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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Christine Daaé/Erik | Phantom of the Opera Characters: Christine Daaé, Erik | Phantom of the Opera, Raoul de Chagny, Meg Giry, Nadir Khan, Madame Giry, Joseph Buquet, Ubaldo Piangi, Carlotta Giudicelli Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - 1950s Summary:

When Erik sees his little birdie, he has no choice but to procure her hand in marriage. For a man like him, he must live every day like it's his last.

It's up, in all its un-proofread glory. 💛

W.I.P chapter three. 🥲

Rough doodle of a scene.

CHAAAPTER FOOUURR IN PROGRESSSS!

It's up!

CHAAAPTER FOOUURR IN PROGRESSSS!

Cozy/Slasher 3

It took more arguing than it should have, but they finally put together something of a timeline.  At least, a timeline of when everyone had gotten to the party and what they said they had been doing.  Not, unfortunately, of what had happened.  

But since none of them were mind readers… 

Okay, actually, Danny needed to ask Ghost Writer - Andrew - if that was part of his powerset.  It certainly wasn’t part of Danny’s.  As occasionally useful (and creepy) as overshadowing was, knowing what the person he was overshadowing was thinking was beyond him.  

As far as Danny knew, none of them were mind readers.  So, they had to work with what they were given.  And what they were given was a headache and a half.  

Mr. Lancer had been there alone for most of the morning.  

(If any of them knew how to tell how long a body had been dead (or if they had internet access) that might have been an important data point.)

He’d asked Technus (Nicholas Tea, aka ghosts were horrible at aliases apparently, and, no, Danny wasn’t considering himself an exception) to come early to help him set up the game system and some other electronics that weren’t working quite right.  Danny made a note to go over everything Technus had worked on.  Not because he thought Technus had killed anyone, but because he didn’t trust the ghost not to have added something ectoplasmic that would animate all the wires in the house.  

After that, Irving Burns (Nasty Burger guy), was the first to arrive.  He’d come with desserts from the Nasty Burger and spent the time Technus was fixing things talking to Mr. Lancer about…  

“My drag hobby,” said Mr. Lancer.  He sounded nervous.  

“Like, drag racing?” asked Kwan.  

“No,” said Mr. Lancer, “as in, performance.”

Irving was staring at him with something like shock and…  From Mr. Falluca, was that disgust?  Whatever was on Lance Thunder’s face was just weird.  Like he couldn’t decide how to feel.  

Everyone else, well…

Yeah.  Danny was surprised, too.  But, in the long run, what Mr. Lancer did in his spare time wasn’t all that important.  

Ghost Writer had come in next, and had gotten into a ‘debate’ with Mr. Lancer and Technus about video game novelizations, novels made into video games, and video games with novels in them.  Danny was surprised the house was still standing after that.  Ghost Writer and Technus must really like Mr. Lancer.  

…  Was it possible that they had killed Mr. Lancer so they had a new ghost buddy?  Danny didn’t feel like that was super likely, but he decided to keep the thought in mind, anyway.  

During that time, Irving had just sort of… hung out, but since everyone else in the house had been otherwise involved, Danny didn’t see what he could have gotten up to.  

Then, Mrs. Ishiyama and Kwan had arrived, followed seconds later by Tetslaff.  They’d gone to put food items and presents in the kitchen.  

The Fallucas came next, and while Mikey and Kwan had disappeared into the game room together (weird), no one was entirely sure what Mr. Falluca was doing.  Hanging around the edges of the three way video game book debate.  

Combine that with his statement that he and Mikey had been on the first floor the whole time…

Yeah, that was suspicious.  

Then again, Tetslaff and Mrs. Ishiyama were also suspicious, because they had stayed in the kitchen.  Neither of them gave off the impression of being particularly enamored of kitchens.  

Irving had gone to talk to them at some point, but he hadn’t stayed long.  Suspicious again!

“What else were you doing?” asked the Beholder, raising an eyebrow.  “There’s not a lot to do in this house.”

“I’ll have you know,” said Irving, “that I was listening to their discussion.”  He nodded in the direction of Lancer, Technus, and Ghost Writer.  

Mr. Falluca sniffed.  “I highly doubt that, with your grades.  You might as well tell everyone what you were really doing.”

“Oh, come on, you kept pointing fingers at me about that all through school!  Will you never give it a break?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Lancer, “I don’t think that this is the place for that at all, James, and Irving has done quite well for himself these past few years.”

Mikey leaned around his father’s (admittedly small) figure and mouthed ‘sorry’ at Irving.  

The Beholder and the Thunder family had come after the Fallucas, but no one could remember the order.  

Star had immediately gone upstairs, and her father had followed her, although he’d come back down shortly after.  He said that he’d then had several one-on-one conversations on the ground floor.  

The Beholder had…  Beheld, Danny guessed.  Anyway, he’d camped out in the center of the living room and read poetry.  Loudly.  The whole time.  He’d gotten into a not-quite fight with Ghost Writer about it.  A rhyming fight.  

Danny was equal parts glad and sorry he’d missed it.  It sounded dreadful.  

Nothing really screamed ‘this guy had the opportunity to dismember an adult (probably) human with various power tools.’  The only people who were, by that accounting, alone together for a long time (other than ghosts who Danny was tentatively ruling out) were Tetslaff and Ishiyama, and Mikey and Kwan.  

Neither of those possibilities were ones he wanted to think about.  

On the other hand, everyone was very obviously thinking about them.  Especially Mr. Falluca, who was openly glaring at Kwan, Tetslaff, and Ishiyama.  Mostly at Kwan, however.  

“I’m not dead,” said Mikey. 

“We weren’t–” started Mr. Lancer.  

“You were.  But Kwan and I are friends.  I help him with his homework all the time!”

Wow, Mikey was really giving the homework slave thing a positive spin, there.  On the other hand, yeah.  Danny couldn’t see Kwan killing anyone, except maybe by accident.  

