Danny Phantom Phic Phight 2022

Prompts used:

Fanonanona: Vine Comp Fic: what are the shenanigans the Amity Park citizens get up to? (PR087)

gothghostgeek: Danny's identity is revealed in the dumbest way. (PR275)

Disclaimer: I did not own a Vine account when it was running, nor did I spend much time on the website, so there may be some technological inaccuracies. Please look past them. Please? For me?


Do It For The Vine

"Mister Foley!" Lancer snapped.

The teen in question squeaked and nearly fell out of his chair. Tucker Foley made a mad scramble for his PDA before it fell to the ground. It was all too obvious the boy had been texting, and if Lancer hadn't known so already, it would've been impossible to hide it now.

Lancer sighed. He was getting too old for this.

"Mister Foley, what do you think you're doing?" he asked, eyebrow raised.

He thought he was a pretty forgiving teacher, all things considered, but when it came to certain things - phones, iPods, and gaming devices in particular - he'd made his stance very clear. The classroom was for learning, not for distractions, and anyone caught with their devices out risked losing them for the day.

Mr Foley clearly knew this stipulation. He froze, eyes wide, caught in the proverbial headlights.

"Uhhh…" the teen paused, clutching his PDA close to his chest, before summoning a winning smile. "Just listening to a riveting lecture from my favorite English teacher, of course."

Smooth.

Also wrong.

"Nice try, Mr Foley," Lancer drawled. "But flattery will get you nowhere. No lectures today. It's Friday—I'm handing out tests."

"…Ah." The boy drooped, defeated.

"And given that my policy is that texting during tests results in an automatic Zero—"

"I wasn't texting!" Mr Foley insisted, holding up his PDA. "See?"

Frowning, Lancer drew close and squinted at the screen. A video was playing - a short one, apparently, seeing as it looped not long after the boy held up the PDA - proving that his statement was, however reluctantly, true.

"What is this?"

"Vine?" Foley said. "—I, uh, was just some videos before class started—"

Lancer raised an eyebrow. "I hardly think you have the time for that."

"Well, they're only six seconds long, so I figured…"

Lancer knew that the overall attention spans of his students was shrinking, year by year, but this was a little much. Six seconds, he thought, dumbfounded. Orson Wells' Time Machine, that's absurd!

"Well, regardless," Lancer waved off the thoughts. "This is hardly the time or place. Now, given that you were not texting, I suppose I can be lenient and avoid the automatic fail—"

"Yes!"

"—Though I will still be confiscating your PDA. To avoid any, ahem. Further temptations."

"What!" Mr Foley clutched his phone possessively to his chest.

"Unless you'd prefer to take that zero?" Lancer pressed. He held out his hand.

Tucker hesitated — actually hesitated — for a good long minute, casting a glance at the door. Lancer honestly thought he was going to have to make good on his threat, before, at last, the teenager sighed and wisely handed over the PDA to his teacher.

"Very good," Lancer said, his fingers curling around the device. "You can have it back at the end of the day."

"…Yes, Mr. Lancer."

Honestly, Lancer thought, with a brief scan of his classroom. The rest of the students passed out the tests, and none were following Mr. Foley's terrible example, so he headed back to his desk, fuming. Kids these days.

Was it really so much to ask for their undivided attention during school hours? Every year, the situation seemed to get worse, phones sapping away any sense of focus as their pocket computers pinged with texts, notifications, ready-to-play apps at their fingertips. Apparently they couldn't stay focused for a full video, anymore, much less an entire classroom lecture!

Lancer sat down hard at his desk, eyeing his class. The kids sat, heads studiously bowed over their tests, no noise but for the scratch of pencil against paper.

Looking at them, Lancer sighed.

…He was being too hard on them, again, wasn't he.

Casting a cursory glance at Mr. Foley's PDA, Lancer watched the video loop again. It was muted, but the picture of a teenager, covered up to the neck in sand, did pique his curiosity.

It wasn't as if short stories, even flash fiction, were much different. Hemmingway was famous for his own, popularizing the six-word short story, a format that still persisted in some magazine contests today.

Was this the same? Could these… Vines be as concise, succinct, and poignant as the infamous For sale, baby shoes, never worn?

If six words could tell a story, shouldn't six seconds of video be the same?

Frowning, Lancer studied the PDA for a second longer. Then, sighing in defeat, he fished out a pair of white headphones from his desk drawer - also confiscated from a student, earlier in the day - plugged them into Mr Foley's phone jack, and pressed play.

