Chapter Text
Something was up with Danny Fenton—well, something other than the fact that girls had been constantly swarming him for more than a week after he had somehow been chosen as the judge for the stupid ‘Miss Teenage Happy Princess Beauty Pageant' (which had thankfully been earlier that night so theoretically that madness would stop).
Valerie still cared about Danny immensely, even if they had broken up for his safety (not that he knew that was the real reason); if there was something wrong and she could help, she was going to, especially if it was ghost related.
But was it ghost related? Given it was Amity Park, that was more likely than not, but part of the strangeness was that Danny had vanished twice now in the past month, for days at a time with his whereabout unknown. If ghosts did that, surely he’d tell people once he got back.
The first time Danny vanished the popular rumor was that he ran away, and was dragged back by Mr. Lancer of all people, which was just ridiculous. What did Danny have to run away from? His parents clearly doted over him… Then again, he did seem scared of them sometimes, although Valerie had no idea why. He never had any bruises or anything, and she’d never seen the Fenton parents act violent towards their kids.
The second time Danny vanished, the rumor was that he was at Stanford for some reason, as someone swore they spotted him in live news footage shown during the huge anti-government protest there, but that was impossible too given the distance—perhaps a fast-flying ghost could fly from there back to Amity Park in the given timeframe, but Danny wasn’t a ghost. A private jet would made it possible too, but he wouldn’t have access to one—the Fentons had a weird blimp and a hover car thing, but neither of those were that fast. Manson might be able to get one, but she hadn’t known Danny’s whereabout either.
Then of course there was Danny’s sudden change of fashion. He had come back from the first disappearance sporting a black leather jacket, which ever since had become a staple of his image, along with darker-colored shirts. When Valerie asked about it, he’d grumbled something about ‘not being suspicious’ and claimed that dark colors blended in better. But, blended into what? The darkness of night? But why would Danny need to hide at night?
Valerie had been thinking about all this at a half hour until midnight, as she closed the Nasty Burger at the end of her shift; her coworkers had already left, leaving her to drag the trash to the dumpster and lock the doors. She zipped her orange sweatshirt over her uniform and headed out.
Thus, Valerie found herself alone as she walked home, through the woods path she used as a shortcut. She debated donning her suit and flying home, but her dad would be suspicious about how quickly she got home and she had never bothered to time how long walking generally took. Besides, it was relaxing to sometimes to just walk quietly through the woods, and Valerie could use some relaxing after the shift she had (it involved a surprise group of fifteen young kids up way past their bedtime, apparently a sports team). Plus, the silver light of the full moon streaming through the trees created beautiful pattens on the ground.
If Valerie were almost any other 15-year-old, she would be more concerned, even frightened, when it came to walking alone through the woods at night. However, Valerie knew how to fight. She had anti-ghost weapons on her, and was a black belt. She was confident that she was safe.
A sudden rustling in the woods caught Valerie’s attention. The sound of heavy footsteps followed—something large running at her. Valerie swerved towards the sound, ecto-gun already drawn. She easily dodged the large creature as it flew at her.
“What are you?” Valerie asked as she faced the creature. It towered over her; vaguely man-shaped with torn pants, it was covered in grey hair, almost silver in the moonlight, and had what looked like a wolf snout and sharply pointed ears. Some sort of wolf ghost?
The ghost eyed Valerie with sharp yellow slitted eyes—predator eyes—and snarled, revealing a massive maw of jagged fangs.
The ghost leapt at Valerie again; she once more easily dodged.
At the same time, Valerie shot the wolf-ghost with her ecto-weapon, shockingly to absolutely no effect. What kind of ghost was this!? …Was it even a ghost? It wasn’t glowing… and it had footsteps… but some ghosts could hide their glow and, although she hadn’t seen any thus far, there likely were some that could mimic footsteps too.
Valerie set her weapon to a higher level, one she used only as needed as at that level it could slightly burn humans, and shot; the wolf-thing flinched at the burn but then growled with even more anger as it slowly stalked towards her, Valerie backing up in response.
