Notes: I've been waiting a while to get started on this oneshot, but it came out a lot sillier than expected. Oops? ^.^ This last incident was what triggered Danny saying "To heck with it!" and dating Valerie. Because, yes, you all probably knew it was coming. X3
Dating
Dan didn't like the idea of his mother dating anyone. Not particularly because he thought his mother and father were meant to be together for everlasting eternity (even though they obviously were), but because his mother was his. Danny was supposed to listen and pay attention to him. Danny was supposed to hug him. Danny was supposed to take him to Olive Garden and get him fancy new stuff – not some stuck-up brunette with bad skin or some weak blonde with dorky glasses!
This time, her name was Veronica. She had long black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin. The way she dressed reminded Dan a lot of his Aunt Sam, which served to further annoy him. She worked at a coffee shop downtown, which was how Danny and her had met. Dan should know; he had been there, pestering his mother endlessly to leave until he'd been forced to set the nearest table on fire as a distraction. Unfortunately, it had already been too late, and his mother and the woman had already exchanged numbers by the time the fire sprinklers had activated. In fact, Dan had come out on the losing end, since Danny had somehow managed to play hero and save a kid that had remained inside the shop, which had further infatuated this Veronica lady.
Dan had tried his usual tricks to get her to stay away from his mom; shoving gross things like bugs in her face, bribing ghosts into terrorizing the house, booby trapping her chair and her car. Yet nothing seemed to work! No matter how horrible he acted, she found it funny and endearing. And she seemed to think she could become Dan's best friend, just because they both wore a lot of black. She wasn't just after his mom – she was crazy, too!
The only thing that seemed to be happening was that he kept getting in more and more trouble as his mother's frustration mounted. The television in his room was being repeatedly taken out, and the parental controls on the training room were repeatedly being implemented – the "repeatedly" part was, of course, due to the fact that his father kept lifting every punishment and feigning ignorance when questioned by his mother.
His father whole-heartedly approved of Dan's need to keep any and everyone with less-than-platonic intentions away from his mother. Actually, his dad was usually the mastermind behind every operation, but his parents were going through one of those phases where his mom would give his dad an ultimatum for something or other. It was nothing new, but that didn't make it any less annoying or inconvenient.
Vlad did help Dan with one thing, though, and that was with digging up dirt on this Veronica woman. After all, how could one properly drive someone away if they were not aware of their weaknesses? And just one far-fetched yet apparently true traumatic experience was all it took for Dan to make some plans.
And although his father might have gone with a more subtle, mess-with-her-mind approach (which always worked wonders), Dan liked things a little more exciting, a little crazier, and quickly done with. The only part that took a long time was asking the Fright Knight to look for what he needed, and despite his clear and utter confusion with his liege's offspring's command, the Fright Knight followed through.
Then the day came, and once he had everything ready to go, Dan turned human outside the entrance to the dining room where his mother and Veronica were having dinner. Only when he was human again and the smell of food wafted up to him did the boy realize how hungry he was; since he spent so much time in ghost form around the house, he didn't usually get hungry. If it weren't for his parents, he'd probably forget to eat altogether! It was probably one of the reasons why he was so skinny.
Ignoring his ravenous thoughts, the ten year old entered the dining room without so much as a knock. "Mommy, I'm – oh!" His eyes widened when he spotted Veronica, pretending he hadn't known she was there all along. "I-I'm sorry! I forgot I wasn't supposed to call you that after the operation, Dad!" he said, though his initially good acting was broken by a twitch of his lip which betrayed a wandering smile.
Danny lowered his fork from where it had been half-way to his mouth and narrowed his eyes at the boy in warning, while Dan simply stared innocently back. If Vlad hadn't already used that story on his French ex-girlfriend, he might have been more surprised.
Veronica snorted in laughter. "Don't worry, Danny. I've seen guys post-op; it's obvious you're all man," she whispered with a wink from next to him, making Danny nearly choke on his food after he'd ventured another bite. Dan didn't get what she meant by her words, but they nevertheless annoyed him.
Dan took a seat next to his mother, dragging the plate the man was eating from over to himself and taking the fork right out of his mom's hands to dig into the vegetarian lasagna.
Danny sighed exasperatedly. "Dan! Go to -"
"Your kid's adorable, Danny," Veronica said through her contained laughter. Dan beamed rather maliciously, though she seemed to miss it completely and instead took it as him being friendly. "Looks like you're in a good mood today, huh, little Dan?"
The boy resisted the urge to sneer at Veronica's nickname for him, and smiled sweetly instead. "Yeah, Miss Veronica! It's 'cause Uncle Vlad took me to the zoo earlier!"
Veronica hesitated in her answer, but nevertheless answered cheerfully. "Oh? Did you have fun?"
