INDEX

(I recommend reading these in order. I have no idea what to call this AU yet, but it’s a crossover AU with... another nickelodeon thing. Spoilers.)

HEADCANONS

VLAD IN METAPHOR

“KING” PARIAH DARK

FANFICS

THE STRANGER DOOR (PART 1)

THE STRANGER DOOR (PART 2)

AN ACT OF MISDIRECTION

(Better read this one first.)

The lights go up.

Everything beneath the circus tent is black, green, and purple. The classic three-ring-and-trapeze setups are crowded with pine boxes–stacked to form pedestals. Brainwashed ghosts of varying shapes and sizes perform as they take their places around the stage. Their movements are formless and unnerving. The crowd in the grandstands watches in bewitched silence or claps a little at the end of a noticeable stunt. Suddenly, every figure in sight stops mid-stride.

Freak Show appears in spotlight with a clap of flash paper. His heel is balanced on the lip of the center ring. His deathly white skin gleams against the darkness. He’s wearing a sharply tailored pinstriped suit—the only red in the entire tent. The crowd’s eyes follow as he reaches up to tip his hat in greeting.

But he’s startled to find nothing there. The spiderlike man smooths back the wrinkles on his forehead in a casual gesture and covertly peers around.

The spotlight abandons him, swinging up across the motionless faces of a troupe of ghosts poised on one of the stacks of boxes. It settles to shine at the top on a clown in a baggy yellow sack-style costume with loud pink polka dots all over it and orange frills on the hands, feet, and neck. The clown’s gloved right hand is extended to point, as if having drawn the spotlight’s direction by itself. Its painted face is obscured by the ringmaster’s ebony silk top hat sat snug on its head. The crowd giggles.

Freak Show, miffed and unsure, hurries through the darkness as quietly as he can toward the lit figure. Meanwhile, the clown’s elbow slowly bends for its fingers to reach the back brim of the hat. With a pinch and a tug, the hat tumbles off–revealing a long messy mop of bright rainbow hair. The crowd laughs and claps. The hat bounces off the toe of one of the clown’s pointed white shoes and rolls on the box. Freak Show appears at the edge of the spotlight and swipes to grab the hat. But the clown swipes faster and plays keep-away with it, dodging and weaving like a rubber hose cartoon as Freak Show lunges and reddens. The crowd chortles with increasing vigor at each failed attempt.

The nearly crimson ringmaster steps back and glances at the darkness above before digging in the pockets of his robe. He produces a ring. Its menacing blue jewel glares in the light. Freak Show slips it on a finger and straightens himself. He turns to the audience with a demonstrative smile and juts the ring in the direction of a nearby performer. The ghost’s body vaporizes, reduced to a green wisp that gutters on the floor. The audience yelps in amazement. He then turns the ring on the misbehaving clown. The clown stands still.

Nothing happens.

The crowd chitters. Freak Show tears off the ring and produces a talisman of blood red mineral carved in the shape of a demon’s head.

No luck.

He throws it down and tries again. The clown leans on one leg and taps its foot. After the third loss, Freak Show’s hand flies in and out of his pocket so fast that it drags out a whole tangled mass of cursed trinkets. He nearly falls to catch them, but misses. They hit the floor with a jingle and scatter. The crowd howls with laughter. Even the clown doubles over, holding its stomach. Freak Show snatches a blackened gold necklace from the pile and raises its glaring pendant at the damned hooligan’s face. The neck of the clown’s gown erupts in eight-foot flames that lick at the tightropes above. The audience shrieks.

The singed cloth falls to the wooden floor in a heap, along with the hat. Dead silence fills the air. A little surprised at the reaction himself, Freak Show regains his composure and coolly approaches his prize. The fabric twitches. He hesitates. The ashy yellow gown bucks with an “arf”, and little teeth from inside clench the brim of the hat. A dog with short blue fur and spry legs races out. It leaps down onto the dirt stage, taking the hat and the spotlight with it. The ringmaster fumes and chases it as the crowd cheers.