The wolf-thing suddenly yelped and twisted, revealing Danny Fenton, of all people, on its back, a knife driven into it. The wolf-thing threw Danny off and then frantically ran deeper into the woods.
Valerie took a moment to process that, then rushed over to Danny, surprisingly unharmed despite the violent crash to the ground and lack of jacket (because it seemed to only ever be short sleeves or the leather jacket, rarely if ever a proper coat or even a sweatshirt), as he stood up from where he had been tossed, a silver object in his hand. The blood on the weapon—a dagger, not a knife—shone a slick crimson red in the moonlight, rather than the glowing green expected of a ghost.
“What was that thing?” Valerie asked incredulously.
“Were you bitten?” Danny demanded instead of answering. Valerie could barely make out his expression in the semi-darkness, the moonlight streaking through the trees missing him. In fact, she could barely make out Danny; the black shirt and darker jeans blended in pretty well, although he couldn’t hide his pale, almost-glowing skin.
“What?” Valerie asked, confused.
“Were you bitten?” Danny repeated.
“No, seriously, what was that?”
“Werewolf,” Danny replied. “Please answer me, Valerie: were you bitten?” He sounded desperate.
“No, I wasn’t,” Valerie replied. “But, you can’t be serious—a werewolf, really?”
Danny gave Valerie a flat stare. “Did you really think ghosts were the only supernatural thing out there?”
Valerie took a moment to process that. Yes, yes she had… Until now.
“Come on; we gotta kill it before it kills anyone else,” Danny told her, hurrying in the direction the thing fled.
Valerie hurried after Danny. “What do you mean, ‘anyone else’?” she asked frantically. “That thing already killed someone?!”
“Yeah, and it’s on a rampage! If we don’t kill it, it’ll just keep killing!” Danny nearly growled; his eyes flashed green in the moonlight, causing Valerie’s blood to freeze for a moment at the familiar color, before she remembered that Danny’s eyes simply did that sometimes due to his ecto-contamination.
“What? No, Danny!” Valerie protested. “We should capture it or something. Give it to the cops; if it’s a werewolf it’s human, right? When not transformed?” She couldn’t kill a human!
“Look, if we don’t kill it, and it escapes, it’ll only cause trouble elsewhere until a different Hunter kills it,” Danny firmly told Valerie. “And even if we do capture it, it’s not like it’ll even get to jail.”
“What do you mean?” Valerie asked, heart racing, though she had a suspicion.
“Clean-up crews,” Danny told her. “Werewolves don’t make it to jail. That’s how you get an entire prison of werewolves. Most jails have Hunters around to take care of any creatures who end up there before they become a problem.”
“Hunters…?” Valerie noted. “Werewolf hunters?”
“Among other things, yeah… Wait.” Danny abruptly stopped; Valerie nearly crashed into him.
“What—”
“Quiet,” Danny hissed.
Valerie froze, listening.
“There; I hear it moving this way,” Danny said, as he turned and began running again, Valerie following, mildly confused; she’d only heard the wind.
A shrill scream rang through the night. Danny sped up, faster than Valerie could keep up, almost like he was flying. Was he even making noise as he ran? And, wait, was he only wearing socks? Yeah, those were black socks with a star pattern.
The woods opened to a large paved walking/bike path, part of the park. Danny stopped Valerie, signalling her to be quiet; she wondered how he wasn’t out of breath… was he even breathing? He must be. Valerie was imagining things.
A wet chewing sound alerted Valerie to the creature’s location, and once her eyes landed on the scene in front of them Valerie began to shake slightly and covered her mouth, trying not to vomit while she tried her best to quietly catch her breath.
Though it was facing largely away from them, the angle was still enough to clearly see that the creature—werewolf—had torn a hole in a woman’s chest and was eating the bloody heart raw.
“Do you have a stun weapon available?” Danny whispered.
“Why would I—”
“I know your suit has them. If we can stun it, I can stab it in the heart. Going from the back didn’t work so it’s gotta be from the front.”
Her suit. Danny knew she was—no, there wasn’t time to ponder that. Valerie took a deep breath, then drew up the nanobots and willed them to create a prod-like electric weapon (she ignored how it glowed slightly, not liking to think about how the suit was ecto-powered now).
