Disclaimer: I wish I owned Danny Phantom! Desiree: -turns me into Butch Hartman- AHHHHHHHHH! CHANGE ME BACK CHANGE ME BACK! -is changed bac
Summary: Miles meets a fellow superhero during the dimensional crossover who, while he doesn't hold the Spiderman title, understands him all too deeply: Danny Phantom.
Rating: K+
Inspiration: danphanwritingprompts on tumblr
Pairings: N/A
Warnings: ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE SPIDERVERSE SPOILERS! I mean, it BEGINS with a massive spoiler.
Other Notes: Written as a follower count winner prize for wolfsongroar on tumblr!
Dear Uncle Aaron,
I gotta do something, and I don't know if I can do it. I'm scared, man. I'm just tired of letting everybody down. You're the only one I can talk to. I just wish you were here.
Miles sighed heavily as he stared at his own words. A million thoughts were running through his head, and he bit his lip. He put the pen to the paper, prepared to continue writing. He paused, and he listened.
Footsteps, faint but clear, on the fire escape. He looked up, a smile pulling at his lips as relief washed over him. Uncle Aaron was home. Miles prepared to rip the note out of the paper, to toss it away when he paused. The figure came to the window, and clawed hands slipped through the crack of the window, grasping it and pushing it up.
The Prowler stepped into the seemingly empty room. He paused, scanning carefully. Seeing nothing. Footsteps slowly creaked through the small apartment, and Miles shifted to press himself to the back of his TV. His fingers quickly went up and jerked his mask down. He could feel the footsteps, the weight of heavy boots as they came closer.
A swift motion and the Prowler was glaring hard at nothing. Miles stared up with wide, worried eyes staring into the oblivious, but suspicious glare of his enemy. A ring filled the apartment, and the Prowler put a hand to his ear.
"Hello, Mr. Frisk. I've got the security tapes from the tunnel right here, I'll find him." The Prowler's voice send shivers down Miles's spine as the man stood up straight. He pulled his mask off, and it froze the young Spiderman still. "You know me, sir. I don't ever quit."
Miles didn't stay frozen for long. It took everything to not begin audibly hyperventilate. He could feel his mask pressing against his lips and blowing out as he began to breath hard and fast. This...this wasn't real. It couldn't be. Miles began to slowly crawl backwards as his uncle, no, the Prowler. No...Uncle Aaron was focusing on his conversation. He turned his back to him, and Miles took this chance to scramble to his feet and leave through the window.
Aaron froze and quickly turned to see the blur of the window half-closing. His eyes narrowed, and he pulled his mask back on.
Miles half-slipped as he turned the sharp corner of the alleyway, mind racing faster than his legs but somehow the thought process had come to a shrieking halt. Bursting out of the alleyway, his feet skidded as he bumped into a car. He pushed himself from the car, and he ran. Down the street, barely avoiding people, trees, newspaper stands.
An engine roared, revving. He ran past an alley, glancing into it. His eyes widened, and he forced shaky legs to go an extra boost. The Prowler burst from the alley on a bike. Oh no. Oh no, oh no oh no oh no oh no. He couldn't outrun a bike!
Miles huffed as he pushed himself. Please, please. Just go. Work! Anything! He desperately wiggled his wrists in attempt to get his web slinger to work. Nothing. Now would be the best time for anything, for something, to work!
He grabbed onto a lamp-post, intending to use it to swing around. His body jerked hard. Panic flowed through him as he desperately tried to pry his hand off. He grabbed the pole with his other hand. Bad move. Miles was completely stuck, and he put his feet on the pole, hurriedly thrashing around like a trapped animal. WHEN I SAID ANYTHING WORK I DIDN'T MEAN THE STICKY! His eyes stung with scared tears.
A hand grabbed the back of his costumed shirt, grasping it tightly. It pulled, and Miles's eyes widened. His hands broke free from the lamp post, just in time for the Prowler to grab at him. Or rather, attempt.
Despite the mask, Miles could see the absolute shock on Uncle Aaron's face as his claw went completely through him with no damage. Their eyes locked, and Miles felt sick. He loved surprising his uncle. He loved the fear of surprise and shock, and he always tried to make a habit out of it. But now…
The Prowler's shock soon disappeared, and both hands were put on his bike. He revved his engine, and began to continue the chase.
