Lasers As A Method Of Introduction

"Hold still!" Jenny shouted, trying to take aim at her white-haired target as they sped above the city.

"No! You'll shoot me!"

"Because you blew a hole in Main Street and ran!"

"Because you were going to shoot me!"

Jenny groaned in impatience as she chased the latest headache in her bad day parade through the skies.

Not a single thing about today had gone right. First mom had "surprised" her by setting off the meteor alarm at five in the morning to test her readiness, then when Jenny hit the snooze button and went back to sleep, she got lectured about her duty until it was time to go to school. Maybe don't set the test for class-C asteroids if you want me to take it seriously, mom! Then, school was just the worst – Brad was away for a few days on some family reunion. And given she found another letter from a "Secret Admirer" in her locker that was totally not in Sheldon's handwriting, she couldn't hang out with him without giving him the very wrong idea that this latest attempt to date her was working. So she had been alone all day.

Which made her easy prey for Brit and Tiff's most recent plan to humiliate the robot girl – by whatever metric the Crust Cousins used to judge what was fashionable (and Jenny had devoted hours of processor time trying to figure that one out), medieval was back in style, which meant so was tarring and feathering. Add on to that detention for getting feathers and goop everywhere along with her homework getting ruined, no matter how she much protested it wasn't her fault, and by the time she heard the explosions and found the weird… she was going to go with alien, sat next to a huge crater in the road, she was more than ready for the chance to cut loose and vent some frustration.

Just her luck to get the one bad guy somehow immune to everything she can do! She'd tear her hair out if she wouldn't fly worse without it.

"This is all just some big misunderstanding…" The boy in the black and white jumpsuit began before weaving around Jenny's cannon blasts. The last one, the one she was sure he couldn't dodge, just passed through him as he turned translucent. "I don't even know where I am!"

"Oh, well, let me help you – you're in a world of trouble!"

Did he think she was stupid or something? Craters don't make themselves in Tremorton (and Jenny decided to ignore the fact they were her doing half the time), and explosions don't come from nowhere. And considering-

"Look, I'm still kind of freaking out over here, would you back off?!"

Jenny rolled in the air to avoid the acid green beam of energy that shot up at her, the attack zooming past her into the sky. She narrowed her eyes at the figure below her, her right arm coming up again to fire a series of shots in retaliation that the glowing boy dodged around.

… And considering that, the ability to fire what her sensors were telling her were very destructive lasers from his palms, she had a good idea how he did it, too!

Jenny put on an extra burst of speed from her boot rockets, the cannon retracting into her arm, to be replaced with an enormous, spiked ball that emerged and grew. Her arm lashed out, sending the morning star shooting out on its chain directly at the white-haired alien. She heard a cry of surprise before the ball went straight through her target and retracted, returning to Jenny's arm with a clang. The glowing boy solidified, stopped in mid-air, and glared at her.

"Alright, that does it!" He growled, his hands glowing an acid green. "I get dragged from my home, dumped in the middle of a place I've never heard of and now I'm gonna get blamed for something I didn't do by a crazy robot girl with weapons instead of ears?! Fine! If you wanna play…"

With a shimmering sound, the boy vanished from sight. Jenny started, looking around for him. Who was this? She didn't know any alien who could everything this guy could. Flight, sure, energy blasts weren't out of the ordinary either. Intangibility, invisibility? All individually, but never all in one. Misty was the closest she'd ever encountered to him.

Jenny whirled on the spot, trying to catch any sign of her missing assailant.

"… than let's play!"

The glowing boy winked into existence in front of her, his fist swinging around in an arc to crash into her face, a ringing sound echoing through the sky.

Jenny stared blankly at the boy as his look of fury slowly gave way to pain. "… Is your hand OK?"

"Fine, thanks," he replied with a tight voice. "In my defence, that usually works."

"I'm sure," she deadpanned, before grabbing his wrist and lashing out with her leg, the blue metal colliding hard with his ribs and sending him hurtling through the sky towards the ground. He stuttered to a halt and fired back with both palms, the green beams snaking out and catching Jenny in the chest.

She hunched over and hissed at the impact even as she was flung through the air. That stung. Nothing major damaged, at least according to her diagnostics, but that was a major jolt to her system in a way almost nothing else had ever been. OK, then – no more Ms. Nice Bot!

Ow, ow, ow, why did I punch the robot girl?!