Mr. Lancer put his head in his hands as everyone started arguing with each other, with lots of finger pointing.  

“How do we know those three didn’t have something to do with it?” asked the Beholder.  Danny looked up just in time to see a finger jabbed first at him, then Sam, then Tucker.  

“Because we were here for, like, a minute before Danny found the body?” suggested Tucker.  “That’s a bit fast for a murder.”

“But he knew there was a body there.  You can’t just know when there’s a body.  At minimum, someone had to tell him.”

“Uncle Bobby,” said Star, “trust me when I say Fenton is just weird like that.  He finds so many bodies.”

“Excuse me?” said the Beholder.  “Bodies, as in, plural?  Am I the only one hearing this?”

“Putting all that aside,” said Mr. Lancer, removing his face from where it had been buried in his hands for the past several minutes.  

No one liked that.  

“PUTTING ALL THAT ASIDE,” he repeated, much louder, “I think we need to challenge some of our assumptions.  Collect clues.  Investigate.”

“Did you learn that in one of your novels?” grumbled Thunder.  

“Considering that you are in a novel,” said Ghost Writer, “there are worse places to look for inspiration.”

Mrs. Ishiyama sighed.  “What do you want to look at first, William?”

“Feasibility.  We’re all convinced that the power tools were the murder weapon, or at least what the killer used to…”  He trailed off, looking green.  “Well.  I did pay for good soundproofing, and I know you kids were playing the game, but is that enough to drown out power tools?”

“Great,” said Irving, pushing himself up out of the armchair.  “We can check these guys’ game scores or whatever at the same time.”

They went to the stairs, Danny, Sam, and Tucker hanging in the back as everyone else filed up the stairs.  

“Shouldn’t we be in the front?”

“We haven’t magically become detectives just because we’re in this situation,” said Danny.  

“Still, you are the most experienced with dead things.”

“Forget that,” said Sam, leaning close, “don’t you think this is all a bit strange?  This house, I mean.”

“Yeah, that it’s still under construction is weird,” said Tucker.  

Danny scrunched his nose.  “Is it?”

“Danny, your parents are outliers in everything.”

“Actually, how is Lancer affording this place?” mused Tucker.  “I didn’t think teachers made all that much.”

“We don’t,” said Mrs. Tetslaff, who had better ears than Danny had thought.  “He got some kind of inheritance thing.”

“Really?” asked Danny.  “Like, a big inheritance?”

“I don’t know,” said Tetslaff, shrugging aggressively.  “Before you get any ideas, it didn’t sound like something a guy would kill over.”  She turned to climb the stairs.

People killed over so very many stupid things, so Danny rather doubted that.  

“Oh, wow,” said Tucker, when they finally got into the gaming room.  “This is a sweet setup.”

“Yes, well,” said Mr. Lancer, “the idea was to have an enjoyable space for myself and my guests.”  He walked over to where a controller was sitting abandoned on the ground and clicked a button, which in turn woke the screen.  

Golden words spelled Apple of Eris on a red and black background.  

“Oh, man,” said Tucker.  “I’ve been wanting to try that game.”

“Mhm,” said Mr. Lancer, “I haven’t had a chance to play it yet myself.”

“Why?” asked Tucker.  “I’d’ve played it as soon as I got it!”

“Perhaps that explains the state of your recent essay.  You really have to stop spilling food on them.  It makes them very difficult to grade.”  

Mr. Lancer navigated to the ‘load game’ screen, and, sure enough, there were a variety of save files for two and three person games, all staggered across the last two hours.  They weren’t all even time jumps.  There were a couple big skips after Star joined in.  But, again, Danny couldn’t really imagine his classmates being murderers.  Victims, maybe, but not murderers.  

“There we are.  Now, let’s check the sound.”

“Actually,” said Danny, interrupting and turning to look at Technus.  “Can you show us the part you had to fix?”

Technus tapped his fingers together, somewhere between nervous and annoyed.  “I don’t know why you–”

“Just to see it.  I don’t think it was you, but it’s still good to be able to see what you were doing.”  Plus, he wanted Technus and Ghost Writer to be ruled out in other people’s minds, too.  

Technus, grudgingly, popped the side off the console and pointed.  

“Huh,” said Tucker, slipping around Danny, “I’m not super familiar with this type of console…  But is that standard?  What did it connect to, do you know?”

Technus shrugged.  “That’s part of what created the problem: A small short!  One I repaired rapidly!”

At least everyone here had been telling the truth.  

“Now,” said Lancer, “we will need some people here, to play the game, some on the first floor, to listen, and someone upstairs to run the power tools.”

Silence.  

Kwan raised his hand, hesitantly.  

“Yes, Kwan?”

“Uh, Mr. Lancer,” said Kwan, “I haven’t read many mysteries, but isn’t splitting up usually a bad thing?”

A question like that could only be followed by one thing: an argument.  

Quit Your School, Join My Ghost Band

@brokeitwiththepowerofmathamatics

.

Danny screamed into the void.  It screamed back, quite literally, ectoplasm and pseudo-emotional loci echoing the sound and feelings back at him.  The tree next to him was stripped of leaves, but regrew them even before Danny dropped to his knees, gasping.  

He couldn’t breathe.  He couldn’t breathe.  He curled in on himself, hands grasping at the purple-gray rocks that made up the floating island.  

As a ghost, he didn’t need to breathe.  Shouldn’t need to breathe.  He’d been to space with no oxygen.  He shouldn’t be out of breath, ever.  

Iron and salt coated the back of his tongue and his body shook.  His rings flickered in and out.  He tasted citrus and copper.  He spit, and his saliva was speckled with green and red.  Gross.  

At least he hadn’t transformed this time.  That was good.  Keeping a secret identity didn’t just keep him from being arrested, it kept him from being horribly experimented on by the government.  Or his parents.  Or random ‘ghost hunters.’  Or alien enthusiasts.  Man, those guys were not picky.  Something people should have already figured out from their obsession with ‘probing.’ 