“Great. Put your armor on too just in case it tries to bite you.”
“And you?” Valerie asked as she donned her suit, noting Danny’s outfit again, particularly that it was absent anything covering his arms. How was he not cold? And why weren’t his arms scratched up after racing through the woods?
“I’ll be fine—come on, while it’s distracted. And don’t touch the woman, we want it to look like an animal attack.”
“Wait, wha—”
“Now!” Danny hissed.
Valerie sprang forward; the werewolf heard her and turned, but not in time enough to dodge as Valerie jammed the prod into the creature’s side. The wolf howled as it convulsed, rolling onto its back.
Danny leapt on top of the werewolf in a crouch and drove the silver dagger directly into the thing’s heart. The wolf howled sharper, high-pitched and petering out as it shifted back into a more normal-looking man in his thirties, though he was still a larger build and muscular. Despite shifting too, his fingernails and teeth still looked a little too pointy to be natural.
“It really is a werewolf,” Valerie whispered as she removed her suit hood, staring at the human man who had moments before been a wolf monster.
Valerie then turned to the woman, and let in a sharp breath. The werewolf, in just that short time, had decimated the woman’s chest and stomach. Organs that should never feel air were on full display, intestines spilling out. Her heart, half-eaten, lay on the ground next to her. A part of Valerie wanted to believe that it was a staged body used for one of those crime TV shows instead of an actual fresh corpse with its guts torn out. Her stomach contents once again urged her to let them free, though she once again suppressed it since that would be evidence.
Valerie shifted her gaze to the woman’s face, and with a jolt Valerie realized that she knew the woman. It wasn’t anyone Valerie personally knew particularly well, and the name escaped her, but the woman was a fairly regular customer at Nasty Burger. In fact, the woman had stopped by shortly before closing that very night, after getting off from her own night shift at a nearby convenience store. She was young, only a couple years out of college; Valerie remembered her wearing a Class of ‘03 shirt from her alma mater. Valerie felt bad that she couldn’t remember the woman’s name. She wanted to reach over and at least close the woman’s eyes, but then she remembered what Danny had said.
Valerie looked towards Danny, who was now a short distance from the bodies, rapidly talking to someone on the phone.
It then hit Valerie what they’d just done. “Oh god,” she said, dismissing her weapon and covering her mouth with her hands. She couldn’t stop looking. She wanted to throw up again.
“Don’t throw up,” Danny said from next to Valerie, causing her to jump slightly in surprise. “I know you want to, trust me I do too, but we can’t leave evidence. Dean says we should burn and bury the body. The werewolf’s, not the woman’s.”
Valerie didn’t respond immediately, still horrified by the scene and biting down the desire to vomit. Once her gag reflex was under control she processed the words and asked, “Who’s Dean?”
“A Hunter,” Danny replied, and Valerie could hear the capitalization of the word. Danny then winced as his eyes fell on the bodies too. “Come on. Before anyone finds us here. I know it’s… disturbing, I want to vomit too, this will definitely be causing nightmares, but… But we can’t be caught here.”
“R-right,” Valerie said. “Because we…”
“Saved a lot of people,” Danny firmly told Valerie. “Don’t think of it as killing, think of it as saving.”
“But he was human!” Valerie lamented, still in mild shock that Danny Fenton violently killed someone, werewolf or not, right in front of her—with her help.
“Yeah, and he also brutally killed three people tonight, that we know of, almost killed you, and was gonna kill a lot more if we didn’t stop him!”
“Yeah but killing him?!”
“It was the only way to make sure everyone was safe!”
“Really? There really wasn’t another way? Werewolves don’t know what they’re doing when transformed, right? If it’s like myth? Did he even know he was doing this?!”
Danny’s face darkened. “He knew,” he said bitterly. “Look, I’m not happy about having to kill him either, trust me. I’ll try to find some other solution if another werewolf shows up, if a truly innocent one appears, but nothing was going to work here. This man was from a werewolf pack that enjoyed killing so much that they could retain some memory of when they were transformed, which is rare, and explicitly sought out people to hunt during the full moon, made a game out of it.
