BIG CHAPTER! 3,126 Words!
Hey guys! We're moving into our next arc, "Dancing With Dragons." Some of you might know this as the "Parental Bonding" episode from the original show. I've changed it a bit but more or less it will be close to the original, unlike the previous arc which was built from bits and pieces from later episodes of the show.
The reason I'm jumping around is to foreshadow future events, set up the world a little better than the show did, give Danny more time to explore his powers and slow down the timeline. Like I said before, if you think that the last arc ended too abruptly and that there seemed like more to say, don't worry! Plot points will be revisited as this fic progresses.
Thanks for reading and reviewing, and as always, let me know what you think!
-Song
The pages of the Gothica were filled in more as the three of them finished recounting everything from that weekend. Sam's diligent script passed over each line, creating an entry for the shadow ghost as well as Danny's ability to use his powers on others. To extend them.
"To share them," Tucker had said.
As Sunday, then Monday, came and went, Invis-O-Bill faded from online popularity, but much to Danny's disappointment, the Fenton's hadn't missed it. It was Jazz, actually, who had found a printed clipping from the community college newspaper and brought it home as a joke for Danny to read, thinking he would find the whole thing ridiculous, but their father had snatched it from her hands.
It was like a mountain man hearing about Bigfoot for the first time. Sheer mania from the excitement of a ghost sighting right here in Amity Park fueled their parents' late-night ghost hunting for that entire week. The Floody Waters staff were increasingly getting sick of the Fentons.
Danny did his best to stay home and to stay human. When the week was over, local talk of the upcoming dance was more than enough to push Invis-O-Bill out of the public mind entirely.
Danny was more than grateful when it did. He was less grateful knowing that he would have to try and find a date for the dance, but he'd been struggling with that since the 6th grade. He was a pro at rejection.
.
.
.
That Tuesday night, while studying late, Danny stood, stretched, and headed downstairs. He was hungry, a little dejected, and frustrated that Mr. Lancer was giving a huge exam the Friday before Homecoming.
Who does that? He thought as he rubbed his face and saw his computer screen ghosting behind his closed eyes.
Only the sadistic English teacher of Casper High.
Danny bounded down the last two steps and steered himself to the kitchen. The fridge was already standing open when he arrived. On the other side of the door was a tall redhead. Jazz was awake. It was one in the morning.
"What are you doing up?"
It was only after he asked and she closed the fridge door with a start that he realized she was fully clothed, ankle boots still strapped to her feet, and an overcoat hanging haphazardly off of her shoulders. Her cheeks were red, but Danny knew for a fact that it was the warmest October on record out there.
"You're just getting home." It wasn't a question.
"No, I'm not!"
Danny lowered his voice to a whispered hiss, and he cracked a wicked smile. "What. The. Hell?"
Jazz's red cheeks started to pale. "You will shut your mouth Danny Fenton. I wasn't doing anything."
"Oh, that's not something suspicious to say at all, Jazz."
He looked her up and down, eyebrow raised. Underneath the haphazard overcoat was a low-cut black silk blouse and a wine-red skirt. She was wearing black tights that disappeared into her ankle boots. Her hair wasn't really done up, Jazz wasn't really that kind of girl, but it was freshly washed and dried in waves. She was wearing lipstick. Or… maybe she had been a few hours ago.
"I think your outfit at one in the morning would beg to differ. I mean, the Jazz that I know is in her purple pajamas by now with Bearbert Einstein tucked under one arm. I think I'm starting to get concerned."
His tone was purely teasing but her face suggested that it wasn't appreciated.
"What? Jazz, come on, you know I won't say anything! And even if I did, you're like… twenty years old. You're almost old enough to drink. Mom and Dad aren't gonna care if you're out dating someone-"
"Okay," Jazz interrupted, putting her hands up. "I don't want to discuss this. Got it? I wasn't here. You weren't here. You saw nothing."
Danny rolled his eyes as she stormed by him and headed upstairs as quietly as she could in her boots. He popped the fridge open and rifled through leftovers, shoving cold pasta salad into his mouth as he tried not to yell up the stairs after Jazz and tell her what a drama queen she was. Not that Danny was even remotely interested in Jazz's love life, but he was pretty sure he'd never seen her go out late at night. His sister, the straight-A, party-free, and "Dating is a useless distraction from higher learning," had never loosened up, and seeing her do so at one in the morning on her way back from a date? That was something interesting.
He couldn't believe she'd snapped at him for being curious about it. He was her brother, not their parents. He wasn't judging her, but that's how she'd reacted.
Hm, he thought as he munched. Maybe she's ashamed of her date.
No, his sister wouldn't be with someone without a 4.0 GPA, a sensible haircut, and a detailed binder full of plans for their upcoming master's degree program two years from now.
Danny decided he didn't care.
After a few more mouthfuls of pasta salad, followed by about six gulps of water, Danny's hunger was satiated, and he yawned. Maybe it was finally time to go to sleep tonight.
He turned to head back up the stairs when he shivered.
"Oh no," he said to himself. "Why?"
When most people shiver, they don't think twice. When Danny shivers, there's usually a ghost afoot.