Dani, hiding in her ghost form in the shadows of canvas high above, laughs to herself. She likes this new guy already.

She turns around and pries apart two layers of the tent’s facade to check on the others. Danny and Valerie are still working on disabling the industrial-sized doomsday mind-control machine–or whatever it is–that Freakshow has hoisted above the stage. The two are hanging in the air at an open panel on the thing’s side. Piles of its guts have been strewn out onto Valerie’s hoverboard as they work feverishly to cut off the power supply without blowing anything up. They bicker in hushed tones over which wires to cut. Neither gives a convincing impression that they’re very sure what they’re doing.

“Almost done?” Dani interrupts.

“Getting there. This wiring is idiotic,” Valerie replies.

“How’s Tim doing?” asks Danny.

Dani zips her head back out and looks down. The dog is running literal circles around Freak Show as the inhibited ghosts fumble to assist. She snickers.

“He’s kinda making me jealous.”

“Just keep an eye out, okay? We don’t know what else could be up here,” Danny tells her. Again.

“What, you think I’m gonna get a spider bite?”

“As if you’d mind.”

Dani doesn’t really hear him. She’s busy thinking about what kind of superpowers you could get from a ghost spider.

“Why did we let the person we barely know handle the distraction again?” Valerie asks.

“You let Wulf come on the last one,” Danny replies.

“Dani vouched for him.”

“And I vouch for Tim. Besides, he’s immune to Freak Show’s tricks.”

“So am I.” Dani taps the Fenton Phones in her ears that keep out the mind control. “Especially if you’d let me pull his cape over his head and shove his stupid hat over it like I wanted. Tim coulda taken pictures. We’d have a Christmas card right there.”

Valerie can’t hide a smirk, but Danny just rolls his eyes.

His sister sighs. He’s so boring these days.

He and Valerie start talking about how to tackle a junction of cords that looks like the head of Medusa when Dani shushes them.

“Wait a second.” She propels herself closer to the outer wall of the tent. Equidistant from the roar of the crowd and the muttering of the machine, she hears tires. Footsteps. The clink of metal. She burns herself a small window with her palm, though she already knows what she’s going to see.

“We got trouble!”

The tent’s flaps fly apart as Guys in White pour in. Each of them is clad in shiny white armor with bulky projectile weapons in hand. The crowd continues to cheer as its own silhouette evaporates in the moonlight from outside. The dog raises its head and barks madly, dropping the hat. The agents ignore the ghosts around them and fire lasers into the roof. Valerie and the halfas put up their shields just in time. The concentrated bolts of plasma slice through the machine like butter. Its moorings fail, and the sabotagers lurch out of the way as the whole thing comes crashing down on the center ring.

What follows is a confusion of ecto-bolts, lasers, darting liberated spirits, and dust. The dog stumbles around on the wreckage of the grandstands with its face stuck in the top hat. Freak Show–battered but undeterred–takes his stupid hat back. He scrambles around, looking for an exit in the chaos without being seen. A crack of green lightning about two feet away scares him limp. He drops to the floor. The dog catches up, nabs the hat, and is gone before it can be reached. Unable to track the dog in the debris, Freak Show shakily gets up and lumbers away. He’s back in the hands of the agents before he’s out of the dust cloud.

The halfas hold their shields as Valerie returns laser fire with laser fire in a hail of bright red energy blasts. In preparation, they’d made up this formation to avoid each person having to juggle offense and defense. But now they find themselves unable to move much as a clump. No matter how many agents they deter, more seem to pile on. It feels like they’re coming from every direction. Closing in.

“We gotta get out of here,” Valerie orders.

“Where’s Tim?” Danny shouts over all the noise.

They have to carefully break formation to look for the dog. No one can see a thing, and they’re all getting banged up. Dani calls out for their new partner, drawing more fire in her direction. She remembers to turn intangible, but a burning shot grazes her arm anyway. She also has to be mindful of her distance to the ground, or else risk melee attacks from batons and debris that swing out of the haze. Something whacked her foot a minute ago.

