"You can't do this!" Danny roared, flailing his arms in frustration.
Tony looked on disinterested, "Uh, I believe I just did."
"You just— you can't— argh!" Twisting away from the multi-billionaire, Danny began to take deep breaths, loosening his clenched fists.
Bruce stood to the side of the conflict, watching the impending battle take place. Tony appeared to be enjoying riling Danny up, and it was apparently working based off the smirk glued to Tony's face and Danny's ever-growing red one.
Danny turned back to Tony and leaned over him in an act of intimidation, "This is blackmail," Danny stated, "Completely illegal."
Tony simply smiled back up at him serenely, "Of course it is. That's why I'm doing it. Your parents lend me their notes and blueprints on their works, I fund any of their future programs that interest me, and I don't tell them that you're some sort of alien-morphing-freak-thingy."
"A ghost. Not an alien, a ghost. Big difference." Danny said, disgruntled.
"Doubtful," Tony scoffed, "And on top of all that, I promise you that we won't report you to Bruce and I's unwillingly joined armed defence agency that will most likely exploit you and try to use you as a military super-weapon. Sound fair?"
Danny looked like he was about to have an aneurism.
"Military super-weapon?" Danny squeaked, stumbling away from Tony.
"I said we won't. Don't worry Dan-Dan, You say everything will be fine. All you have to do is convince your parents to let me become a partner in their work. hat big portal in the lab leads to an alternate dimension?" Tony's eyebrow quirked up.
Danny nodded, shell-shocked, "Yeah, to the Ghost Zone." He mumbled.
Tony grinned at Bruce, "Can you imagine? A man-made inter-dimensional rift that leads to another universe is sitting in a basement of some absolutely brilliant scientists that use it to catch ghosts?" he crowed.
Bruce grimaced uneasily, leaning over to Tony, "Are you sure this is a safe game to play, Tony?" he whispered, "I mean, if he's able to beating that guy into submission, don't you think we should act a little more cautious?"
Tony snickered, "I'm pretty sure Danny could handle almost anything thrown at him. Besides, he's a good kid – a superhero practically!"
Bruce stepped away, musing over Tony's words. If the stories were true, Danny had saved the city multiple times without reward – even when he'd been considered an outlaw. Looking over to where Tony was standing with Danny, coaxing him out of his shock (still laughing at the poor boy's expense), Bruce smiled. Danny really was a good kid.
/ / /
Jasmine Fenton had come to a conclusion. Natasha Romanoff, the pretty red-haired woman who had accompanied Tony Stark, was heading towards an emotional breakdown – which was understandable considering the company she kept. After seeing the torn-up house, surrounded by police cars and fire trucks, the woman had seemed to have fallen into a state of denial before slipping off without a word to her or her parents. Jazz suspected her disappearance wasn't just out of courtesy.
She was going to have a talk with Danny, see if he could find anything about her while she was still in town. The woman was acting way too suspicious.
Jazz crept through the house, trying to touch as little as possible as she gathered visual evidence. The emergency services had left over half an hour ago when the sun had begun to set, leaving the house silent. Walking through, towards the basement she noted a large indentation in the wall, as if something had collapsed into it. A ghost, perhaps? Her mum and dad certainly thought so. They were still downstairs, rampaging over their ruined lab.
Slithering down the steps as quietly as possible, she bypassed her ranting parents to look at the damage. Burn marks were littered throughout the room, the portal's control panel was completely flattened, sparking violently every so often, there was destroyed weaponry and tools scattered across the room, and the far wall had almost been completely blown away, with almost four feet of rock and soil excavated from the large cavity. Jazz wasn't certain how structurally sound that made the house.
Her eyes wandered to a far corner of the room where the Ecto-Extractor stood. Stepping closer, she peered inside. The door and innards of the machine were slightly dented, as if something much too large had been contained in it recently. I had definitely not looked like that when her dad showed it to her that morning.
Glancing down, she paused. Was that… a pamphlet? Crouching, she snatched the charred piece of paper and glanced at the cover which was promoting some sort of week-long camp.
Jazz huffed, "Danny."