His rescuer seemed to swing with the most grace Miles had felt thus far. He tried to glance back, but only saw black and white mixing in with the dark night sky, and highlights of the city's lights on the form. His eyes focused back to his uncle, only for his view to change as his savior turned.
Miles was shifted to lay against somebody, looking up, and the grasp on his back had quickly moved to wrap a protective arm around his waist. He knew that they were not swinging. They were flying. And for the shortest of time, he was taken aback just how wonderful his city looked at this angle.
Life seemed to move in slow motion. The lights took a distorted, long exposure view. A beautiful mix of pinks and yellows, bright reds and blues, hints of green and purple creating an explosion of color that he had seen so many times, but had never experienced like this. It took his breath away.
A small explosion broke his gaze, and he craned his neck to look at the streets just in time. The Prowler's motorcycle had a burst tire, green smoke coming from it. He was stranded to a halt, and he was staring intently up at the pair. Uncle Aaron was ignoring traffic, as he always did. Miles always remembered his dad grabbing his uncle and preventing him from just freely jaywalking across New York streets.
He had no clue how to feel anymore.
His rescuer soon took him to an alleyway, setting him down. Miles immediately took a step forward. He looked at his rescuer properly for the first time as he tried to collect himself. He was a white haired teen with glowing green eyes, in a spandex suit. He had a symbol on his chest. Miles squinted at him as he tried to focus, but his spider sense didn't go off. The other stared back at him, squinting slightly.
"You're...you're a superhero," Miles noted, his voice a bit quiet and confused. "But...you're not a Spiderperson?" Miles leaned back a bit, motioning to the other up and down. "You look so much like one of us, but...I'm not sensing…?" Miles closed his eyes briefly, shaking his head as he tried to collect his thoughts. Uncle Aaron, the Prowler, Spiderman, Peter B. Parker. "Wh-who are you?" The teen gave a half-smile at him.
"Alright, let's start at the beginning, one last time. My name is Danny Phantom."
A title card comes to the screen, stylized like a comic book. The title reads "Along Came A Spider", and the subcaption "A web of stories come together!" Danny and Miles are side by side, swinging towards the camera, Miles in his current kiddie costume, and Danny as Fenton in the white suit with black details. Danny is using ecto construct as a makeshift web slinging, his "web" green and glowing. In the background is the looming shadow of Fisk.
"I stepped into my parents' ghost portal, and the shock turned me into a half-ghost."
A black haired Danny Fenton stood within the outline of his parents' portal. His hand brushed against the on button, and an explosion of color flashed as the shock turned the familiar white haired, green eyed hero.
"And for the last two years, I thought I was the one and only hero. I regularly save Amity Park, my hometown, from ghosts. Then I saved my hometown from the Ghost King."
Danny, in his normal ghost form, is seen chasing ghosts and hunting them down, sucking them into his thermos. A suited up Danny punched Pariah Dark. A duplicated grabbed the Ghost King, pushing him into the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep, his duplicate shutting it closed. The scene flashed to Amity Park, previously surrounded by the glowing green swirls of the Ghost Zone, flicking back to it's normal spot on the American map.
"I regularly dodge the Guys in White, my parents, and foil my arch enemy's plot. My arch enemy is my dad's, quote unquote, best friend. He's also a halfa, but he's terrible. Morally, I mean. The dude wants to date my mom."
Danny is zooming down the streets of Amity, dodging blasts from Guys in White. They are weaving in and out of traffic on motorbike styled vehicles. Scene flashes to Danny with his eyes wide, hands up in surrender as his mom shoves an ectogun against his nose. Before she can pull the trigger, he quickly smacks the gun from her hand and phases through the floor. Another flash, and Danny is seen shoving his thermos into an invention of Vlad's causing steam to rise from it and the large machine to shake and burst at a weak spot. Vlad is coming from his behind, ready to pounce when Danny turns at the last second to send him to the floor with a zap of the Plasmius Maximus. Vlad hits the floor, turning human in a daze. A flash, and Vlad is seen trying to put his arm around Maddie. She glares at him, shrugging him off. Danny is in the background, crossing his arms and narrowing glowing green eyes.
"I was doing the normal, ya know, running from my ex-girlfriend, when this weird thing happened. A portal opened up. I'm used to portals, but this one...it was different."
