Disclaimer: Not the big man…just a fanfic author.
Story: Danny Fenton, best friend of Sam Manson and Tucker Foley, sophomore at Casper High, and very much a tomboy. That's right, Danny is as female as they come. Well, minus the clothing and attitude.
Set all over the place, but very AU.
Spoilers: I'm not sure…most probably. No, definitely going to be spoilers.
Warnings: Eh….
Pairings: Danny/???
A/n: If you watch Lifetime, this is what happens. That was all me and my mom watched when I wrote this. I don't even have the channel any more. I miss it actually…before, I was getting sick of it.
Danny Fenton's Divine Comedy
Chapter One: Inferno
One Year Before
"You're female!" Sam began the age-old debate.
The Goth may not care for girly stuff, but she was proud to at least show she was female. Her friend Danny, on the other hand...
"That's not the problem, Sam! I'm a freak!" Danny wailed.
Sam sighed and patted her friend's back sympathetically. Tucker continued to let Danny cry into his shoulder.
"Come on, Danny! It's not that bad. Your powers are a gift. They make you unique."
Danny glared at her, "It takes all my concentration not to break things! I'm either going intangible and risking breaking things, or my newly gained strength freakishly breaks things. I'm lucky I haven't gotten in trouble yet!"
Her best friends winced.
"Now, back to what I was saying. Danny, as a fellow female, you need to show a little female pride! You can't dress up like a guy all the time! Heck, the entire school thinks you're a male already!"
Danny shrugged her slender shoulders. It was true. She wore her father's old hoodies from a long time ago, so they weren't as big as his size now, and baggy black jeans. Even her long, precious hair she loved was piled under her cap, with only a few loose strands falling out. She looked like a really feminine boy, as the whole entire school believed. Only the teachers knew the truth and weren't about to rat her out.
"Can we please go back to me being a freak?!"
One Year Later, Present Time
A little history lesson about Danny, not Danielle, Fenton. She, like the rest of her family, was a genius. Her parents were scientists, her sister an aspiring pyschologist, and Danny herself was just a genius. She didn't specify in any field. Her parents were all confusing calculations and formulas and theories. Jazz was book smarts and analyzation. Danny?
Think of her as Artermis Fowl the Second…minus the whole criminal venture and all.
Another thing about her, she had a brain condition. She was prone to having seizures because of a chemical imbalance in her brain.
And the last part…well, that was a little too personal to go into right now.
And the newest addition to her life was the added plus, or negative depending on how you see it, of ghost powers and being half-ghost. In Danny's words, being half dead.
It didn't help when Big and Dumb began harassing her.
"Hey, Fentino! Ready for another bashing?"
Danny had managed to avoid Dash before, but now she was cornered. But the big idiot thought she was a guy, and that didn't help in the matters of beatings.
Deciding to just duck and run, she attempted to do so until Dash grabbed the hood of her sweater and pulled her back. Grunting in pain and annoyance, she decided she'd had enough. She twisted around in his grip, giving Dash an upperhook in succession. She glared at his figure on the ground and sneered.
"Get a grip, stupid idiot," Danny narrowed her eyes.
Hearing him being called an idiot, Dash's eyes flashed angrily and he launched himself off the floor and knocked Danny down. He punched Danny once in the face before Lancer appeared and tossed Dash off.
"Baxter, Fenton! My office now!"
Furiously rubbing her cheek, Danny got up and glared at the blond jock that followed after her. They both sat in opposite chairs in Lancer's office, exchanging glares and waiting for the Vice Principal slash English teacher to talk.
"Mr. Baxter, I'd appreciate you not beating up on Mr. Fenton," Lancer looked disapprovingly at Dash. "I don't approve of violence, no matter of your station as sophomore star quarterback on the school's team."
"He started it!" Dash shouted. "He called me a stupid idiot!"
"I saw you coming towards Mr. Fenton with the intent of violence first, Mr. Baxter." Turning his attention towards Danny, he sighed. "Mr. Fenton, Mr. Baxter is suffering from dyslexia. Please refrain from calling him names of that sort."