The dog finally hears her, at least. A muffled bark comes from somewhere behind her. She turns and sees the dog running from an electrified net that gets thrown, reeled back, and thrown again. Dani fires a slew of bolts in the direction of its caster. She hears them hit something, but the net comes again. Her brother swiftly appears and scoops the dog up as it jumps from a collapsed heap of boxes. That’s good enough for her. She flies upward.

They all fly out of there at top speed into the surrounding fields of Amity Park’s city limits. Ghosts soar out of the destroyed tent, up into the night sky like bees from a burning hive. A deadlocked parking lot of government assault vans attempts to follow them out. Dani stops looking back and focuses on heading back toward town with the others.

Exhausted, Tim stops being a dog and returns to his street clothes. This leaves Danny holding him awkwardly by the waist with his legs dangling. Tim still has the hat in his mouth.

“Is there a reason you couldn’t have done that a little earlier?” Valerie asks pointedly.

“I forgot how until now,” Tim answers defensively after transferring the hat to his hand.

Danny turns Tim and himself invisible, so as not to be spotted. Dani joins Valerie on her board to do the same. When things go this crazy, the girls’ usual plan is for the two of them to split up and debrief remotely. But she isn’t sure Danny knows. Before anything can be said about it, the group notices familiar pod-shaped tracing jets approaching on the horizon, ready for them to scatter.

“Great. Now what?” Dani asks aloud.

“Train car!” Valerie points to a nearby train track where an engine with several freight cars attached speeds along toward town. Too low to track, and the Guys won’t be expecting it. The four of them head down and slip spectrally into a half-empty car of hay bales. Urgency finally lifts, and they all melt against the barn-smelling floor.

Danny is the first to say what everyone’s thinking.

“Well, that was a trap.” He rubs a sore spot on his side where he got hit with a stun baton. “I should’ve known something was off. Freak Show’s an ‘artifacts and occult’ guy. A big machine like that isn’t really in his wheelhouse.”

“It was definitely made by the Guys in White. Nobody overdesigns like they do,” Valerie adds. “This wasn’t just a trap, it was a sting.”

Danny nods in agreement, his head still on the floor.

“Hey, hasn’t Freak Show been in trouble with the Guys for, like… years?” Dani directs her question at her brother. She’s never had to deal with the eerie kook herself before, but she’s heard Danny complain about him often enough. “What do you bet they cut a deal where he lures us in and gets–I dunno, parole or whatever. Meanwhile, they test-drive this big honking machine that can brainwash a ton of ghosts at once. Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.”

“Mine too.” Danny sits up and takes out the earphones. He collects Dani’s pair. “Did he actually manage to set you on fire?” He asks Tim.

“No, I did that,” he answers from somewhere behind her. “I think I singed my hair a little, though.”

Danny doesn’t hide being unnerved, which makes Dani grin. Valerie looks away impassively.

“So now, I guess we’ll have to worry about Freak Show being off the hook,” Danny thinks aloud to keep the thread going.

“Doubt it. Cause he stole this.” Tim has spent the whole conversation trying to pry something away from the inside of the hat. He tears away the duct tape and is left with a storage drive. He shows the others the label. “Blueprints and backups.”

“Yikes,” the other three say together.

“So, what do we do with it?” Dani asks. She already has her own opinion, but she doesn’t like the riveted look Valerie’s giving the rectangle in Tim’s hand.

If they built anything like that machine, there are a thousand ways they could use it to their advantage and save their town. Valerie knows that isn’t the way they agreed to handle this. At the same time, Dani knows it’s hard for Valerie to put her trust in ghosts in general. And recent events are only making that more complicated. But even if ghosts aren’t all on their side—and many of them aren’t even that human—they’re not pawns to be used. Dani herself is proof enough of that, isn’t she?

True to his promise, Danny hasn’t said anything–waiting for her lead.

Valerie tears her eyes away to look at Dani. She gives her a half-smile and says, “Well, we can’t let it get out, can we? Shouldn’t even exist.”

