Chapter Text
Danny barely stopped himself from literally flying out of the detention room when the bell finally rang, excited to meet Sam and Tucker to play minigolf. They had planned to meet there right after school, but then during lunch Danny had fought some weird possibly-fake ghost (the core felt off, and it dissolved into nothing halfway through fighting it), and in the process broke a window, netting him detention.
Ishiyama and Lancer knowing Danny was Phantom (and therefore excusing him for lates and absences due to ghost fights) apparently meant that they were going to punish him for things like causing ‘unnecessary damage’. Which, yeah, Danny actually could admit that it had been a bit overkill and dramatic to tackle the thing through a window instead of just phasing through the window or slamming the thing into the ground. This wasn’t the first time he’d gotten carried away and caused property damage that could have been avoided—and it seemed the two adults planned to help with that problem via detention.
Danny would have normally blamed the other ghost, but unfortunately—and very unexpectedly—Principal Ishiyama had been there watching instead of hiding with everyone else, which prevented him from claiming it was unavoidable. He should have figured she would though, given her newfound insistence on learning how to fight not just ghosts but everything. Lancer had agreed with her that detention was an apt punishment, and would be going forward any time Danny wasn’t careful enough about damage caused.
Danny wondered if Ishiyama and Lancer actually cared that much about the damage, given the school had long ago met the ghost insurance deductible, or if they were just using it as an excuse to get him to do his homework, much like the detentions for being late had formerly been used for.
Danny exited the school and pushed through yet another protest related to The Lunch Lady being in charge of the cafeteria; honestly, he wasn’t sure why so many were opposed, given that the ghost had stopped attacking people altogether since being offered the job (it was part of the agreement allowing her to work there), but some people were just so much against ghosts that they’d even yell at one for saving their life (it had happened before, more than once in fact, specifically to Danny). Besides, it wasn’t like any of the protestors were offering to take the job instead! Amity Park wasn’t exactly teeming with job applicants, especially for jobs at the most haunted school in the world; they needed a lunch lady, and the ghost was the only one willing, so she’d naturally gotten the job.
Halfway along his journey to the minigolf course, Danny observed a peculiar sight: a man in a tweet coat with a head of shaggy salt-and-pepper hair was rushing down a side street in the more urban part of town, looking panicked. The people he passed all stared at him in confusion, completely ignoring the shaggy black dog loping after him.
Danny swooped down as the man turned into an abandoned alley, dog in pursuit. Danny recognized the man as Mr. Willow, who was a manager at one of the local hardware stores both Tucker and Danny’s parents frequented for parts.
Mr. Willow shakily pulled out a key and jammed it in a nearby door, or attempted to. He switched to a different key, cursing as the dog stalked closer.
The dog pounced; Danny shot in front of the dog and put up an ecto-shield, which it bounced off of with a whimper. The massive dog shook itself off as it stood up, and growled—a grating sound unlike any Danny had ever heard, as though it came from Hell itself.
Or, maybe from the Ghost Zone, despite the pitch black color. The dog was apparently invisible to humans, after all, although somehow Mr. Willow still saw it. And the dog did have an otherworldly feel to it. Something was strange though; there was no ghostly glow, and Danny’s ghost sense hadn’t gone off.
“Ugh, I think you need something for your throat,” Danny told the dog, as Mr. Willow finally got his door open.
The dog pounced again; Danny braced himself, but it bypassed him, headed right for the man…
Danny let out a relieved breath as the man got the door closed just in time, the dog slamming into it with a yelp; strange that it didn’t use any phasing ability.
Danny shot an ecto-blast at the dog, to little effect. Was this not a ghost after all? Or was the thick fur protecting it?
The thing pounced in Danny’s distraction, knocking him to the ground and pinning him via pressing its massive paws down on his chest. Danny pushed against it, but it was strong! It was also just staring at him instead of trying to finish him off, despite looking angry. Was it awaiting orders or something? Did it not actually want to kill? Cujo had just wanted to play, after all; but this dog had definitely planned to kill Mr. Willow, of that Danny was certain.
The dog then yelped as it tumbled off Danny, a green metal harpoon sticking out of the dog’s side.
“Don’t you dare hunt my prey,” Skulker, at the end of the alley, warned the dog as he stalked over to it and then bent over it. “Hmm. Such a strange creature; perfect for a rug, I think. You better not vanish like the other one.”
Danny scrambled up and summoned the thermos. While the hunter ghost was distracted by the dog, Danny jumped up and grabbed Skulker’s head, twisting it off and then sucking the blob inside into the thermos, leaving the suit to clatter to the ground, upon which it dissolved; huh, so the hunter’s newest suit was actually ecto-based this time, interesting. Danny then moved the beam to the injured dog, but it harmlessly passed over the still mound of black fur. Danny then noted that Skulker’s weapon had vanished with the suit, leaving black blood pouring out of a gaping hole.
“So, not a ghost then,” Danny concluded.
Danny jumped back slightly in surprise as a pool of smoldering fire appeared under the dog’s corpse. The dog sunk into the fire before the fire extinguished itself, leaving nothing but a faint smell of sulfur.