He pushed himself up to sit on his heels.

Having his strongest attack wipe him out like this really wasn’t ideal.  Yeah, it was a last-ditch thing, not something he was going to pull out for just anyone, but what if it didn’t work?  What if he went all in, and his opponent still had fight left, after he’d run out?

He’d die, that’s what.  

Since he wasn’t an idiot, no matter what his grades said, and he didn’t actually have a death wish, no matter what kind of jokes he made, he was practicing.  Because practice made perfect, or at least better, and with the way the ghosts coming through the portal were getting stronger and nastier…

He shook himself.  He’d probably be okay to try again in an hour or so, if he wanted to go the endurance route.  Repeated use should make it easier, right?  That was how things worked.  Or he’d be able to fly home.  

He was highly tempted to fly home.

“Wow, babypop, that sounded pretty wretched.”

Danny jumped and overbalanced, finally getting around to face Ember while crouched on the ground.  It was his luck to run into an enemy while practicing a skill that incapacitated him in an effort to not get incapacitated in front of an enemy.  

Ember, for her part, looked unconcerned.  She blew a bubble in the neon pink gum she was chewing, and popped it.  

“You’re gonna wreck your voice if you keep up like that, you know?”

“What?” rasped Danny.

“If you keep doing that, you’re going to wreck your voice.  You’ll wind up sounding like a fifty-year-old lifelong smoker before you’re twenty if you keep that up.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Permanently, I mean, rather than this temporary bit you have going on here.”  She traced a finger over him.  “Have you never heard of vocal warm ups?  Or maybe just not screaming at the top of your lungs?  It’s godawful to listen to.”

“Well, sorry to disturb you, but that’s how my power happens to work,” said Danny, angrily, wincing at how his voice cracked.  

“Are you sure?”

“Uh, yeah?”

Ember rolled her eyes.  “Yeah, yeah, whatever.  You don’t know squat, do you?”

“H-hey!”

“It’s so painful listening to you.  It makes me want to put holes in my eardrums.”  She flicked her fingers, and a tongue of blue fire appeared between them briefly before dissolving into a small, paper card, which she held out to Danny.  “Look, when you’re done feeling like you just gargled sandpaper, come look me up.  Believe it or not, I do know my way around voice based powers.  And how to scream without destroying your vocal cords.”

Danny stared at her, uncomprehending.  

“It’s a calling card, dweeb.  Medieval, I know, but there aren’t exactly phones or road maps around here.  Not safe ones, anyway.”

“A what?”

“God, you’re a loser.  A calling card.  It’ll show you where to find me, moron.  Have you never been invited anywhere?”

“Not in the Ghost Zone,” said Danny, before grimacing and rubbing his throat.

“I almost feel sorry for you, but honestly I can’t blame them.  You kinda suck.  Try honey.”

“Wha?”

“Honey.  Like from bees.  You have heard of bees, right?”

“I’ve heard of bees.”

“Good for you, babypop,” said Ember, in a falsely sweet voice.  She took her gum out of her mouth and threw it at him.  “Later!”

.

Jazz attacked his hair with brutal efficiency.  

“She said all that, and then stuck ghost gum in your hair?”

“To be fair, to her it’s just gum,” said Danny.  “I’m just hoping it doesn’t gain sentience.  Or, you know, eat all my hair.  How much do you think you’ll have to cut off?”

“Uh,” said Jazz.  “Still working on that.”

“I mean,” said Danny, as Jazz tugged on his hair, “she seemed sincere.  As sincere as Ember ever is, anyway.  She could’ve wasted me by herself just then, too.”

“I suppose that’s true.  It seems a bit… confrontational, though.”

“Yeah, maybe.  But not in terms of, like, other ghosts, if that makes sense?”

The scissors went snik snik near his ear.  “Uh huh.  In that context, sure,” said Jazz.  “But I’m not entirely sure it’s smart to judge ghosts by a completely different behavioral scale than humans.  If someone from Casper High walked up to you and treated you like that, then gave you an invitation to their house, would you go?”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  

“Really?”

“I mean, I have done that.  I went to Dash’s party, remember?”

“Oh, yeah, you did,” said Jazz.  “But didn’t they also mercilessly mock and demean you?”

“Well,” said Danny.  “Yes.  Yes they did.”

Jazz sighed.  “You’re going to go anyway, aren’t you?”

“Yep.  I mean, hey, worst case scenario is that we fight each other, and we do that every other week, anyway.  Right?”

“I guess,” said Jazz.  She put down the scissors and Danny heard something drop into the trash bin next to them.

“Oh, are you done?  Thanks for–”  Danny ran a hand over his hair.  What was left of it.  He brought his other hand up to check what he was feeling.  “Jazz.”

“Okay, before you get mad, I did tell you that I’d never cut anyone’s hair before and you had a lot of gum in it.”

“It’s gone Jazz!”

“It’ll grow back!  Our family doesn't have a history of male pattern baldness!”

“I have school tomorrow!”

“You can wear a hat!”

“Not all day I can’t!”

“What are you kids–  Oh my,” said Maddie.  She came fully into the room.  “Oh dear.”

Danny put his face in his hands.

.

“It isn’t that funny!” complained Danny.  “You can stand up now.  You don’t even need to breathe!”

Ember did not straighten up.  In fact, she pulled her feet off the ground so she could rotate in the air, laughing.  Gradually, she drifted to the center of the stage that made up the majority of her lair.

“Your hair.  It’s even better than I imagined!  Serves you right for doing it to me!  Ha!”

“You did that on purpose?”

“You were there when I threw the gum, babypop.”

Danny huffed.  “I’m going home.  I don’t have to deal with this.”

Ember grabbed his shoulder.  “No, you’re not.  I’m a ghost of my word, and you really do have atrocious screaming technique, even if you do have a great set of pipes.”

Danny was dubious, but he stopped.  

“Great,” said Ember, “we can get you started on some warm ups.”

