces!”
The blue ghost man, who Danny assumed was Cole now that he could think some semblance of straight, bent over with laughter, his body wreathed now in a rainbow. His laughter was joined by Sam’s, as everyone else slowly relaxed.
“Oh my gosh, you guys didn’t actually get scared by that, did you? All he said was boo.”
Sam shook her head, and Cole clapped his hands loudly.
“Oh, I like you. Not many people can handle when I’m trying to spook em, specially not kids like y’all.”
Cole flew closer, holding a hand out to Sam and another to Danny.
“Cole Lumano, Toby’s husband and, according to someone whose name I’m forgetting at the moment, ‘The Raging Storm’.”
Valdan sighed from beside two and ran a hand through his hair. He was wearing a bright red shirt and grey pants. In one hand, he had a basket that Danny could see a soft glow from, though it was different and far gentler than the light shimmering around Valdan’s body, almost like the air was dancing through colors.
“As the person who gave you that nickname, I’m touched that you’d put in the effort to forget me. Truly, family is all you can count on to disregard you.”
Cole rolled his eyes and wrapped Valdan in his arm, giving him a noogie.
“Aw, don’t be like that, you know I could never forget you. You cook about as well as your brother does, after all!”
“Toby you best look for a new husband, I’m killing this one.”
“Babe, please. We are trying to make a good impression on the children, aren’t we? Also, didn’t Valdan give you that title, for the songs?”
“Maybe it shouldn’t’ve been so catchy, cause a lot of people started calling me that, and while it was funny sometimes it was also kind of annoying.”
“Hi,” Jazz said, holding out her hand to Cole, which he also shook. “I’m just wondering why you thought scaring us was an appropriate first greeting? You might’ve scared off your potential student, after all.”
“Oh, that was a test, to see how easy y’all are to scare, what your immediate fear response is, and how fast you snap out of fear and into action. Also, it was, again, really funny.”
Cole crossed his arms, the rainbow lining his being dimming a bit as he circled the group like a shark.
“Plus, if a little prank was enough to scare you off then either I’m not the teacher for you and ya need to find someone else, or I’ve been away from people long enough to forget how to talk with em. People fear so easily, after all.”
“I see someone’s been either paying attention to the monologues from the evil people we fight, or to my performances. You sound so dramatic, we’ll work on improving that. Hello, my name is Valdan Lumano, this windbag is, for some reason, my cousin.”
“Didn’t they teach you how that works in your little school? Well, you see-”
Valdan pulled from the basket a small bread bun which he threw with startling accuracy and speed at Cole’s mouth. Cole caught it with his teeth and started chewing, while Toby simply laughed.
Danny twisted his head around and around to keep an eye on Cole, who grinned and ruffled Danny’s hair.
“Hey, I put a whole two seconds’ worth of effort into that hairdo today.”
“Monumental, I’m sure,” Cole drawled. “So, you want me to teach you how to get the weather to do what you want it to, right?”
“I was actually planning to learn how to make ice cream with my ghost powers from you, but weather control will do, I guess.”
Cole barked out booming laughter and wrapped an arm around Danny.
“Oh, we’ve got a funny one, you know how to find ‘em babe.”
“An important part of being able to do any cool thing with magic or muscles is how much fuel you’ve got in your stomach and what kind. My family tells me that you’re alarmingly thin for someone so powerful and with a whole year’s worth of experience in combat. I was hoping they were exaggerating.”
Danny groaned, rolling his eyes and tipping back until half of his head was phased through the floor.
“Why must everyone call me skinny?”
“I’m calling you malnourished, actually. I’ve brought you something to eat so that you can work on that, and you’re gonna start every training session we might end up doing by eating, deal?”
Danny did a loop through the ground and then the air, tail curling under him like a snake’s before he shook the hand that Valdan had extended.
“Sure, I guess. If it’s good then that doesn’t sound all that bad. Oh, you just, you already had something.”
Danny was handed a bun, hot enough to feel through his glove and clearly filled with something. Valdan grinned and gave him a thumbs up, while Toby shook his head in the back.
“I also have something I want to discuss before we go about training, and that has to do with that list of ghosts you’ve given us.”
Toby pulled out the list and Danny sucked on his teeth while Tucker and Sam grinned.
“Based on our experiences in life, it’s not smart to go into an area and just start killing people.”
“Right, uh Cole, can you promise that you’re not gonna kill anyone on that list?”
Danny had his doubts but he had to at least try.
“Firstly: no. Secondly: a bit late for that.”
“You can keep some of them safe by telling us what exactly they even did. Some of these people could just use a stern talking to, while others might need more drastic measures taken.”
Jazz cleared her throat and stepped forward, holding up her notebook.