“Okay then. Definitely not a ghost. Well, I’ll figure it out later; now, I gotta meet Sam and Tucker.”
Danny stared at where the strange bedsheet-clad skeleton-like possibly-fake ghost had dissolved in the middle of the broken windmill challenge at the minigolf course. He, Sam, and Tucker had almost managed to get through all the holes this time, yet alas, it seemed that that was never meant to be—seven times since the accident they had tried, only to always get interrupted by a ghost. And after all this damage? Danny would bet they’d all get banned even if they claimed it was a ghost that did it.
Danny was about to float down to his friends and change back before the manager got there when he heard barking in the distance. Familiar ethereal hellish barking. Was the black dog back? It was coming from the direction of Mr. Willow’s shop… Surely it wasn’t after him again?
Danny zoomed off in the direction of the noise.
Sure enough, Mr. Willow was being chased by another black dog. Or, the same one? The other seemed to die but you never knew with supernatural creatures. No, this one was different; the size was bigger and the ears were a little further apart. Maybe. The lack of injury intuited that it was a different one too, but the dogs could just be fast-healing.
Danny tackled the dog this time. Mr. Willow glanced back, but kept running. Danny grabbed the dog’s thick spiked collar (he noted this implied ownership; had someone sicced it on Mr. Willow?) and tried a close-range ecto-blast, but it didn’t seem to do much other than annoy the dog as the dog began chasing Mr. Willow again, Danny still clutching the collar around the dog’s furry neck.
Danny wondered what he could do. It didn’t feel like a ghost, but maybe ghost-adjacent. Kinda like the demon, come to think of it… Could demons be dogs? Danny summoned the ecto-dagger that had worked on the demon at Stanford and stabbed the dog in the side of the neck just above the collar.
The dog yelped as black blood spurted from the wound; Danny must have hit an artery. He jumped off it, but not before he got splashed with a good spray of the rotten-smelling blood. Ugh; thankfully he could phase it off!
But, not yet; now he had to dodge another lunge from the dog, which was moving a little sluggishly and looked confused. Danny tried to stab it again but the dog turned last second and Danny cried out as its teeth drove into his arm, causing the dagger to clatter to the ground. Danny tried grabbing its jaw as it thrashed around only for his hand to end up on the dog’s still-bleeding neck, his fingers actually sliding into the wound.
The dog let go of Danny’s arm as it howled, and Danny twisted, telekinetically pulling the knife back to his hand and stabbing it upwards into the dog’s jaw.
The howling petered to a stop and the dog flopped to the ground with an audible THUD. Yup, definitely not a ghost.
Once again, as the dog died(?), a circle of fire formed below it and then engulfed it, leaving only a trace scent of sulfur.
“These dogs are too weird; I gotta call Dean,” Danny muttered to himself as the fire faded.
Danny dismissed the dagger and clutched his arm, wincing slightly at the ectoplasm slowly bubbled out; not as bad as Danny had expected, honestly, but still painful. He glanced around, noting some citizens had been watching, thankfully at a safe distance this time (some could get brazen); he quickly phased the dog blood off him and flew off.
Danny decided to walk home as he talked. After invisibly ducking into an alley to change to his human form, making sure to wrap his arm with a summoned bandage first (his lair must look like a warehouse at this point; he really should actually find it someday) so as not to get all that ecto on the leather jacket Dean had gotten him, Danny pulled his cell phone out and quickly dialed the contact for Dean as he moved in the direction of Fentonworks. The phone rang once, twice…
“Let me guess: got another supernatural issue?” Dean’s voice rang out with amusement.
Danny laughed. “Got it in one.”
“If it’s another mummy, I’m heading over, because I’m bummed I missed the last one.”
“Actually, the mummy just turned out to just be a ghost, not an actual mummy,” Danny revealed. He opted not to mention that weird relationship it had with Tucker. “I was wondering what you know about black dogs?”
“Black dogs?”
“Yeah. But, invisible ones, to humans. I can see them and the ghosts can see them but the humans can’t, except for Mr. Willow who they seem to be chasing. They kinda feel like ghosts, but not, at the same time. You take one down and another appears not long after.”
“Hellhounds, it sounds like; but, how are you even taking them down? Do ecto-blasts work?”
“No, those don’t seem to do much. Not sure if they’re actually immune or if the fur insulates them from it. Skulker—he’s a hunter ghost, lowercase ‘h’—got one with a harpoon though. He mentioned he killed one earlier but I dunno how, maybe the same way. I killed the third with an ecto-knife, it bled black blood. Then it vanished into a pool of fire, kinda like the exorcism did.”
“Oh yeah, definitely a hellhound then.”
“How do I protect people from them?” Danny wondered.
Dean sighed. “Unfortunately, kid, you can’t. More will just keep coming, and before you know it you’ll be at war with Hell itself since they ain’t gonna just let people keep killing their dogs.”
“But I can’t just let them kill people!”
“Yeah, you can, kid. People who get hellhounds after them signed up for it.”
“What? Wait, so they really are just attacking the one guy? They’re not gonna go after others?”
