Hello and welcome to the first chapter of Of Fruitloops and Badgers! This is a partner fic to If Vlad Wasn't a Fruitloop, so if you haven't read that, I encourage you to go check it out! For those who are new to my fanfics, I'm experimenting with the idea of Vlad being a good guy who helps Danny, instead of being a villain. There will NOT be slash between them, I promise. Just an adorable father/son thing going on. xD
This fic is for drabbles and one-shots that I don't want to include in the main story, for example, the halfa secret being revealed, an alternate ending to a chapter, or other things I want to write about that don't stay consistent with IVWAF.
Also, I recently made a DeviantArt account, PhantomS14, where I'm posting stuff for this series I'm doing, and other DP stuff. So you can look that up if you want, and if anyone watches me I'll watch them back!
Finally, here's the first chapter, Innocent, after the song by Taylor Swift. I'm going to try to make each of the chapter titles songs that correspond/relate to the chapter. We'll see how that works out. ;)
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters from Danny Phantom, but I own the plot. The song Innocent belongs to Taylor Swift.
Innocent
Danny laid his throbbing head down on his cool, comfortable desk, as Mr. Lancer's voice droned in the background. He had been up pretty late fighting ghosts the night before, so he had gotten only an hour or two of sleep. He could barely even keep his eyes open.
He started drifting off to the lulling sound of his teacher's lecture, and the normal whispers and giggles in the typical high school classroom.
After what seemed like only a few seconds, he was aware of something or someone directly behind him. Hands grabbed his shoulders roughly, and forgetting where he was, Danny whipped around and shot a blast of green energy at whatever had startled him.
A loud, cracking thud sounded across the room. The younger halfa froze in his turned around position, and stared blankly at the scene in front of him. The room was deadly silent, and he was sure that his slow heartbeat could be heard by everyone.
After those few seconds of pristine, dreamy silence and stillness, the room buzzed to life. Screams and shouting filled the air. Danny sat there blankly, still numb and emotionless. He vaguely remembered shooting energy at someone or something... He looked from his outstretched hand to the wall in front of it.
A still body lay crumpled by the white, painted brick wall.
He heard someone calling his name, and then a different voice doing the same. He felt gentle taps on his shoulder and arm, but didn't respond. He felt as if he had plunged into an ocean of syrup, and couldn't move or breathe, just observe everything around him.
Some high-schoolers backed away to the opposite side of the room, while some surrounded the body. The room was filled with panicked conversation and sobbing, but Danny couldn't hear anything over the sound of the thudding in his chest.
Once the ghost boy could finally move again, his legs were tangled up with each other as he struggled to get out of his chair. Knowing he was already exposed anyway, he turned intangible and staggered to the back of the classroom, going right through a few people along the way. The room grew silent again as everyone around him backed away, like he had a force field around his body.
Some blood stained the once-white bricks.
"No... No... No no no no no!" He muttered, dropping onto his knees beside Dash, who lay there motionless, except for the very slight rise and fall of his chest. His shirt had a black blast mark in the middle, and a circular shape had been burned through to his skin.
"Dash! Dash, no!"
Panicked and shaking, Danny gently lifted the remains of the white shirt, and saw what was (at least) a second degree burn on the football player's chest.
"D-Danny," a feminine voice almost whispered, and a hand pulled gently on his arm, "Come on, just back up and-"
"No, no no no..." The ghost boy pulled his arm back, keeping his eyes trained on the unconscious boy in front of him. "Dash... Dash..."
More hands joined the other, pulling him back. Startled, Danny phased through them, followed by gasps from the numerous people watching.
"Kid, move out of the way." Danny flinched at the deep, unfamiliar voice and looked up. A male paramedic stood there, looking down at the still blond boy on the floor. In all of the confusion and shock, someone had called 911. A team of firemen pulling a stretcher entered the classroom and progressed toward the back wall.
Danny watched with a mix of fascination and horror as Dashiel Baxter was laid on the stretcher and rolled away.
"Wait... Wait!" Danny called with a hoarse voice, flying through the air behind the emergency team. "I-I can help, I-"
Two sets of hands grabbed him and held him back. He struggled and squirmed in their firm hold.
"No, no! I-I can... I..." Tears rushed to his eyes and threatened to drip down his face, as he began to hyperventilate. "It's my fault, it's my fault, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-" he wrapped his arms around his thin frame, looking down and letting his dark bangs hide his clenched eyes.
Sam and Tucker, who held the quivering boy in their arms, tried to comfort their friend, but their efforts were in vain.