“On that note, we have a few more questions for the three of you, which we have collectively agreed to ask you. Does an answer per story sound like a fair trade?”
Toby grinned ear to ear and held out his hand, which Jazz shook firmly.
“It certainly does. Are we training in here?”
“No.”
Danny coughed into his fist and swallowed a mouthful of delicious meat and vegetables before he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Uh, no, I don’t wanna risk breaking something in here. Outside though, we can definitely do.”
Danny flew backwards until he phased through the roof and Sam and Tucker both sighed before heading out through the doors. Cole followed Danny through the roof, and Jazz, Valdan, and Toby shook their heads, walking to the doors like civilized people.
“Fair enough. Fire away your questions, Jazz.”
“There’s something on here that I personally want to know that I’m sure Danny will be interested in as well. Our parents are considered the world’s greatest experts on all things ghost, which isn’t very hard to achieve in a field of study that is effectively only 1.2 years old that you yourself create, but they have an irrational bias against ghosts.”
“Yeah, don’t your folks think that ghosts can’t feel pain?”
“Oh, Tucker, if only.” Danny scowled. “’ If we hear screaming, we know it’s working!’”
Jazz sighed, gripping her notebook hard enough to bend it.
“That was a disturbingly accurate imitation of our father’s voice, Danny, I didn’t know you could reach that low. Have you been keeping up on your vocal training?”
Danny beamed and gave a thumbs up, floating a little higher while Cole circled him, lightning arcing across the genasi’s body in tiny flashes.
“Your parents sound shitty.”
“Absolutely awful and in for a rather unrestful eternity thinking like that.”
“They are… excellent mechanical and chemical engineers, but neither of them has actually captured a ghost for study before, even during the invasion, and they’ve never exactly stopped to ask questions when they see a ghost just minding their own business. So, I wanted to clarify on one of their theories.”
Toby shrugged and nodded, rolling his shoulders before pointing at Valdan. Valdan offered a thumbs up and rolled his hand at Jazz.
“My parents believe that ghosts are all supernaturally driven by an obsession that keeps them stabilized, and that if one were to prevent a ghost from fulfilling or at least temporarily satisfying that obsession, they would destabilize and dissolve into a puddle of inert ectoplasm.”
Toby steepled his hands in front of his face and grass began to grow up between the cracks of the sidewalk path leading up to the observatory.
“Mm, that is certainly something based on the whole ‘unfinished business’ thing, isn’t it? Well, gosh, how do I put this?”
“While the priest and demigod decide how to explain passions and shit, I think I know where to start with this training thing. I’m told your mortal face looks much the opposite of this?”
Danny’s head snapped up at the sound of Cole and he shrugged.
“I was wearing this during the portal accident but it was white with black gloves and boots before. I think I have a backup one back at the house, actually.”
“First of all your choice in fashion is atrocious,” Cole said.
“How would you know, you’re naked!”
“No, he has a point, Danny,” Sam said. “Just because it’s all black doesn’t mean it looks good.”
“Some friend you are,” Danny grumbled.
He conjured up a ball of ectoplasm to flick Cole’s way. Cole responded by flicking his wrist and kicking up a gust of wind that pushed Danny back a good 5 feet.
“Dude, you gotta show me how you did that.”
“First I gotta see what you can do. So, what can you do, kid? I’ve only ‘fought’ one ghost round here and he was in a big metal contraption so that honestly doesn’t feel like it counts.”
“Oh, David’ll get you for sayin that,” Toby mumbled.
“So, I don’t know what y’all round here can do with your magic. C’mon kid hit me up.”
Danny shrugged before putting on a smirk and taking a swing at Cole, which wasn’t even dodged. Instead, Cole turned into a cloud that Danny sailed through and solidified with his arms around Danny in a chokehold.
“Nice try, but no. I mean the kinda shit like what I just pulled, kid, I know there’s no way in hell you’re gonna hurt me with a punch.”
“Oh yeah, then why’d ya dodge?”
“Cause I don’t want you breakin yer fist on my chest. I’ve seen some wimp hear that I’m an air genasi and they think that they can just hit the cloud man and nothin bad’ll happen, so they came at me full force. There’s a lotta blood in your hand once it’s split open, ya know.”
“Right so, the way your parents describe it, and even the way they named it, is… inaccurate.”
Toby pitched his voice to try and carry over the description that Cole was, no doubt, about to go into.
“The core that I described earlier? In a ghost that is the brain, through which one controls and even rebuilds their body. Still, even if one can destroy a ghost’s core, it would take a very very powerful god to destroy a soul.”
“Isn’t that what the core is, though? Wouldn’t the soul be the brain of a ghost?”
“Not really, Sam, no.”
Valdan set down his basket as he began to gesture with his explanation.
