Chapter Text
Going missing wouldn’t be too bad, though.
A cruel part of himself curled in satisfaction in his stomach.
If— when his parents realized he left, they would tear apart the house, maybe the entire city, looking for him.
They would realize how little they knew about his routine, his school work, and his habits. Someone would ask when was the last time they saw him and they would look at each other listlessly because they wouldn’t know.
They would finally realize how awful of parents they had been. Maybe some other adult, other than Jazz, would point it out.
Danny would reappear right at the height of their panic. Relief would flood their faces, his dad would pick him up, squeezing so tight every joint in his spine popped. His mom would grab his face and kiss it a million times despite his protests. They’d apologize a million times, ask where he’d been, how he was doing—
“We were just so caught up in our work! We didn’t even notice you were gone, Sweetie.”
The satisfaction fizzled out, replaced by something pitiful, ugly, and painful.
The way he destroyed the kitchen, they would think it was a ghost that took him.
They would be more interested in chasing down the ghost that hurt him rather than comforting him when he came back.
Hell, if they tried to read his ectoplasm they might see something was wrong.
They would see his recent behavior— the skipping classes, the anger issues.
They would conclude he was a monster of his own making, a monster who didn’t let their precious baby boy’s body rest and transformed him into the thing they hated most. Nothing would convince them their precious baby boy had been killed years ago, that Danny’s hate for the world started with no accident.
Danny dismissed the idea entirely, kicking his blankets away as he sat up in bed.
He shuffled down to the kitchen, gracing his parents with an appearance, not that they would notice.
He took an extra second to process what he was seeing, having expected to come face-to-face with the consequences of his tantrum.
The kitchen was pristine . There were no signs of green stains, broken glass, or destroyed inventions.
He inhaled the nostalgic scent of his mom’s favorite coffee. The walls were scrubbed clean, removing years of charred marks and green stains.
No half-baked inventions were taking up all the counter space, no lingering scent of stale ectoplasm.
His mom was sitting at the table, running her hand over the old flower pattern tablecloth Danny hadn’t seen since work on the portal started and the ghost inventions became too all-consuming.
His dad stood by the toaster. Burly, hairy arms crossed over his chest. The plaid-pattern pajama pants he wore matched the pair Maddie wore because they were just sickly in love like that.
Maybe it was because it had been months since Jazz left for college, leaving only Danny to do all the chores in his half-assed way, maybe it was because his parents weren’t wearing their hazmat suits for the first time in what felt like years, maybe it was just because both his parents were there and present, but Danny felt a spark of hopefulness leap into his throat and tempt to choke him.
Danny blinked, did he enter the wrong portal? Did he enter a dimension where his parents were normal non-crack scientists who were present in his life?
Maddie raised her eyes from the mug cupped in her hands. “Danny.” Her tone was accusatory. “Do you know what happened to the kitchen?”
She was mad at him? Danny almost started laughing at the incredibility of it all.
He shook his head to himself, stalling as he grabbed a cereal box from the cupboard. He lightly shook the near-empty box.
“We have almost run out of cereal?” He asked, feigning obliviousness. “You know, Jazz isn’t around to do the shopping anymore—”
“Daniel Jack,” His mom cut him off sharply. “Did you smash months— years worth of research and thousands of dollars of supplies?”
Research. Research! It was all about their stupid research.
Danny rolled his eyes as he opened the fridge. He felt almost smug seeing the shelves. It was nearly empty, but the only thing in the fridge was food, as it should be.
He rolled around in his head how mad his parents must be. Danny had trashed the kitchen and then promptly fucked off for who-knows how long, leaving his parent’s to clean up the mess. He knew how much his dad in particular hated cleaning.
There was a reason Danny was usually the only one to do any chores. His main job was even to clean the lab, mostly because that was the chore that would be noticed should he neglect it.
His mom wasn’t full-naming him yet, though, so he was fine.
His dad sighed. The toast popped. It was shaped like Jack’s head. God, how conceited is he?
“Yesterday, we heard crashing up here and came upstairs to find everything was destroyed. Even the defense ecto-gun had been ripped out. You weren’t anywhere to be found.”
Danny shrugged, not saying anything as he poured his bowl of cereal.
“Yeah, I stayed late at school because I had detention with Mr. Lancer,” Danny said, shoving a spoonful of cereal into his mouth.
The lie was flimsy, how would he know when exactly the kitchen was destroyed and why wasn’t he home for the rest of the day?