"I am the sand guardian! Guardian of the sand—"

After all, he was an English Teacher.

He should know better than to judge a book by its cover.

Mr Lancer would readily admit he didn't entirely understand today's humor.

He only barely understood Fre Sha Voca Do, and could not, in his right mind, understand what was so funny about Jered, 19. How had that young man made it all the way through high school without a proper education?

He did understand what students meant when they yelled "Yeet" now, though. Lancer made a mental note to dodge projectiles whenever he heard that in the hallway.

The vines weren't long, he knew that much, but Lancer was surprised all the same to find how quickly he was able to burn through them. Perhaps this was part of the appeal, he thought. If a video was a dud, it was over in six seconds. If it wasn't, it stuck with him far longer than it should've.

After a couple dozen videos - less than three minutes in! - Lancer realized he could narrow down the Vines he saw to certain subjects, presets, or tags. Mr Foley had a number of settings available, and he didn't particularly want to mess with them, but after a minute, he gave in and selected one of the preset options.

The category was labeled Amity Park.

Lancer wouldn't mind seeing what nonsense his fellow citizens got up to in their spare time.

1.

"…Wishing he'd taken that job in Chicago, this is your local weatherman, Lance Thunder."

A ghost zoomed in from the left side of the frame, and Lance recoiled;

"Wait, Not the face!"

2.

[A still-shot of the Amity Park grocery, people walking past calmly on the sidewalk]

[Audio plays:] "Jesus take the wheeeeeeeeeel—"

"Ghooooooooooooost!" Jack Fenton yelled, and took out the nearby fire hydrant with the Fenton RV.

3.

"I love you more than anyone in the whole wide world!" one of Lancer's students, Kwan, told his girlfriend Star.

"Aww, Babe—" Star said. "More than anyone?"

"…Except maybe for Ember McLain." Kwan added.

[A pause, and Star nods.]

"Okay yeah, no, totally same."

4.

Mrs. Sanchez - (Paulina's mother; Lancer recognized her from Parent teacher conferences) - sat at a table, sipping her coffee, as her daughter filmed her.

A toddler shuffled in the background, draped in a white sheet.

"I'm a Phan-'m," the toddler announced, flailing white arms.

"That's nice sweetie," Mrs. Sanchez said, and the toddler shuffled off, Bop'ping headlong into an open door, making Paulina, behind the camera, giggle.

5.

[The song "It's a Hard Knock Life" plays in the background]

[A six second montage plays of Phantom getting zapped, yanked, tossed, thrown, and redirected into concrete, dumpsters, rosebushes, and billboards, each with an accompanying 'ow'.]

6.

Dash Baxter pulled up to Madam Babazita's thrift store, and stopped short.

A ratty, run down teddy bear, Clearly cursed, if not outright haunted, sat in the display case.

The camera panned back to Dash Baxter, staring down the bear.

[Cut to the quarterback bursting through his house's front door—]

"looK WHAT I BOUGHT—"

7.

"Guys! Let's get out of here!"

A Casper High senior, a girl with curly brown hair, whispered to her friends huddled in a derelict, rundown building.

"This place is creepy! What if there's a ghost? Or worse—"

"Did someone say, GHOST?" Came the unmistakable voice of Jack Fenton.

Someone in a Kool-Aid Man costume, doctored with a large orange jumpsuit, burst through the wall with a trademark oh yeah~!

"Oh god, It's him! Run! Run!"

8.

[The school printer stops working, an Error! message displayed on the computer]

"But I need that paper for class!" Lester said, panicked.

"Dude, hold on, I saw this trick once—I bet I can get it working again." Nathan said.

"…Okay?"

Nathan cleared his throat, closed his eyes, and began.

"I, TECHNUS, MASTER OF ALL THINGS ELECTRONIC AND BEEPING—"

9.

[Two ghosts are filmed talking. A blue pudgy man in overalls beseeching a green skinned lady with a hairnet.]

[Whatever audio the camera might've captured has been replaced;]

1: "There's this quiz to find out which type of donut you would be."

2: "You don't think I already know? Which type of donut?! I would be?"

10.

"Hi! This is Maddie Fenton with a Ghost PSA!" announced an Amity Park citizen who was clearly not Madeline Fenton. "If you're hunting ghosts, make sure you've got something to fight back."

"Can't afford our ectoguns? Try these alternatives!"

"Salt!"

"Karate!"

"A baseball bat with the word Fenton on it—"

11.