Afloat?
Whatever. Danny immediately headed for the basement.
The portal is closed, he reminded himself. There's no way something got in down here.
Still, he knew that neglecting to check his parent's laboratory would be a dumb move. When he made it to the bottom of the stairs, all was dark, except for the sparking of tiny electrical currents near the portal's control panel. Then he realized that the basement wasn't empty.
"Dad?"
His father was sitting in a large chair with what looked to be a fishing pole in his hands. The fishing pole was long – strong like the kind of pole that you would take deep-sea fishing for sharks or sea monsters. His father was nodding off in his chair. As he approached, he also noticed that the portal was cracked open only a tiny bit; the line of the fishing pole stretching thin into the void that led to the "other side."
"Dad?" Danny asked again, putting his hand on Jack Fenton's shoulder. Jack startled awake and turned to see his son.
"Danny?"
"Uh, yeah? It's me, are you okay? What are you doing, it's one in the morning?"
"Oh," Jack said, blinking lazily at the analog clock on the wall. "I didn't realize. I noticed earlier today that the portal was closed off. You know, it only started working recently, so I opened it back up. I wanted to try out the new Fenton Fisher. Check it out, it's got an iron rod and the best poly-bicarbonate ecto-fiber line that your mother and I could create. Gonna catch a ghost, you know?"
He held up the fishing pole for emphasis. The line was thick and glowing a crystalline white and light blue color. It looked strong and, Danny noticed, it gave him goosebumps – as though he, too, could be the ghost on the wrong end of that line; caught and dangling at the mercy of ghost hunters like his father.
"Right…"
Jack Fenton sighed. His second wind of energy deflated, leaving him looking exhausted.
"I know you don't believe anymore, but when I catch something, I'll prove it to you, son."
The clock on the wall ticked into the wee hours of the morning.
"Maybe I should get to bed. Your mother is probably worried, unless she's asleep already."
Danny imagined that Maddie Fenton was asleep already. Still, he wasn't going to argue if it meant that his father put the fishing pole away.
"You should get some sleep, Dad."
Jack nodded and yawned big. "Mhm."
In his sleepy daze, Jack Fenton left the Fenton Fisher securely in the rod holder welded to the side of the metallic chair he had been sitting in. Danny's father shuffled toward the basement stairs and headed up without a backward glance. When the door closed at the top with a 'thud,' Danny turned toward the cracked portal and pondered the possibilities.
Was it really possible to catch a ghost with a fishing pole? Sure, his mother's inventions were never ordinary, but treating ghosts like common sunfish pulled from the "other side" as if from a pond seemed ridiculous. Then again, what was ridiculous was how little Danny actually knew about ghosts; about himself.
He reached for the Fenton Fisher. His intent was to reel in the line and then close the portal using his human code, given to him by his parents. Just as he started to reel in the line, he felt a massive tug. It dragged him forward several feet and knocked him to the ground. Then the line went slack, and the portal made a loud sound. It was like the straining sound that rebar made in movie sound effects; a low, metallic groaning.
Danny jumped up to his feet and shifted quickly to ghost form. He assumed a defensive stance and hoped more than anything that his father really had gone back to bed. If not, he may not be able to hide his identity this time.
The portal doors opened a fraction of an inch more and he readied himself for anything. What he hadn't been prepared for was a giant snout, ivory white with a blue sheen, forcing itself through the portal and into his basement. Danny took several more steps back as a ghost so impossibly large pulled itself through the portal.
It revealed itself to be not just a snout, but an entire ghost dragon. Towering, slick and scaled, with long white wings and webbed green ears. Two large horns and a line of emerald spikes trailed down the dragon's skull and spine. Finally, and perhaps most strangely, a golden collar with an emerald the size of Danny's fist dangled from its long neck.
In its jaws was the fishhook securely attached to the white-blue, unbreakable line of the Fenton Fisher.
"Oh shit," Danny gasped. It was hard to process what he was seeing, but one thing was clear. "My dad got you, didn't he?"
The dragon roared at him and Danny covered his ears. There was NO way that his parents didn't hear that, even with a soundproofed basement.
"We're gonna have to make this quick," he told the dragon desperately. Its jaws snapped and snarled at him, the fishhook glinting between its large teeth.
Danny, not thinking, flew forward and dove for the jaws of the monster. He reached for the hook. As he clasped his fingers around it and pulled, the dragon pawed at him like a perturbed housecat and threw him across the basement. A slight ripping sound came with him.
He hit the wall and slid down to the floor. He landed hard, his teeth clacking together. His right hand was green with the dragon's ectoplasm and pinched between his fingers was the fishhook.
The dragon's thrashing and roaring slowed. It shuffled on its feet and smacked its jaws a few times. Then its large, forked tongue flicked in and out, as though tasting the loss of the sharp object that had once been there. Danny sighed in relief, until the dragon's red eyes zeroed in on him and it got incredibly close.
"Waaannt," it hissed.
"E-excuse me?" Danny was shocked that the dragon was capable of… speech?!
"Waaannt," it hissed again, "to gooooo."