“Nope, everyone else should be safe. Only the one they’re targeting can see them, well as far as humans go, guess ghosts are different. Anyway, standard demon deal is that the person gets whatever they want for ten years, and then the dogs come to collect the person’s soul. That guy knew what he was getting into when he made the deal.”
“So then… you’re saying I should just let the dogs take him?”
“Exactly. Hellhounds just aren’t something you mess with.”
Danny hesitated, unsure how to respond to that. Was that really the only solution? He didn’t like doing that. Mr. Willow was a citizen of Amity Park, and Danny was supposed to protect all the citizens.
“Look, kid, I know it sucks,” Dean said, apparently guessing Danny’s thoughts. “I’ve been in your shoes, trust me. You want to protect everyone, and that’s not a bad thing. But sometimes you gotta make tough choices. You mess with the hellhounds too much and soon the demons will show up too, then everyone will be in danger. So just let them collect the fee, and they’ll be gone. Got it?”
Danny sighed with mild frustration. He wasn’t happy about it, but unfortunately what Dean said made sense. If the demons did get angry about the dogs being killed and came to Amity Park then it would not end well for the citizens overall; to protect more people, he had to let the dogs take Mr. Willow. There was no way to save everyone in this scenario; even if he tried fighting the demons, and succeeded, people would die, because demons played dirty. Demons had to possess people to be in their world, and would fight as those people, not caring if the damage to the body, which could be possessed regardless of living or dead, was too much for the human to survive once the demon left. Save one person and doom many others, or let one person die so the many could survive. Classic trolly problem.
“Kid, you there? You get that you have to leave this be?”
“Yeah, I get it,” Danny sullenly confirmed, then decided to change the subject. “So, what about you and Ember? Anything interesting happen since that wendigo last week? Ember said you two were in Washington, right? The state?”
Dean scoffed. “Oh, yeah, that was interesting all right. We just finished with the investigation, actually. There were rumors of vampires, which we were pretty excited about seeing as they’re supposedly all gone, but it turned out to just be some night club trying to capitalize on that new vampire romance novel. By legit biting people.”
Danny scrunched his nose. “Eww, seriously? People do that?”
“Apparently. I’m telling you, humans, man. Anyway, so now we’re heading to Colorado, something about weird ghost animals in the woods, Ember thinks it could be some of your brand of ghosts, an open natural portal or something.”
“Really?” Danny asked, perking up at that. “Can I come?”
“Haha, yeah, no. You’ve got school.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I do know that. Your sister gave me a copy of your school schedule.”
“Dammit, Jazz,” Danny muttered
Ember’s voice then rang out after the sound of a door slamming. “I’ve got the pizza! Oooh, who’s on the phone? Is that Babypop?”
Dean chuckled. “Looks like your other ‘sister’ wants to chat with you.”
“You don’t need to use that cover when it’s just us,” Danny pointed out.
“Eh, the practice helps make sure we don’t slip up when it does matter. Now—hey!”
“Hi Babypop!” Ember greeted, evidently having stolen the phone. “Did he tell you about the cool vampire night club?”
“Yeah, but it sounded more weird than cool,” Danny said with a chuckle.
“Well, if you ignore the blood thing it was pretty ballin’. Dean even got laid by one of the vamp chicks!”
“Hey! That’s not something you announce!” Dean’s voice rang; Ember must have put it on speaker. “And how do you even know that!?”
Ember snickered. “Anyway, Babypop, gotta go before the pizza gets cold, but call me later, okay? Rumor has it you met with Clockwork recently so I know there’s gotta be a story there! Maybe involving time travel…?”
Danny groaned. “Ugh, yeah, that was a doozy. Let’s just say that Vlad is apparently a huge ass in every timeline and leave it there for now. Anyway, I should get home now—enjoy your pizza!”
“Buh-bye, Babypop!” Ember said at the same time Dean said, “See ya around, kid.” Then, the phone beeped, signalling a hang-up.
Danny noted that he was close to home, but not quite there yet, meaning he ought to call someone else—well, two someones.
“So, gonna explain why you ran off and forced us to clean up the golf course?” Sam dryly answered. “We found your pair of Fenton Phones in the rubble, by the way.”
Danny winced. “They really made you clean that all up? Don’t they have ghost insurance?”
“Nope,” Tucker said. “No cameras, either.”
“But, it should be obvious the damage was from an ecto-blast?”
“Apparently not to the minigolf course manager.”
“What did you even fly off so fast for, anyway?” Sam asked, sounding like she was trying her best not to let her anger reign free.
Danny sighed, feeling bummed as he recalled that particular situation. “Another one of those weird dogs. I called Dean about it, and…” Danny explained to the two all about hellhounds and what the best course of action for that situation was.
“Damn,” Tucker said quietly when Danny finished. “Mr. Willow was a pretty cool guy, too.”
“What was even worth selling his soul for?” Sam wondered, seeming calmer than earlier.
Danny shrugged even though the two couldn’t see him. “Beats me.”
“Love,” Tucker said. “Quick search shows his wife was gonna get married to some other guy ten years ago today. They broke up at the alter, it was a huge scandal.”
“And suddenly, Mr. Willow doesn’t seem so nice anymore,” Sam stated flatly.
