"I think we're on to something here," Danny heard his mother hum excitedly to his father as he approached the kitchen, coming home from school.
Lately, he'd been attempting to stay up to date on their ghost equipment plans, considering some genuinely worked and could be utilized or sabotaged at his own discretion… and thankfully, his parents had been all too eager to rant on upon questioning. Just as one of such questions was on his lips, though, a tightness overtook his throat. Danny's throat constricted and his lungs spasmed, leading to choking coughs.
"Oh!" his mother crooned, worried and rushing over. "Sweetie are you alright?" Maddie asked in a motherly tone, patting his back.
Through his shirt, the thick latex glove on his back itched dreadfully.
"Fine," Danny ground out through his sore throat. "I'm just going to go…" his voice shorted out, leading to a wheezy cough. Danny motioned upstairs, skirting the furthest from the red pulp and seeds laid out on the table.
xXx
"Jazz," Danny rasped, knocking desperately at her door.
His sister opened with a questioning eyebrow cock, then took in Danny's haggard appearance with a worried frown.
"I need you to ask what they're working on," he croaked in a bare whisper, voice shot only from being in the house for a few minutes around whatever it was his parents were working on. "It's making me… react." Absently, Danny scratched at his back where his mother had touched him.
"React is putting it mildly," Jazz said, voice snippy with worry. Danny gave a squawk as she peeled up his shirt, revealing hives on his back. "I'll ask," she affirmed softly, leaving her brother twisting to see his own back.
xXx
"Something with blood blossoms?" Jazz reported to her brother camped out in his room under covers (for he immediately began to feel ill). "They're doing some gardening initiative, all over Amity Park," she elaborated.
Danny's eyes grew wide. "Jazz, we hafta stop them," he hissed urgently. "Of course they found something that worked and told us nothing about it until now," Danny growled under his breath to himself, sarcastic.
xXx
The first sabotage plan was simple: destruction. Jazz tossed all the blood blossoms in a fire the next day after school.
Danny's rashes and accumulated from the single night of breathing in the blossoms' aroma in just human form (he didn't dare turn Phantom and feel their full effect) disappeared that day at school, and didn't return… until the next day.
At school, of all places.
"Look!" Lancer said proudly, motioning to a gathering of potted plants outside the school as he welcomed kids in. "The Fentons have provided us with experimental ghost treatment!"
Plan A was once again used, this time with Sam and Tucker on board. Once again, the blood blossoms were "mysteriously" burnt to a crisp.
That evening, Danny returned home to oddly excited parents. He was confused until he caught the conversation.
"The nasty spooks are burning it 'cuz they know it's working!" his father proclaimed proudly, banging a fist on the table. His mother nodded along.
Their smiles looked so twisted and sharp to Danny.
xXx
There were a few days of healing peace before Danny once again noticed the sick feeling— this time, it was a quick decline. He woke up one morning to a dreadful cough, wheezy lungs, a fever, and a general sickly pallor about him— eye bags, pale skin, dead eyes… the whole shebang.
This was because (according to Jazz's reports) his parents had managed to obtain a massive garden of blood blossoms in the basement.
After that report, he called Sam.
"I, uh— kinda need to stay at your house until we figure this out," Danny said bluntly. He felt a bit bad saying it so outright, but talking hurt.
"That's fine," Sam said easily. Her voice turned harsh— "guess we need a plan b, then, huh?"
xXx
Away from the blossoms, Danny got better quick. Unfortunately, that of course involved begging his parents to stay with Sam for "just a few days" over the phone and then hiding desperately from her parents. The latter was much easier than the former, considering he did have ghost powers allowing intangibility and invisibility… and Sam had a big house, to boot.
He was not found… mostly. Somehow her grandmother seemed somehow aware of his presence— how?!— but all she did was give Sam a conspiratorial wink. Sam turned pink at that— and Danny, tucked away in the same room, would've as well if he were on the visible spectrum.
And thus began the plotting.
"So," Tucker said one evening, on their urgent get rid of blossoms meeting, "first we need a better name for the operation."
"Tucker," Sam sighed, exasperated.
Jazz opened her mouth to say something along the lines of ignoring that, but was cut off by Danny, who supplied a bit of a hoarse, "we really do. Blood Blossom…" he trailed off. "Bestruction?" Danny finished unsurely, jokingly.
"Perfect," Tucker cawed through laughter.
"Yeah ok," Sam sighed. "Alright now onto the plan. So I guess like, overt destruction isn't in, huh?"
"Nope, too noticeable," Danny confirmed. "Not that the idea of setting fire to more of those stupid things isn't pleasant," he hummed, eyes lost in an arsonist fantasy.
Jazz cut in— "they think it's the ghosts doing it because it's successful— they understand it's intentional."
"Why don't we make it look unintentional, then?" Sam grinned wolfishly.
xXx
"Where's Danny?" Maddie asked, peering into check on the kids who had oddly volunteered to take care of the lab for the Fentons— importantly, plants included.