[A six second clip of traffic, the camera pointed at a nearby car, as the driver head-bangs out to Ember's "Remember" as it plays on the radio]

12.

"I am the Box Ghost!" a blue skinned man bursts from nowhere.

The person he's attempting to terrorize turns around, wearing a rubber horse face mask.

"Um," the Box Ghost says, uncomfortable. "—Hm. Could I maybe just come back later?"

13.

[An explosion sounds in the distance]

Tucker Foley—(and why was Lancer surprised to see Tucker had his own vines?)—looked out the window at the dust cloud. "Honey?"

"—Yeah?" a voice that must be Sam's came from far away.

"Where's my super suit?"

"What?"

"Where! Is! My! Super! Suit!" he demanded.

"Why. Do you need. To Know!"

"You tell me where my suit is woman—"

Lancer paused here, eyebrow raised.

Upon closer inspection, it seemed like Tucker Foley had his own Vine account, and had submitted a fair number for circulation. Out of curiosity, Lancer clicked through.

—Perhaps it wasn't just Mr. Foley's account, actually, because the familiar faces of Sam Manson, Danny Fenton, and even Danny's sister, Jazz, graced the page for all to see. Lancer wasn't great at traversing the site yet, either, but it looked like several of them had a large number of views.

Lancer, in far too deep to stop now, decided to find out what the most troublesome trio of Casper High got up to while not at school.

Click.

14.

[Danny Fenton sits wordlessly at the kitchen table, camera angled in a selfie shot to catch his unamused face while simultaneously recording over his shoulder.]

"Mads, you're only gonna be gone for one day…"

"Yes, Jack, and I don't want to come home to find that you pulled the house into an alternate dimension again—"

"That was one time!"

15.

"Mom," Sam announces, holding a phone. "Can I have $100? I wanna buy some fruit."

"Oh please," Pamela scoffs. "You're buying some grapes. What could it cost? Ten dollars?"

16.

"Shhh," Tucker whispers to the camera, finger held up to his lips.

The sky is dark, rainy. Carefully, he bends down and lifts a storm drain to reveal a pile of ecto-blobs, all cuddled together in the dark.

"They're sleeping," he whispers.

17.

[Danny Fenton walks towards the street, approaching the curb.]

[He takes off his backpack and tosses it into the street. The backpack's trajectory stops, suddenly, suspended above the pavement, as if it had landed on an invisible surface.]

[Danny Fenton makes a motion of opening a car door, and then he, too, sits suspended midair, slamming the "door" behind him.]

[Turning an invisible key into the invisible car's ignition, an unseen engine roars to life. Without a word, Danny puts the car in gear and speeds off down the street.]

Lancer paused again, here, rewatching that Vine.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

—He wasn't sure which scenario he believed; that the Fentons had actually designed an invisible car for public use, or a ghost had made an actual car invisible, or, option 3, that Foley's editing skills were just that good.

At this point, living in Amity Park, Lancer knew that any of these possibilities could be the truth.

A fourth watch revealed absolutely no new information, though Lancer did note that this Vine had several thousand more views than the rest of Foley's collection.

The next one below it seemed related, so, bracing himself, Lancer clicked through.

18.

[Danny sits at his invisible car. Tucker, from the side, approaches.]

"Can I see your driver's license, Sir?"

"Oh, of course, Officer," Danny says, and mimes handing over an invisible rectangle.

Tucker accepts the invisible card, and "squints" at it. "This picture doesn't look anything like you."

"Oh right, sorry, Sir," Danny says, and promptly disappears.

Okay, this is getting—weird, Lancer thought.

19.

[The camera is angled from the back seat of a high-tech floating vehicle. Danny and Sam sit in the front seats. Past the controls, just beyond the windshield, sits a sky of swirling green ectoplasm dotted with floating islands and purple doors.]

Tucker narrated, "And that's when they became horribly lost."

A pause. "…Are we lost?" Sam asked.

"No," Danny answered.

"—He lied," Tucker continued, dramatically.

"Cut it out, Tucker!"

Was that the Ghost Zone? Lancer thought, frantically. He'd only seen the place once, in a terrible run-in with a fear ghost over Halloween, but he'd recognize that sky anywhere. And his students were traversing this alternate dimension for, what, a bad joke on the internet?

He was going to have to sit down and have a word with Mr. Foley…

20.

[The camera is shaky, and brings into view a dingy boy's locker room.]

[A breath of mist escapes from Danny's mouth.]

"BEWARE!" The Box Ghost announces out of nowhere.