“I still don’t like having to just let him die though,” Danny said miserably. “I know he made the deal, but he’s still part of Amity Park… Anyway, I gotta go now,” he told them as he neared his house. “See you tomorrow.” Once the other two echoed him, Danny hung up the phone and entered his house.
From the sound of it, Danny’s parents were in the lab working on something, which wasn’t entirely unexpected; they didn’t notice him come home thanks to his lack of footsteps, which they still never noticed (along with all the other ghostly slip-ups, somehow). As also was expected, although his parents agreed to make it due to Jazz being at a library book club, dinner wasn’t even started despite it being nearly 7pm.
Danny tossed his backpack on the living room couch before entering the kitchen, upon which he sighed as he noted the half-assembled ecto-glock on the kitchen table. Welp, looks like that promise Jack and Maddie made to Lancer and Jazz to to keep all weapons work to the lab or ops center had already been broken… for the, what was it, eighth time in the past month? Well, at least finding dangerous half-finished weapons and experiments throughout the house had been significantly reduced, since it used to be daily…
And, wow, was that a spilled beaker of some corrosive material eating through the kitchen counter? Danny debated cleaning it up, like he used to do, or leaving it there. It was probably safer for everyone to take the time to clean it, but Danny’s hunger surprisingly was overriding that protective urge, and it seemed to have finished whatever it did to the counter anyway. Danny snapped a photo of it with his phone and sent it to Jazz to warn her about it.
Unfortunately, a quick check of the fridge revealed that the only thing potentially edible in there, and only really edible for Danny, was a package of ecto-contaminated chicken legs, obviously so as it had become reanimated and was thrashing around angrily. Danny took the monstrosity down with an ecto-blast, miserably noting that the chicken legs had destroyed basically everything on the middle fridge level, breaking open the curdled milk, orange juice, and condiments, and the mess had seeped onto everything on the bottom level destroying everything there (well, maybe not destroying, given plenty was in sealed containers, but Danny was too tired to try finding something in the sticky gross mess). The vegetable drawer revealed a mass of half-rotten fruits and veggies (he could probably sort some good ones out from that too but didn’t feel like doing that either). The freezer did have some frozen meats and vegetables, but Danny was hungry now and did not want to risk using the ‘Fenton Auto-Defrost’ invention that reanimated things as much as it defrosted things.
The cabinets were largely bare too; there were pastas and grains that could be cooked, but nothing to put on them and Danny didn’t want to eat plain pasta or rice. The snacks needed to be resupplied too; no chips, no granola bars, not even fudge. All that was left were the rice cakes that Jazz snacked on, which Danny wasn’t a fan of. There was cereal too, but that needed milk, which had been obliterated by the chicken legs.
Danny grabbed a few vials of ectoplasm samples from the top shelf of the fridge, which would be an okay dinner substitute for him. Jazz would have to eat one of the premade meals the school had provided them, which were in a secret mini-fridge in Jazz’s room. Danny could have one too, but he didn’t want to use them up so fast—yeah, Lancer and Ishiyama wouldn’t call CPS, given Danny’s situation, which was the whole reason they were the ones helping with food and stuff, but Danny didn’t want to worry them even more than he already was.
Danny flew up the stairs and into his room, not bothering to open the door, and then immediately downed one of the vials of ectoplasm; he must have been hungrier than expected! Well, he did fight a lot that day.
“About time you got here!” came a shout from the bed followed by, “Wait, did you really just drink straight ectoplasm?!”
Danny immediately swerved around to face the bed, growled, and summoned an ecto-dagger as he positioned into a battle stance, hoping that was the right call and he didn’t need a silver dagger (maybe he could combine the two to make a silver ecto-blade?).”Who are you and why are you in my room?!”
The girl, who looked to be about twelve and had bright blue eyes and long black hair tied into a ponytail poking out from under a red beanie, squeaked and hopped backwards, tumbling over the side of the bed.
Danny leapt onto the bed so that he crouched over her, dagger at the ready; she looked like a kid, yeah, but in Danny’s line of work, that could be deceiving. Her oversized pale blue hoodie could easily hide multiple weapons, too, as could her baggy gray jeans.
“Whoa, whoa, hey!” the girl shouted, holding her hands out towards Danny as she laid on the floor. “I come in peace! I’m your, uh, third cousin once removed, I’m here because I need a place to stay!”
Danny frowned, evaluating her. There was something off about her. He couldn’t sense things as well as Ember could, although she was teaching him, but it didn’t feel like the girl was overshadowed… at least, not by a ghost. There was an energy though, semi-ghostly? But muted, like it was suppressed? It was a little like those weird possibly-fake ghosts, actually, but unlike them the girl clearly was sentient.
Danny then remembered the hellhounds, and what Dean said might happen if too many were killed. Three could be too many. “Are you a demon?” he demanded of the girl.
“Am I a… what?” the girl asked, confused. Or, faking confusion? The demon in Brady had fooled Dean’s brother for a while, so acting wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
Danny summoned a vial of holy water from his lair, uncorked it with his teeth, and dumped it on the girl’s face.