.

“You’ve been doing the warm ups every day?”

“Every day,” confirmed Danny.  

“Alright,” said Ember.  “Let’s hear them.  Then you can do one of your screamy things.”

“It’s called the Ghostly Wail.”

“That’s so lame.”

.

“Here, see if you can sing this,” said Ember, shoving a sheet of paper at Danny.  

He looked down at it.  “Uh,” he said, “I can’t read this.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I mean, there aren’t actually any words here.  Just notes.”

“You can’t read music?” asked Ember, in disbelief.  

“Believe it or not, fighting ghosts all the time kind of precludes me from being in band or choir.  Or anything extracurricular, for that matter.”

“Precludes.  You steal that word from your sister?”

“A vocabulary test, actually.”

“God, you’re hopeless.”  She materialized her guitar.  “Sing along with me, loser.”  She strummed a chord.  

“You know, I’m starting to detect an ulterior motive at play here.”

“Shut up and sing.”

.

“I’m not here to learn guitar,” said Danny.  

“Either learn it, or you can say goodbye to my help.  You’ve been able to do your thing without collapsing, right?”

“I guess,” said Danny, a bit sulkily.  He had always wanted to learn to play an instrument.  It was just the method…

“So, hold the neck like this.  No, not like that.  You’ll put a nasty crick in your neck.  You still have all those stupid little bones.”

.

“What’s going on?” asked Danny.  There were a lot more ghosts in Ember’s lair than there usually were, swarming over the stage and the seating in front of it.  

“Oh, good, you’re here.  You’re backup vocals and guitar.”

“I’m what?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” said Ember.  “I know you aren’t deaf.  Speaking of, earplugs are in that jar over there.”  She pointed.  

“So,” said Danny, “this is the ulterior motive.”

“Well, yeah, dipstick.  What do you think we were practicing for?”

.

“I hate you,” said Danny, hoarsely.  

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”  Ember threw a bottle of water at him.  “We have another gig on Tuesday, one o’clock.”

“I have school.  And I’m not part of your band.”

“Quit your school, join my ghost band.”

“... No.”

“Alright, Saturday, then.”

.

Danny stood on a lonely island in the Ghost Zone.  The tree next to him flexed its leaves.  

He took a deep breath, and wailed.  

When he was done, he was still on his feet.  

“See?  I told you it’d pay off,” said Ember.  “Now, this is our playbill for our next gig.”

“I’m still not in your band.”  His throat was a little sore, but it was nothing as compared to what he’d dealt with before Ember’s lessons.

“It’s cute how you still think that, babypop.  Anyway…”

Detection (true version)

This is the second version of this prompt I've written. I decided I liked this take better. Like the other one, it is a loose continuation of Flight Simulation.

Prompt by @faedemon: Ghosts are naturally drawn to death. When people die in Amity Park, Danny keeps finding the bodies. (PR263)

.

"You know," said Detective Collins conversationally, "if most of these guys hadn't been dead longer than you've been alive, I'd be wondering if you were some kind of serial killer."

Danny hunched his shoulders.  As a… whatever he was, he had some powers.  Intangibility, invisibility, overshadowing, transformation, ghost sense, and now… this.  He guessed it might be an extension of his ghost sense.  After all, both had to do with finding dead people.  

"What is this one, the sixth?"

"Fifth," corrected Danny, although that didn't make him any less miserable.  He stared through the trees at the swarm of forensics people.  This was the fifth dead human body he'd been drawn to since the Accident, not counting the incidents at the cemetery and the hospital.

Collins scribbled something on his notepad then snapped it closed.  “Okay, off the record?”

“Huh?  Uh, sure?”

“Is this some new thing from your parents?  Did they make a dead body finder and scrap it because it didn’t find ghosts?  Because, if so, the department would definitely like to get our hands on one.”

“What?”

Collins sighed, slightly, and continued at a slightly slower pace.  “If the reason you’re finding all these bodies is that you’re using one of your parents’ inventions, the police department will buy it from you.  Heck, we’d commission a dozen from your parents.”

“It isn’t an invention,” said Danny.  “But, I mean, that sounds like a good idea.  I don’t know how it’d work, but if it did, I could see it.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he wanted to punch himself in his face.  A perfect excuse, and he just hammered it to pieces.

“Pity,” said Collins.  “But this,” –he pointed at where Danny had found the skeleton– “isn’t normal.  Finding five bodies like this by coincidence is unheard of.  Did you get cursed or something?”

Danny shrugged.  Honestly, he might as well be cursed.  “My ancestors on my Dad’s side were witch hunters way back when, so it wouldn’t really surprise me, but…  I haven’t heard of any curse?  That doesn’t mean that I would have heard of a curse, even if there was one…”

“Hm.  Think you’re haunted?”

“My parents are ghost hunters,” said Danny.  “They aren’t always the most observant, but–”

“Danny!”  There was a crash near the park entrance.  Danny winced and blushed.  Marley Park was one of the biggest and wildest still in Amity Park’s services district, but they weren’t actually that far from the entrance.  It was very easy to recognize the sounds of his father’s driving.  

“Did anyone tell them this was an active crime scene?” muttered Collins, flipping his pad back open.  

“Probably multiple times,” said Danny.  Collins flinched a little, having probably not intended for Danny to hear.  Oh, well.  

Danny’s parents thundered down the path, followed by a lot of shouting.  

“Danny, baby!” said Maddie, throwing her arms around him.  “What happened?  What are you even doing all the way out here?”

“He found a body,” said Collins.  “Specifically a skeleton.”

“What?” said Maddie.  “Again?”

“Ohhh,” said Jack, almost growling.  “I know what this is!  This is some blasted ghost trying to make our Danny look bad!”  He pulled out a bazooka.  “When I find it, I’m gonna–!”

“Mr. Fenton,” said Detective Collins, “please, there are no ghosts here.  We took ectoplasm readings when we got here, first thing.  This is a crime scene.  You need to put your weapon away.”