"Ah, you just missed him, Mrs. F," Tucker said in a mournful tone. Gesturing outside, he explained, "Danny went to go pick us up some lunch from the Nasty Burger."
"He must really be feeling better, then," she hummed to herself happily. "We would've given you lunch, though!"
Tucker just gave a shrugging laugh, fingering the hidden weed killer behind his back.
xXx
"Overwatered, sprayed with weed killer, and poisoned with nitrogen in the fertilizer," Tucker hummed, miming checking off boxes in the air. "There's no way those things aren't going to die."
Sam nodded. "I'd feel kind of bad for 'em, but you know— it was pretty satisfying." In her mind, an image of the sickly Danny flashed forwards. "Definitely satisfying," she revised.
xXx
"We totally killed 'em, dude!" Tucker cawed.
Danny emerged from invisibility— and immediately began violently coughing.
"Crap, forgot to wash—" Tucker hissed. Sam and him backed up, away from their friend.
"It's fine," Danny croaked as they soaped their hands down, getting rid of the oils. They both waved him off.
"Decontamination complete," Tucker intoned in a mock robotic voice. "And Blood Blossoms Bestroyed," he added in the same tone, then broke into peals of laughter.
xXx
Once all the plants withered and died in one way or another, Danny returned home.
Even just being there where the plants used to be made him feel like he caught a cold— but Danny tolerated it, and simply didn't "go ghost" in the house's vicinity.
His parents were (of course) disappointed— he felt bad, but figured they would quit after such astounding failure in the plant's growth.
Danny was wrong.
xXx
This time, Danny didn't immediately notice his slow decline from cold symptoms until he was in bed rest, and had numerous rashes. Yet, Jazz could not locate blood blossoms.
After a week of being desperately sick, even his teachers were starting to notice that it was most certainly not his "usual" deathly pallor and tiredness, and that this "sickness" had lasted a very long time. Still, he continued to go to school; it was his only escape from the contaminated environment of his house— Danny assumed that's why his symptoms were worsening even without the blossoms there, as both his parents and everything they touched had to be contaminated with the awful oil of the flowers.
Still, though— he functioned.
His friends slowly sought out the Fenton's secret supply— they weren't sharing it out of fear of "listening ghost ears." So far… no luck.
xXx
So it went, with Danny simply getting used to general illness and side glances, until a ghost fight.
Both he and Skulker had been hovering, duking it out, throwing each other— until they both collapsed, screaming. Skulker's suit activated automatically, boosting him away. Danny was not so lucky, and he fell to earth, writhing. He barely managed to switch back to Fenton after his fall, and even then it took him time of clutching the cool grass, panting, breathing in the friendly smells of dew and more malevelont ones of an aromatic flower.
After an immeasurable amount of time where he simply lay there, panting away the pain, Danny lifted himself up and stumbled away.
xXx
"Danny?!" Tucker cawed at exactly 3:04 AM as said halfa collapsed onto his bed. Judging by the fact his door was closed, Danny had turned intangible— because he certainly didn't look in the condition to turn and close it behind himself.
"Dude," Tucker muttered, hands fluttering in worry as he took in his friend's condition. Forget sick, Danny looked dead— even as a human.
Danny gave a pathetic wheeze in response, presumably something stupid anyways, like a simple "hey." It just makes Tucker wring his hands and feel like a mother hen more.
xXx
"Found the greenhouse," Danny croaks in the morning. "By falling on it," he adds.
"Where?" Tucker asks. He feels bad for being interrogative— but Danny is obviously fading based on the long, slow blinks he's givinh and disoriented, sick look about him.
"By the pond," he says. "Near the well, in the park."
Ugh. The pond. The gross, disgusting, slimy pond— Tucker knows that pond.
By the time this runs through his head, Danny is asleep again.
xXx
"We need something more subtle than a destruction-based assault this time," Sam says, cross legged on the carpet of her room.
"Bestruction," Tucker corrects absent-mindedly, earning him a bland look from Sam.
"What if we created a scare?" Jazz hummed.
xXx
"Ugh," Sam moaned melodramatically, bursting into the Fenton's house. "I was just at the pond—"
"Near the well," Tucker injected, earning a glare from Sam to broadcast a not so obvious.
"...And now I feel sick," she groans. "Danny, too," she adds. "We all went to do some studying there, and we all just felt super sick."
"It smelled like weird roses," Tucker input. "Mixed with rot," he adds, sticking his tongue out. (Indeed, the smell of blood blossoms is a unique one).
"Do you think there's a ghost poisoning the water, Mrs. Fenton?" Sam directs overly-innocently at the guilty looking Maddie.
xXx
Sam and Tucker high-five after that— and then set to work creating anonymous rumours on all the forums and boards they can get their grubby hands on.
xXx
Within a week, the blood blossoms are "mysteriously" gone, and Danny is well again.
Things are restored.
Operation Bestruction: Complete.