Danny Phantom zooms close to the ground of the park, dodging trees or simply phasing through them. His pursuer, the Red Huntress, is hot on his tail, shooting at him with an ecto gun. Danny turned onto his back, firing up a ghost ray to shoot at her board. He just needs to slow her down.
A portal opened up underneath him, causing him to stop so fast he, quite literally, did a flip before he was pulled in. He tries hard to grasp the side, but is ultimately sucked in. The Red Huntress flies past him, but screeches to a halt and attempts to go back to investigate the area. Danny is flung through a kaleidoscope of bright colors. This definitely wasn't the cold green color palette of the Ghost Zone.
He's spit out in New York. He does a few flips in the air, but manages to catch and steady himself. Danny looks up, and his eyes widen.
"I was in...New York. Which, admittedly, isn't too weird. But I saw the headlines."
BREAKING NEWS: NEW YORK'S HERO, SPIDER-MAN, FOUND DEAD AT 26.
Danny stares up in disbelief.
"Spiderman isn't real where I'm from. He's fiction. A comic book hero. I knew this had to be an alternate dimension where he...not only existed but he's...He was always my favorite hero, ya know."
Danny, now as Fenton, is standing in front of a newspaper stand. He phases his hand through the box, taking out a newspaper. The front page was entirely devoted to the passing of grad student Peter Parker. He clutches it tightly.
"Out of every superhero comic I've ever read...out of all of them...I always related to him the most...I may not have been doing the superhero thing for very long, but I knew that whatever killed him had to...had to have brought me here. That wasn't the kind of portal I'm used to."
Miles stared at the white-haired teenager with wide eyes.
"I...I thought the collider only brought Spiderpeople here," Miles said slowly. "If you're here...how many heroes are in New York?"
"Hey, let's not worry about that right now," Danny told him, and he reached out to put a hand on the dude's shoulder. Miles glanced up at him. "Are you okay?"
"I-I, yeah. I'm cool, man. T-thanks for-for saving me," Miles replied, and he brushed off the other teen's touch. He turned towards the street, taking a few steps from the other. Danny stared at him, studying him.
"Dude, I know that look," he lightly accused. "Who was chas-IOPAIGDSFYH."
Miles turned on his feel to see Danny on the ground. He was jerking hard as he glitched, curled up in a ball with distorted yells. Miles immediately rushed back, hovering anxiously over him. After a moment, he stopped, and Danny was left panting hard on the floor with wide eyes. He was clutching his side, staring upwards before looking to Miles. Miles bit his inner cheek as he offered a hand to Danny. The half-ghost laid motionless for a moment before accepting his hand. Miles pulled him up, squeezing his hand hard as the other stood on shaky legs.
"Look, you gotta come with me," Miles said. "You're going to die if you stay here. Come with me, I can get you home." Danny squeezed his hand in return before they both let go. They both automatically briefly fist-bumped.
"Thanks. So who are you? You seem to know a lot about what's going on."
"My name's Miles Morales," Miles introduced himself. "I…" He cut himself off as he thought. His gut twisted up. "I'm…" Danny leaned in a bit.
"You mentioned a spider sense," Dany told him. Miles snapped his attention to him, wide eyed.
"I never told you about my spider sense!" he cried out. Danny snapped his fingers before giving him a finger gun.
"You did just now," he grinned. Miles's face fell hard, and he began to play with the hems of the cuffs on his costume. Danny's grin quickly turned into a sympathetic grin. "Dude. It's chill. You're new to this, aren't you?" Miles swallowed a hard lump in his throat. Was it that obvious?
"I'm...I'm supposed to be Spiderman," he began, and his breath hitched. "But I'm...I can't...I'm so sticky."
"I...I don't know what that means," Danny admitted, giving him a bit of an odd stare. "But, uh, let's get going. Where is this collider?"
"We need to get the other Spiderpeople," Miles explained. He shoved his hands into his pocket, and he jerked his head for Danny to follow him. Danny shifted to begin walking next to him.
"Aren't you worried about your mask?" Danny questioned. Miles smiled, despite knowing his fellow he-his fellow teen couldn't see. "Like, standing out as Spiderman."
"I don't think I have to worry much about it," he said, and he lifted a hand to motion to New York. There were plenty of people also wearing Spiderman gear in memory of the fallen hero. The true hero of New York. Danny just nodded, and he began to walk alongside Miles. "So, Danny, right? I can't help but notice that you're still in costume. And you don't have a mask." Danny grinned.