Danny pursed her lips, but looked at Dash calculatingly. "Sir, with all due respect, he comes at me again I'll knock him down a peg or two. And I didn't know he was suffering from it or else I wouldn't have called him that. But it doesn't help when the stereotype of jocks is stupid and he doesn't disprove that image in class. If he doesn't want people to assume, and they're not going to know he has dyslexia either, then he shouldn't act out in class. You might want to talk to some of your teachers as well, Lancer. If they know he has dyslexia, then they're the ones aiming to humiliate, not me."
Danny got up and stomped away to the door. She paused and then glanced back at Dash quickly.
"I'm sorry for calling you a stupid idiot."
"Mr. Fenton," Lancer called out before Danny was completely out the door. She turned back to him, refusing to look at them in the eye. "I still need to talk to you. Please wait outside while I talk to Mr. Baxter."
It was a couple more minutes before Dash came back out, and Danny slipped into the office, eager to avoid saying anything to Dash.
"Miss Fenton, I apologize –" Lancer started off.
Danny waved her hand, "Don't mention it. Dash was here, and you know how much I'd rather let everyone think I'm a guy."
"Still..." he looked reluctant to leave it as it was. "How have you been?" he changed the subject instead.
Danny grew stony, staring out his window.
"Miss –Danny. Have you been doing fine...?"
"I don't want to talk about it, Mr. Lancer," Danny forced out, feeling tears coming up.
"I'm sorry."
Her head nodded sharply.
"I'd like to talk about it sometime."
She didn't answer.
Lancer sighed, "On another subject...I would like for you to start tutoring a fellow student. Maybe it might...take your mind off of things."
She sighed, "Who?"
"Kwan Jeong," Lancer said hesitantly.
Danny glared at him, "The football player?"
When he didn't answer, she pulled up her knees to her chest and closed her eyes, laying her head on her knees.
"Is there anyone else who can do it?"
"Danny, you and your sister are natural tutors. Mr. Jeong is failing badly, and he doesn't have dyslexia. He needs this help."
Danny shrugged, "I'll do it."
Sighing in relief, Lancer grinned. "Excellent. Now, how's your Tae Kwon Do going?"
Danny grinned back, "Actually, it's Muay Thai now."
Lancer's grin froze on his face, "Muay Thai?"
"Yup."
"Are you crazy?! Do you know how dangerous that is?"
Danny giggled, "Figured you'd act that way. I'm still practicing Tae Kwon Do and Wing Chun, but I've moved on to Muay Thai. I'm hoping to get started on Jujutsu in the summer before junior year."
Lancer twitched, "Well, they're hobbies..."
She dumped her books onto the table and glared at the Asian jock. Kwan nervously sat down and waited for his tutor to get started.
"Listen up. I'm not going to say this twice, so you better listen. Work hard. If you slack off, I'm ditching you. You mouth off to me, I'll ditch you. If you need help, that's what I'm here for. Don't ask to copy my homework. Don't ask me to do your work. Got it?"
Kwan nodded shakily. He didn't know Fenton had a backbone, so this different attitude was new to him.
"Now name all of your subjects you need help with, starting with the hardest for you," she ordered.
"Math, English, World History, and Biology."
She arched an eyebrow, "Biology's the easiest for you, huh? Interesting."
Kwan blushed, "Well, I kind of...like science."
She smirked, "Looks like not all jocks have the brain capacity of a hamster."
And so started her tutoring sessions with Kwan Jeong.
That Friday, her friends were having a tiff over the change in the lunch menu. Somehow, Sam had managed to convince them to change it to some kind of veggie dish thing that Danny didn't bother to taste. She didn't mind veggies or anything, but Danny wasn't about to eat whatever it was that came from the ground. Or force anyone who didn't want to eat it to eat it.
Instead, Danny disappeared off to wherever she disappeared off to on Friday lunch. Underneath an unnoticeable, large oak tree at the back of the school near the gym, she already saw Coach Julian McKinney waiting with a blanket on the ground, looking as morose as he always did nowadays.