“See, souls are always on the move to somewhere when you die, your flesh and blood – or wires and steel, etcetera – is simply a vessel for your soul to inhabit, and a ghost is no different from any other body. The core allows for a soul to interact with the ectoplasm surrounding it, or if there’s not a lot of that then whatever they can get themselves into. This is why shoving a soul directly into a construct is a terrible idea, because there’s no brain to do all the important things that brains do.”
Tucker tilted his head to the side.
“I’ll be honest, I’m surprised you know about brains.”
“I’m a healer back home, and while I could have let the magic do all the work, that felt lazy. So, I did some learning and, admittedly, let the magic help me with that learning. Now I know lots of things.”
“He’s learned a great deal from fucking around and finding out, you see. Ow, what, you did.”
“Some of us prefer to do more than just pray for the answers to complicated questions.”
“Some of us have religious reasons not to go digging around through a corpse, too.”
Cole whistled when Danny turned himself into a cloud of green mist to get out of his light chokehold.
“Very good! That’s the kinda stuff I’m tryna find out about you kid.”
“Ok, what does the function of a ghostly core have to do with obsessions and unfinished business?”
Jazz had a pencil out and was taking notes down at a speed normal people would find alarming. Nobody at the gathering was normal, however, so no one commented on it.
Valdan and Toby looked at each other, having a whole conversation with their eyes, before turning back to the group.
“Right, well, ghostly bodies are hard as hell to damage, even if you’ve got the magic needed to make contact with them. Cores are practically made of diamond for how hard it is to crack one, let alone destroy it. Ghosts are, effectively, immortal outside of the absolute worst possible conditions.”
“Sometimes a ghost is wrapping up unfinished business on the mortal plane where they last lived but most of the time they pick a hobby to keep from going insane from boredom. That’s if they don’t get picked up by some god to be put to rest or punished or whatever the particular god plans to do with wayward souls they come across.”
Cole shrugged and gave Danny a beckoning gesture, fists raised with a grin on his face.
“Ya can’t do nothin for eternity without losing your mind, so you pick something and do that for however long it entertains you.”
“Exactly!”
Toby didn’t bat an eye when Danny fired off several ectoblasts at Cole, who took them to the arms and chest with a laugh.
“Some people can get a tad obsessive, but that’s a tendency of everyone I think.”
“Of course, I will say there’s usually a bit of compulsion apparent when a ghost does reach the mortal world and is able to get down to that unfinished business.”
“What’s more engaging than crossing out your bucket list even after you kick the bucket?”
Danny ducked a tackle from Cole and threw up a shield when he spun around to try again.
“What am I even supposed to be showing you?”
“Didn’t you shock that one ghost cop or whatever he was with his own whip?”
Tucker scrolled through his PDA and nodded to himself.
“You told us you’d done that when I asked. Think you can do it again?”
Danny shuddered and shook his head.
“I don’t think I’ll be zapping anyone anytime soon, no. I’m pretty sure I just took the energy that he was pushing through the thing and sent it back with my own charge. Any ideas, wispy?”
“Well, Toby was right when he said I’m the guy to go to about this. You’re certainly blessed and loved by the sky, but I don’t know if you’re a Weather kinda guy.”
“How do ya mean?”
Cole gestured at the observatory and arched a brow.
“Would you say that you’re passionate about the stars, kiddo?”
Danny nodded, grinning as he floated in the direction of the building.
“Absolutely! I love outer space and the stars and it’s my dream to be an astronaut and explore the cosmos. There’s so much about our own universe that we don’t know, so many mysteries that we may never get an answer to! We’ll never know if we don’t go out and look and I want to explore and learn!”
“Oh, his freckles are glowing! That’s cute.”
“His eyes are crescent moons, too, that’s real cool. Ok kid, I think you’re more a stars and space kinda Sky Spirit than the weather kind that I am. Bet you can absolutely pull of some of my tricks though. Babe, wasn’t there a circle of star druids?”
Toby furrowed his brow and crossed his legs, and Danny let himself slide into the warmth of invisibility as mild embarrassment washed over him. It was cool that they knew something about stars and his powers being tied to his love thereof but still. Who just gushed about nerd shit in front of cool explorers from a whole other universe? Valdan clearly wasn’t even dead!
“The Circle of Stars is a thing, yeah. They keep records of star movements and stuff and draw power from the physical heavens. Congrats, Danny, you’ve got a blessing almost nobody does! It’s rare that anyone can just tap into the power of the stars.”
“Well, I dunno if I can just tap into the power of the stars, actually. What would space powers even be?”
Cole shrugged and ruffled Danny’s hair with a snort.
“Magic came pretty naturally for me, but I was also a whole ass teenager when I started shootin out lightning, not a baby.”