Jack grumbled, but did so.  The other policemen in the area, who had put their hands on their weapons, slowly relaxed.  

“Anyway,” said Collins, “this is an older body, so we…”  He trailed off and made a face.  “I think we all can agree this isn’t a coincidence anymore, but it’s safe to say that Danny wasn’t involved in the actual death of this person.”

“Of course,” said Maddie, who was still checking Danny over, as if the years-dead skeleton could have hurt him.  

“Anyway, if you, any of you, ever figure out what’s causing…”  He gestured at Danny.

“Right,” said Maddie.  “We’ll let you know.”

Danny shrugged, because he sure wouldn’t.  

“And our offer to refer you to a therapist still stands.”

“Thank you,” said Maddie.  “We’ll talk about it.”

Danny was bundled down the path and into the back seat of the GAV.  He slumped, feeling exhausted.  

“Danny,” said Maddie, after Jack had started the engine.  “Why were you out here?”

Jack backed up enthusiastically, and Danny used his need to adjust his position as an excuse not to answer right away.  “I was just walking,” said Danny.  

“Without your friends?” pressed Maddie.  “Or did they just leave before the police showed up this time?”

“They weren’t there,” said Danny.  

Of course, the reason they weren’t there was that they hadn’t been able to keep up with the ghost fight once it started to go through walls.  And then, of course, Skulker just had to pick Danny up and rub in the fact that Danny couldn’t fly.

Jerk.  

Danny much preferred Technus.  At least he only trapped Danny in video games and acted like an avuncular and completely out of touch mad scientist.  Dealing with him was almost fun, if completely terrifying sometimes.  

(Pac Man was an abomination that should never have been created.)

Anyway, Danny had, eventually, managed to get Skulker back to ground level and fish him out of his stupid helmet.  By that point, though, he’d been in the park, and then he had to get out of the park and that’s when he’d noticed the pull.  And there was only one thing that particular pull led to.

Danny couldn’t just leave the body once he’d found it.  That would be… Well, illegal, probably, but considering he was a kinda-sorta vigilante whose existence was illegal under the Anti-Ecto Acts, he didn’t really care about that.  It was more about leaving a person forgotten and unmourned.  Not given proper rites, whatever those were for the person in question.  

Maddie sighed at him.  Danny squirmed in his seat.  

“They really weren’t with me at the park.”

“But you still haven’t said why you were there.”

“I was just walking.”

“Mhm,” said Maddie, dubiously.  “But why there?”

“Why not there?”

“Because it’s all the way across the city!” said Maddie.  

“You’d tell us if you knew you were being haunted, right, Danno?” asked Jack.

“Yeah,” said Danny.  Well, if a ghost was really harassing him, he might.  He’d told them about Johnny.  He hadn’t told him about Skulker, though.  Was what Skulker was doing really haunting, though?  

Attempted murder, though, sure.  Danny didn’t think he could leave without his skin, after all.  

Maddie sighed.  “Alright.”

That signaled the end of the conversation, and Danny slid his phone out of pocket to text Sam and Tucker.  

Danny: im w my prints

Danny: left the park

Sam: u ok

Danny: ye

Tucker: u sure? skulker got u rely good that time

Tucker: and he picked u up. still p sure u cant fly

Danny: shut up

Sam: yeah tuck thats the thing hes sensitive about

Danny sighed and put his phone away.  It was over and done with.  Everything was going to be fine.  

At least, until the next time he found a dead body.  But how many missing dead people could there be in Amity Park?

.

The next time they went on a field trip, Danny wanted to beat his head in for even thinking something like that.  

“Uh, Danny,” said Tucker, “you’re eying that wall really intensely.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, “that’s because there’s a corpse in it.”

“What.”

“Yeah, that was my reaction.”

“Hey, guys,” said Sam, walking up behind Danny and Tucker.  “I hate to interrupt your contemplation, but the art’s hung up over there.  Why are you both staring at a wall?  Are you turning into cats?”

“Well, Danny can already detect ghosts–”

Danny elbowed him in the side.  “There’s a dead body in the wall,” he muttered.  

Sam’s eyebrows went up.  “In an art museum?”

“That is where we are.”

“You know what I mean.  What’re you going to do?”

Danny ran a hand through his hair, frustrated.  “I don’t know.  It’s not like there’s any,” –he waved his hand at the wall– “evidence, so I can’t just call.”

“Didn’t that one detective dude give you his phone number?” asked Tucker.  “Maybe he’d believe you.”

“I don’t know…”

“You could come back as, you know, and phase it out,” suggested Sam.  

“My alter ego has enough problems without being associated with murder.”

“Maybe you could be an anonymous tip,” said Tucker, fiddling with the power button of his PDA.  “I could look up how.”

Danny made a face.  “They all know who I am.”

“All of them?” asked Tucker, skeptically.

“You try calling in five separate skeletons while being the son of ghost hunters.  Yes, they all know who I am.”

“You could still leave a letter.”

“You could ‘accidentally’ put a hole in the wall,” said Sam.  “Or you could phase something halfway in, and then when they have to clean it up, they’ll find it?”

“Doesn’t do much good when they might be the people to put it in in the first place,” said Danny, making a face.

“Could you tip someone off as… you know?”

“Same problem phasing it out of the wall.”  He covered his eyes, feeling the approach of a headache.

Ugh.  He was going to have to punch a hole in this wall.  

He’d have to do it soon, too, otherwise the tour would move on and he’d have to try something else.  

“Mr. Fenton, Miss Manson, Mr. Foley,” called Mr. Lancer, “we’re– Mr. Fenton!  Catcher in the Rye!  Why would you punch the wall?”  Over his shoulder, the tour guide and a security guard started jogging over.

“Uh,” said Danny, cradling his hand, because punching through drywall with his stupid unprotected human hand hurt.  “Because… There’s a skeleton in it?”

Why did he feel the need to tell the truth in stupid, stupid situations like this?