“Hey, whoa, what the hell was that for?!” the girl protested, blinking her eyes and trying to shake some of the water off of her. She stood; Danny tensed, but allowed it, seeing no burns.
Not a demon, then. But was she really his cousin? He hadn’t heard of any extended family so close to his age. What was a third cousin once removed again? The removed meant generation higher or lower, right? She was too young to have kids, so that meant the kid of a third cousin? And that would be… um. A first cousin would be his parents’ sibling’s kid, a second would be his grandparent’s sibling’s grandkid, so a third would be a great-grandparent’s sibling’s great-grandkid? He knew his grandparents on both sides had siblings. Danny tried to think if any of his great-grandparents had any siblings. Both of them had died well before Danny was born, but Jazz had done a genealogy project at some point, and Danny thought he maybe recalled that they did.
“Um, hello? Zoning out much?” the girl said, waving a hand in front of Danny’s face.
Danny growled, baring fangs, and jumped back off the bed, holding up the knife again.
“Whoa, jumpy much?” the girl said, holding out her hands again. Danny noticed there wasn’t any evidence of even a single drop of water mark on her; he recalled how he often phased off water instinctively. A ghost after all? But why was the signature so weak, almost cloaked… Like Vlad and Danny were in human form, Danny realized. Another halfa? But then, how? And come to think of it, she looked an awful lot like Danny—could a cousin resemble him that much?
“Who are you?” Danny demanded again.
“My name’s Dani, with an i,” Dani introduced. “Short for Danielle.”
Even more suspicious. “And you’re here why?”
“I needed a place to stay, since I ran away,” she told him. “Don’t tell your parents though—I don’t want them calling mine.”
Danny relaxed slightly and put the dagger away, recalling his own story about running away. But, wait—did she really? Her clothes looked perfectly fine. She didn’t look sleepy or hungry. “I won’t,” Danny told her. “But if you want food or anything, we’re basically out... Wait,” he said, remembering one more test he forgot. He summoned his silver dagger. “Touch this,” he instructed.
“Okay?” Dani said warily, though obliged; there was no reaction. “What was that supposed to do?” she asked as her eyes flashed green, as Danny’s often did when nervous.
Danny dismissed the dagger and summoned some Fenton Fishing Line; before the mysterious girl with the uncannily similar looks and name to Danny could think to move, Danny already had her tied up in the line with the line tied to a bedpost.
“What the hell!?” the girl protested, struggling. Danny used a ball of ectoplasm to gag her, belatedly realizing that that would lead her to suspect he wasn’t human—but he had a feeling she already knew that, as she clearly wasn’t entirely human too. Plus he had been summoning things pretty casually, and drank the ectoplasm in front of her.
Danny rushed to his desk and pulled out the three old Hunting journals Dean had lent him, relics from Hunters that had perished in the line of duty. Colorful post-it notes stuck out from between the pages, noting where different creatures had been mentioned (hellhounds absent, because of course Danny had to run into something that wasn’t in these journals); Danny had spent all of the previous weekend reading through them. He recalled one creature in particular, which two of the journals mentioned…
Danny quickly reread the notes on shapeshifters—shifters for short—and then sat in contemplation for a moment. The journals said silver should burn them, but it clearly didn’t. Plus, there was no mention about if a shifter could copy non-human creatures, and if so if they could have their abilities. They could also be identified by eyes reflecting direct light, although the girl’s had definitely glowed rather than reflected.
The rest of the notes were on how to kill them, but Danny didn’t want to kill a young girl, shifter or not. Or, just kill a shifter in general; he had a feeling that most shifters, like ghosts, just wanted to be left alone and did not use their powers for nefarious means. More reason would be needed to kill one, like with the serial killer werewolf.
Danny decided to do a stronger silver test. He knelt down in front of the girl and harshly grabbed her arm, still constrained by the line, and nicked her with the silver knife; the girl flinched and the wound quickly began to close, although not before Danny noted some blood trickle out… But, the blood was a sickly brown color, almost a little greenish. Shifters should have human-like red blood, not brown. Plus, the silver didn’t burn.
The girl twisted away the best she could, glaring at Danny with glowing eyes. Danny leaned back on his heels and frowned. He used telekinesis to pull a flashlight to him from his desk, then shined it in the girl’s eyes. She quickly closed them, but not before enough light hit for Danny to realize that they did not reflect light like a mirror, as was characteristic for shifters…
Danny summoned his ecto-blade and nicked the girl’s arm with that; she hissed through the gag in protest. Okay, that one did burn; the flesh around it was reddish, and the cut was healing a little slower. That lent some credibility to a ghost, or at least a ghost-adjacent being, but didn’t rule out a creature, though; the ecto-blade worked on demons too, as well as on the hellhounds. It could work on shifters too. In fact, if the shifter copied Danny’s powers, it would follow that an ecto-blade would work on it. That could explain the weird blood, too, if it tried to copy ectoplasm but got a mix.
Danny stood up and paced back and forth a bit, thinking of what else he could do. Quickly concluding that he wasn’t going to solve this mystery alone, Danny stopped abruptly, then pulled out his phone and called Dean.
