AN: Right… So, someone posted an idea about ghost powers for Taylor while I was reading a Danny phantom fic. And suddenly I was plotting a Worm, Danny Phantom crossover. First thing to establish is if you're going to write a Danny Phantom fic then Worm is too bleak. Need to lighten the setting. No entities. No Endbringers. Or at least not the unstoppable destruction beasts we are used too. If a lucky shot from one specific cape is the only way to kill the damn thing, it doesn't belong in this crossover. adjust the gangs so they are different enough to be interesting as well while I'm at it.
Treat it like DC or Marvel. People get powers, how varies, no one has a good explanation. Move along, nothing to see here.
Next, Danny is OP. For all that canon Tay is a memetic badass she just does not have the firepower to play on that level. Well not if he actually learned to fight smart. So, she needs to be on his level. Well she doesn't need to be, but lone ghost Tay sounds dull, and just adding Danny Phantom seems like a waste. So, no more lone wolf in misunderstood heroism. Then I need to turn down the halfa max power level.
So, some toned down bad asses, fit to be unleashed on a DC/Marvel style Wormverse. It's going to give canon worm characters nightmares, and I honestly find that hilarious. What do you all think? Ditch the ghostly wail, possession and duplication? Split physical perks and talent with energy manipulation between them so everyone has specialties? Say Danny is tougher and stronger Tay is better with blasts and shields? Should others get non ice power ups? Should anyone even get elemental power ups? Swap out energy manipulation and look into more obscure ghostly abilities? Telekinesis would be a good one, lots of villains from the show had some obsession specific telekinesis so it wouldn't even be a stretch. I don't know, there's a lot of things to play with here that could make the power sets less OP and more balanced. Still enough to make them the envy of grab bag capes everywhere.
As always, I'm looking to give some of my many ideas away to good homes. I just don't have the time to give them all the attention they each deserve. This snippet thread is just the tip of the iceberg. I have roughly a hundred fic ideas stored away in google docs at this point so if you want to adopt a plot bunny please let me know.
"Danny, are you sure we should be down here?" Despite asking the question I wasn't actually complaining. Danny's parents might have been considered on the same level as Uber and Leet, but they were tinkers. Getting a chance to look around a tinker's lab wasn't something I'd pass up.
"Eh, it's fine. We had enough safety gear for everyone, and that's really all Dad and Mom care about. Well, that and we shouldn't touch most of this stuff, but it's ok to show you around." Danny answered with a shrug.
Self consciously I shifted the breathing mask a little and tried to ignore the fact that I was wearing some insane cross between hazmat suit and spandex. I could only imagine how much grief I would get from the bitches at school if they saw me in this get up. I glanced around the room and couldn't help smiling. At least I wasn't the only one. Sam Tucker and Danny all looked just as goofy. The scifi reject face masks didn't really help though I had to wonder why they left most of the head open if the outfits went to the trouble of covering everything else.
Sam's light hip check knocked me out of my thoughts and made me glance over. I couldn't see the lower half of her face thanks to her breathing mask, but we'd been friends for more than a year. I could recognize her comforting smile just from the eyes. I grinned back and shook off the depressing chain of thought. I didn't need Emma. I have new friends now. Whatever Emma's issue was, it wasn't my problem. I just needed to ignore her and get on with my life.
The lab was everything a cape geek could imagine and then some. Chemistry equipment, welding gear, soldering irons, piles of electronics components, wires, and lights. More impressive were the finished items resting almost haphazardly all over. Dozens of guns, and beakers full of glowing liquids stood out the most. Besides those there were lots of less recognizable and more normal items.
"This is really cool." I murmured looking around wide eyed.
"Yeah, I've been in here a few times, but it never really gets old." Tucker said as he looked over some custom electronics.
"I still don't see what's so interesting about it." Danny muttered from where he was leaning against a wall.
"That's because you're just too used to this, Danny. For the rest of us? This is the sort of thing that only exists on tv." Sam countered as she leaned in to inspect an oversized dream catcher.
"There's a glowing oil rig resting in the middle of the bay." Danny deadpanned.
"Which none of us have ever been too. This is real, and right here." I countered. Why was there a thermos down here? It certainly looked high tech, but what was the point of a tinker tech thermos?
Danny only shrugged that off. I didn't push, and neither did Sam or Tucker. Danny's parents were a sensitive topic even at the best of times.
It only took a few minutes for those of us still wowed by the novelty to converge on the room's apparent centerpiece.
"Dude," Tucker breathed out in awe. "your parents built a stargate?!"
Danny snorted and shook his head moving over to join us. "It's not a stargate. It's the Fenton Ghost Portal. Meant to enable travel to and from the Ghost Zone, the alternate dimension in which the lively deceased reside." Even through his breathing mask the sarcasm was thick enough to cut with a knife.
"That's insane." I shot Danny a look. "Even Haywire never got to the point of sending physical objects across dimensions, never mind people."