“Mr. Fenton,” said Mr. Lancer, thunderously, “stop making up–”  Danny knew the moment Mr. Lancer actually looked into the hole in the wall, because his face went the color of milk.  “The Cask of Amontillado,” he said, then sat down.  

.

“So,” said Detective Collins, looking at the wall.  “You want to explain how you knew this one was there?”

Danny didn’t have to fake the tears of frustration in his eyes.  His powers were so stupid sometimes.  

“Well,” said the detective.  “This is sure going to be a murder mystery and a half, then.”

.

“So, are we off to solve a murder?” asked Tucker.  

“Why would we be solving a murder?” asked Danny, dropping his backpack on the floor of the bus, where they were waiting for the police to be done with all of them.  

Tucker blinked.  “Because you just found a dead body.”

“It’s hardly the first time,” said Danny, quietly.  He didn’t exactly want something like that to become common knowledge among his fellow students.  Not that he expected it would stay quiet or anything.  

“Well, yeah, but those were just, you know, accidental deaths.”

“We don’t know that.  We don’t know anything about solving murders, either.  Why are you suddenly so gung-ho about this?  I thought dead bodies freaked you out.”

“Sure do,” agreed Tucker.  He shrugged.  “Murder mysteries are cool, though.”

“Wow,” said Sam, looking up from her paperback.  “You aren’t okay with hospitals, but murder–”

“Look, it happened a long time ago, okay?  Guy was a skeleton.  Whoever killed him must be long dead by now.”

“Yeah,” drawled Danny.  “Long dead.  Because length of time spent dead is a good indicator of how much of a problem someone is going to be.  How long have Desiree and Poindexter been dead?  How about Technus?”

Tucker opened his mouth, closed it, went through a variety of emotions, then pushed himself to the end of the bench, muttering.  

Danny leaned back, too.  Rumors at school and his bruised knuckles aside, this was almost peaceful.  

“HEY!” bellowed Dash from the front of the bus.  “CORPSE SNIFFER!”

Aaaaaand there it went. 

dannymay2022 day 4: videotape word count: 2922

just keep talking on

Lance Thunder’s crew was about to wrap up for the night when he caught the two ghosts out of the corner of his eye. They’d just finished getting B-roll and a standup for tomorrow’s package but hadn’t shut off the camera yet. Maybe it was a sense of journalistic ambition, or maybe the fact that Lance was tired of doing stories on rising gas prices—nonetheless, Lance directed his crew to follow the two ghosts to the back of the gas station.

It was probably a bust, but what else was there to report on in this town?

He recognized the ghosts as Johnny 13 and Kitty—a notorious couple that Phantom often let race through the town on joyrides. Once, they’d been a threat to the town but after a tentative truce between them and the town’s hero, they’d mellowed out. It was a welcome change of pace after what seemed like endless attacks from the other side.

They were both leaning against the wall of the building, pulsating in the dim light, sharing cigarettes. The footage looked like trash considering how the ghosts’ glow messed with the exposure, but he hoped the audio would be better.

“—feels like our afterlives are just more of the same. We do the same boring shit, over and over and expect it to feel new,” Kitty said. “It’s just a bore.”

“I mean.” Johnny thought for a moment. “At least we don’t have it as bad as Phantom.”

Seguir leyendo

Ectober Day 26: Autopsy/Pumpkin

(It’s both)

Summary: Maddie always goes through the proper process for carving something up. Heavy angst. dissec fic

Content Warnings: blood, gore, vivid description of dissection, back-and-forth/parallel scenes, Fenton ghost bias, duct tape gag, pumpkin carving(?) (Better to be safe than sorry). If I’m missing something you think I should include, tell me.

AO3 link

Words: 1640

Notes: I hurt myself. I will also hurt you. Italics is one scene, plain another. Also, italics is flashback.

Maddie held the plump pumpkin in front of her admiring its shape and color. Bright orange, stout, and round, she slid it into the grocery cart along with various other October treats and daily groceries. She made sure to buy Danny those chips he seemed to like.

Maddie eyed the specimen in front of her appraisingly. She was doing this one on her own. Despite Jack’s excitement over the capture, he could never really handle the dissection of the more human-passing specimens. It had just woken up too, bright green eyes searching wildly around as it strained against the ghost-proof restraints she had practically wrapped it in. There was no way Phantom was escaping this time.

Once Maddie had gotten home, she quickly put the groceries away and put the pumpkin on the kitchen table, eyeing it as various possible patterns and ideas popped into her head. There were so many possibilities, but it was best to stick with the basics, something simple would do just fine.

Maddie rummaged through the drawers for her supplies. A bucket, a plastic bag, a large bowl, gloves, a bread knife, a marker, a spoon, and a smaller, serrated, steak knife for the details. She set them up neatly around the pumpkin and on the floor next to her seat.

Maddie gathered her materials meticulously. The surgical steel was perfectly sterile and neatly lined up on a metal tray. Ectophobic glass jars would be perfect for containing her samples, of which she would collect many. With a ghost like Phantom, she wanted to do a full diagnostic. She replaced her gloves with ones better suited to her task, longer, more fitted, and more flexible, along with being coated in another ectophobic gloss. She grabbed a simple marker as well, then made sure everything was in its proper location, before going over the procedure in her mind.

Phantom eyed her supplies in terror; its emulation of human facial expressions was exceptional. It started muttering, pleading, begging for its existence. She ignored it. Every word out of its mouth was either a lie or a manipulation. Nothing a ghost could say meant anything. They were just echoes cemented in ectoplasm. Still, she contemplated a gag.

This would be a text-book dissection. Maddie could see every cut she would make clearly in her mind. She put the tray of tools on a surgical stand and rolled it over to where Phantom was restrained.

Maddie took the marker and drew the design carefully on the pumpkin, making sure it was centered properly. Simple, triangle eyes and a toothy grin. She shaded in the areas she needed to cut. The marker was washable so she’d be able to clean off any excess ink left on the pumpkin after she cut.