OK, yeah, he was frustrated, angry and more than a little scared, but he liked to think he was smarter than that. Not exactly the first time he's immediately regretted a decision, though. He shook his wrist as he darted between some buildings. He needed a plan.

If nothing else, he needed a plan to take his mind off the fact there was a robot chasing him that was so advanced he was giving her personal pronouns instinctively, and that he really ought to have heard about her if he were anywhere near where he was supposed to, and he might be further than-

No. Stop. Brain, enough of that. Time to fight.

Alright, so, close combat is out, whatever she's made of is way stronger than I am, and she hits as hard as the Ghost King. I like my teeth where they are. Maybe-

Danny yelped and dodged to the left as a claw crackling with electricity whipped past him, embedding itself in the wall of a nearby skyscraper. He turned and faced the robot girl (Jenny, she said?) as she yanked the weapon that was, somehow, larger than herself out of the wall, a look of incredulity on his face.

"OK, no, seriously, where are you storing all these?!"

"It's not polite to ask a lady where she keeps her weapons!" Jenny retorted, the claw seeming to collapse in on itself before retracting into her hand as her other formed a… Was that a diamond?

"And I don't know about you, but I'm just getting warmed up!" She shouted as the diamond glowed a dull blue, before a rushing gout of flame erupted from it, a cone of fire streaking towards the ghost boy. He held his hands up and focused on reflex, a green shield flaring into existence around him. The fire licked around the exterior of the barrier, lapping up and down as Jenny altered her aim minutely. Danny grit his teeth as he felt the interior of the bubble shield heat up rapidly.

Before too long, thankfully, the robot girl ended the torrent of fire and Danny dropped the shield instantly, his hands glowing blue.

"I think you need to cool off!" He roared, thrusting out both palms at Jenny, cold blue beams impacting hard on the robot girls arms and legs. Ice crawled around her, encasing her limbs in unnaturally glittering chunks. She slowly began to sink to the ground as the added weight dragged, struggling as she did. Danny tried not to enjoy the look of surprise on her face and good grief, she was exceptionally expressive. He knew some humans who didn't convey their emotions that well.

"Well, it's been nice chilling with you, but I think we're gonna have to put this on ice for now! Stay frosty!" Danny grinned, throwing Jenny a mocking salute before taking off in the other direction.

"Hey! Oh, no you don't!" He heard her cry out futilely.

Crack.

… Or what he really hoped was futilely.

He glanced backwards to see her body flexing and shifting again, steam rising from the ice wrapped around her, a spiderweb of cracks appearing in the ghostly blue.

Oh, brilliant.

Jenny slammed herself into the nearest tall building as she chased her target, the final chunk of ice on her arm shattering and dropping into fragments as she did. She shook it, double checking that venting heat to melt the ice didn't cause any rust, before narrowing her eyes at the retreating form of the glowing boy. Her hair rearranged itself to produce thrusters, and she took off after him, pouring on speed. The more she chased him the more she was sure she couldn't just let him run around town.

Despite that, her irritation at the absolute mess of her day was beginning to fade into the background, replaced by curiosity. Because whoever this was and whatever his plans for Tremorton, he was, so far as she could tell, impossible. She wasn't much of a scientist, much to her mom's disappointment, but you couldn't live with Nora Wakeman and not pick up a weird miscellany of science knowledge. And doing everything this guy could do wasn't feasible. Maybe there'd be some vaguely plausible explanation or maybe some of it was microcircuitry built into that jumpsuit but Jenny… doubted it, somehow.

There was this weird itch in the back of her processors. Mom had described it as a 'gut feeling', a sensation that you already knew the answer but couldn't properly express it. And Jenny knew there was something else going on with this boy.

The white-haired kid took a sharp turn down and to the side, another acid green beam zipping past her as he did before he turned invisible again, trying to lose her. Pft, like that was gonna work. Jenny cycled through vision modes until she came across infrared, looking for a teen shaped thermal mass to follow. In a way she did, and it just added to the impossibility of this… being. Because what she found was a near freezing patch moving through buildings. With everything he's doing, he should be radiating enough heat to spontaneously set the buildings he was passing through on fire, and yet here he was, trackable by being much, much colder than everything around him.

This was so weird. Maybe she should let mom have a look at him before she kicked him back to space or wherever he comes from. She was always complaining about never getting to deal with extreme scientific curiosities anymore.

And… maybe it might be worth talking to him once she'd stopped him? He wasn't acting like most of the bad guys that made their way to Tremorton. Maybe stun him with something first in case she was wrong.