Dani nods affirmatively.

“Give it here. I barely got to do anything this time,” she says.

Tim hands it to her. Dani stands up and smashes the drive with her foot.

------------

First part of this concept/au.

INDEX

I might make a series out of this. It’s fun.

(Read part one first.)

Danny enters the Ghost Zone through his parents’ portal. He shuts it behind him with a convenient little remote from his pocket before anything can escape. Familiar channels in the infinite green expanse lay open in every direction. Yet, he hesitates. His white hair waves like mist as he hovers.

He’s about 19 now and nearly as tall as his dad, though not as stocky. His frame is lean and muscular, stretched taut with constant exercise. A little overstretched, even. Looming and harshly angular. Luckily, his black jumpsuit has grown with him over the years. The insignia on his chest has even smeared a little. He wound up with the sharpest of his parents’ facial features, completing the image of a predator ready to spring at a moment’s notice. At least, that’s what the public seems to think. The electric green eyes probably don’t help.

Nope, there’s no time to think about that. He knows he has to make a decision before it’s too late.

The easiest thing to get his hands on would probably be Dora’s spare amulet. He wouldn’t mind owing her a favor. But then, a giant dragon might just stir up more trouble than it would solve. And there’s no telling if he could keep his head on straight for long enough without going on some kind of primal rampage.

There are plenty of cursed weapons, but the “curse” part tends to get ugly and fast.

Pandora’s box is also definitely out.

Danny rubs his chin and thumbs through several other options in his mind. Too risky to get. Not powerful enough. Boobytrapped. Too cursed. Way too cursed.

He repeatedly brushes past a candidate that refuses to stay away. He can’t believe he’d even consider it. He wishes he’d never looked it up.

But… An undead army sworn to the Ghost King’s Crown could be a pretty sure bet. It would be dangerous to get. It would change everything. The others would never forgive him. But it would be enough. Could he really take down the King just to get his stupid hat–and get saddled with wearing it for the rest of his life? The forums were kind of vague about that part. Maybe there’s a way to borrow it? As if that’s never come back to bite him before.

What is he thinking? It’d be overkill.

Then again, it might not be enough if he waits. What’ll he do then?

He winces, pushes his hair back, and lets out a deep sigh. He needs to get a hold of himself–and away from everything.

Danny dives down into the green, heading away from floating doors and islands, toward vast cavities of amorphous space.

Tangled bodies of semi-formed ectoplasmic matter dance and collide to draw the landscape into being. Plumes of shimmering fog in dark shades of green, purple, and red conceal the origin points of what little inherent structure the Ghost Zone has, far far below in humid chasms. Terrifying wormholes suck in their surroundings and take them who-knows-where as who-knows-what.

The budding scientist in Danny wonders what could be learned about the universe if this phenomena were studied in depth–or even how they’re influenced by the mingling personalities of eons of passed life. The brainless adventure-seeker in him just wants to see them up close.

Something else is drawing him along. It’s almost prickly, like a current of static electricity. Curiosity takes the lead as he traces it through migrating clouds of soft phthalo mist. By the time he reaches the other side, he can’t tell if he’s lost the trail or acclimated to it.

Everything around him is moving. Enormous shapes travel together in droves–some solid, some less so.

He levels out and glides through the grooves of a brainlike field of reddish rock. The motion of flight pushes the Ghost Zone’s thick chilly not-quite-air into his lungs. He loves it.

As he meanders his way through junction after junction in the canyons, his attention begins to drift.

Even if he doesn’t do it tonight, it’ll have to be soon. The Guys In White have only been getting busier, and he shudders to think what they might be up to next. He may not even be free of prying eyes here in the Ghost Zone.

