Written for Phic Phight 2021, for Sailor_Toni over on AO3
Prompt: "Paulina has to save Danny from a villain"
Somewhat ooc but I don't care, I operate solely on what I think is funny lol
It all happens so fast, Danny can hardly keep up.
One second Johnny is about to bash his face in with a studded-knuckled fist, the next second Paulina has entered his field of vision, appearing with startling speed just to Johnny's side, and has grabbed a fistful of blond hair.
"Leave him alone, you-"
Whatever insult Paulina had chosen is drowned out as Johnny screeches in pain from having his head yanked back with such force as to throw him bodily off-balance. Pinned as he is under Johnny's motorcycle, Danny can only watch as Paulina goes for the classic knee-to-the-groin against Johnny, apparently with such effective force that Johnny's voice deserts him entirely in an undignified, high-pitched yelp; he flops over onto the ground with his hands between his legs, his face even paler than usual, wheezing ineffectually.
Paulina gives him another kick and shouts something in Spanish before running over to Danny.
"Are you okay?" she asks, flipping her hair over one shoulder; Danny can only stare, feeling more than a little infatuated. He's never seen Paulina fight anyone besides other girls at school, and those fights are usually made up of psychological warfare rather than exchanging physical blows. He should probably examine why seeing Paulina kick Johnny's ass turns him on as much as it does, but right now is admittedly not the best time.
Danny attempts to answer her, but instead just coughs from the weight of Johnny's motorcycle crushing his lungs. Smooth. He supposes her presence here is a mixed blessing - without her, he'd be able to go ghost and just phase through the motorcycle, but he's certainly not going to do that now that she's looking directly at him. He's also pretty sure his leg might be broken, or at least quite badly strained, given the flare of pain that shoots through it whenever he attempts to move it, but that will have to be a concern for later, because Johnny has managed to push himself up onto his elbows and is attempting to recover not only his prior stamina, but also some amount of his dignity.
"Shadow-attack-!" he manages to croak, pointing not at Danny, but rather at Paulina, whose impulsive bravery seems to falter a bit as she is faced with something truly alien, as Shadow splits away from Johnny like splintering wood and begins rocketing straight for her.
"Paulina, focus!" Danny shouts, and she spins to face him again. "You pull, I'll push!" She nods, wrapping perfectly-manicured hands around the handlebars. "One, two, three-"
Whether Paulina is somehow hiding considerable muscles inside her tiny body somewhere, or if it's just adrenaline augmenting her strength, she nevertheless succeeds in helping extricate Danny from under Johnny's motorcycle. Before he can even think about thanking her or helping her or really, anything, however, Paulina climbs onto the bike and yanks Danny onto it behind her.
"Get on!"
He does not need to be told twice, throwing his arms around Paulina's middle as she takes off with the sound of squealing tires and Johnny's enraged swearing rapidly fading behind them.
Under basically any other circumstances, Danny would be delighted at this turn of events - clinging to Paulina's back as she drives a motorcycle with surprising skill, at exhilaratingly high speeds, through the thick of the city, dodging pedestrians and cars while they both laugh with equal parts excitement and terror - in fact, he's pretty sure he's literally dreamt about this before. Of course, this is all rendered much more distressing with Shadow immediately at their backs, leaving a trail of rotten luck and destruction wherever it touches.
"Get out of the city!" Danny yells, trying not to swallow Paulina's hair as it flies in his face. "That thing's too dangerous to fight here!"
"You want to fight it?" Paulina lets out another string of Spanish words that Danny doesn't need to understand to get the colorful vibe of. "Fenton, you're insane!" she says.
"I'm not the one who stole a ghost's motorcycle and is currently driving at like ninety miles per hour in the city ce-whoaohshit!" Every muscle in Danny's body clenches as Paulina nearly hits a pedestrian; the bike skids, wobbles dangerously, tires smoking, before she manages to wrangle it back under control and takes a hard turn towards the highway exits, and Danny realizes the scream he's hearing is coming from his own mouth.
He twists, wincing in pain as he does so, to find Shadow still right behind them, maybe ten feet back, trailing inky black dust and detritus behind it. Danny's mind races to try and decide whether it's worth the risk of exposure to fight back, but they're still in a relatively crowded part of the city and if nothing else, startling Paulina right now - while they are racing down the road at breakneck speeds - will put both of them in immediate danger, and not just from Shadow catching up to them.
"That thing is weak to light!" he says. "If you can get us somewhere with strong enough lights we can deal some damage to it!"
"And where do you suggest?"
"I don't know! Like a construction site or the football field at school or something!"
"The football field?" she cries, indignant. "I'm literally about to get on the highway, Fenton, I can't circle back around to Casper High!"
"Hey, you asked!"
The bike catches the slightest bit of air as Paulina takes the exit to the highway, and neither of them can help but laugh at the sudden G-forces that lift them off the seat.
"Man, this would be so much cooler if we weren't being chased right now!" Danny says, twisting again to watch Shadow chase them. As the sun sets and the sky gets darker, Shadow seems to get bigger and faster, and is now gaining on them; as if that isn't concerning enough by itself, Danny catches sight of the telltale glow of ectoplasmic energy flickering between Shadow's hands.
"Shit!"
"What?"
"Look out, left left left!"
Paulina swerves into the next lane, narrowly misses being side-swiped by a honking SUV, as Shadow lets loose an energy blast that blows holes into the highway right behind them, spraying dust and asphalt into the air, causing multiple cars to swerve into other lanes to avoid the sudden explosions. Paulina screams and the bike wobbles again as she panics, and Danny tries to shield her as well as he can.