Meanwhile, Danny couldn't help but eye his son suspiciously, not a clue as to what he was planning – but the boy was most definitely planning something. They hadn't taken him to the zoo since he was eight, after all, when the excursion had ended in catastrophe.
Dan nodded in response to her question. "Yeah! They got new monkeys!"
This time, Veronica could definitely be seen tensing. "You know, I never really liked monkeys," she added conversationally, though Danny could now tell that she was uncomfortable, and that further invoked his suspicion.
"Well, I like 'em," the young half-ghost said. "They weren't there the last time I went, 'cause they all died or something."
"Oh," the woman said, obvious that she wanted to get out of this conversation.
"Yeah, but we saw a couple of ghost monkeys hanging around. Uncle Vlad says they were probably the ghosts of the dead ones."
She was quiet, though her eyes had glazed over with some unknown memory.
"Dan, what are you doing?" Danny hissed into the boy's ear to his left.
Dan took another bite of the lasagna in front of him. "I'm just trying to be nice to your girlfriend, Dad," he replied, his pointy teeth displayed in a full grin. Danny felt a pit of dread build in his stomach.
"Dan, if you -"
"Actually," Dan continued, and Veronica turned her attention to him once again, "since Dad's so interested in ghosts, he brought them home... but I haven't seen 'em in a while. I was looking for them, but..." the boy trailed off and bit his lip while looking off to the side. His eyes lit up when his sensitive ghost hearing picked up a tiny squeak from the woman.
"DAN!" Danny scolded, clearly seeing that Veronica was frightened of something. Although he could hardly imagine what could cause her such terror in the current conversation. The zoo? The monkeys? It couldn't be the ghosts, could it? She was dating the son of ghost hunters, after all. Not to mention she lived in Amity Park out of her own volition. He turned to the woman and smiled apologetically. "He's just kidding, Veronica. You know how he gets. We haven't even been to... the..."
A sudden noise caused him to trail off, and he turned his attention to the door. Given that Veronica was distracted, she failed to notice his and Dan's respective ghost senses as the thunderous sound grew louder. He could swear he felt the house shake. No, it was definitely shaking.
The explanation for the sudden disturbance came sooner than he expected, and as soon as it did, Veronica let out a bloodcurdling scream. He himself found it hard to keep down a startled yell.
"DAN, WHAT DID YOU DO?"
"N-NOTHING!" the boy stuttered back in response to his mom's angry demand. Dan winced as his hair was pulled and he was attacked. He hadn't put this in his equation when he was planning things out! One of the many primates that now ran and flew rampant through the kitchen screeched in his ear, making him whimper as his sensitive ghost hearing picked up the sound ten-fold and his ears vibrated.
The dining room table was soon ectoblasted into several pieces, a flyaway table leg barely missing Danny's head as he tried to pry one of the ghost monkeys off his back. All the while, Veronica kept screaming. When she eventually realized that she couldn't run without a monkey or two blocking her path, she simply dropped to the ground and wrapped her arms around her legs, half screaming and half dry-sobbing.
Dan wasn't surprised, of course. In fact, this was more or less what he had expected. Because when Veronica was twelve years old, she had a bad run-in with some ghosts at the zoo. Not only did the monkey-like spirits land her mother in the hospital, but they pelted Veronica with so much of what was questionably ectoplasmic goo that they had to cut all her waist-long hair off. She'd managed to get over her fear of ghosts, given that Amity Park was constantly in a state of panic with them, but the creatures the apparitions had mimicked were another story entirely.
"ARGH!" Danny grabbed the ghost monkey clinging to his leg by the tail and flung it across the room, though the creature simply phased through the wall before phasing back in again and joining its brethren in causing more chaos. By this point, the walls, various expensive frames, and a priceless vase were covered in thick green goo and most of the chandelier lay in shambles on the ground.
Seeing that Veronica was distracted having a breakdown, Danny grit his teeth in frustration before he allowed blue rings to wash over him and change him into Phantom. Quickly zooming over to the boy, currently fighting off three ghosts that were fascinated by his long hair, the man blasted the three ghosts away before bending down to his son's level. "You are helping me clean this up now," Danny hissed, blasting another ghost as it was lunging towards Veronica.
The youngest half-ghost stifled a laugh, letting his own set of blue-white rings transform him into his ghost counterpart. He was obviously having too much fun with this, and it was no different with the battle that followed as mother and son blasted ghosts left and right, all the while the woman in the room conveniently kept her eyes shut tight. After Dan retrieved a red and silver thermos from the closest living room, it was all over.