“Please don’t tell me you ganked more hellhounds,” Dean tiredly answered, the sound of the impala’s motor in the background.
“No, no, gonna leave those things alone just like you said,” Danny told him. It was also highly possible, if not certain, that one already got Mr. Willow by now.
“Then what is it? If you wanna talk to Ember, she’s flying behind the car, but if I beep my horn she’ll come back.”
“No, she can keep flying; I’m calling with another mystery,” Danny revealed. “I read those Hunters’ journals you lent me, the ones from Hunters who didn’t make it, and I’m pretty sure I have some sort of shifter here? But, I’m wondering if there have been any shifters that could shift into other creatures? And don’t react to silver? And don’t have the eye flare? And can be slightly different from a person, like gender and maybe age?”
“Uh. Not that I know of. You sure it’s a shifter?”
“No idea. But she’s claiming to be my third cousin once removed yet looks more like my sister than my actual sister, and says her name is Dani, with an i. She has a strange energy to her, kinda like a ghost but it’s dim and she’s more solid?”
“Thought all your ghosts were solid?”
“Yeah, I don’t mean physical solid, more… I dunno, her presence?” Danny tried to explain. “Maybe it’s something only ghosts can feel, but it’s like she’s more bound to the physical plane compared to a normal ghost.”
“Ember said that about you once. Could this chick be like you?”
“I mean, I guess, but do you know how exceedingly rare that is? Plus her blood was a brownish color, mine’s green. And halfa formation basically always happens in a lab, with a manmade portal, but the only people I know who do portal stuff are my parents and—” Danny cut himself off. “Oh, crap. I could totally see him doing that.”
“See who doing what?” Dean asked worriedly.
“Vlad. The crazy fruitloop mad scientist I told you about, the one who’s obsessed with me being his son. Or more specifically, having a half-ghost heir.”
“You think he would try to, what, kidnap a kid and turn them into one?”
“Oh yeah, definitely wouldn’t put it past him. The fact that she looks so much like me can’t be a coincidence either. Weird that he’d choose a girl though, really thought he was more obsessed with the heir being a son…” Danny glanced at the girl, noting that her eyes definitely looked extremely panicked. Yeah, they were definitely onto something with this theory. “Blood’s still weird, but red and green do make brown, so maybe however he made her did that.”
“Need us to come help you? If that guy’s involved, things could get dicey.”
“No, you should investigate that ghost activity in Colorado first, I can handle some kid and Vlad’s more annoying than anything. See ya.”
“See ya, kid. Be careful.” With that, Dean hung up.
Danny snapped his phone shut and put it on his desk, then sat in the desk chair and turned to the trapped girl—Dani, if that was even her real name. With a wave of his hand the ecto-gag vanished.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Dani raged. “I came to you for help, and you tie me up?!”
Danny crossed his arms and draped one leg over the other. “You’re not my third cousin. You’re a half-ghost. You’re a product of one of Vlad’s experiments. You claim to be running away, but that could easily be a ploy to get me to lower my guard. What, did he claim that if you kill me he’d accept you as his daughter or something?”
“I am Vlad’s daughter!” Dani asserted. “He already accepts me! He loves me!”
“So he brainwashed you, that’s just great,” Danny said sarcastically. He vaguely noted that he probably should approach this more delicately, but he was just so tired that he didn’t care.
“I’m not brainwashed! Let me go.”
“What, so you could hurt me or my family? Did that ass tell you to kill Dad and kidnap Mom or something too?”
“He’s not an ass! And I really did run away!”
“Okay, then humor me: why?”
“Because—because—um…” Dani clearly was scrambling for an answer, obviously not having expected to need more of a story.
“Thought so,” Danny said. “Look, I’ve run away before. I was a mess when I did, emotionally and physically. I also had a reason for running. You? You look like you flew right here from wherever he experimented on you, brand-new clothes and all. Hell, you’re wearing light blue Converse yet not even the soles look dirty!
“Also, the fact that you think he accepts you and loves you, and are super defensive of him, is more proof of that. You didn’t run, you’re here on a mission. And you know what? If Vlad truly loves you so much, then he can come get you.” Danny summoned an empty thermos (he carried multiple now just in case, and he wasn’t cruel enough to trap the girl with Skulker) and aimed it at the girl.
“What are you doing?!” Dani demanded, struggling in the fishing line. “He said that you were the good guy, a protector!”
“I am,” Danny told Dani sternly. “And if you truly believe you’re Vlad’s daughter and are carrying out his dirty work, then you are a danger to my town and not welcome here.” He activated the thermos, sucking Dani into it and leaving the fishing line the only evidence she had been there.
Danny stood there for a moment, processing what just happened, what he’d just done. He looked down at the thermos. Had that been the right move? She was just a kid, likely kidnapped before being experimented on and brainwashed. A part of who she was prior must be in there somewhere. Maybe Danny could learn who she was? He’d have Tucker do a search for missing persons that matched her description; if they could find out who she was, they could reunite her with her family, and then maybe that would help undo the brainwashing… Wait, wasn’t there something they’d used to undo something similar in the past?