“Other Hunters found their base and took out the rest, but a few escaped—Dean and… a friend of his went after one, the other hunters went after some others, and Dean warned me the last had fled in this direction. They just caught theirs but are too far away to help us with this part.
“This had to be done, Valerie. It had to be done. If he’d been allowed to roam, not only would he have killed so many more people tonight, but he would have set out to build a new pack—they don’t need to bite someone during the full moon to turn them, it can be whenever. Then the next full moon it would be a massacre in Amity Park before they move on.”
Despite the harsh words, Danny’s tone hadn’t been particularly angry. It was more of a no-nonsense tone, laying out facts and trying to make Valerie understand. Valerie took a deep breath and told him, “Okay, I get it. I get it.” And, she did. She understood all his points, and agreed with them. But, “It’s just… a lot.”
“I know,” Danny said with a gentle yet sad smile. “This is the first werewolf I’ve killed, too. I mean it when I say if there were another way, I would have done it, but in this case… there simply wasn’t.”
“You seem calm,” Valerie noted. “At least, calmer than me.”
Danny chuckled. “Oh no, internally I’m freaking out. I just know how to shove everything away until later. Compartmentalize, you know. Totally gonna have nightmares about this for sure.” A closer glance at Danny’s face showed that he was indeed barely holding it together, clearly trying hard not to let tears escape. “Anyway, Sam, Jazz, and Tucker are on their way with shovels and gasoline.”
“Right. But the woman… we’re not just gonna leave her here, are we?”
Danny shook his head. “We’ll anonymously report it after we’re done with him. But the police are currently busy with the other two, so—”
“Wait, two?” Valerie asked sharply.
Danny nodded, eyes glowing green again. “Yeah. Two people together, I don’t know who they were, couldn’t get close enough to see their faces, just the carnage. But they’re the ones that made me realize that the wolf had made it all the way to town. There might be more that haven’t been found along the way. Once realizing, I started looking. Really glad I had a silver dagger on hand; silver to the heart, whether stabbed or shot, is the only way to kill a werewolf. Well, that or beheading, which I’d reaaaaally prefer to avoid.”
“Why did you have a silver dagger on hand?” Valerie wondered.
“Family heirloom,” Danny told her. “My ancestors were allegedly just regular witch hunters, but the box of stuff from them seems to be more general Hunting stuff. Not sure which ancestor decided to give up Hunting though; I had no idea about all this until I met Dean a few weeks ago.”
“I’m assuming by ‘Hunting’ you don’t mean deer and stuff?” Valerie asked warily.
“Unfortunately not,” Danny told her darkly. “Not every creature from legends is real, but most of them are. Not always in the same way the legends say though.”
“Like ghosts are very different from legends,” Valerie said.
“Kinda,” Danny agreed. “Although to be fair, in most of the world the traditional notation of less tangible ghosts stuck to a single place actually is true. Amity Park is pretty unique in that the ghosts here are not just solid and have powers, but are also sentient enough that most of them won’t intentionally cause harm.”
“Sentient?” Valerie asked, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t cause harm? Have you seen the damage?”
“Valerie,” Danny said sternly. “Have you ever seen one of our ghosts attack any human with intent to kill, other than Spectra?”
Valerie considered that. “Well, no, I guess not…”
“Exactly. Our ghosts have morals, and can make decisions. But the shades? The barely-formed ones elsewhere that never got enough ectoplasm to keep the full mind of their old selves? They’re the ones who, unless they’re brand new, have no awareness, stuck at their point of death with just one or two emotions. Some are harmless, but often they do kill, particularly if the emotions they have are related to vengeance or payback. That’s how I met Dean—he was hunting one that had been killing for years, taking vengeance on anyone similar to the one that killed her.
“That why my parents’ research is so wrong, you know—it was done on those half-formed shades, not on full ghosts. They didn’t anticipate that the levels of ectoplasm in the Ghost Zone, and to a lesser extent that in Amity Park, changes ghosts so much. So all their research doesn’t apply the same to our ghosts.