"Not up to eating 'turf sandwich' today?" his lips twisted upwards, but his eyes read 'I'm sorry.' She ignored them and instead sat herself in front of him, rummaging through the picnic basket and stealing a sandwich.
"Not up to being healthy," she deadpanned before savagely taking a bite out of her sandwich.
"I like being healthy, but even I think it's a little too much," he agreed.
"How's the team, Jules?" Danny rolled her eyes, eating much more politely than she started out.
"Good, good. Baxter is looking promising for the JV team, and he'll probably have a spot next year on Varsity. Well, if he can keep his grades up."
"Dash has dyslexia," she blurted out.
He raised an eyebrow, "I know."
Danny looked away, starting to nibble at her sandwich. "The other teachers teach at different paces and it's harder for him. It's not his fault."
"Again, I know that, Danny," Julian said softly. "Why don't you talk to those other teachers then? And if they teach at different paces, you could always help Dash by teaching him yourself, at his pace?"
She stubbornly stayed quiet.
When he was about to talk again, screaming interrupted him. Both of them blinking rapidly in surprise and confusion, they watched as a lot of meat began combining together to form a big monster. Mouth forming an o in surprise and revulsion, Danny thought that that was a rather horrid ghost –if that was a ghost.
"Danny, stay here. I'm going to go check it out," Julian said hurriedly, running towards the school and towards the ghost.
Sighing, Danny finished off her sandwich quickly and then stood up. Making sure no one was around, she muttered very quietly to herself.
"Ars moriendi."
They'd decided having the trigger to her transformation be something not so obvious like 'I'm going ghost!', but something that couldn't be understood. Besides, who would think a Latin phrase had anything to do with the new Ghost Girl? No one studied Latin any more anyway. Besides, it was fitting. Ars moriendi. The art of dying.
She quickly took care of the Lunch Lady –and wow did that ghost have a mean grudge against Sam for just changing the menu! –then she made it back to the area Julian had ordered her to stay out of sight at. She made it time to see him coming back for her.
"You should've seen it!" he grinned widely at her. "That Ghost Girl came again, Phantom she said her name was, and beat up that ghost pretty badly. And oh did Phantom have the nicest legs!"
Danny rolled her eyes, "Pervert."
Julian grinned, "Of course, my dear. Though your legs will always be prettiest."
She snorted and then hefted up her backpack onto her shoulder. "Whatever, Jules. Look, bell's about to ring. I've got to head to my next class."
"I'm sorry," he said anxiously as her back turned to leave.
She stiffened. "There's nothing to be sorry for, Jules. I have no idea what you're talking about."
"I should've never let Jack Madden near you!"
She turned halfway, glaring at him from underneath her bangs.
"Drop it."
"No," he glared back half-heartedly.
"I said –!"
"No! If I'd known, he never would've been able to rape you!"
Danny was quiet. He tried to speak again, but she just turned on her heel and kept walking away.
"Danny, you're still suffering. You may go around acting normal, but it's still affecting you now," he said remorsefully, and though she was gaining distance from him, she still heard it.
She didn't bother with a response.
"There's a dance coming up," Sam prodded her friend.
Danny, however, had been unresponsive since lunch ended. She'd just sat at her seat, quietly taking down notes and ignoring everything around her.
Frustrated, Sam crumpled up a piece of paper and hit her friend in the head with it. Reluctantly, Danny turned her head and looked at her.
"No buts. You're going to the dance and you're going to look like a female for once. If you want, you and I can go together," Sam offered.
Danny sighed, "I'll think about it, Sam. I'm just not feeling up to it."
Sam frowned, but nodded.
Settling her head down onto the desk and onto her arms, Danny hid her face into her clothed arms and began to cry. Seeing her, Mr. Falluca looked the other way and kept teaching, not willing to call her out.
It was an occasional thing with Danny.
Started 8/23/08 –Completed 8/23/08