Danny’s ghost sense then went off, and he groaned. Seriously? More? It better not be another one of those strange barely-ghosts that simply said ‘change back’ and then dissolved… He’d jinxed it, hadn’t he?
Danny transformed and flew through his wall, then quickly concluded that, yup, he’d jinxed it.
“Wait wait wait,” Tucker said at lunch the next day. “Are you serious? Vlad really experimented on kids?”
“Looks like it,” Danny said. He had just finished telling Sam and Tucker about the situation with ‘Danielle’.
The discussion had to wait until lunch as Danny had been running too late to tell them before classes. The reason for this was due to the morning news being on, with a report on a strange ‘ghostly’ incident involving him, meaning the previous day’s fight against the hellhound.
Danny fully expected the news to claim he was losing his mind or something by fighting nonexistent ghosts, given the dogs were invisible to humans, but it surprisingly wasn’t. Some people had filmed the fight, and one happened to have a very expensive ecto-proof camera. The press had footage from a regular camera, which just showed Danny as a blur of black and white static fighting nothing, side-by-side with the ecto-proof one’s footage, which surprisingly had actually caught the big ugly dog on it.
It also reported on Mr. Willow being killed later that night by an apparent animal attack (why the hell had he taken a walk through the park!?). Seeing as fairly recently three people had been killed in similar attacks near the same park (from a now-dead werewolf, but few actually knew that), people were understandably concluding that a new species of invisible murderous ghost dogs had infiltrated Amity Park.
Danny would have to somehow try to ease that fear; maybe he could tell the press that it had been a small pack that he had Ended? Of course, he was known for capturing ghosts, not Ending them… But maybe he could say that any ghosts that killed humans get that punishment? That could also help ease fears that ghosts in general would suddenly start killing people. He could say the fire was related maybe; apparently everyone had seen that, camera or no.
They’d also all seen that Phantom was using a Fentonworks ecto-dagger to fight the dog, and (correctly?) concluded that ecto-blasts, and presumably similar guns, didn’t affect the dogs at all. Cue his parents immediately getting call-in orders for them, and presumably website orders too. Danny was not too thrilled with the fact that apparently a large portion of the town’s citizens were now going to be carrying daggers around.
Anyway, back to Sam and Tucker. Danny also could have called to tell them about Danielle the previous night, but he hadn’t wanted to risk the possibility that Vlad had the phones bugged—his own wasn’t, being a special Fentonworks design that ran on an independent network, but Sam and Tucker’s easily could be. Vlad’s hidden camera bugs weren’t an issue though; Tucker had designed counter-bugs that could seek them out using Plasmius’s ecto-signature (as he used his own ectoplasm to charge them) and destroy them. All their homes (secretly) had those.
“Just when we thought Vlad couldn’t get creepier,” Sam said dryly.
“So, what, the plan is to just wait until Vlad comes to get her?” Tucker confirmed, gesturing to the thermos in front of Danny.
Danny shook his head. “No, that’s what I told her, but I was thinking maybe we could try talking to her? I mean, she’s clearly brainwashed, you know? So I was thinking after school we could release her in one of the lab cages and try talking, maybe get her to remember that she’s not actually Vlad’s daughter. If not we can use that helmet you made, Tucker. You know, the one we used to deprogram you from Ember’s hypnosis.”
Tucker shivered slightly at the memory. “For her sake, really hope it doesn’t come to that.”
A familiar icy gasp then escaped Danny’s lips. He groaned. “Oh, great, what now?”
“At least it’s a ghost and not a hellhound,” Sam pointed out.
“Think it’s another of those fake ghosts?” Tucker asked.
“Well, whatever it is, I better go check it out,” Danny said, standing up. “Keep the thermos with her safe, I’ll be right—ah, shit.”
Before Danny could grab the thermos from the table, a large blur snatched the thermos up, too fast to see for sure but from the feel of it definitely was Vlad. The speed knocked the trays around them into the air, food flying all over; Danny used the chaos to duck under the table so he could turn invisible, wincing as he heard someone yell about a food fight just before he invisibly flew out of the school building.
Danny found Vlad standing on a nearby flat rooftop of a four-story apartment building. Danny wondered why Vlad always seemed to like standing so much when floating was so much easier. His invisibility dropped as he attempted a high-speed tackle to grab the thermos, but Vlad easily dodged; Danny stopped in midair and turned to face the man, growling.
Vlad tilted his head slightly, a strange look on his face. “Daniel, you do realize you’re in human form right now?”
Danny looked down at himself. “Oh. Oops,” he said as he realized; good thing he flew invisibly here. He refused to admit that he was blushing as he quickly changed to Phantom form.
“How do you not notice—oh, nevermind that.” Vlad activated the thermos in his hand, releasing Danielle.
Danielle stretched out her back. “Aww, shit, that thing is so not comfy!”
“Language,” Vlad hissed at the girl. “Honestly!”
“Sorry, Daddy,” Danielle said a little sheepishly. “And, sorry for failing the mission.”