“Alright, how long until I’m considered an adult by ghost standards? Being called a toddler is getting old.”
Danny folded his arms over his chest, legs turning into a tail while Cole held up his hands in faux surrender.
“That we don’t know yet,” Valdan said with a shrug. “We’ll have to ask around. But hey, that was 2 questions from y’all so it’s time for some stories about these ghosts.”
Toby waved a hand and the concrete around them rose up as if it were liquid, settling into seats for the five of them on the ground.
“Any of them that you wanna tell us about first or shall we pick?”
“Shall? When’d you get so fancy, antler boy?”
Cole dropped down to drape himself over Toby’s back regardless, and the blond scratched his chin.
Jazz, meanwhile, considered her options carefully and decided that starting off with the absolute worst ghosts they had collectively had to deal with would put a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
“If I remember correctly from what I’ve been told, the first sapient ghost that you all fought was the Lunch Lady, right?”
Danny and Tucker nodded while Sam groaned loudly.
“She was so aggravating.”
“Is it because you were forced to consider that maybe being a vegan isn’t for everyone and you shouldn’t force your ‘healthy food choices’ down everyone’s throat whether they want it or not?”
Tucker offered a sunny grin to Sam’s dark glower.
“I’ll admit, the food at the cafeteria sucks ass, but that isn’t because there’s meat on the menu.”
Cole, Toby, and Valdan stared unblinkingly at the four of them, and Danny let out a long suffering sigh that lasted much longer than humanly possible. It went on for a good minute before Tucker threw an eraser at him.
“Why do you- no, I don’t need to know. Right, her. Ok, so this might sound ridiculous if you haven’t done any research on like, modern America yet.”
“Not yet, but that’s going onto the list of things to look into.”
“The longer we talk with y’all the more I worry we’re going to end up moving here almost whole sale.”
“Oh what, can’t handle saving another world, big guy?”
“Can I do that with violence?”
“I would prefer if you didn’t.”
“Noted, Danny. Anyway, this Lunch Lady person?”
“Right.”
Danny floated in an orbit around the seats with his legs crossed.
“So, Sam convinced the schoolboard through what I assume to be an amazing combination of pestering and bribery to change the menu at our school’s cafeteria for a week to her strange diet, including grass that was growing out a bun, and quite literally nobody but people who – like Sam – refuse to eat things that come from animals liked that.”
“That doesn’t sound like an all that healthy diet,” Toby said, frowning. “I’m no chef but I’m pretty sure a lot of nutrients come from meat.”
“I am a chef, and yeah there’s plenty of nutrients that come from meat - depending on the animal, practically every nutrient most humanoids need are in the meat of other animals.”
“I prefer not to benefit from the suffering of defenseless living beings.”
“You mean like plants?”
“Wha- plants don’t suffer from being eaten.”
“Do you believe, Sam, that plants don’t have thoughts and experience tactile feelings? Cause I promise you they do. Hell, I can tune you in to their voices if you want.”
“Toby, put back on the guise of a wise old druid with things like self restraint and wisdom.”
“He asked permission before doin it, I’d call that restraint songboy.”
“That felt like a threat, so I’m gonna also have to ask that you chill the fuck out and not threaten my friends.”
Toby rolled his eyes and sat back in his chair.
“It wasn’t a threat, it was an offer to commune with nature the same you would any other being. My mother is literally the goddess of the forest I was born in. As in, the combined consciousness of all the living things in the forest, plants, fungi, animals, all of it.”
“That’s great, and we can save that for another time, but right now Danny is telling us a story.”
Danny high fived Valdan, who grinned and high fived him back.
“Apparently one of the lunch ladies who serves the food to us students but like, 50 years ago, sensed that the menu had been changed, and came to the school to investigate. She blew her lid when she found out that there was no meat, cheddared our ears off about how essential meat is in someone’s diet, and kidnapped Sam to try and make her eat it.”
“If she’s only 50 years dead, that’s actually pretty understandable. Her ghost would’ve only just formed and I guess she took a great deal of pride in making that menu.”
Valdan pulled from the bag strapped to his waist a leather bound notebook and pen, and started writing.
“Anything else of note with this one?”
“She called Danny scrawny, then pulled all the meat in the basement of the school into a giant monstrosity made entirely out of processed corpses.”
Sam shuddered and rubbed her arms.
“It was so incredibly gross to be trapped in a pile of meat.”
“That’s both disgusting and wasteful.”
Cole’s face scrunched up and the air around them cooling drastically.
“That’s so much food!”
“Oh, and one time when I was in prison I saw her make a giant turkey leg to beat people up with,” Danny added, a mildly exciting afterthought.