Maddie picked up her first tool, a simple set of scissors and approached Phantom. It shouted and strained against the restraints, the cuffs groaning under the pressure it was putting on them. Maddie decided agag was a good idea, and many things could be fixed with duct tape. A solid piece went right over his mouth. She could still hear it shriek under the tape, however, but it was much more manageable now, muffled enough to allow her to focus. She also adjusted the restraints, adding an extra set to keep it from moving while she worked. It started sobbing.

The scissors sliced easily through the suit Phantom wore. Maddie also cut a few small squares of the material and placed them into a jar to analyze later. Next came the marker. On it’s bare chest, which was a surprisingly accurate imitation of a teenage boy’s, Maddie drew out the lines where she would cut. A vivisection along with several other cuts to access several areas. Maddie was curious to see if it emulated the internal organs too, despite them being little more than vestigial structures.

Maddie put on the gloves and grabbed the bread knife. She started at the top, opening up the pumpkin so she could begin. The heavily serrated knife cut through the gourd with much more ease than another knife might’ve had, but she still had to use quite a bit of force to complete the circle.

Once complete, Maddie took the top and set it to the side on a plate, and peered into the pumpkin, eyeing the numerous seeds and the pumpkin pulp that would need to be cleaned out.

Maddie started with the vivisection, starting from the left shoulder and working her way down. Her selected scalpel sliced through Phantom’s skin with ease, creating a shape that emulated the marking almost perfectly. Ectoplasm welled and spilled from the cut in its wake.

Phantom’s sobs had stopped a while ago as it realized that it would not get any pity from her, but at the first cut, they had morphed into full on shrieks. Perhaps it was trying to use that ‘wail’ of its. Maddie had made sure Phantom would not have the energy to do such an attack while it had been out. It shouldn’t even have the energy to fire off a simple ectoblast. Where it was finding the energy to scream and struggle with such vigor, Maddie had no clue. Well, perhaps she would know soon.

Maddie removed the scalpel and moved onto the next shoulder, making sure the cut was almost perfectly symmetrical. The center was perfectly over where she assumed Phantom’s core would be, right where a heart would be on a human. Maddie began her cut downwards. Once complete, she pulled back the triangles on skin to reveal what lay underneath. Phantom seemed to choke on his own screams, silencing itself.

Maddie paused, gazing at wonder at what lay underneath. A full set of functional organs, its heart beating in its chest, close to that of human’s, all made out of ectoplasmic tissues. Bones too, forming an accurate rib cage inside its chest. And she could see it there too, smeared with ectoplasm, Phantom’s core, partially fused into its heart, pulsing in tandem with the beats of the heart. Both were at the typical bpm of a human’s, increasing in speed as she watched the faux muscle pulse in effort, suggesting a biological response of panic, perhaps even shock.

Maddie wished she could afford to keep Phantom around and intact, perhaps even in containment so she could properly catalog this. But it was too much of a hazard, likely to escape and ghosts were well known to be vengeful creatures. What a shame.

Maddie grabbed the spoon and began to scoop out the pumpkin, scrapping it off the edges of the walls before dropping them into the plastic bag, separating out as many of the seeds as was efficient to be roasted for later. Roasted pumpkin seeds were a favorite of Jazz’s when done properly.

Maddie began the actual dissection, poking around Phantom’s organ’s before deciding on what to collect. She only had a limited amount of space, else she would’ve been much more meticulous. She switched out her tools and decided where to start. The core had to be collected last or else Phantom could destabilize. She started with bone samples, setting down the scalpel and retrieving the bone saw.

Phantom only flinched as it started up, and its heart rate continued to accelerate. Maddie watched its facial expression, frozen and empty. She wondered how anyone could possibly sympathize with such a creature. It screamed as she cut off samples from his exposed ribs, an instinctive response rather than a conscious one. She placed them in one of the jars, carefully filled with a solution to preserve her precious samples.

Satisfied with her work, Maddie began the next step. A hollow, cleaned pumpkin was so much easier to work with. She took up the steak knife and began cutting out the face.

Maddie looked over at the samples she had collected from Phantom. Several tissues from various organs, an entire kidney, section of the intestines, bone cuttings, and what she assumed was an artery. She would collect more from it after she finished with the chest cavity. She knew she at least wanted a few samples from its head, perhaps a section of bone from the legs. Maddie wondered if she could fit an entire hand in one of her jars, and if she could do an age analysis from one of its teeth.

Over the course of the process, Maddie had been monitoring its heart rate. It had peaked just after the bone cuttings, then rapidly started to drop, to barely a single beat a minute. Phantom was no longer responsive in any way, shape, or form. She wondered how important that heart was to it, and if it was actually necessary for its survival. Unlikely.

Was the presence of internal organs part of the reason Phantom’s power level had escalated so quickly? It was a sturdy theory. Ghosts were static creatures, but by emulating a human’s physiology, it made them capable of physical growth, although mentally stunted. Maddie wanted to know how Phantom was capable of doing this, and if it was a conscious project or not. What were the drawbacks of such a physique? The questions continued to rise, but Maddie would just have to find them out through further analysis of the samples.

She eyed the core-heart fusion greedily. It was time.

Maddie looked at her finished creation, the grinning pumpkin complete. She placed the top back on and held it up, shadows filling its eyes and the gap of its mouth. She would have to find a candle to put in it, or one of those little LED ones that were all over the place. It was certainly safer than a candle.

Maddie vaguely wondered what excuse Danny was inevitably going to use today when he came home past curfew again.

I'll take your hand when thunder roars

After the Accident Danny has developed a phobia for thunderstorms. Luckily Sam and Tucker is there to make him feel better

Everlasting trio that can be read as platonic, romantic or queerplatonic. Hurt/comfort. Mostly fluffy. This is my first fic for the phandom so I’m very excited to see what you think about my writing!

