Picture a TV store. Each channel showed the newscaster reporting the words below:

Phantom seen in Hosu…Phantom caused destruction during the events in Hosu City…Ice everywhere, multiple people with fire quirks tried to melt it but it proved to be resistant to flames…Disappeared after 13 hours.

Phantom seen with the League of Villains….Phantom in League with the League of Villains...

Danny watched the news even though people hated him. There were always going to be people who failed to see the bigger picture or twist his image of him turning him into someone who just wanted to cause destruction. It was the mayor's incident all over again. He sighed.

"I should be used to this by now," he says still watching the news from behind the glass of a TV store. Hands in his pockets, he walked to work. Amity had just started to like him so the universe in all its spiteful glory, decided to put him in a world where everyone had superpowers yet still managed to hate his guts. Last night was tiring. Kurogiri warped him to another city so he had to fly 30 minutes just to get back at his shitty apartment.

Well, at least he wasn't the star of the shitshow. The Hero Killer (Whoever that was) was captured by Endeavor last night. Good for him. That oversized fire hazard needed a win. Phantom being Endeavor's love child eventually died down and was nothing more than a Twitter trend. People were more focused on the Stain, the Hero Killer. Which is good news from Danny, I guess. Now that he was officially a villain, it was time to give up the vigilante act and focus on how he was going to get out of this world. His mind went to Kurogiri, the villain with a warping quirk. His ghost sense went off when that guy arrived so he must be somehow connected to the Ghost Zone. If only he knew where he is. Still, it would be difficult to convince him to use his powers to help Danny seeing how Phantom refused to join Shigaraki's emo boy band.

It was a beautiful morning. The clouds were cumulus, casting the perfect shady morning. Good for Danny. He burns easily. He decided to forget about the events last night and focus on work instead. The universe had already bombarded him with bullshit last night so he guessed that today was going to be A-Okay.

"Oh shit," He spoke too soon. There were police waiting outside the Butler café he was working. Three men, including his manager, were being escorted out of the place towards two police cars.

"Sir?" He called out. His manager, a thin, handsome man in his forties looked up at his newest employee, Danny Fenton.

"Oh, Fenton. It's you." He said with the enthusiasm of a man who knew he was caught red-handed.

"What's going on?" Danny asked, walking faster towards the police car.

"Money laundering," said the police officer who was holding his manager's arms behind his back. He held his manager's head down pushing him inside the backseat of the police car.

"I'm still getting this week's paycheck right?" It was important for that to happen.

"Sorry, kid." His manager's voice was muffled from inside the police car. "They took all the money. We would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for what happened last night."

That was the last of their conversation as the car sped away.

"But…My paycheck." Danny stuttered, devastated. They couldn't have waited tomorrow. Danny's eye twitched. The universe just didn't want him to have nice things. He screamed at the sky until a police officer yelled at him to stop.

He huffed. Eyes flashing green. "It's time for some misplaced aggression."

Hosu City had its own Dagoba beach. Some bystander had been lucky enough to catch Phantom blasting junk metal to kingdom come.

"Take that. And this. And some of that." Phantom grunted as he threw an ecto-blast at any piece of scrap metal he could find at the beach, disintegrating them each time.

"WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE HATE ME!" Phantom yelled to the sky. He fired a green energy blast from his right hand towards a refrigerator. It exploded into tiny bits.

Bystander-chan did not have anything else to do that day. He whips out his phone from his pocket and started recording. They knew that Phantom was probably a villain but I mean look at him, he's like 12. Normal people generally walk away at the site of an overpowered teenager throwing a temper tantrum at a bunch of junk at the beach. Bystander-chan decided to be spontaneous and approach the alleged villain out of curiosity.

"Hello," they said carefully as one does when one does not want to get disintegrated into ashes like the broken microwave.

Phantom snapped his head in the direction of Bystander-chan. He was at least 3 feet away just to be safe. Phantom blinked his glowing green eyes, the color of cartoon toxic waste.

"Oh…" Phantom said softly. "Hello, there. Can I help you?"

Bystander-chan was still recording. Phantom didn't seem to mind. He tilted his head to the right, looking a bit confused about why someone had approached him in his grouchy state.

"Um…" they stammered. "Why are you blowing up trash?"

There was a brief pause. Danny saw that the person was recording. He doesn't want to say that because he was destroying stuff just because he lost his job. Public opinion about him was already in its negative numbers.

Instead, Phantom said: "Community service?"

Bystander-chan did not believe that was true. Phantom was clearly having a hissy fit.

"Well, what are you doing here? I'm a villain now, you know." Phantom continued. He crossed his arms to his chest, pouting. "You really should not approach alleged villains on the news especially when he is not feeling very happy." Phantom showed his fangs just to prove a point.

Bystander-chan flinched. He lowered his phone so he could see Phantom in a better light. "Are you going to hurt me?"

The tremble in Bystander-chan's voice made Phantom frown. He sighed and softened his expression.

"No kid. Why would you think that?" Phantom slumped his shoulders in an attempt to be less intimidating. He landed on the sand.

"The newspapers all think that you're a villain. But you're not, aren't you?" they said. They were there when Phantom fought the black Nomu yesterday. He was amazing. Phantom handled that monster like a pro that even the pro-heroes weren't able to do anything about it. Bystander-chan could not help but look at Phantom in awe. They smiled.

"Not a villain," Phantom confirmed.

Bystander-chan smirked. Their grandmother lived near the beach and it would be a nice little birthday present if all the trash just magically disappeared.

"Well. Aren't you going to finish what you're doing? You better prove to us that you aren't a villain by cleaning up the whole beach then."

Phantom raised his brow. "Is that so…." He drawled and looked at his surroundings. Piles of metal junk, plastic wrappers, and water bottles were scattered throughout the beach. "Well, can't argue with that. Come on, I'll let you help me." Phantom said smiling.

Bystander-chan returned the gesture. They put the phone in their pocket and started picking up trash.

Phantom mostly did the work. He let Bystander-chan throw trash as far as they could so Phantom could work on his aim. It was amazing how each one just exploded into dust. After three hours, Bystander-chan picked up the last candy wrapper and put it in his pocket.

"It's nice that you humored me, Phantom-san. My grandmother lives near here and finally, she could see the sunset again," said Bystander-chan cheerfully. They should be going. A text from mother had arrived saying how they needed to get home.

Bystander-chan waved goodbye. "Thanks for everything, Phantom. I don't care what everyone says, you're pretty cool." And then they ran until Danny could no longer see them.

Danny placed his hands to his hips and looked at the work they just did. The beach was clean again. Not a single trash in sight. His mind wandered over to Bystander-chan.

"It's nice to be appreciated once in a while." He said to himself. Mood fixed, Danny decided to start over.