Toby, skilled at schooling his facial expressions, waited until Valdan had written that all down to look up and stared directly into Danny’s shining green eyes.
“What?”
“Why were you in prison?”
“I would like to know why too, actually, I don’t think you told me about that.”
Jazz rubbed her temples, and Valdan gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
“Oh, yeah, remember when you were having a melt down about being wrong about dad?”
Jazz cringed a bit and Danny chuckled.
“Like it was the first time you’d ever been wrong in your life.”
“What about your dad was she wrong about exactly?”
Danny turned his attention back to Cole and let out a deep breath.
“Ok, so, dad was showing me the Specter Speeder™ and Mom came down to ask if he’d remembered their anniversary around the same time that he shoved me into the driver’s seat to show off the controls.”
“Of course he did, why wouldn’t he?”
Jazz sighed, rubbing her temples.
“Mom banged on the Speeder while yelling at him for literally always forgetting their anniversary, and that somehow activated the propulsion system. I dunno why.”
“Percussive Maintenance works on prototypes, sometimes,” Tucker said, snorting. “Especially with Fenton Tech.”
“Or Technus.”
Tucker laughed and Sam groaned.
“I was uh sent jettisoning into the Ghost Zone for the first time ever and I was absolutely terrified. Saw this colossal giant skeleton in a white suit and he gave me a warning about how ‘ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it’ and that the Speeder was an unauthorized vehicle or whatever and I gotta say: terrifying experience, 0/10, would not recommend. Backed right back into the lab.”
“Did either of your parents notice that you were gone?” Toby asked with a raised brow and Danny shook his head.
“Nah, they were too focused on Mom yelling at Dad.”
Valdan wrote something down in his notebook but Danny couldn’t imagine what.
“So a few days later Mom went to go visit our aunt Alicia in another state and brought up a divorce – which turned out to just be the anniversary of our Aunt’s divorce but I was freaking out thinking that our parents were gonna break up and Tucker was no help.”
“Hey, I was right, they weren’t gonna divorce and you didn’t need to worry,” Tucker said, crossing his arms.
“You were still pretty bad about it. It’s ok, with how you flirt with women, I don’t think anyone expects you to be tactful.”
Sam patted his shoulder.
“Excuse me?”
“Anyway, Dad went after Mom, I cleaned up the house while Jazz had a nervous breakdown about being wrong for once about Dad, and when I got to the lab I uh. Started using my ghost rays to organize the place.”
Cole barked out a laugh and Toby snorted, laughing himself into a little ball on the chair while Valdan covered his eyes with a hand.
“You- you shot the trash into the can?”
Danny coughed into his fist, face warm.
“I shot a lot of things into a lot of places.”
“You can’t tell me you aren’t like your folks ever again,” Sam said, “cause shooting the lab clean is something your dad would do and you know it.”
“That suggests Dad would clean the lab without Mom telling him to do it, but yeah, that’s what he’d do.”
“You’ve given Cole an idea. It’s safest when he doesn’t have those.”
“Well, now I’m a little embarrassed to say what happened next.”
Danny crossed his arms and scowled at his traitorous friends and sister, all laughing just a bit harder.
“Since y’all think this is so funny maybe I should turn it into a stand up routine instead, I’ll be the next John Mulaney.”
“No, please,” Toby said, clearing his throat but still grinning wide. “Please, continue. What happened while you were shooting the trash around in the lab?”
“Well… Dad had left the portal open.”
Cole’s hair froze once more into spikes, the rainbow he’d been flaring out with his laughter gone in an instant.
“So, I accidentally shot the present he’d gotten to apologize to Mom with into the open portal, and after like a day of freaking out about it I decided to go in and get it back. I had a camera and mic on me so that Sam and Tucker could see where I was going and talk to me the whole way, but there were some uh complications.”
“Complications arose from flying into the afterlife, alone,” Jazz deadpanned. “I would never have guessed such a thing might happen, Danny, truly this was completely unforeseen.”
Danny opened his mouth to defend himself, a finger raised high.
Sam beat him to the punch, grinning like a cat.
“When Danny met up with the Box Ghost, he asked ‘what are you doing here?’ and Boxy asked where he thought the ghosts went when he emptied the thermos into the portal. Which, an incredible point. Where else would the boxed up present go but to the box ghost?”
“Alright, that’s fair, I guess. But before I could just grab the thing and go, ghost cops raided the place and arrested me and Boxy,” Danny grumbled. “We got taken to jail and put in prisoner jumpsuits – black and white stripes and all like some old movie. Walker – the giant skeleton who was now only like, 7 feet tall instead of 700 – told me he was, ‘Judge, executioner, jury, executioner, and if needed your Executioner’. He apparently really likes that part.”