Self-consciousness prickles at his neck. There’s a lot he can’t see in here. He raises himself in an effort to oversee the entire maze just in time to reach its end. He swings his legs forward and comes to a stop, hanging in mid air. The rock cuts off at a sheer cliff face. The area beyond–a mass of impenetrable shadow–yawns before him. Danny can’t tell if it’s a trench so deep that light can’t reach the bottom or if there’s some kind of obscuring force field shutting it out. The trench is so impossibly wide that it completely fills his view, aside from a puff of white breath from his own mouth.

Wait, what?

Danny turns just in time to see the giant spiny claw of a primeval crustacean inches from his face. Its shell is the same color and texture as the terrain, as if it had just stood up from its place as part of the rock. He can preserve his momentum if he doesn’t try to run, and so dives between the claw and the creature’s body. The serrated pincer digs into the ground beneath where he was. Its smaller claw reacts without hesitation, but Danny’s reflexes are even faster. He grabs the dull side of the shell and freezes it solid to the shoulder on contact. The crab maneuvers back and snaps with its big claw. Danny pushes off of it with his foot to get away from it, bringing him even closer to the creature’s mouth. With a sickening crack, a seam along the center of the exoskeleton opens up, revealing a sea of stinging white tendrils that threaten to envelop their prey. Danny only has a few seconds to think. There’s no way for him to get up enough speed to get away without getting stung, and he doesn’t want to find out what that’s like. He draws his shoulders inward with his hands extended forward. The excess energy in his body is made volatile and forced out through his fingertips. Jagged threads of green lightning leap through the waving tendrils, searing and crackling. Danny sizes up his victory as he shakes out his hands. The crab monster takes uncoordinated steps backward. Its joints make clacking sounds that clash with the degrading tendrils, making an awful chorus. It’s so loud, the boy doesn’t bother with a quip. He also doesn’t notice that some of the noise is out of sync until it’s too late.

There’s a shadow at his feet. He has just enough time to raise a shield before a second crab whips at his head. It’s like getting hit by a rocket.

The world is a blur. Danny tries to counteract his momentum, but he just ends up spinning. In a blink, he’s enveloped in the darkness of the trench below. He can’t see anything. There’s nothing to sense at all apart from the rushing in his head and the pounding of his heart. He keeps trying to slow down and eventually gets the head rush to stop. By then, he can’t see light in any direction. There’s no way to tell up from down.

He produces a bolt of energy from his hand like a torch, but it is almost immediately swallowed by the dark. It takes effort to hold one up for more than a few seconds as he tries to get his bearings. Cold seeps in. Danny’s no stranger to cold, but this is something more. Gnawing. Creeping and oppressive. The air tastes stale.

Something rough drags at his arm, and he wheels at it violently. When he tries to get some light on it, he finds nothing there.

Danny lets instinct take over to keep himself calm as he looks for a way out.

~

Time passes. He has no idea how much. The cell phone in his pocket won’t turn on. It could be hours. It feels like hours. Every once in a while, he brushes something sharp that stokes his adrenaline and paranoia. He’s so tired–not like he would from flying or fighting. He’s drained in a way that feels like he’s being hollowed out. Despite his best efforts, worry leaks in as time gruels on.

He can’t be gone this long. Especially at night. There must be something he’s not doing to break out. He has to try harder. He should have paid more attention before. He could be stuck here forever, and it’s all his fault.

Suddenly, Danny bumps into something solid. He reflexively kicks against it and gets pushed back. He pauses. Nothing so far has been anchored in space like that. He feels it over. It’s flat and smooth with the texture of wood. His fingers bump a metal knob. Hardly thinking, he turns it and pulls. The door swings open, letting warm air and light spill out from inside. He pulls himself through by the doorframe and shuts himself off from the darkness with a heavy click.

He stands in the entryway and breathes, pushing out all the cold dead air. He warms up a little, but the fatigue lingers. He really does feel like he got hit with a rocket. Or maybe a bus. He tries his phone. Still useless.

Danny looks around. The entryway extends to a hallway leading out to some steps that head down. The hall is unlit, but the room beyond glows invitingly. There are hooks with hats and jackets hung on the walls, along with a long thick rope tied in a loop. Pairs of shoes clutter the floor. The door he just came from is purple with a little window at the top that’s been taped over.