"Yeah, well, that's my parents for you. Nothing is too ambitious in the pursuit of ghosts." He shook his head. "Besides it doesn't work, or they haven't got it working yet, whichever." As a group we moved to look at the portal more closely. Staring into a massive mechanical tube was actually really impressive even if it didn't do work. All the hours of careful work that must have gone into it… It was really impressive.
There was a noise behind us. Just a quiet rattle of glass. Even as we turned to look the noise grew louder. There was a large glass beaker resting on one of the nearest tables glowing a sickly neon green, and it was shaking more and more violently by the second.
"Danny?" Sam asked cautiously as we all started to step backwards. Away from the chemicals… and into the portal.
"I don't know." Danny muttered. "It looks like ectoplasm, but they're always messing with that stuff in new ways, and a lot of them blow up." He admitted nervously.
"Crap." The word was barely out of my mouth before the inevitable happened and the beaker exploded. The shockwave knocked us backwards, fully into the portal. And then the whole world was toxic green and pain.
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Waking up strapped to a table was not something I'd expected when I got up this morning. My everything felt sore. I was tasting something that made me think of decay backed by lightning strikes, and I was nauseous enough for the whole room to feel like it was spinning.
"Jack we are not dissecting our son and his friends!" Mrs. Fenton's outraged shout grabbed my attention.
"I'm not saying we should!" Mr. Fenton hollered back. I couldn't see either of them. Behind me? "But you saw the security footage! They were in the portal when it was activated and now, they're all exhibiting ghost like abilities! Their systems are flooded with ectoplasm, and we don't know why. They could be possessed for all we know! We can't just let them run off like that!"
Oh God there was what in my system?! And what did he mean ghostly abilities?
"Maybe you're right…" Mrs. Fenton sighed. "We have no idea what kind of health repercussions this could have on them. It's not like things were pretty the last time something like this happened." This had happened before?! "Still though, Vlad turned out alright in the end. No matter what he says, glowing green zits may have looked disturbing, but they didn't seem to do any real damage."
"I swear to God if I have glowing green zits, I am going to break that stupid machine." It took me a second to realize that their conversation had trailed off and I'd actually said that out loud.
A few seconds and the sounds of footsteps later and the Fenton's were standing in front of me in all their jump suited glory. Even after a year and a half that still weirded me out.
"Oh, thank God. Taylor, you're the first to wake up. That's good. It's only been an hour. With any luck the others will be up soon. This is at least a good sign." Mrs. Fenton breathed out a sigh of relief before glancing to her left. Following her look, I could just make out Sam on the table next to me. I guess the boys were past her.
With a groan I let my head flop back against the table. Only I kept going through it. I squawked a little as I bounced off the floor. "What the hell just happened?!" I sat up and looked at Danny's parents.
Jack swiped something off of a nearby counter and started pointing it at me as he poked me in the shoulder. "Did you see that Maddie?! She phased right through the table, just like a ghost! I mean, I know she was floating earlier but this is incredible!"
"I was floating?!"
"It's why we had to strap you to the table, dear." Maddie said as she looked over Jack's shoulder. "This is fascinating. She's putting out enough ecto-energy to power just about anything in the lab, but it keeps fluctuating. Do you think the spikes are what's causing her to display ghost like abilities?"
"Like a ghostly pressure gage! Brilliant Maddie!"
"Would you guys please keep it down." Danny's voices sounded off. Standing on wobbly legs I looked over just in time to see him float up through his restraints before dropping about six inches back to his lab table with a small shout. "Ugh, what happened, I had the weirdest dream." He picked that moment to rub the last of the sleep from his eyes and look around the room. "... It wasn't a dream… Was it?"
I only managed to shake my head.
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"Dad, I'm fine, will you stop fussing." I pushed Dad off. It had almost been endearing at first, but it had been five minutes, and I was very much over that now.
"You are not fine." Dad countered. "You got blasted with some strange energy, are floating half a foot off of the ground, and when I tried to hug you, I went through you!" With a frown I managed to get back into my chair without dropping this time.
"Well I'm not in pain, and I'm pretty sure I'm not dying, so just calm down alright. Apparently, Panacea owes the Fenton's a favor. We just need to sit tight and wait for her to check us out."
Dad frowned. "I don't know, Taylor. I know she does a lot of good, but Marquise is a villain."
"Well it's her or let the Fenton's keep prodding us." I deadpanned. "I'll take my chances with the villain aligned healer, thanks."
Dad scowled, but that did seem to be the end of any arguments on his part. He wasn't very tuned into the cape scene. He paid enough attention to keep the gangs out of the Dockworkers association, but beyond that it didn't interest him much. Still, he was there for the barbecue when the hotdogs came alive. He knew Danny's parents meant well, but he also knew they were… not the most reliable. Honestly, for me, the fact they called Panacea rather than trying to figure this out on their own said pretty much everything about the situation. They were worried, and they wanted the miracle worker on hand in case things were time sensitive or worse than they realized.