"It's alright, it's alright!" he says, twisting again. Stuck as they are between two cars on the highway, their speed is, somewhat ironically, much more reasonable than before. They are in the glare of the SUV's headlights, and Danny can hardly make out anything, much less where Shadow might be.
An idea hits him.
"Headlights!" Danny shouts, and Paulina jumps.
"What?!"
"We have light! The headlights on the bike!" he says. "If we can… If we can somehow take it by surprise or something… I-I'm not sure how we'd do it, but we have what we need right here!"
Paulina doesn't respond, but Danny can feel her contemplation through the tenseness of her muscles under his arms. The SUV is still honking at them, and down the highway Danny can see red-and-blue flashing lights coming their way. He swallows.
"Not to alarm you," he says, "but I'm pretty sure we're about to be involved in a police chase!"
She lets out a distressed moan. "Papa's going to kill me!"
"At least it'll be an amazing story!" Danny says with enthusiasm he does not feel.
Paulina huffs. "Yes, I'll make sure to mention this was all your fault!" There's little sting in her words.
"C'mon, think of how much less exciting your night would've been otherwise!"
"Ugh, yeah, just a hot bubble bath and the latest episode of Werewolf Memoirs... All that pampering would have sucked!" Her tone is very deadpan and unamused, but it makes Danny laugh.
"It'll just be all the more worth it after we don't die from a ghost attack!"
"Oh, just in time for my dad to kill me instead!"
Hey, on that topic, you wanna hear a funny story about my dad's ghost portal kind of killing me? Danny thinks but doesn't say. Paulina interrupts his thoughts, anyway, revving the bike into high speed again as the police lights get ever closer, their wailing sirens audible over the SUV's continued honking.
"Hold on tight, okay? I've got an idea!" she yells, and Danny does as he's told, holding on tight as Paulina swerves over several lanes of traffic at once and onto an exit, which veers off into a part of town that's somewhere between back-country roads and suburbs. Far less populated, here, thankfully, and just in time, because now that they aren't surrounded by headlights anymore, Shadow reappears behind them, more ectoblasts charging in each hand.
"It's back!" Danny says, "and angry!" Against his better judgement, he lets his own energy charge between his fingers, crackling and familiar warmth that makes him feel safer even though actually firing it could be a huge mistake.
"We're almost there!" Paulina says, eking out every bit of horsepower from the bike that she can.
The police cars turn onto the exit and one of the flashing lights hits Shadow, just in time to throw off the aim of its ectoblast, which hits the ground several feet away and explodes with enough force that Danny can feel the impact even from a distance. Paulina shrieks but steers true, heading straight for an empty abandoned supermarket parking lot. All the streetlights are off, and after a moment of fiddling, Paulina manages to turn the motorcycle's lights off as well.
"You better hold on, Fenton, I've never done this before!"
Danny doesn't have time to question it, just holds on for dear life as Paulina lets off the gas and wrenches the handlebars to the side, leaning into the sudden and terrifying skid that leaves Danny's stomach behind, just leaves him a screaming shell at the mercy of G-forces and the laws of physics he's so often been able to ignore in ghost form.
The bike completes a full turn during this skid, at which point Paulina hits the lights and the high-beams; Shadow appears in stark relief, looking shocked for just the briefest moment before screeching and writhing and contorting in anguish as it disintegrates into dust, leaving just a thick black film on the ground where it will eventually reform.
Relative silence hits them with uncomfortable force, and both of them tremble and breathe heavily as residual adrenaline courses through their veins. Danny's ears are ringing, his stomach still struggling to catch up with the rest of him.
"Wh… Where did you learn to drive like that?!" Danny asks finally, wiggling Paulina back and forth. She laughs, but pries his arms off of her. "That was incredible!"
"Dash's dad has a motorcycle, and sometimes we take it out for a drive when he's out of town," she says, smoothing down the front of her shirt. "But I've never… never done anything like that. We usually just like, drive it around the city and stuff."
"You must be a natural, then."
"Must be," she says confidently, flipping her hair over her shoulder. It's less effective than last time, since her hair is disheveled and covered in debris, but Danny's heart still skips a beat.
"Either way, you saved my ass, Paulina," he says. "That was… really cool of you."
She almost seems to blush, rolling her eyes and turning to watch the police cars get closer. "You can make it up to me by figuring out how we're gonna get out of this mess. If I go to jail I'll lose major clout at school."
Danny watches her for a moment, just admiring her profile and letting his spinning head continue to settle down. "I've got an idea." He climbs off the bike, keeping his weight off his bad leg. "Take the back way home and lose the bike, then just lay low. I'll take the fall."
She's clearly confused, staring at him with a furrow between her brows and narrowed eyes, like he's just given her a cryptic riddle to puzzle over. "Are you serious?"
He shrugs. "Yeah. I've already got a reputation as a troublemaker. Besides, again," he says, "you saved my ass."
She definitely does blush this time, still staring at him in bewilderment. The police cars are entering the parking lot now, their red-and-blue lights flashing colored halos in Paulina's hair. "Thanks, Danny," she says, and leans over to kiss his cheek. When she pulls away, however, she grabs the front of his shirt with that same shocking strength she'd moved Johnny's bike with. "Nobody hears about this, ever, you understand?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die," he says, miming the motion over his shirt.
She gives him an uncertain smile, and then she's off, circling back around the abandoned building to evade the cops, who are finally closing in on Danny.
With a little bit of overshadowing, it's easy enough to make them forget they saw two teenagers speeding down the highway on a motorcycle with a ghost in hot pursuit, but it's a memory that Danny is pretty sure he'll treasure for a very long time.