Author's Note: Cross-posted from AO3. Took the prompt of "What if the Maddie put blood blossoms in Danny's food, not knowing of their anti-ghost properties?" Three chapters total, lots of unreliable narrative courtesy one really messed up Danny. Expect body horror and vomiting.


"Mom made sandwiches today," Jazz said, handing Danny a brown paper lunch bag decorated with hearts and flowers in black Sharpie. "Tuna."

"Thanks," he replied, hastily shoving his lunch into his backpack. "Please tell me she didn't write us sappy notes again."

Jazz laughed. "You know Mom. She just wants to show she cares."

"Yeah, I know." Despite his beleaguered tone, he was grinning. Notes in his lunch were second grader levels of cheesy, but it was nice too.

"So do you want a ride from your big sister today or did you want to take the, uh, quicker route to school?" She raised her eyebrows and lowered her voice so that their father, cheerily doing his after-breakfast needlepoint in the family room, couldn't hear. It was more out of habit than anything else; the Disasteroid-and their parents finding out about Danny's little secret-had been months ago.

Danny checked his watch before tossing Jazz her car keys from the bowl beside the door. "I think I have time today," he said with a smile.

"Great! You can help me go over my psychology notes on the way there!"

"Oh c'mon, Jazz!"


"I know the food is terrible, but I still feel kinda bad for wrecking the cafeteria kitchen last week."

"Are you kidding me? I heard it might be a whole month before they open the cafeteria again!" Tucker's eyes lit up as he opened his lunchbox. "It's nothin' but homemade sloppy Joe's for me from here on out."

"Besides," Sam added as she peeled a homegrown orange, "It's not like it was you who decided ripping apart the deep fryers while they were full of boiling oil was a good idea."

"Yeah but I-I mean Phantom-" He cast a nervous glance around their table. So far only those who'd physically been at the Antarctica site knew he and Phantom were one and the same, and he was leery of even that many people knowing his secret. "-should have stopped the Lunch Lady before that happened."

"At least Phantom managed to thermos her before anyone got hurt."

"This time." Danny popped the lid off his Tupperware and tosses it aside, a sour expression on his face.

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Lighten up, dude. Phantom's gotten pro at keeping people out of harm's way. So a high school cafeteria and a couple walls got trashed-so what?"

"So eventually Amity Park's going to get fed up with all the property damage Phantom's caused and try to foot me the bill. I don't even have a part-time job yet!"

"I'm pretty sure even politicians realize that ghosts don't really do money," Sam replied wryly. When Danny's expression didn't change she set down her orange, touching his arm with her less sticky hand. "Danny, I'm serious. You're doing a great job keeping Amity Park safe."

His knit brows softened and he huffed. "You're right, I'll shut up now. Sorry."

"Good." She lightly punched his shoulder, smiling. "You're sending out some serious negative vibes today, and that's supposed to be my job."

"Please, Sam," Tucker said, fiddling with his PDA one-handed. "You're the cheeriest Goth we know."

Sam only shrugged, returning to her orange. "So Danny, what ectohorror did your dad pack you for lunch this time? Should I get my handy dandy wrist ray ready?"

"Nah, Mom banned him from the kitchen. Again. It's just a couple of tuna sandwiches, see?" He held one out as proof, then squinted at it suspiciously. "Oh gross, she mixed the tuna with a bunch of organic herbs."

"Funny, your mom never struck me as the green thumb type." Tucker paused. "Well, the farmer's market-going kind of green thumb anyway. I know she's got the ectoplasmic green thumb down pat."

Danny raised an unimpressed eyebrow, but didn't comment on the lame pun. "Jazz is trying to convince her to shop healthier. You know, less fudge and ectoweenies and more salad and-whatever's in my sandwich, I guess."

"If your sister's looking for healthy alternatives, let her know my greenhouse is open to her-just as long as she closes the door after her, of course." Sam shoved a slice of bright green kiwi into her mouth and spoke around it. "This dry heat's no good for my tropical babies."

"I'll be sure to let her know." He took a cautious bite of his sandwich, chewed thoughtfully and then brightened. "Hey, whatever she put on this is delicious!"

In the brown paper lunch bag covered in hearts and flowers drawn with black Sharpie, Maddie Fenton's note detailing both her love for her baby boy (all grown up and fighting ghosts, she was so proud) and the contents of his lunch went unread.


In fifth period, Danny's ghost sense went off. At the same time, pain sharp enough to make him cry out involuntarily gripped his belly. He tensed, but the pain vanished as quickly as it had come.

Weird.

Ignoring the concerned look Tucker gave him, Danny asked to be excused.


In the boy's bathroom he reached through the wall where he kept a spare thermos, but like in class, his stomach clenched in pain his brain translated as "really hot" and "holy crap I don't remember eating knives for lunch." He wrenched his hand out of the wall, popping his hand tangible again as soon as it was clear. Again the pain vanished, not even leaving the trace of an ache behind.