"Mr. Fenton..." Lancer said hesitantly, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Come with me... You're not in trouble, I promise. Just come along..." Danny was led out of the room, back to a numb and shocked state. His two friends started to follow, but their teacher turned around briefly. "Would you two mind staying here, and calming everyone down?" The rest of the class were still standing in shocked silence. "I'm sure they have questions and whatnot..." Tucker nodded a little, reluctant to let his distressed friend go alone, but he knew that the other teenagers could be a problem, too, if rumors spread about the incident. Sam agreed without a word, and they prepared to explain to their class. Mr. Lancer continued out of the room with the dark haired boy in tow.
The two traveled slowly and silently through the school, Danny shaking and holding back strangled sobs. He knew he had hurt Dash, badly...
Before he knew it, they had reached the front office.
"You can sit down, Mr. Fenton..." Mr. Lancer said, lifting a hand to his chin and looking to Principal Ishiyama, unsure of what to say.
Danny slowly sat down on one of the chairs, and stared vacantly at the floor.
"I-I-I... Dash..." Danny struggled to form words. "He c-could be..." He gulped back the lump in his throat. "I d-didn't mean to-"
"We know you didn't mean to, Danny," Lancer said quietly. "I saw what happened; it was he who started this whole thing."
"He-he didn't know," Danny sobbed and brought his legs up onto the chair, hugging his knees. "It's all my f-fault..." His haunted ice blue eyes stared at nothing.
"Oh, it's not your fault, Danny." The school principal said, trying to soothe the boy.
"But it is my fault!" He said, his eyes glowing a radioactive green, startling the two adults. Green ecto-energy sparked around his hands. "It's all because of these stupid powers, that I almost killed Dash!" His voice broke, and he shot intangibly through the glass window that framed the school's front yard. He gathered all his power, and blasted a nearby tree with it with an angry yell.
When the light died down, only a pile of black dust remained.
He returned inside absently and lowered back into his chair. The principal and teacher stared in shock at what had just happened.
"It was the tree, or this room..." Danny almost whispered, hugging his knees again, ashamed that he had almost lost control.
After some more uncomfortable silence, Principal Ishiyama spoke up quietly.
"Should we call your parents, to take you home?"
"No!" Danny yelled in surprise, looking at the adults in horror. That situation would have been the worst way for them to find out...
The two adults looked at each other in confusion and astonishment at the outbreak.
"Please, no, they-they don't know..." He looked down and tried to explain further. "I'm just not sure how they would react..."
Flinching sympathetically at the boy's fear of his own parents, the woman in the room nodded. "Well, who're we going to call then?"
Danny sniffed and smiled the tiniest bit, forgetting about his depression for a moment. "Ghostbusters?"
"..."
"Too soon?" He couldn't help but giggle a little bit, before remembering the dire situation. "W-well Vlad, my dad's friend... He knows..."
Vlad Masters scowled as he left his meeting. It had not gone the way he had wanted it to...
He walked out of the office building, and turned right to go to the nearest alley, so he could transform and teleport back to his mansion.
Just then, a muffled sound came from his pocket. When he pulled out his cell phone, the song played even louder, causing the people passing by to look at Vlad strangely.
"If there's something strange... in the neighborhood... Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!"
Vlad growled at the song choice; Danny must have changed his ringtone again. He answered the phone with an annoyed, "What?!"
"Ahem, excuse me, is this Mr. Vlad Masters?"
Vlad flinched internally for answering so rudely. "Yes, it is. I apologize."
"There has been an... incident... at Casper High School. Daniel Fenton was involved... He requested for us not to contact his parents, and provided your number instead."
Vlad's eyes widened. "I'll be right over." He hung up and took off running to the nearest inhabited corner, pushing people in his way to the side and ignoring their disgruntled yells and expressions. He had somewhere important to be.
Within less than a minute, Vlad had teleported from the middle of Wisconsin to Illinois.
He hid behind a group of trees and changed back into a human. He walked towards the school, and into the front office.
The lady and man in the office stopped their hushed conversation, and looked at the billionaire in shock.
"Well that was fast, Mr. Masters..."
"Please call me Vlad. May I ask what happened?"
The bald man and the Asian-American met eyes nervously, hesitant to say anything.
"And, where is Daniel?"
"Oh, er, he's on the roof..." The lady said, before flinching at Vlad's surprised look.
The suited man's demeanor changed from curious to threatening with the blink of an eye. "How much do you know?"
"Enough." The man said flatly. "I am William Lancer, Mr. Fenton's homeroom teacher. This morning... I could tell Danny was exhausted. He was fast asleep only a few minutes after the morning bell. Close to the end of the hour, another one of my students, Dash Baxter, decided it was a good idea to sneak up behind Mr. Fenton and scare the bejeepers out of him..."
Vlad blinked a few times, realizing with dread what had happened. "Oh my... Is the other boy alright?"
"At the hospital now... He was unresponsive from a concussion from the wall, and had pretty severe burns on his chest."
Vlad almost couldn't believe it. He couldn't imagine how Danny must have been feeling, with his obsession being protecting people.