His stomach swirled. Why would he even lie about having detention in the first place? Why would he say such a flimsy lie? They’ll just freak out.
Well, he did have detention that one time. He supposed this was a good time to finally get them to schedule that meeting that Lancer wanted.
Jack blinked, his face suddenly cleared considerably. His eyes shot over to his wife, who returned the look meaningfully.
“Do you think we are being haunted ?” Jack asked his wife excitedly.
What— No—
His parents were here, they were present, and they were not running off to conduct experiments or make inventions.
“Mom, Dad, can we talk about school for a sec? Cause Mr. Lancer wanted—”
Maddie’s eyes went wide. she flew to her feet, knocking over her mug and spilling the coffee all over the tablecloth. “That makes so much more sense! We better set up traps for it!”
“But—” Danny tried to interject, “I need you to come to my school—”
Luckily, the interruption worked as Jack turned his attention back to Danny. “Career day?” he asked, perking up.
Last career day, when Danny was in 6th grade, was a disaster that ended with the teacher’s toupee being lasered off by Jack in his excitement to show off all the ghost-hunting equipment to the room of eleven-year-olds.
“I’m not in elementary school anymore.” Danny snapped. “It's a parent-teacher conference.”
“Oh, Danny.” His mom waved a hand in the air dismissively. “We’ve heard it all before. You’re great, well behaved, and a Fenton genius, just like your sister.”
Last week he dumped 2 gallons of tainted dye on a fellow student and skipped most of his classes. The week before that he received detention and— oh yeah, fucking died.
“You should come,” Danny said through a false smile and gritted teeth. “You might be surprised.”
“How about a Fenton fishing line!” his dad exclaimed suddenly, making exaggerated hand motions as he spoke. “We put bait on the end and when a ghost bites we reel it in.”
“What?” Danny asked, but his parents were already off, discussing a new invention. “Mom—”
“Phase-proof line!”
“Dad—”
“Catch that son-of-a-ghost!”
Danny stood up quickly, sending his chair screeching back. He dropped his cereal bowl in the sink, half to be dramatic, half because his intangibility acted up again.
His parents didn’t notice his dramatic exit.
…
Who you gonna call?
1-800-Fentons
This was exactly why Danny spent years honing his art skills— to draw a hyper-realistic dick and balls on the jumbo advertisement of his father’s gigantic head.
This particular billboard was the largest Fentonworks sign in the city and the closest to FentonWorks. It was only appropriate to put extra effort into spray-painting the ball hairs as realistic as possible.
He heard a commotion below him and looked down, spotting a few people gathering below the billboard.
They held up their phones while watching him, taking pictures or videos. Danny waved with a big smirk, then continued his defiling, cackling at the thought of someone calling the hotline.
A chill worked its way from the center of his chest— not his lungs— traveling up his throat and out on his breath, causing a mist in the air like it was freezing out.
It took him longer than it should have to piece together what that particular phenomenon meant, but now he knew that it sensed a ghost was nearby.
Danny hunched his shoulders and continued. He could just feel the sense of superiority rolling off the haughty ghost’s gaze, burning into Danny’s back.
An excited shout from below announced the ghost’s identity, making the crowd start buzzing with anticipation for their “hero”.
“Ah, you again. I believe I only just threw you back in the realms yesterday.”
Danny rolled his eyes exasperatedly. Of course, he couldn’t just mind his own business.
“Oh look, it’s the fun-sucking vampire, here to ruin my perfectly good day again?” Danny snarked, not taking his focus off his work of art.
There was a judgemental silence behind Danny.
“Do you have any idea how much damage you’re doing right now?” the ghost asked.
Danny turned, grinning at the ghost, pride in himself showing through his fanged smile.
“Well, since the advertisement is still legible, the insurance company won’t cover it. So, it will cost about 3k out of pocket to fix, unless they want to keep it up until the end of the billing period, of course.”
Plasmius huffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “Cut it out. I don’t want to have to force you.” He said, an edge of confidence curling around the tone of his threat.
Danny stared at him, shook the can, and in a way not unlike a cat knocking a glass off the edge of a table, he slowly lifted his hand back up, continuing filling the sclera of Jack’s eyes with red paint, undeterred by the threat.
“You should be grateful , these guys are your biggest haters.”