Danny and Dan changed back just in time for Veronica to curiously peek her eyes open through the quiet that had suddenly enveloped the room. She whimpered as her eyes darted around the demolished room, her frazzled black hair out of its ponytail and eyes looking slightly mad with their coating of fear. Then, her eyes landed on Danny. They stared nervously at each other before the man leaned down to help her up, but she surprised him by scrambling to her feet and pressing herself against the nearest wall, glaring heatedly at him.
"What. Was that?" she asked angrily, emphasizing the correct words and panting from the recently eradicated scare.
Danny sighed. "I-I don't know, Veronica," the half-ghost said without looking at her.
Veronica's eyes narrowed, and she said nothing before snapping in an accusatory tone, "Your son obviously seemed to know a lot about it!"
"Well, he -"
"And it seems to me like you're responsible for this!"
"I -"
"If this is your idea of a joke, I am done!"
"W-Wait! Baby, you don't -"
"Argh, that's it! I should've listened to my dad years ago, I'm getting out of this hellish town!"
And with that, the gothic woman grabbed her purse – or what was left of it after the ghosts got done with it – and stomped angrily towards the door.
"Veronica! Veronica, wait! Come back!" Danny yelled, quickly running after her. He only paused in the doorway to turn angry and hurt eyes towards his son. The look made Dan feel bad, but not guilty. It was for his mom's own good, after all.
As the footsteps and Danny's pleas faded away, Dan's blue eyes landed in the upper right corner of the room, and he patiently waited as he felt the presence finally descend. A disembodied chuckle echoed around the room before Plasmius dropped his invisibility and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder, staring at the spot where Danny and his now ex-girlfriend had disappeared.
"Good one, son. Although it could've used to be toned down a bit. Either way..." Vlad reached into his silver suit, procuring his wallet seemingly out of nowhere and digging inside before he handed Dan a hundred dollar bill.
The boy quickly pocketed it and grinned. "Oh, come on, Dad. You know I totally just outdid what you did to Christy!" he replied to his father's previous comment.
Vlad laughed. "You wish, boy."
Half an hour later, after almost getting run over by the woman's car and getting threatened with a restraining order, Danny stomped furiously into his room. His eyes alternated between flashing green and red, almost like a funny pair of Christmas decorations, and he bristled just thinking about the fact that another woman had been so traumatized by his son that she was going to leave town. Danny wished he could say it was the first time it had happened.
If it had to happen, he wished it would have been Vlad who broke him and Veronica up. It was easy to be mad at the billionaire; it was a horrible feeling to be mad at his son. Yet the two seemed to alternate when it came to making his dating life miserable and virtually non-existent. It had taken him nearly a month to ask Veronica out, not because he was shy, but because he was afraid at this point. He was genuinely scared of what chaos the next woman in his life would stir among the two other half-ghosts.
He was twenty-eight and his his prime, for crying out loud! And still, his love life was long past being a disaster, thanks to some cruel hand that refused to let him be with anyone but that pompous, snobby, jealous, egotistical... Oh, he could keep going for an eternity, but that didn't change the fact that Vlad always knew how to play the cards just right to make sure that he never found himself in a relationship for more than a month. Yes, he was twenty-eight and had never managed to hold a girlfriend for more than a month since he broke up with Sam. All of it, of course, due to the interference and constant sabotage of two certain half-ghosts. It was simply depressing as well, what with his sister and friends and co-workers his age getting happily married left and right. He wanted that, too! He yearned for it, at this point!
And yet Danny constantly ignored that part of his mind that pestered him about the complications that a woman would bring with the whole situation with his son; forget the simple secret of being half-ghost – that had long ago seized being the most complicated aspect of his life. He constantly pushed away those thoughts that told him how easy, how nice it might be to go for what was, in this case, pure simplicity and just get with the more than willing billionaire. But life wasn't fair, and he refused to go with what was easy just because it was what his ghost side wanted. After all, his ghost side often craved for a lot of things, including some fairly cruel prank ideas and the aura of fear he could often taste around ghost attack scenes. But that didn't make it okay to give in.
Plus, after so many years of sacrificing himself for other people, he wanted his own life.
Suddenly, Danny grabbed his cell phone from his pocket. He looked through the contacts until he reached the "V"s. His eyes narrowed. The same fear that kept him from dating anyone was also the thing that made him absolutely terrified to get too far with Valerie. They had never even tried going on a date, despite their rabid flirting... Well, at least he hadn't tried. He would always make up some sort of excuse whenever she made it obvious that she was asking him out. But at this point, it was all too much! He truly liked Valerie! And he'd be damned if he would let Vlad and Dan get in his way forever. After all, if there was one person who knew how to keep a secret...
His mind made up, he pressed the button to connect the call and waited as the phone rang.
"Hi, Valerie? It's Danny... I was just wondering if you were doing anything tomorrow night."