Toby hummed and the clouds overhead grew thick and dark. He rolled his hand, and Danny’s legs turned into a tail while he started flying in a circle around the group.
“So, I get into a little fight in the cafeteria cause a bunch of ghosts I’d dealt with were in there – Technus had his weird mech on, Skulker was there, so was Desiree, the Lunch Lady, and Boxy. I reminded them that I just tossed ‘em back in the Zone, not in the prison, and we came together and planned a riot.”
“You know, if you tried diplomacy a bit more you’d probably have less recurring fights with ghosts.”
“During the fight?”
“After. We’ll talk about that later, please go on about Walker.”
“I can even help with the lessons, actually.”
Danny stuck his tongue out at Jazz and tossed a ball of goop at her shoes. Tucker piped up while he did, raising his PDA in lieu of the actual Speeder control panel.
“This is around the time when we went in after him. We used what the Fentons called their ‘real world item locator’ to find the present and presumably Danny, though I was also following the signal of the headset. Signals just got… kinda funky.”
“We got lost and I tried to ask Princess Dora for directions but she flipped out and went dragon on us, so we flew away fast as we could. The chase ended when we flew through a rock and found out that Earthly objects can just go through anything in the Zone.”
“That makes a little sense,” Toby said, “you were in a world built on belief and expectation, and regardless of how they’re able to manifest here in this world, you’ve undoubtedly got the deep seeded belief that ghosts are intangible, right?”
“Well, yes, before the portal opened everyone just sorta knew that ghosts can’t touch things,” Sam said, “what’s that have to do with it?”
Valdan grinned and started gesturing again, his notepad flying all about but never losing his spot. Danny couldn’t read whatever it was he’d written down anyway.
“Well, if you went in believing that ghosts can’t be touched, however in the back of your mind it was, then you went in believing that you couldn’t touch the ghost world either. Perception is reality in a world made entirely of ectoplasm, since it’s the basis of reality in the first place. Entire worlds can be, and often are, dreamed into existence there. A strong belief can be powerful in the Infinite Realms.”
“When Tucker and Sam got to me in the prison, I realized that I should just transform back to human and I changed, grabbed the present, and left. I got the present back to Dad, but the Box Ghost was in it for some reason.”
Tucker raised his stylus this time, realization painted over his face.
“I think the Box Ghost uses boxes on Earth as portals.”
All of team Phantom groaned as loudly as they collectively could.
“How else would he get here so often?”
“He was probably just hiding in it,” Cole said with a laugh. “If he’s getting his ass beat by a child on a regular basis, he can’t be strong enough to go opening portals like that.”
“Well, reality is pretty thin around here.”
Toby ran his hand through the air. With a snap of his fingers the air went completely still, making it harder for the present humans to breathe it in and out.
“I can almost feel it tangibly, so it stands to reason that someone of relatively low power could weave a corridor through it if they had the right tool for their personal use.”
“Hon, the air is my thing.”
With a wave of Cole’s hand the air flowed again, a strong breeze sweeping over everyone, and Toby cleared his throat.
“Sorry ‘bout that, he gets dramatic sometimes.”
“Says the man who teleported us here with thunderous gravitas.”
“At least he didn’t go suffocating everyone to demonstrate the thinness of reality. Now, Danny, eat some more, you’re terribly skinny.”
Danny caught a food bun tossed at him and was caught between the urge to retaliate against being called skinny and appreciation for the food. Hunger won out and Danny dug into the bun, feeling all of the sudden like he’d never eaten anything in his life.
“What’s even in those, and can I try some?”
“That depends, Tucker, how much ectoplasm is in your system? I made this on our ship in the Infinite Realms, so it’s saturated with energy that I’m not sure non-magical humans can safely have in their system.”
Tucker tilted his head to the side and looked between himself, Jazz, and Sam. He shrugged and shifted around in his seat before counting off on his fingers.
“Sam and I’ve been in the Ghost Zone for extended periods of time without any kind of protection from the ambient ectoplasmic radiation; Danny has possessed me a few times, which I hate; Desiree the wishing ghost transformed me into some approximation of a half ghost but I got it all expunged with the ghost catcher, and I can do this.”
Tucker put his stuff down in his lap and held out his hand, furrowing his brow in concentration. Danny arched a brow at his best friend as sand swirled into the shape of Duul Amon’s scepter, and then fell away to reveal just that in Tucker’s hand.
“I’d say I’m probably magic enough to eat the thing, though I still wanna know what’s in it first.”
“Daniel James Phantom, you get this goop off my shoes this instant.”
“Yes, mooom.”
Danny waved a hand in Jazz’s direction and the goop flew off of her, splattering on the ground.