“I’m not.” Plasmius intoned. “Juvenile pranks will get you nowhere in life—”
“Well, I’m fucking dead.” Danny spat, his eyes flaming a brighter red. He turned his attention back to the billboard. Maybe he should sprawl ‘Murderer’ across his father’s face, that might get them to notice they killed their own son.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Kid.” Plasmius sighed, disappointed as if he expected more of Danny.
Well, like it or not, this was all he was getting.
Plasmius put a hand on his waist, just above where the thermos hung from his belt. “Just— hand the spray paint over, and let’s talk, alright?”
Danny’s shoulders slumped and he slowly floated over to Plasmius like a chastised child dragging his feet.
Plasmius's smile was full of smugness and condescension as he held out a hand toward Danny. “See? Not so hard—”
He was cut off abruptly, eyes screwing shut just in time for a cold sensation to flush over his face, followed by the distinct smell of paint.
Danny cackled so hard he tilted backward, his bright white hair flaming brighter. “Oh, man! I can’t believe you fell for that!” He crowed.
Plasmius stayed stock still in the air, his face screwed shut. He sighed, long and annoyed. Then, he turned intangible.
The paint fell from his face as if it never existed.
When he reappeared, eyes stony and angry, Danny's laughter cut off abruptly.
“Crud.” Danny’s eyes widened. He jerked out of the way of a laser— it blackened out one of Jack’s teeth in his wide smile.
“ Don’t try to run, Little Badger.”
“It’s Danny—” Danny corrected, shooting the ghost a scathing glare and— hey, that would be funny. “—Phantom. Yep. Danny Phantom. That’s the name I’ve had since forever and not something I made up three seconds ago. So, respect it!”
Plasmius’s expression soured, like he just accidentally spilled mayo on his favorite ascot, or like he found Danny’s totally creative and hilarious pun on his last name unfunny. That would just be ridiculous of him.
Danny took the opportunity to run away like a bat out of hell— or a ghost out of the ghost zone. That worked actually, so he would be going with that.
He assumed he lost Plasmius quickly, the buildings below flew by faster than even when his dad drove, so when he looked back and saw Plasmius easily keeping pace he couldn’t help the surprise that jumped into his throat in the form of a yelp.
Danny sped up, pushing his limits to try and outrun the ghost. Every time he glanced back the ghost was still right on his tail, keeping pace with ease.
Danny sped straight toward another building, going easily over a hundred miles an hour.
That’s a brick wall. He should probably turn intangible before he hit it.
“Ow!”
Danny did, in fact, not turn intangible. He flew face-first into the building. He grabbed his nose, green ectoplasm spilling into his hand, probably making him look like a fucking Christmas ornament.
“I can follow you, even if you turn invisible,” Plasmius-the-horror-movie-stalker said.
“You frootloop! That’s totally creepy!” Danny flipped him off, then promptly turned invisible.
Danny took a moment to check he was actually invisible before diving straight through the ground. Danny’s legs disappeared into a tail as he escaped as fast as he could.
Try and track this, asshat.
Danny dove through buildings, traveled underground, and shot up high into the sky.
Still, every time he looked back, the ghost was on him. Terror slowly crept up his back.
Okay, okay, think.
Plasmius must have been using an internal detector to trace Danny’s ecto-signature and- and god, did Danny hate himself for sounding like his parents. Danny could tell from his own ability that his… ghostly presence or whatever was covered up when he changed back to human—or as Danny liked to word it committing alive.
Transforming back was a last resort, one that might get him discovered if it didn’t work, but he really, really didn’t want to get thrown back into the ghost zone.
Danny landed on some random fire escape with a heavy clang, the only thing keeping him upright was his tight grip on the railing. White rings traveled over his form, the center of his chest burning painfully cold at the overuse of his powers turned into a pounding heart from the exercise.
This wasn’t like his loosey-goosey play with death in the ghost zone the day before. Plasmius was a much bigger threat with his teleporting and clones, especially without the ambient ectoplasm keeping Danny sustained.
The only thing he could hear were his own breaths as Plasmius flew into one side of the alley and out the next. His celebration was cut short as the ghost re-entered the alley, seeming to pause in the air.
Danny ducked down, resisting the impulse to turn invisible to not give himself away. He covered his mouth to muffle his breathing, hoping the ghost didn’t have, like, supersonic hearing or anything.
Plasmius hovered in the air as he searched for Danny, finally teleporting away after a few agonizing seconds.
Danny sighed in relief, slumping onto the fire escape stairs. That guy was crazy— It was only pure luck that kept him out of the guy’s grasp.