Danny imagined that this was what it was like to be a mouse cornered by a cat in the basement. Terrified, tiny, and completely powerless to the monstrous, hungry predator standing over you.
"Where d-do you want to go?"
It looked even more furious that Danny had to ask. Its catlike eyes narrowed further, and now Danny couldn't even see his own reflection in the tiny slits that were looking at him as though killing him wouldn't take more than a fiery sneeze. It parted its jaws and Danny felt the ice-cold heat of the flames about to engulf him in a furious display of ghostly power. He ducked quickly, flew as fast as he could, and looped his arm through the dragon's collar.
His intent had been to pull on it, sort of like horse reigns, and force the dragon backward into the portal, but with a firm tug the collar snapped off, and with his momentum, Danny and the collar flew to the other side of the laboratory. He touched down on the cement-tile floor and skidded his heels to keep his balance. The dragon, still facing the wall, stopped its fiery onslaught and shuddered as though wracked with fever. It turned, eyes changing from catlike to humanoid. The red color remained, but rather than a sickly, veiny red, it changed to ruby, no, scarlet, no sunset red.
Then the dragon began to shrink.
Danny watched in curious shock as the dragon morphed quickly from serpentine to specter, and soon a young woman in a renaissance dress with matching circlet over her brow knelt on all fours, her translucent fingers splayed on the cold tile of the floor. She heaved as though she had just woken from a nightmare, and then she turned to face him.
Her sunset eyes and sage-green skin, her long, golden hair in a plaited braid, and her clear, porcelain-smooth face gave Danny the immediate impression that if Rapunzel had died and came back as a ghost, this is what she would look like. Then, with a sickening lurch of his stomach, he saw the damage that the Fenton Fisher hook had done to her face.
A giant gash through her lower jaw and bottom lip leaked green ectoplasmic blood, dripping down her cheek like vermillion tears and fell steadily onto her ice-blue dress. Her eyes welled with huge tears, and she covered her face with ghostly hands. Then she started weeping.
"Oh, no," he said. "Are you okay?" Danny, a seventeen-year-old boy, had never known what to do when someone started to cry. Well, now was the time to figure it out – quickly.
"I'll n-never g-go noooowwww," she sobbed.
"Where?"
She looked up at him, her bloodied face contorting into both despair and rage.
"The BALL! I'm hideous! Now no one will m-marry meeee!"
The ball? Oh, of course, he thought. Renaissance dress, clearly died a million years ago, the works.
"Hey, don't do that to yourself," he said, carefully approaching her. When he put his hand on her shoulder, she was almost warm. "It isn't that bad, it will heal. Besides, you know… if the guy loves you, he won't give a – uh, he won't care about stuff like that."
"Foolish b-boy. You know n-not what you say!"
Danny's first reaction of awkwardness to her sobbing turned quickly into heartbreak as she curled in on herself and looked away from him in despair.
"I'll never g-get away n-now," she whispered through her tears.
"From where?" Her vague comments were running him in circles.
Without answering she brushed his hand away, stood, turned, and floated miserably back to the entrance of the Fenton Portal.
"Wait-!" Danny called after her, but she threw herself into the small crack his father had left open and disappeared entirely. Not intending to follow her, Danny quickly shut the portal behind her and locked it down. "And stay that way," he told the portal.
Of course, his parents would never let that happen. He'd better make regular checks down here to guarantee that the portal stayed closed.
Miraculously, no one in the family came thundering down the stairs to see what all the roaring and screeching sounds were. It was almost frightening how sound-proof the basement really was. Danny rubbed his weary eyes and decided that, yes, it was actually time for bed now.
Just as he changed back to human, he noticed a shining behind him. Danny scooped down to pick up the gold and emerald collar – no, necklace – that had been around the draconian girl's neck. It was heavier than expected, weighing him down like shackles.
Shackles? Where had that thought come from?
Well, it was too late to return it to the ghost girl now, and even worse, she would probably be back for it.
"Now what do I do? Toss it in with a note saying, 'please return to crying dragon girl'?"
No one was around to answer.
Danny sighed and stuffed the heavy necklace into his pajama pants pocket and trudged barefoot back up the stairs. When he fell into bed that night, his mind reeled with everything that had happened. A ghost had talked to him. Cried in front of him. It wasn't like the Lunch Lady ghost – the one who had seemed lost in the 1950s and confused. It was like talking to a stranger he had bumped into on the street, babbling about her plans and her despair at not being able to fulfill them because his father had ripped up her face.
Danny had told the girl that her wound would 'heal,' and he meant it, but how could he know that for sure? How could she get hurt or heal when she was already dead? Sure, Danny had his own injuries from fights with ghosts that bled green blood and then mended themselves back together, but he had attributed that to being half-human; still alive.
Ghosts were supposed to be dead, vengeful or confused, and their only purpose was supposed to be haunting the living or old houses they once lived in. Now, Danny grappled with the idea that ghosts fell in love, got hurt, got married, and attended parties.
How was any of this feasible?
Was there really… life after death?
He rolled over, thinking he wouldn't get any sleep tonight with thoughts like that, but just as quickly as his eyes closed did he sleep and then dream.