“It’s mostly just some vegetables that Toby grows in our garden-”
“Oh, it’s our garden, now? When’s the last time you went in and took care of anything besides harvesting ingredients?”
“-with some chicken and pork. I dunno how Duncan and David made those doors work but they sure as hell do.”
“So it’s basically a stew in a bun?”
“Yeah, want one? Danny seems to think we don’t see him levitating more to himself while we talk, but there’s not gonna be much left soon I imagine.”
“Damn, I can’t tell if he likes the flavor of it’s he’s just been starved of magic for so long he’ll take anything. Then again, it’s your cooking so probably the second thing.”
While Valdan punched Cole, Tucker set down the scepter and reached up to snatch one of the buns from Danny’s telekinetic grip.
It was a lot easier than he expected.
With how quickly the bun disappeared down Tucker’s gullet, taking it from Danny was much easier than it should’ve been.
“Dude, this is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten! You gotta give me the recipe.”
“Mmmm, no I don’t actually.”
“If you’re done stuffing your face, I’ve got an idea on how to do some basic fuckin training. First, you’re gonna figure out that connection to the sky, and then you’re gonna drop the ghost form and we’re gonna do some actual exercise.”
“I can help with that too, you need to do a lot of stretching.”
“Actually, speaking of training, I had a question for you, Toby.”
“Fire away, Sam.”
“Is your magic something that you’d say can be learned by anyone, or is it something exclusive to you? And if it can be learned, are you a qualified teacher?”
Toby’s lips flattened into a line and his eyes darkened rapidly, growing wide and focused entirely on Sam.
“My magic is the magic of nature, drawn from the world around me, and in order to use it, you have to be willing to open yourself up to the natural world. Nature is violent and gross, storms and disasters and all manner of sharpened bones to kill with. Things have to die for other things to live, and alien as it may be to you, even plants and fungi have a consciousness that can feel pain, especially when ripped out to be eaten. I knew all of this all my life because I was born to a forest goddess and raised in her woods; can you face that reality without buckling under the weight of its atrocities?”
“Harsh,” Tucker muttered, and Toby would admit, he was a bit harsh on anyone that wanted to learn the ways of druidic magic. Most that asked were only thinking of the ways that they could use it to dominate their foes in battle or gain more social power, not how they could use it in service to their world.
Those people would usually back out of things as soon as he started teaching them how to use components harvested from animals and plants to cast spells, even when those components were cleaned up for practice in a sanitized and safe environment. Stars knew they wouldn’t be able to handle the big guns.
Adults of all kinds were unprepared, how could he expect more from a human child?
Sam stared right back at Toby, rising to her feet with her fists at her sides.
“There’s nothing you can show me that I’m not ready to see. I fight reminders of death and tragedy every single day just to keep myself and everyone around me alive. Can your magic help me keep people safe or not?”
“Natural magic affects ghosts as much as it does anything else, so yes.”
“I can handle it then. Teach me, and I’ll learn. Hell, I might even show you a new thing or two.”
Toby smiled and held out his hand, the pressure in the air gone.
“Teaching and learning are often more the same than one thinks. I can’t promise to be the perfect teacher, of course, but I promise to do my best, and in return I expect you to respect the teachings of my mothers.”
Sam shook his hand with a grin, relaxing visibly.
“I can do that, promise. When do we start lessons?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve got a lesson plan all set up,” Toby said with a laugh. “Now, does anyone have anymore uh questions?”
Tucker half raised his hand and groaned.
“Why do Danny and Sam get cool mentors from another dimension and I don’t?”
“Well, I don’t have some extra-dimensional mentor, you’re not alone.”
“You’d just psycho-analyze anyone who tried and teach them something instead, and you hardly want one.”
Tucker crossed his arms and pouted, slouching in his chair. Toby snorted and arched his brow.
“Sounds like Valdan could teach you how to do some enchantments?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’m not sure how I feel about Jazz having magic, frankly, let alone bardic magic. We’ll see.”
“Fair enough, though I’m not sure I’m interested in learning magic anyway. I prefer things that make sense.”
“That’s subjective, but fair. Going back to Tucker: what do you do? Got any magic tricks to share that you need help with developing?”
“Well, last time I used this I’m pretty sure I got partially possessed, so maybe some help with figuring out how the scepter works and how to keep being me while I use it? Cause I did some wild shit with it last time.”
“Didn’t you say it had run out of magic on the ride here? How’d you summon it?”
“...ghost magic? Maybe it charged up a bit off the ambient ectoplasm in all of Amity Park.”
“We do have a couple of artificers on the ship, I’m sure they’d love to help you figure out your scepter. They specialize in magical artifacts, and building mechanical and magical wonders. Actually, didn’t David say he wanted to learn about this world’s technology?”