“Oh no, you didn’t fail, girl,” Vlad told her, giving her a smile that Danny interpreted as conniving but Danielle seemed to drink in as though it were genuine pride. “You did as best as could be expected; better, in fact.” He put a hand on her head and she preened at the attention; then, Vlad turned to Danny. “I am, however, surprised with you, Daniel.”
“Me?” Danny asked, unsure what to do in this situation. Let Vlad talk? Would just doing that work, or should Danny demand more information? Vlad did tend to ramble about his plans without needing much prompting.
“Why yes. A fellow halfa, claiming to be your kin, shows up, and instead of offering her hospitality and friendship you capture her in a thermos, talking about interrogating her later? Not at all as I expected, although I am somewhat proud—after all, you’ve always been much too trusting, so a healthy dose of wariness is an improvement.”
“More like paranoia,” Dani bitterly muttered, arms crossed and glaring at the ground.
Danny scoffed. “Dude, anyone would be suspicious.”
“Perhaps,” Vlad said. “Although, I must make a correction to your earlier assumptions: I did not kidnap anyone. Danielle is very much my own creation.”
Danny frowned. “What do you mean? The thermos worked, so she’s not a robot. And she can’t be yours biologically—halfas are infertile, right?” He wasn’t sure of that, but he figured it made sense given the DNA was mutated. “Otherwise you’d have gotten an heir the traditional way instead of trying to force me into the role.”
Vlad growled and his glowing red eyes narrowed, anger practically wafting off of him, which Danny took as confirmation of his suspicion. Instead of answering with words, Vlad shot an ecto-blast at Danny, which was easily dodged.
Danny grinned. “Fighting time, huh?” He shot off two blasts at Vlad, which were easily dodged. “Good; I got a real beef you with, kidnapping and experimenting on kids!”
Vlad growled. “Again, I did not kidnap anyone! At least, not yet.” He flew forward; Danny dodged.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Danny demanded, though Vlad didn’t answer as the fight began in earnest, increasing in violence as it went, soon devolving into more fists and kicks than longer-range attacks. The venomosity between the two was strong enough for even a human to taste, Danny was sure. Vlad seemed nearly rabid, relentlessly attacking without any of the usual pauses to speak.
Danny cried out as a counter of Vlad’s flung him into the roof, landing on his back, his transformation rings accidentally activating and switching him back to his default human form.
“Sheesh, Vlad, intense much?” Danny asked as he scrambled to his feet, surprised and a little worried, given the violence was escalating and they’d migrated closer to the school, the building right next to it. The man seemed to have a determination that Danny wasn’t used to. “Not even a stupid crack at my dad or lame come on about my mom?”
Danny let out a truncated yelp as Vlad managed to grab him by the throat and slammed him into a large metal air vent sticking out from the roof.
As Danny kicked his legs and grabbed the hands at his throat, unable to phase though them, Vlad said coldly, “No, dear boy. Funny joke around Vlad isn’t here today.” He tightened his hands, then frowned, some slight befuddlement seeping into the coldness, as though he were confused at why the choking wasn’t doing much.
Danny took advantage of Vlad’s distraction to partially phase his rear into the vent to get his legs high enough to bunny kick Vlad away, then flew forward and slammed his fist into the other halfa’s stomach, knocking him back into a chimney hard enough to crack the bricks.
Danny transformed back to Phantom and started charging an ecto-blast.
“Daddy!” Danielle shouted, followed by an ecto-blast slamming into Danny’s back causing his to fizzle out.
Danny swerved around to face the girl. “Stay out of this!” he yelled at her, noting that she had transformed—just like her human form was, her ghost form was a mirror of Danny, although the outfit was weirdly a little more showy given it used a crop top. The pants were also flared, the white boots more angled, and the top was divided diagonally down the front with one side being a black shirt with a white glove and the other a white shirt with a black glove. Danny was a little jealous, honestly; it looked so much cooler than his suit! Wait, now wasn’t the time for that.
“No! I won’t let you hurt my dad,” Danielle adamantly asserted.
“He’s not your father!”
“He is! He’s my dad and he loves me!”
Danny let out a barking laugh. “Love? Seriously? That man loves nothing but himself. He’s not capable of it. Even the thing with my mom is just some creepy—AHHHH!”
Danny arched back as ecto-electricity jolted through him. Since when did Vlad have an electric attack this strong? Wait, no, something hard was pressed against the center of his back—some sort of taser weapon? Damn, Danny hadn’t expected Vlad to supplement his ghost attacks with actual weapons.
The attack abruptly ended, and Danny floated there dizzily for a moment, twitching slightly as he desperately tried to push away some very unwelcome flashbacks to the portal accident and collect himself enough to continue the fight.
Unfortunately, Danny managed to sort himself out a moment too late, as Danielle followed up with a spectacular ecto-augmented kick, launching Danny diagonally downward through the air right towards the school; his back arched as it hit the edge of the school roof, and Danny fell to the ground, landing hard on top of the dumpster below before tumbling off it and onto the ground.
Shaking slightly, Danny tried to float to a more vertical position, but instead the transformation rings washed over him and he collapsed belly-down onto the ground, limbs splayed and feeling like jelly. He craned his neck up to see Vlad and Danielle looming over him before consciousness escaped him.