She closed the door of the Ecto-Extractor firmly and headed back up the stairs. It was definitely time to have a chat with her little brother.
/ / /
The tall thick trees were slowly starting to thin out as Danny, Tony and Bruce made their way back to civilisation. It was eerily quiet.
"Hey, um, I was just wondering …" Danny said to Bruce, his voice sounding loud in his ears, "How come you turn into a giant green guy? Uh, if you don't mind answering, I mean! I totally understand if you don't want—!" he added quickly, feeling a little more than rude.
Bruce gave a weak chuckle, "It's okay, at least you're more thoughtful than Tony was."
Tony looked aghast, "I give you nothing but compliments! Green truly is your colour. Brings out your eyes."
Danny and Bruce ignored him.
Bruce shrugged his shoulders at Danny, "I was developing the use of Gamma radiation and now I'm roommates with the other guy. I'm a regular Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde."
Danny looked confused, "Gamma? Never heard of it."
Bruce raised his eyebrows, "At all? It's made quite an influence to modern science. The Tesseract let off quite a strong signal of it too."
Danny gave the two men a blank stare, "Okay, now you're just making up names."
Tony and Bruce stopped walking.
"How could you not have heard of the Tesseract? It was a huge part of the earth being almost dominated and consumed by an alien race last year!" Tony looked baffled.
"Oh, that cube-thing, right? I thought that was just a hoax to get more tourism to Manhattan. You know, 'Come see our amazing city where real aliens have landed!' I mean, who believes in aliens of all things?" Danny waved his hand in the air for emphasis, chuckling.
He looked over to see what the others thought about it, but found the expressions on Bruce and Tony's faces to be almost embarrassed. He wasn't quite sure why.
"So," Danny said, after a long pause, "Good to go? Because I have a ten o'clock curfew."
Tony barked out a laugh, breaking out of his discomfort, "Ten o'clock? Aren't you like seventeen?"
"Sixteen. And my parents are strict when it comes to curfews," Danny frowned.
"Then we should probably start moving again. Wouldn't want Cinderella here to miss the midnight pumpkin home, eh?"
Danny stormed off ahead, leaving the others to catch up.
/ / /
Natasha headed through the gate, ignoring the overly-cheerful goodbyes of the flight attendant, her shoulders and back straight, but her steps were missing the streamline pace she kept for efficiency. What had merely been a case of insatiable curiosity and her desk-job phobia had ended up landing everyone in a lot of trouble. She could only hope that Bruce was all right, but after seeing the state of the house she wasn't optimistic. Natasha wasn't going to bother calling Stark though, the man always had a way of getting out of situations, and she'd rather not take any more of a blow to her pride than she'd already had – Fury was either going to tear her apart or promote her after this fiasco.
Hearing someone approach her on her right, Natasha kept her footfalls even as she meandered her way through the crowd. Clint Barton fell into step beside her when she hoisted her duffel bag higher onto her shoulder. Schooling her forehead to become free of worry lines, she nodded in his direction.
"What were you thinking?" Clint's hissed under his breath, lips barely moving to match his own blank face.
Natasha didn't respond, just continued towards the ticket booths, head held high confidently. Clint followed closely behind, muttering under his breath.
/ / /
Danny sighed as they stood on a hill at the border of the city, "I'm not excited to see what my parents thought of our renovation."
Tony elbowed Bruce in the ribs, "Some of your finest work yet, I think, Bruce."
"Me? It was Mr Magic next to me that did it!" Bruce accused, pointing at Danny.
"I have ghost powers. Not magic. How come none of you get that?" Danny growled out, wandering down the hill, "You guys coming?"
"To have another lovely chat with your parents? I want to make it home with my sanity tonight, thank you. I'll come by tomorrow to talk more about our little deal then okay, Dan-Dan?" Tony said, giving the teenager a lopsided grin before skipping ahead down the slope, Bruce hurrying behind him.
"It was nice meeting you, Danny," Bruce called over his shoulder.
Danny rolled his eyes as the two unlikely friends slowly disappeared from his sight, "Geez, thanks. Nice to meet you, too," he muttered. Transforming into his counterpart, he flew the rest of the way home to meet his parents' possible wrath.