Weird.

He has no idea what might lay beyond the steps, but he certainly isn’t going back outside. If he can find another door in here that leads to a different part of the Ghost Zone, he might be able to get back to the portal. If he’s really lucky, the inhabitants might not know him.

He walks cautiously down the hallway. His brain feels like it drags behind him as he goes.

The steps lead to a living room with hardwood floors, pastel orange walls, and rounded wooden doorways leading elsewhere. The furniture is a mix of styles and sizes–all soft, colorful, and well-used. It’s very cottage-y. The disembodied doors Danny’s been through before usually lead to the domains of ghosts. Their homes often manifest as exaggerated shades of places they left or desired in life. This one feels more like a home to be lived in than a distorted memory of one. Even if it does look kind of goofy.

Instinct tells him not to let his guard down. It could be some kind of illusion. And there’s an unfamiliar energy in the air.

Danny pushes off the floor with his toes and silently floats through a corridor further into the house. The pastel walls and wood floors cut abruptly to bright blue walls and cement floors. The architecture’s completely different. Acutely modern, rectilinear, and borderless. It’s like being inside a stone carving of a house. He peeks inside some rooms and finds each a completely different style unto itself. Some are cluttered with drifts of antiques, containers, and brick-a-brack that are just as disparate in style as the house. Many look ancient–tarnished and corroded. Others have bizarre everyday objects that Danny nearly recognizes. If they don’t have some quality that makes them totally nonfunctional, they’re plastered with a poor imitation of a brand name.

He moves on, trying every door he can find. More rooms. More hallways. He loses track of how they wind and connect, pulling tricks of direction on his own mental map. He’s too dizzy to figure it out. With a sinking feeling, Danny realizes that he’s once again lost in a place that seems to go on forever.

Then, he notices a smell. Salty and hearty, like something cooking. It’s subtle at first, beckoning him back the way he came and down a hallway he passed up earlier. Green wood paneling and yellow carpet. The smell of actual food is by far the weirdest thing so far. His apprehension has been completely exhausted by this point, replaced with subdued confusion. And he’s suddenly very hungry. He follows the green hallway to a set of stairs leading upward. Echoes of music bounce down to him from somewhere ahead. He ascends.

 The stairs end at a smaller living room with unpainted wood paneling. There’s a brown L-shaped couch and a big TV in the corner, a dining table and chairs next to the far wall, and four tall picture windows that glow with daylight beneath orange curtains.  A pop song Danny’s never heard of blares in his ears from a nebulous source.

Danny immediately wonders if he managed to stumble through a natural portal to the real world and has just been wandering around some eccentric collector’s house well into the morning.

The music stops. There’s noise and movement directly to his left, in a kitchen with peach and white tile and counters. Someone is standing at the stove. They were in the middle of cooking a pan full of scrambled eggs, apparently.

“Hi there,” they say.

“Uh, hi,” Danny responds absently. He’s so tired.

An awkward pause settles in as Danny fails to read the person’s face.

“Do you wanna have some eggs?” they ask.

The toaster on the counter pops up.

“And toast.”

Danny blinks.

~

The next thing Danny knows, he’s sitting at the dining table with a plate of eggs and toast in front of him and a glass of orange juice to go with it. Across from him sits the person who made them, stiffly eating and drinking from their own plate and glass.

“So,” they ask, “what brings you here?”

Danny swallows the bite he already took.

“I just got lost, I guess.” The eggs are bland and dry. He has a sip of juice and looks the room over again. “I definitely wasn’t expecting to end up anywhere like this.” The juice doesn’t taste like orange. Maybe it’s tangerine or something.

His host makes a short noise of acknowledgement, but Danny can barely process his own words. It’s like trying to think through tar. He sits up straighter and tries to shake it off.

The person sitting across from Danny has hair nearly the same shade as his. Their shirt is red, almost the same as their skin. They look calm, but they keep squeezing their fingers together.