"Yeah, I don't think I exist here," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "So I'm not worried walking around as Phantom. It actually makes it kind of easier, cause I can better tolerate the cold better like this."
"And the lack of mask?" Miles questioned. Danny shrugged.
"My hair and eyes are different like this. And it's been working for me so far. I mean, my own parents have pointed a gun in Danny Phantom's face before, and neither one have caught on," Danny replied. He must have noticed Miles's wide eyes, and to his light horror, Danny just laughed.
"Your-your parents? They've pointed a gun at you!?" Miles choked out.
"Just an ecto-gun," said the teen, as if that made it any better. "They're ghost hunters. I'm a ghost. That's what they do."
"And it doesn't hurt you?" Miles spoke only just loud enough for Danny to hear. "That your family...wants to...to kill you?"
"Can't kill what's already dead," Danny joked, grinning. Miles didn't see the humor in it, and Danny's grin dropped as he sighed. "I mean, it's not like they know it's me. Ultimately, I know they love me. I'm their son. No matter what, they will always love me. I know they'll accept me."
"How do you know that?" Miles questioned. He stopped at a crosswalk amongst a crowd. Nobody paid any mind to the odd duo.
"Due to timeline stuff, let's just say that I've been revealed before, and they've accepted me. I know that they will always love me," Danny replied. He sounded so...confident. Miles envied him.
"..." Miles looked at the ground, the slush and the reflections of his city in the half-melted snow. His throat tightened as he tried to find the words. "That man who was chasing me...The Prowler...that was my uncle." He stole a glance at Danny, who looked sympathetic to him. Miles returned his attention to the water. It rippled, the beautiful lights breaking, as a car broke the puddle's surface.
"...I'm sorry, man." Miles felt Danny's hand pat his shoulder comfortingly, giving it a light squeeze. "Does he know?" Miles shook his head.
"No," he choked out. He could see, despite the water rippling, that they were allowed to pass. Danny let go of him, and they continued. "But...man, we're so close. I just...I looked up to him. So much, and I just...he wants to kill me, and I…"
"You guys hang out often?" Danny interrupted his thoughts with an unexpected question.
"All the time," Miles felt an unexpected lightness and warmth. "Uncle Aaron and I are artists. He helps me throw up my art all the time. He always finds the best spots for me to display it." A gut punch as flashes of all the spots came to mind. Now…oh god...that's…That's why Uncle Aaron always knew…
"He'll love you no matter what," Danny told him. Miles snapped his gaze to him. How could Danny sound so confident and assure of what he was saying. "Trust me."
"He wants to kill me," Miles tried to protest. "It's, it's his literal job-" Danny cut him off.
"Miles, trust me. This is coming from somebody whose parents hunt him." Danny stopped, and Miles did too. People passed them, completely oblivious. "The only reason I haven't told my parents is because I can't have them worry for me like this. My sister knows though. But my parents knowing would also limit what I can do. But at the end of the day? I know once I turn human in front of them, they will never hunt Phantom again and that they will instantly love him. Because Phantom is Fenton, and Fenton is, and will always be, their family." Miles felt anxiety rush through him at the idea of coming clean.
"But it's not just my uncle! My dad," Miles spoke up, his voice choking. "He thinks Spiderman's a menace! He's a cop. He wants to arrest Spiderman, which is still like, a thousand times better than my uncle wanting to kill Spiderman." Danny chuckled.
"Miles, I swear to you. If you ever chose to expose your secret to your family, they will instantly love Spiderman. Because Spiderman is Miles Morales, and Miles Morales is their son and nephew." Miles felt his eyes watering up. It felt so weird to hear that he was Spiderman, especially spoken so confidently by a hero. "Above all, you were family before Spiderman."
He felt a strange surge of comfort and confidence, and he took a deep breath. Danny smiled at him.
"Come on, man. Let's go get everybody home. I'm actually really curious to meet all these Spiderpeople you keep talking about," he told him. Miles gave a smile.
"Yeah. Let's go." Miles began to take a step. Danny put a hand on his chest to stop him. He raised an eyebrow at the half-ghost. Danny's eyes were sparkling.
"Dude. Let's take the scenic route. I know Spiderman can't fly, and we just went for a bit of a flight, but...wanna go again?"
Miles broke out into a grin, his own eyes sparkling excitedly as he nodded eagerly.