"But, he's alive, and that's what matters." Mr. Lancer finished. "Danny was inconsolable for the first few minutes, but then he opened up a little..." He shakily motioned to what had been a tree, in front of the school. "He spared the office from that, which we're grateful for."
Vlad observed the pile of ash, mildly impressed that the ghost boy had enough sense to unleash his anger on something replaceable, like a tree. Though, the man figured that Danny's friend Sam wouldn't be too happy about that…
"I suppose I'll go see him now..." Vlad muttered, looking at the two humans in the room. He considered keeping up his act, and asking if they had a way up to the roof, but he shrugged and decided to get there the faster and more efficient way.
He turned intangible in his human form and grinned at the shock of the two school staff members, before flying up through the ceiling.
Vlad floated a few inches above the roof, looking around for the younger halfa. He caught a glimpse of black hair, and saw the boy leaning back against a petite building on the top of the school, possibly used for storage. Vlad lowered himself down beside the silent, raven-haired boy and followed his gaze up to the sky.
"Look, that one looks like... a cat riding a unicycle... holding a candy cane."
Danny chuckled bitterly. "Of course you would think it looks like a cat..." He muttered. Vlad rolled his blue-grey eyes. The duo sat in silence for a few minutes, simply watching the clouds.
"I could have killed him."
Vlad looked over with a sympathetic frown; he didn't know what to say to that.
"Th-There was blood on the wall..." The boy whimpered. "I-I didn't know what to do... I was just there, frozen..."
The older halfa reached over and held the boy's cold, shaking hand.
"Everyone was terrified of me, even Sam and Tucker..." He swallowed. "I was terrified of me, too."
Vlad's heart broke at the sadness and fear in the boy's voice.
"Little Badger," Vlad said quietly, "You know it wasn't your fault-"
"If I hadn't overreacted and shot Dash, then he wouldn't be in the hospital! I could be a murderer, he could even be dead right now-" Tears suddenly broke through, with a few strangled sobs.
"Listen to me, Danny." Vlad gently but firmly turned the boy's head towards him with one hand, and looked him in the eyes. "Please don't blame yourself. This was just one of those things, that couldn't have happened any differently. If it's anyone's fault, it's Dash's, for deciding to play a dirty trick in the first place. Now, all we can do is move on. Forgive and forget."
A tear streamed onto Vlad's finger, and Danny leaned over, burying his face in Vlad's chest, another sob being forced from his throat.
Vlad froze in shock for a few seconds before awkwardly patting the boy's back. He had never been in that situation before, and didn't know what else to do, except to simply be there for the teenager... who was also the only person in the world that Vlad cared for as his own son.
"Now everyone in my class knows I'm a ghostly freak..." Danny choked, his voice muffled. "And by now, the whole school probably knows..."
"Danny, you are not a freak." Vlad assured firmly. "You are a talented, selfless young man. You sacrifice your life to protect those around you, and lose sleep and time by doing so. If anything, you're a hero, and don't think of yourself as anything different." Danny sniffed and nodded slightly against Vlad's chest. "And hey, Little Badger, anything you call yourself, you call me too!" Vlad joked a little. "Do you think I'm a freak?"
"No... Of course not..."
"I'm the one who could go around as a ghost on Halloween, and have the perfect costume. Green/blue skin, fangs, lifeless red eyes... I've got the whole vampire package. If anyone's a freak, I am."
"To be honest, I've always thought your ghost appearance was cool, Vlad. Not freaky. Well, freaky in a good way, if you know what I mean." Danny smiled a little.
"I'll take "freaky in a good way" as a compliment, then." Vlad muttered in amusement, and heard Danny chuckle a little.
Just then, Vlad's pocket buzzed. He moved his free hand down to pull it out.
"If there's something strange... in the neighborhood... Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!"
Vlad glared at Danny, who had pulled away from Vlad and had started shaking with uncontrollable, silent laughter.
"Little Badger..." Vlad growled before picking up the phone. "Hello, this is Vlad Masters."
It turned out to be an annoying telemarketer (Vlad had no idea how he had gotten the number in the first place), so the billionaire hung up.
"That's the second Ghostbuster reference I've heard today..." Danny said with a giggle.
"I'll get you for this, Daniel."
"You can try, Vlad." The boy sniffed and rubbed the back of his hand across his tear-stained face. "But thanks... for everything."
"Just remember that I'm here for you, no matter what happens, Little Badger."
"Likewise, Fruitloop."
It's all right, just wait and see
Your string of lights are still bright to me
Oh, who you are is not where you've been
You're still an innocent
It's okay, life is a tough crowd
Thirty-two/fifteen and still growing up now
Who you are is not what you did
You're still an innocent
Ah the feels... xD Feel free to leave a review about your thoughts/comments/criticisms/whatever else you want to say! Thanks for reading and see ya next chapter! :) :)