“He did, so maybe we can get him out of his little workshop and hear to meet you. After all, it’s best to see things on the plane they were built to function in, isn’t it?”
“Alright, that’s enough of that. Twig, you’ve cleaned out the basket, time to work on that sky magic.”
Cole slapped Danny on the back and he coughed a bit before swallowing around the last of his food. He scowled and shot a ghost ray into Cole’s chest, earning a hearty laugh.
“Good! I kinda felt that one. Now, you said you zapped a guy before, yeah? Do you remember what it felt like to do that, or should I try something weird?”
“How weird are we talkin’, here?”
“Well, I’d be connecting with your core to try and stimulate the parts of it that feel similar to mine. I dunno if you noticed, but I’m pretty blessed by the sky myself. The solid body is convenient to hang out in smaller spaces and with solid people with, but it’s hardly all that I am.”
Thunder rolled across the sky, rain, hail, snow and sleet flew from Cole’s body out in all directions and danced in the wind all around them. With a CRACKOOOM Danny’s vision was filled with pure iridescence and his body tingled from proximity.
“So, I should be able to help with that.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to see again. Holy shit, man, give a guy some warning next time!”
Danny muttered, blinking spots out of his eyes. He shook his head and squinted at Cole.
“This wouldn’t let you like, read my mind or anything, would it?”
“I don’t know how to do that, but if I did then yes. I don’t though, and if I could read your mind I’d’ve probably done it by now.”
“He would, he doesn’t like wasting time at all.”
“That’s… honest of you, at least. Ok, I guess. Sure.”
Danny held out his hand to Cole, who grasped it firmly and closed his eyes. A feeling not unlike being overshadowed passed over Danny, something Else slipping into his very being and following the flow of energy back to its source at the center of his chest.
“That’s weird.”
Cole simply grunted, rifling about in the culmination of Danny’s entire being. He could tell near immediately that the soul before him had the potential to stretch on and on, infinite and ever changing, a blessed Chosen child of the great Sky. He also knew that the baby was far too young to shine as a star, he needed first to be a nebula and experience all that such existence had to offer. His passion - Explore protect learn stars moons galaxies voids - was adorably intense.
Arcs of plasma from shrieking, singing stars was locked away, too reminiscent of lightning for the kid. That was fine, he very soon found a far more suitable connection to make, and pulled as gently as he could.
“Have you considered, Nebula, that space and quite a few things in it happen to be colder than a blizzard?”
Beneath them, the temperature dropped 20 degrees in 2 seconds, sending shivers through the assorted humans. Toby, meanwhile, snapped his fingers and a bonfire appeared between the Lumanos and Team Phantom.
“Whoa… Danny looks downright majestic right now.”
“Gotta say, that’s the most haunting he’s ever gonna look. Could do without the cold snap in summer, but that’s probably going to be useful later.”
“Please at least ask before you use my brother as an air conditioner. He’ll feel pretty bad if he gives you frostbite because you leaned on him too heavily.”
When Cole pulled back, Danny looked down at himself and saw frost spider-webbed all over his suit in swirling patterns that looked to be shifting as he bent and turned. Snow was beginning to manifest around him and the air cooled more and more in his immediate presence.
“This is… awesome !”
Holding up his hand, Danny grasped the grave chill pulsing through him like waves crashing onto a shore, and blue light rose to his fingertips. A flick of his wrist and snow swirled into the air, curling up and away from him before another gesture threw a shard of ice a dozen feet away before it dropped.
“Holy shit, is this how you feel all the time?”
Cole grinned, ruffling Danny’s hair.
“I’m stronger than you, so yeah but more. Oh, what’s with that look kid? Think you can prove me wrong?”
Cole darted back, arms spread, and smirked.
“Go on, show me!”
“Don’t think I won’t, old man!”
Power built up in Danny’s chest and ran down his arms to his hand, pointed at Cole. The wind howled as a flurry of snow and ice flew from his glove and struck the cloud man in the chest, splashing out like a wave that left ice in its wake.
“Ha!”
Cole laughed right back, sunlight peeking through the clouds above them, and Danny charged his hands up.
“Don’t think that’s all I got!”
“Is Cole really the person to go teaching the kid how to use this? He doesn’t really default to ice much in a fight unless he needs a new weapon.”
Toby hemmed and hawed a bit before shrugging and wiggling his hand a bit. Danny shone with icy-blue light a moment more before that light snapped into rings that swept over him, and he fell, barely caught by grass that rose at Toby’s command.
“Probably not. We should probably look into the Far Frozen about teaching Danny how to use this particular power, but I trust Cole with putting the kid through his paces physically. Speaking of the Far Frozen, though… you guys wanna tell us where you think Elle is?”