Aha! There we go, he's stopped, in the middle of a… is that the mall? Middle of the complex, right below the…

Ah. Ah ha! Let's see how good your reflexes are when I surprise you, glowy boy!

Danny skidded to a halt in the middle of whatever structure he was in at the moment. A mall or something? Everything around him was all seating, plants, and broad pillars, holding the skylight covered ceiling up. He breathed heavily, forcing himself to stay still and just listen for a moment.

All he could hear was people chattering away, moving around the shops and chains (none of which he recognised, but let's shunt that off to the side). No jet engines or energy weapons. He relaxed, slightly, allowing himself to return to visibility, propping himself up against a thick column and not caring about the stares and whispers he got from the multitude of people around. Either for suddenly appearing, or his outfit.

Right. So. Plan. Plan to deal with the ridiculously powerful girl who shrugged off more or less everything he threw at her.

Punching was out, she didn't even feel that. Ectobeams seemed to hurt, and at the very least she reacted to them in a way she hadn't otherwise, but they didn't seem to cause much damage. Over time that might work, sure, if he could outlast a robot, but given he was still failing gym class he doubted it. Ice would work if he could get it cold enough, fast enough – metal snaps when brittle after all. How would he get that chance around Jenny's seemingly bottomless bag of tricks, though?

He counted himself lucky that she couldn't really harm him any more than he could her – intangibility was an absolute blessing, especially when your opponent didn't have any specifically anti-ghost weapons. If she had any of Val's guns, he would be utterly doomed.

Wait. Intangibility. Overshadowing!

Worth a shot before resorting to the Ghostly Wail. He didn't know if he could even work a body like Jenny's, but he could-

Glass above him shattered and he snapped his head up, a skylight broken to pieces as something streaked through it at speed.

"Found you!"

Jenny slammed into the ground in front of Danny, cracking the floor as she brought her arm up, the metal shifting once again. A blue ball of energy coalesced and shimmered swiftly into existence between two spikes, humming and pulsating as it grew before it was released. In a panic, Danny phased, his body turning translucent as the ball streaked through him and struck the pillar, detonating with a dull boom. Anyone who'd been curious about the glowing jumpsuited boy leapt back at this point – but some back corner of Danny's mind noted they didn't seem surprised by Jenny diving through the ceiling to shoot at people.

"Oh, come on!" Danny yelled in frustration, keeping himself intangible as the robot girl scowled at him. "Can't you just leave me alone?! I didn't do anything!"

"Then explain the giant hole and the screaming!" Jenny shot back.

Danny threw up his arms and restrained himself from shrieking in frustration. "I literally fell out of the sky! I didn't even know I'd crashed anywhere until I woke up with a face full of concrete!"

She scoffed, but she did put away the big intimidating claw gun, which Danny took as a plus. "Right. You're, like, the fourth person this week to try coming here and wreck my town for kicks, and it's only Tuesday! Why should I believe you?"

It's Thursday, Danny's brain immediately supplied, adding it to the pile of things he wasn't thinking about right now. Try to talk down the heavily armed girl you probably maybe can't beat, now you've got the chance. Then overshadow if it goes badly.

"Because- "

Crack.

Danny and Jenny both froze, before turning around to face the pillar that had taken the plasma ball instead of Danny.

The load bearing pillar, they both suddenly recalled.

"Oh crikey," he heard Jenny murmur in shock as the column slowly, inevitably tilted, twisted, and began to fall downwards.

Right on top of a group of shoppers.

Instinct compelled Danny forward, solidifying as he raced to the falling column, halting his flight directly under it as it collapsed. He reached up and braced himself as the concrete fell onto his hands, the weight forcing the air from his lungs as he propped it up with some difficulty.

"Get to safety, move!" He shouted behind him at the people in the path of the falling masonry. The shoppers, paralysed briefly by fear, jerked to life at the urging of the ghost boy, scurrying out of the way. Danny barely had time to set the pillar down before plaster started dropping from above, a web of cracks appearing as that section of the roof began to cave in, screams mounting as the public noticed the danger.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! Danny berated himself. Always go for the shield in built up areas, don't go intangible! You never know where everyone is in this kind of fight! Now at least part of the roof is going to come down and he had no idea if he could hold it up or not. But he had to try. People were people no matter where he was.

Before he could even make the attempt, the whine of jets reached his ears. Danny tensed, expecting an attack from behind, before the white and blue form of Jenny streaked past him to the roof. Her arms extended out, quite literally, with a whirr, pressing against the collapsing concrete and holding it in place.