"Sup." Speak of the miracle worker and she appears. The mousy girl in red and white scrubs with the surgical mask was well known nationwide. But best known here in the bay. "Didn't think you guys would ever cash that favor in, but a debt is a debt. What's the issue?"
Maddie smiled faintly as she closed the door behind Panacea. "Danny and his friends were taking a look around the lab when one of our more long term experiments… violently destabilized."
Panacea nodded. "Something exploded." She bluntly summarized.
Maddie sighed but nodded. "Yes. They were all wearing our standard protective gear, and if that was the only issue, they would have been fine. Unfortunately, the blast knocked them into something else we've been working on, and that saturated them with ectoplasm. They seem healthy but…"
"Ahh, gotcha." Panacea nodded. "Better safe than sorry and all that. Especially with exotic energies. Let's see what we got."
She worked her way through the room poking each of us in turn and humming idly to herself. Finally, she shrugged her shoulders and plopped down into an empty kitchen chair.
"As far as I can tell they're all fine." Our parents all lout out audible sighs. But I was pretty sure I wasn't the only teenager in the room to slump in relief. Though if we were fine that didn't really answer the sudden onslaught of gravity no longer working. "I can tell there's something bonding to their cells all the way down to the genetic level, but it's not causing any kind of mutation or harm, on a cellular level, or on a larger scale. I know it's early, but if whatever the stuff is was harmful, I'd be spotting at least something. You boys might want to ease up on the meat and fried foods though, that stuff's terrible for your arteries."
Sam's superior smirk over her eating habits wasn't usually funny, but it was so normal after all this craziness that I laughed myself silly as the parents all thanked the healer. After Panacea left, the kitchen fell back into silence as the adults all played a game of chicken to see who would crack and voice the obvious first. I was a bit surprised, and a little proud, when Dad was the one to bite the bullet.
"Ok, the kids are healthy. So why can they float through things now?"
Jack fidgeted with a salt shaker, seemingly not wanting to look at any of us. "I almost hate to say this considering it was our experiments that caused it but… They're exhibiting ghostly abilities. Floating, moving through solid objects, and we know they were exposed to ectoplasm…"
I think we all looked pretty skeptical, but Maddie came to her husband's defense. "I know what most people think of us and our work." She admitted. "I'll even admit we don't normally find any kind of proof ghosts exist. Almost never in fact." She sighed. "But we've had a few rare encounters. Samples we managed to get in our early days are the basis of, well, everything." She shrugged. "The scarcity of definitive sightings was the entire reason we became desperate enough to try making a portal in the first place."
Mr. Manson took a deep breath and let it out slowly before starting to speak. "Ok, let's say, just for discussion, that these abilities are ghost related. What does that mean for the kids?"
The Fenton's shared a look. "We have no idea." Jack admitted. "There was a similar, smaller scale accident, involving a friend of ours when we were in college. But all that did was cause an unusual case of very persistent acne. As far as we know he never showed any signs of…" Tucker chose that moment to fall through his chair. "That." Jack pointed at the timely visual que.
"Is this a bad thing?" Everyone turned curious eyes on me. "I mean, we survived a lab accident that probably should have killed us… and now we've got some kind of superpowers." I shrugged. "We're not exactly going to win a fight with our incredible ability to travel through walls, but I'll take this over being dead." And maybe they'd get better with time. Right now, I accidently floated a few inches off the ground at random. If I learned to control it? Maybe I'd actually be able to fly.
"That's a pretty good way to look at it, yeah." Sam pointed at me with… "Gahh!" She shook her empty sleeve until her arm faded back into sight. "Aaaaand we can add invisibility to the list." She muttered glaring at her own hand as if it had betrayed her.
Mrs. Folly shook her head. "We're going to have to call you kids out of school."
"Huh?" We all asked in stereo.
"You haven't been able to go more than a half hour without one of you having something happen. It's certainly not going to be safe for you all to go to school and show off a bunch of abilities you can't even control." Mrs. Folly didn't need to elaborate any more on that point.
The heroes did their best to keep a lid on the gangs and the Marquis kept them mostly honest, but that didn't mean it would help all that much if someone decided to recruit us.
Dad took one look at me glared. "No running off to play hero. Not until you all have control, and not until we've all had a chance to talk about this." He shared looks with the other parents before the four of us were all being subjected to glares, again.
"Can't even turn this stuff on and off yet, Dad." I grumbled. "Pretty sure you can relax."
Dad rolled his eyes before looking at the other parents again. "I'm going to assume that only buys us a couple of weeks, what do you all think?" He ignored my offended squawk.
Mr. Folly gave Tucker an assessing look. "I think it'll hold us at least a month if we let them practice together. Longer if control proves to be an issue."
"We're right here you know." Danny muttered. He was going for outraged, but the little grin on his face ruined the effect.
Maybe we could be heroes. Or maybe I'd just end up card carrying member of the unassisted recreational fliers club. But that was something to worry about later. Right now, I needed to get myself back to the ground before I dropped two feet when this burst of flight wore off.