"…Goddamn it. Again?" Danny groans. "This is the third time this week—"

"Dude," Tucker, from behind the camera, laughs. "It's the Box Ghost. What are you gonna do about it?"

Danny shrugs.

"Guess I'll die," he says, and a blinding ring of light appears around his waist…

What. Lancer thinks, completely dumbfounded.

Then, rocking back into his seat, his mind helpfully plays the question on loop.

What, what, what, what, what—

He blinks, once he can manage it. He drinks some water, resists the urge to throw the cup's contents in his own face. The room is very quiet, many kids still taking their tests, and the world feels unnaturally calm.

Like the universe doesn't care that Lancer's worldview just got rocked to the core -

—That he just saw one of his students transform into Danny Phantom.

The vine is still playing on loop, the earbud loose and dangling from the desk. Lancer watches again as Danny Fenton's eyes turn green, his hair turns white, the video cuts off, unprofessionally, unstaged and unedited, just as Phant— just as Danny crouches to turn and face his opponent.

The video is less than half an hour old. Posted, Lancer realizes, just as class begun.

Maybe that's what Tucker was trying to do, he thinks, detached. He'd been trying to upload his latest capture for the world to see…

…Except no, that doesn't feel right. Mr. Foley was nothing if not loyal. He wouldn't air such a damning secret for the world to see. Lancer remembers the frantic way Mr Foley had been tapping at the keys, cursing under his breath, in such an eye-catching manner that even Lancer, busy with passing out the latest tests, had noticed…

Was it possible Tucker had uploaded the video by mistake?

Lancer eyed the video's stats. The views were climbing, sluggishly, but he doubted they would stay that way. Most of the channel's usual viewers, Amity Park teenagers, would be in class right now, not on their phones. But the minute the period was over that would change, and then…

As if reading his mind, a loud bell cut through the silence, and the students, gathering their backpacks and shuffling their test papers, rose up as one.

Scrambling from his stupor, Lancer acted fast, moving purely on instinct. He snatched up Tucker's stylus and tapped frantically at the red icon on the screen.

Are you sure you wish to delete this video? The PDA asked.

[Yes] [No]

Lancer quickly clicked yes.

And all six seconds of damning footage disappeared as if it had never existed.

"Sam Sam Sam Sam SAM—" Tucker rushed into sixth period History, nearly barreling over his friend.

"Tucker, what—Woah! What's the rush?" Sam demanded.

"I need your phone!"

"You need—what? No. Why?"

"No time to explain! Just c'mon!"

Sam surrendered her phone, rolling her eyes as Tucker quickly tapped a series of buttons in rapid succession. "If you got your PDA confiscated again, that's not my problem. Are you going to explain, or what—"

Danny was usually late to sixth period, but today he made it in record time, slamming open the door and all but teleporting over to Tucker's desk.

"I can't believe you posted it!" Danny yelled.

"—Wait, posted what," Sam asked, casting a glance between her friends.

"Tucker took a video of me going—!" Danny halted, then, quieter, stage-whispered, "Going ghost."

"You What?!"

"It was an accident, I'm deleting it, I'm deleting it—"

"Why didn't you delete it the second you noticed—"

"Lancer took my PDA, okay? It's not—" Tucker froze, mid sentence, eyes locked on the screen.

Sam and Danny shared a look. "…Tucker?" she asked.

"Huh." Tucker said, deflating. "It's gone?"

The trio held their breaths as Tucker refreshed the page. At last, after a thorough investigation, Tucker slumped.

"It's gone," he breathed out, his whole body sagging in relief. "I thought… no, I must've managed to hit the delete button just before Lancer saw. Thank god."

Sam and Danny collapsed into their chairs simultaneously, Danny burying his face in his arms. Sam rubbed her temples, completely at a loss. "Okay, I think maybe we need to lay off the Vines for a while, guys."

"Don't have to tell me twice," Danny groaned.

"I mean, what were you thinking?" Sam pressed.

"That it was funny? I dunno," Danny said. "I didn't tell him to post it—"

"I swear I didn't mean to!" Tucker insisted.

"—But I didn't exactly tell him to stop filming, either," Danny admitted, taking some of the blame.

Sam took her phone back from Tucker, triple checking their account. "Well, okay, no harm no foul this time, I guess. But seriously guys, we need to start being more careful."

"What," Danny said, sarcastically, rolling his eyes. "You don't want me to blow my secret in the dumbest way possible?"

"Yeah, Sam. You know the saying." Tucker chuckled nervously under his breath. "Do it for the Vine."