Danny finally realizes how strange this must look and digs up some manners.

“Uh–I’m sorry for barging in like this. I promise I won’t be long.”

He hopes they won’t even ask about his hair and eyes. Maybe they’re used to having ghosts wander through if they have a portal downstairs.

“Don’t worry about it,” they say evenly. “Do you need to… call anyone?”

“I should. I don’t know how long they’ve–”

Danny stops halfway through digging for his phone. He looks at the host, who sits there with a fork in their mouth. The unnatural feeling is still in the air. Danny had nearly forgotten.

Something’s wrong here, but he isn’t about to show that he knows it.

Danny retracts his hand without being too quick about it and relaxes into the chair.

“Y’know, it can wait. I think it’s dead anyway. So, you live here?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you usually leave the door to the pitch black void unlocked?”

Danny jabs a thumb over his shoulder at the stairs.

“Oh, I didn’t know I had one,” the host answers with a scratch of their head.

Danny just nods. At least they’re a terrible liar. There’s something off about their face, but he can’t focus on it.

“I mean. It’s never really bothered me, so I kinda forget about it. I’ve had this place so long.”

“Then, there’s another door?” Danny asks casually.

“Hm. No. I use the windows.”

“Those windows right there?” he points at the ones behind the table.

“No, bad idea. Rose bushes.”

Danny almost snickers.

“Where is this anyway?”

“Kansas.” They answer nearly the same moment Danny finishes asking. “It’s Topeka, Kansas. I’ve lived here for 20 years. And I’m. Marv. –Y. My name is Marvy.” They clench their jaw as soon as they’re done tripping over their script. “And you are…?”

“Just passing through. Like I said, I got lost. I’ll be out of your hair in a sec.”

Just as soon as he can stand. His head isn’t clearing up much.

“What were you looking for?” they ask innocently, breezing past the fact that Danny didn’t answer the question.

They’re on to him. Think of something fast.

“Someone. A troublemaker.”

“So, you’re like a bounty hunter?”

“I guess I’m more of a sheriff--for better of for worse.” He pretends to sip some juice.

“Is the person you’re looking for dangerous?”

Don’t sell anyone out, Fenton.

“Just a little guy. No big deal.”

The host is silent for a good ten seconds, then lets out a tiny “oh.”

Crap.

Danny glances at the window, putting together an exit strategy. He’s picturing a rat maze on a soundstage deep in Guys in White HQ with flood lights everywhere.

He feels like an idiot–getting shuffled from one trap to the next and lured in with food like an animal. The toast doesn’t even look real. They must have laid out that trail in the Ghost Zone to draw him close to the trench. Did… did they send the crabs, too?

Odds are good that there’s a knockoff ghost shield around them now. He’s broken through those before. It’s gonna hurt, though.

“I’m sorry,” his host interrupts the silence, probably reading Danny’s masked suspicion. “I’ve never had a thing–person–like you. Here. Before. But I won’t tell. You don’t have to worry.”

Danny was inches from making a run for it before that last sentence.

“You won’t tell what?”

“I won’t tell anyone what you are.”

Danny’s blood runs cold. Have they figured out his secret identity already?

“That’s an awfully nice thing to do for a stranger,” he says, trying not to put the last nail in his own coffin. “Can I ask why?”

“No reason, I just don’t want to make any trouble for you. It’s not like I ever go anywhere or talk to anyone.”

What kind of veiled threat is this?

“What kind of trouble?” Danny asks almost too lightly.

“Having the wrong people find out. That’s the big fear, isn’t it?” They finish their juice in one long sip.

“So, what would I need to do to pay the favor back?”

The host shakes their head and speaks with a smile.

“All you have to do is do nothing to me.”

Danny can’t think of what to say to that. He just stays still.

Satisfied with their answer, the host leans against the backrest and absentmindedly raises their right arm in a vague open gesture. Danny hears a sliding sound from the kitchen, and a pitcher of juice flies with unseen force into the host’s ready hand.