[Read on Ao3]

I’ll take your hand when thunder roars

And I’ll hold you close, I’ll stay the course

I promise you from up above

That we’ll take what comes, take what comes, love

- Walking the Wire by Imagine Dragons

Danny’s eyes were squeezed shut and both his and Tucker’s hands were covering his ears, but he still flinched as lightning struck. His left hand spasmed every time, new waves of pain coursing through him. He could feel the electricity in his bones, in his very core. Every flash of lightning sent memories of the Accident searing through his mind. Every boom of thunder echoed with the phantom sound of his own agonized screams as he was ripped apart and put back together again.

Blind, deaf and buried a mile beneath the weight of his memories and pain, he had no idea where he was or where Sam was leading him. While Tucker helped keep his mind from splintering, Sam almost single handedly carried his full weight, trudging them through the thick rain. He was wet down to his bones, shivering from the cold as his core was too overworked to help him regulate his temperature.

Worst part? This was entirely his fault and it could have easily been avoided. In fact, Tucker and Sam had tried to avoid this, but he had been too stubborn to listen to them, and now they had to pay for his stupidity. He didn’t deserve them.

Seguir leyendo

Rot and Bruises

For the Phic Phight!

@sylph-feather / hummingbird

AO3: sylph_feather, FFN: sylph-feather

·        “I think it would be interesting to see Danny’s phantom form either more monstrous from the get go, or become monstrous in some way, and people’s reactions to that”

@ecto-american 

It started with the bruises.

Normal bruises are not pleasant. And color-wise, Danny’s bruises were just like the before. Before the portal. They were varying shades from blue, faint green, and a terrible black. Bruises still kept their nature, their function back when Danny was human. The broken and split blood vessels that got smashed and torn under the layers of skin. The varying pain, the sharp, the dull. The throbbing, the soreness – that remained the same, too. And all of that sameness made it so much more difficult for people to see the difference, to see what changed. Maybe for the better.

 Danny’s bruises became clammy, Danny’s bruises became soft all around the afflicted area. Soft, as if the skin and muscle, and if everything except the bone was rotting. The kind of softness that reminds him of a corpse rather than of something that bleeds.

 But at least, Danny would note during the dark nights after long hours of fighting ghosts, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling of his bedroom, it’s not something that’s noticeable.

 Not to the casual observer, anyway.

 And at least Danny still bleeds. Dead things don’t bleed. Dead things don’t bruise. Danny’s… something. But he isn’t dead.

Then, as months pass, Danny learns that it was a mistake to take this fact as a comfort. Not when his cuts steadily loose its wine-like redness. Not when the shades shift from its healthy shade of molten rubies to a grey, awful color. A dead color. And that – that has to be a joke. To have a beating heart and blood pulsing through but for it to somehow look dead.

Still, people don’t notice. Except for Sam and Tucker but they are completely, uncharacteristically silent for these matters. And what could they say really? Danny, go to the hospital. Danny, go to your parents. Danny, go to Vlad. They’ll fix you. They’ll have to fix you. A hospital that never met a thing like Danny? His parents, people, hunters that chase ‘Phantom’ for Danny’s atoms? Vlad, a man who has proven over and over that Danny was second to Vlad’s murderous, possessive, objective?

In the end, it just became something they don’t talk about.

So, Danny rots, quietly.

                                                             )*(

“That’s going to get infected, you know,” Star said with a furrowed brow and wrinkled nose. “With all of that ink.”

Danny looks at his hand, at the papercut on the pad of his thumb and the now black blood that drips down. He stares at it for a moment, before blinking and slowly turning to Star.

“Uh, thanks.”

                                                             )*(

When Danny starts to look in the mirror, he’s dulled. There’s no better way to describe it. His eyes, while still blue when human, lost all vividness, at least what he used to have. His hair before the portal, before all this madness and creeping rot, was brown. A dark brown, but a brown none-of-the-less. Only now, it was a dark, unforgiving black. All color from the shade of his skin, from the redness on his knuckles, fingertips, and cheeks, all ‘rosiness’ was gone. And he was blank. Completely blank, and people are noticing it. Staring. Worried, curious, avoiding glances, avoiding eye contact.

Danny turns away from the mirror. Worried, yes. Curious, yes. But not suspicious. Never suspicious.

It’s just a reflection. It wasn’t always his reflection, but it is now.

There’s not much Danny can do about it, really.

                                                             )*(

People don’t look at him, and they make a point, an effort not to do so.

The school halls separate like the red sea.

Dash and the others have stopped coming close to him, stopped touching him. They just… lingered. Like Vultures waiting for the desert hare to finally stop twitching its limbs.

No. That wasn’t right.

It doesn’t illustrate the full depth of it, of how gross it felt to be in his own skin. Of how, no matter how small he made himself he still feels predatory. And it’s not for reasons that are Danny’s fault. He’s not violent to them, he doesn’t attack them, not like with violent ghosts, he makes no move against them and he doesn’t want to. It is, it seems, how he makes them feel. From the way they flinch, from the way they recoil.

It makes Danny nauseous.

                                                             )*(

It started with bruises.

With the hits, with the punches and the beating.

Danny gives a wet, frantic laugh. The kind with a mouthful of blood and torn organs.

Black blood. Because of course. Because of course, this is how it goes. How it ends. With a fight that went too far and with a night too dark without anyone in the alleyway without both Sam and Tucker, who had been asleep long ago.

It should’ve gone how Danny imagined it. A coherent last thought, a final realization. A good-bye.

Not anger, not grappling for awareness. Not the stillness.

Not the blankness.

Love it!!

I Am a Wreck When I'm Without You

Read my new one shot on Ao3!

Erik spends several days sick in bed before Christine comes to find and take care of him.

This was a one shot that was requested like a month and a half ago by @tondroom that took me way too long to finish lol. But it's finally done! I hope you all enjoy the sick fic content!

And yes, the title is taken from a song. You get points if you can guess which song it’s from.