He blinked, the sudden shift in her behaviour mildly jarring. But then he shook himself and focused. She was willing to help stop the roof caving in on everyone here, so don't look a gift robot in the maintenance hatch

"You sure you've got that?!" Danny called up, obliterating a few chunks with his ectobeams as they came down as people directly underneath finally got the message and started running. Not quickly enough, as ever – in Danny's experience nobody ever realised the danger they were in until it might be too late.

"I'll be fine!" Came the electronically tinted reply. "I've got the strength of, like, a million and seventy men!"

"That's oddly specific."

"Less sass, more save!"

"… Right. Right!"

The air around him grew noticeably colder and Danny's hands glowed a bright blue before he thrust them at the ground. Ice grew up in great chunks, a pair of monoliths growing upwards to meet the ceiling. As the ghost boy continued to pour ice into the structure, the tips of the structures began spreading, a thick sheet of ice covering the ceiling.

"Get clear!" He called to his impromptu ally, who retracted her arms back to their normal length and pushed off the ceiling as the ice crept over the patches Jenny had been holding. She flew down and stood beside him as he made the ice thicker, reinforcing it as best he could. After several seconds, after he was sure it would hold long enough to get something more permanent in place, he dropped onto the floor, panting heavily.

He didn't even react when he felt a warm but still nevertheless metal hand drop onto his shoulder. Yeah, he could fight still, but screw it. If the guess about where was that he could no longer ignore was true, winning wouldn't matter anyway. He glanced up at the robot girl.

"You're, um," Jenny started, looking sheepish. "You're not a bad guy, are you?"

"… No," Danny sighed, climbing to his feet. "I'm really not."

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry! I just… you know, screaming and damage and person with powers, I just thought… I should have- "

"It's… it's fine," Danny interrupted. "I'd probably have done something similar back…"

Home.

He took a deep breath, trying to steady his nerves. "Let's start over. Hi. I'm Danny and I think," he started, hating how his voice was beginning to crack. "I think I might be a lot further from home than I thought."

Jenny looked at him with deep sympathy, before she held out her hand to him.

"Come on," she said kindly, smiling at him. "I think my mom'll be able to help."

After a brief moment of hesitation, he tentatively reached out and took her hand.

A/N: I'm kind of lowballing Jenny's overall power, mostly just to make everything consistent between "can be caught in earth quite easily" to "can lift a 100 ton pyramid with ease", but even with that I'm of the opinion she'd win 9 times out of 10 fighting Danny. Danny just doesn't have the offensive power to properly harm her, and while she doesn't have the means to hurt ghosts specifically, ghosts can be punched into submission, and Danny would eventually get too tired to fight and phase properly. He'd need a power up or Jenny would need to do something real dumb to weaken herself (which isn't exactly out of character for her, let's be fair) for Danny to win.

Interestingly, there IS something he could do that would let him win more or less every fight with Jenny, but he probably wouldn't think of it, much less do it. It's going to come up eventually, so take a guess as to what that might be!

germanjustiniano9: My grasp of Spanish is very loose, but I'm reasonably sure you've got the wrong guy, if only because I don't really but into ghostly obsessions as a thing.

RonaldM40196867: Robot fighting time indeed! More or less what I said in the last note – a throwaway joke I realised worked better than I'd thought.

, OneYuTriSlayers, trjz: Thanks! Hopefully I can make it work.

Jacob Phantom: Done! Unless you meant Fire And Ice, still got writers block there, alas.

Dreams Come True 996: Funnily enough, this actually started life as After Many Dates: Danny and Jenny. Almost all the ideas that are going to go into this would have gone into that, and some ideas I've got would only work with that setup.

That said, I went with a more self-contained fic for two reasons: One, my anxiety kinda flared up about asking someone if I could follow up on their work and two, the ideas I've got for this work best if it's just the worlds of MLAATR and DP colliding, rather than everything as was the case with Many Dates. In any case, hope you enjoy!

nightmaster000: Technus, you say? Now why would you bring up Technus, he's not going to be anywhere in this fic at all

Ironchef13, jebest4781: Thanks!

Devilsummoner666: Confused and also avoid decapitation, indeed. He didn't really have a chance, thus lots of running. This one is happening in that sweet spot between D-Stabilized and Phantom Planet, where if fanfic is to be believed three whole other seasons minimum happened.