They both stare at the pitcher. The host has a perfectly guilty expression on their face. They try to recover by putting down the pitcher and folding their hands, by which they end up moving everything on the table by about an inch without touching a thing.

“I, uh, er… Oops.”

Danny disappears. By the time the host reacts, he’s already at the exterior wall. His intangible body pushes through the wood–or tries to. For some reason, it won’t let him through. It doesn’t burn like a ghost shield. He just sinks an inch in and stops, as if there’s nothing beyond. He pulls himself out and lifts the curtain of one of the windows. Nothing but white light. It’s hot, like the light source is right up against it. He can’t pass through that, either.

“I can explain.”

The host is standing up and looking at him, though not directly. Danny realizes they’re focused on the raised curtain in his grip. He drops it, and the host’s eyes dart frantically around. Danny tries the ceiling. When it stops him, he ricochets down toward the stairs. As if reading his mind, the host gasps, snaps around, and points at the opening in the opposite wall. And then, it’s just a wall. Danny slams against it head-first. Stars bloom in his vision. His invisibility fails him. The host stares, motionless with their hands splayed at their sides, as if trying to hold something in place. Their captive scrambles up to where the wall meets the ceiling like a cornered rodent.

He summons everything he has left to raise an ecto-bolt.

“Let me go,” he demands.

“I can’t,” the host says shortly. A little panicked, even.

“Wasn’t asking!”

Danny bids the bolt to fire, but it just flickers in his palm. His arm already hurts from holding its own weight. This isn’t working. He lets the bolt dissipate and tries to draw the energy back into his hand. Instead, the threads of green light slither down in a flash and pepper the room with burn marks. The host is alarmed and shrinks into themself without changing stance. It looks… wrong. Like they’re squished. Danny can’t remember their colors being so bright, either.

“What are you? What did you do to me?” Danny practically begs.

“Nothing. I’m just a guy, y’know? A guy,” they beg back.

Danny scans them up and down. The host jolts on their heels when they get a look at themself. Their hair is the shade of their skin which is the shade of their clothes–which are suddenly deep blue. They’re a silhouette in play-doh.

After a little more stammering, the host lets out the rest of their breath and drops their shoulders.

“Fine. You got me.”

The play-doh form blinks away, replaced by a distinctly human figure in its place. They’re about a head and a half shorter than Danny, and a few years younger too. Their face is round and boyish with tiny freckles across their light peachy skin. Their hair is so wild that it probably hasn’t seen a comb in weeks. It’s a different color every time Danny glances at it. He can’t believe he felt any air of menace from someone who looks like a burned out high schooler–down to their faded pink socks, heavy grey sweatpants, grape-purple pullover hoodie, painted nails, and the blue plastic star-shaped studs in their earlobes.

“Happy?” the host asks through uneven teeth. “It wasn’t a good disguise, anyway. I panicked.” Their voice is a little raspy and isn’t through breaking, which makes Danny realize it barely had any character at all before. “Go ahead and wipe me. Throw me in front of your bosses or whatever. Just make it quick.” They raise their hands in surrender.

Danny stares, dumbfounded.

“Look–I’m sorry, okay?” the host continues, insecure in the face of Danny’s silence. They flick a hand, and the stairs are suddenly back. “I’m not trying to be a bad guy. You’d freak out too if someone was after you.”

Danny can feel his back phase through the wall as he begins to drift.

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

His genuine confusion makes the host’s defeated blue eyes widen.

“You… you’re not here for me? Or, are you even one of them?”

Danny tries to say something, but nothing really comes out. His stomach keeps telling him he’s falling.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry. Listen, you gotta promise not to tell anyone. It’s important! I mean. Uh.” They run their fingers fraughtly through their technicolor hair and then extend a hand. “We got off on the wrong foot. My name’s Tim.”

Danny catches a break. He passes out after slipping out of the wall. He’s back in human form by the time he hits the floor.

------------

PART 2

INDEX

Edit: I tweaked the header a little so it’d read better.