Weird.

"What the heck is going on?" He looked down at his hand, but of course his hand was perfectly fine. Was something trying to disrupt his ghost powers?

Outside the bathroom, people began to scream in the hallways.

Gritting his teeth, he phased his hand through the wall again, knocking out the thermos as quickly as he could. He picked it up off the floor, gasping through another hard stab of pain. "I sure hope this is an easy ghost to deal with!" he said, bolting out the door.


He didn't know this ghost, but one look and he threw peaceful negotiation out the window. It was huge and froggy; which made sense, considering he found it in the science lab. When it's bulbous red eyes fell on him it roared, exposing a poisonous purple mouth ringed with stubby fangs.

"Guess it's gonna be the hard way," he muttered to himself. Rings of white light appeared at his waist as he broke into a run, transforming him from Fenton to Phantom. Unfortunately, he didn't even make it halfway across the classroom before hot pain made him stagger hard into a counter. He hit the floor with a scream, curling instinctively to protect vital organs, but when he was Phantom vital organs were optional so why was he in so much pain?

The ghost frog roared again, and he heard the purple claws of its huge webbed feet dig into the classroom floor. He rolled right and launched himself through another counter even as the pain (boiling hot, sizzling hot, he was cooking from the inside out hot) made him scream again. The ghost crashed through delicate lab equipment and a number of cardboard science projects, screeched, and turned towards him again.

Danny was on his feet, baring his teeth and hugging his middle (uselessly, there was nothing to keep from falling out, nothing stuck through him, there was only an awful heat that left his guts feeling overdone and slippery). "Gotta do this fast," he panted. He held up one hand, fired off three bursts before the pain rocketed through his skull and short-circuited his powers. Luckily for him the frog was big, slow, and close by; every shot hit. It was thrown against the back wall with a shriek of pain, three smoking holes in its slimy side.

His eyesight blurred, his head roared, his legs could barely hold his weight. He had no choice but to give it time to lurch to its feet, red eyes murderous. It opened its mouth, and before Danny realized what it was going to do its tongue, dripping something that makes the tile floor hiss and sputter, shot with a noise like a whip crack for him. It caught him by the waist and pain to match the fire in his gut ran through him. He screamed again, but kept his head enough to shed his legs in favor for his ghost tail. He quickly slipped free, but the pain remained-no, it worsened. Distracted, disoriented, dazed, he bumped up against the ceiling and barely managed to fire another two shots.

One of his shots missed entirely, blasted a hole through the wall instead, but the second nailed the frog in its gaping mouth. Apparently its-spit? venom?-didn't mix well with ghost rays, because its mouth immediately foamed and filled with neon green fire. It shrieked again, loud enough to rattle the windows, and lunged for him. He dodged-barely-and managed to grab one of its long hind legs before it crashed again. He'd done enough damage to the school this month; there was no need to wreck the science lab too.

The ghost frog, dangling head down scarce feet above the floor, croaked, convulsed, and threw up another frog half its size. The second frog was bathed in neon green fire from the first's mouth, and yet hardly seemed to notice. It opened its mouth and spat out a third frog. The third spit a fourth and so on, until Danny was surrounded by red-eyed ghost frogs spanning from the size of a full-grown bear to the length of his hand.

His tail flicked nervously, eliciting pain akin to a pulled muscle where he had no muscle to pull. Fuzzily, some part of him that was still together enough to do so asked: what was wrong with him?

He couldn't answer that.

He dropped the first frog and fled.


He was getting worse.

It wasn't just pain, although that showed no sign of letting up anytime soon. No, the longer he fought-the longer he was Phantom-the worse he was getting, the faster he was getting worse. His strength, his powers, his eyesight, even his thoughts hiccupped, stuttered, blurred. Was he fighting six frogs or twelve? Was he imagining pain in his shoulder or had he fallen out of the sky? Had he puked or was that splatter of ectoplasm one of the smaller frogs? Blinked, missed precious seconds, and got thrown against a tree.

Losing focus, losing consciousness, he was nearly out of steam. The frogs wouldn't stop multiplying, growing, and multiplying again. If he wasn't so-

-he tried to summon a shield but his vision wobbled and how did he end up in the grass-

-out of it these ghosts wouldn't even make him break a sweat, but-

-frogs pinned him down, acid dripping from their burning mouths but he barely felt it because his guts were already soup-

-something in him was wrong, catastrophically wrong, and he couldn't fight them in ones and twos, he had to take them all at once or not at all-

-slipped out from under them, barely managed a hover ten feet off the ground, everything was twisting and burning and it was familiarly awful, it was awfully familiar, but what was this-

-there wasn't a choice. He didn't want to, he didn't want to think about how much it was going to hurt him. But his classmates were still nearby, the teachers too, and he had to protect people, he had to save the humans, so there wasn't a choice.

He opened his mouth and began to Wail.