“Anyway, we can talk about this later if you want, but right now we gotta find a good place to bury this guy.”
“Oh we will definitely be talking more later,” Valerie told Danny sternly. “About both ghost types and all this ‘Hunting’ business. You know, I broke up with you to protect you? Thought my ghost hunting thing might get you hurt. But now I find out you’re chasing after freaking werewolves with nothing but a dagger!”
“Yeah… Oh, incoming,” Danny said.
Valerie turned in the direction Danny was looking, finding Sam, Tucker, and Jazz headed towards them on bicycles. She quickly dismissed her suit.
“You didn’t have to dismiss it; they know too,” Danny revealed.
“What?” Valerie asked, confused. “How?”
“We recognized your voice,” Danny said. “New suit has a voice modulator, but the first didn’t.”
As Valerie cursed her stupidity, the group dismounted a short distance away, not bothering with the kickstands rather letting the bikes clatter to the ground before running the rest of the distance.
“Oh god,” Tucker said, hands over his mouth as he turned to rush to the woods.
Danny intercepted Tucker, blocking him with one arm. “Hold it in; we don’t want evidence.”
Tucker managed to swallow it down, then took some deep breaths, Danny rubbing on his back in calming motions. When he was done he gasped out. “Oh god. Danny, that’s… That’s…”
“I couldn’t get to her in time,” Danny grimly told Tucker, voice laden with guilt. Valerie could guess he was doing his best not to think about it until later—Valerie sure was.
Sam laughed weakly. “Sheesh, Danny, when I told you I’d help you bury a body I never thought it would be literal.”
“This is why I wanted to stick with ghost hunting only,” Tucker grumbled, as he and Danny rejoined Valerie, Jazz, and Sam.
Jazz, as expected, began checking Danny over for injuries, not saying a word, just looking extremely worried.
“I’m fine, Jazz,” Danny said with an eyeroll.
Jazz shook her head. “Danny, you just stabbed someone, werewolf or not! Psychologically—”
“Seriously. Not the first time I’ve seen someone die this month,” Danny told his sister, apparently thinking that was a comfort. It definitely did not placate Valerie’s worries.
“That is not reassuring!” Jazz practically screeched. “We will be talking about this later, because I’m sure your nightmares are only going to increase after this.”
“Dunno how they can increase from nightly,” Danny muttered. “Anyway, let’s get this done with—do you have the stuff?”
Sam tapped a backpack. “Collapsible shovels, gasoline, and an extra lighter just in case you forgot yours.” Valerie decided not to ask why Danny would carry around a lighter given she was sure he didn’t smoke. It probably had something to do with all this Hunting business.
“Why was that woman out here walking close to midnight, anyway?” Tucker wondered.
“Dude! Victim-blaming much?” Sam chided, slapping Tucker on the shoulder with the back of her hand.
“I wasn’t!” Tucker defended. “I was just curious!”
“She works the night shift at 6-10,” Valerie told them, feeling a little disconnected.
“You know her?” Tucker asked with surprise.
“Not well, but she often stopped by Nasty Burger after getting off her shift. I just saw her an hour ago…” An hour ago. An hour prior, this woman had been alive, and now her guts were… Valerie put a hand over her mouth, once again resisting the urge to vomit.
The whole group quieted, an air of grimness spreading over them all. This was real. This really happened. Despite all the ghost attacks in Amity Park, no one had been killed, although there were close calls. This was… unprecedented. Even passed off as a wild animal attack, it would shake the entire community.
Danny then sighed forlornly. “Ghosts are going to get blamed for this, aren’t they?”
“Probably,” Tucker said casually.
“Why does that matter?” Valerie asked, a little confused at their reactions. “Wild animal, ghost—either way, the police won’t investigate further, so the blame won’t fall on us.”
Danny gave a single self-depreciating laugh. “Yeah, guess that’s true. Come on, let’s go get rid of a body.”
“Right,” Valerie said. “Let’s go… bury a body.” Because apparently that’s a thing teens in Amity Park do now. Right. Sure. Valerie’s life was already something out of a horror movie, given she lived in a literally haunted town, so why not add this to it too?