I am absolutely astounded at the support that this fic has gotten in the last week so? Here's another chapter. Thank you guys so much!
I also just saw Puss in Boots: the Last Wish and let me tell you. 10 year old me would have passed out watching that. Fantastic movie. 10/10.
Summary: While investigating a robbery, Danny Phantom stumbles across a very strange sight.
And here starts the ridiculous amount of Phandom-specific lore. If you're mostly a HTTYD fan, I'm so sorry, lol.
On the rare occasions that Danny Phantom found himself in the Far Frozen, it took a ridiculous amount of willpower to want to leave.
Not because of the view, mind you. It was, after all, a rather dreary wasteland no matter how welcoming Frostbite and his people were.
But his core felt at home in the Far Frozen. He supposed it had something to do with the fact that his ice powers were awoken here, but then again, cold places had always been much more comforting to him since he'd become Phantom.
The same could not be said for Sam and Tucker, who were currently huddling in the Specter Speeder with the heat on full-blast and chattering teeth.
Cowards, Danny reminisced with a fond smile as he exited the relic vault.
"And you're sure you never saw it?" He asked Frostbite, who seemed to be resisting the urge to wring his hands together. The yeti's hands remained stagnant near his abs.
"We sensed no one, Great One." his deep voice was not affected by the howling wind as the icy doors closed behind them. Large, impossibly heavy locks fell into place as two more yetis stood guard. "Who – or what – ever it was, they knew what they were doing, and what they were looking for."
Danny hummed, not knowing what to do with the information. "Are you sure it wasn't Plasmius again?" He asked, despite the ghostly part of his instincts feeling that the man probably wasn't responsible – not since their arrangement a few months ago.
Though, a truce with Plasmius was almost as elusive as the element he was named after, so he couldn't be so certain. A visit to the man was already planning itself in the back of Danny's mind.
"It was not Plasmius himself," Frostbite understood Danny's concerns, "we would have recognized his ecto signature. Though, if it were one of his henchmen, I fear we may never know…"
The yeti trailed off, the big softy that he was at heart, and Danny pretended not to notice the tear he wiped from his eye.
"I'll find the Infimap, Frostbite." the teen tried to comfort, floating a few feet off the ground to set a hand onto the beast's hulking shoulder.
The biting wind blew up Danny's spine, and he damn-near purred at the sensation. Perhaps that was the reason he was in such high spirits. He'd chased after the Infimap once before, and that was hard enough without their adversary getting a headstart.
Danny didn't like to think of many things as impossible – he was, after all, half-living proof to the contrary – but the task ahead of him seemed to be the closest one yet. He doubted his obsession would do much to calm itself if he didn't at least try.
Frostbite seemed to take comfort from the ghost boy's words, and he nodded determedly. "I know you will, Great One."
The yeti's gaze trailed to Sam and Tucker, who were peering at them from behind a gradually frosting-over window, and an amused smile broke out on his face. Frostbite raised his icy hand to wave to the other two teens, and they returned the greeting with a way-too enthusiastic demeanor.
"They need to work on their acting skills," Danny snorted, crossing his arms over his chest.
Frostbite guffawed, and the teen was glad he could humor the yeti despite the situation. "Go get them out of here before they turn blue, Great One." He waved Danny off.
"I'll let you know if I find anything," Danny agreed as he began to float backwards toward the Speeder, "See you later, Frostbite!"
The Speeder was so hot when Danny entered, that he recoiled for a split second. "Jeez!" He exclaimed as he floated his way to the front, "what, are you guys trying to boil eggs in here?"
He placed a hand on each of his best friends' chairs as they turned to him, each with similar looks of exasperation.
"Better than being a couple of ice cubes," Sam retorted as she rubbed her shoulders, "Seriously, are we ready to go?"
Danny decided to cut them some slack and with a confirmation (and a chattering "finally!" from Tucker), they peeled out of the Far Frozen.
The exuberance left Danny's core as the territory shrunk behind them, and he closed his eyes to try and fill in the emptiness that the cold left in him.
If Sam and Tucker noticed this, they didn't mention it. They were long used to his ghostly behaviors by now, Danny supposed. Being Phantom for two years didn't leave much room to be surprised anymore.
"So where's our first stop?" Sam asked as she gripped the steering wheel.
Tucker interrupted Danny before he could answer. "What do you mean first stop? I thought we agreed that finding the Infimap was going to be, like, improbable!"
"Hence the word," Sam chastised, "We can't leave without trying."
"And why are we trying in the first place?" Tucker countered, whirling with half-lidded eyes towards Danny, "because this sounds suspiciously like a job for a king, and last I checked, you still won't venture anywhere near the crown, Daniel James Phantom."
Danny rolled his eyes and shoved his best friend exasperatingly, "I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do," He lowered his head in a meaningful way, hoping that he wouldn't have to admit that his core was pulling at him to do it.
Sam hummed, "you know, Danny, you don't really have to be king. You could be, like, chancellor. Or president."
"Or emperor!" Tucker chimed in, and Sam snorted, but her gaze dropped to something softer at the sight of Danny's scowl.
"We aren't having this conversation again," the ghost boy complained, crossing his arms over his chest.
The goth turned in her chair to insist, "You're already doing things that a king would do! I'm just saying, it would be nice to have some kind of…official title to go with it."
"Sam, we're Juniors in high school." Danny deadpanned.
"So? Cleopatra became queen when she was 18! King Tut was ten years younger." She protested, throwing her hands up in the air, "maybe they're in the Ghost Zone! We should ask them."
"When did you become an Egyptian history buff?" Tucker chuckled.
Shrugging, Sam said, "I'm just saying, you underestimate yourself, Danny."
"Actually, I'm fairly certain the Infinite Realms would be much more doomed than it already is if I was put in charge." the ghost boy tried to end the subject, his gaze darted out the window to the endless green ahead of them.
"Speaking of doomed," Tucker muttered as he held up his phone, "My phone's gonna be just that if we don't get to a charger soon. So if we're going to go on this useless scavenger hunt, can we make it quick?"
The looks that Danny and Sam sent to Tucker both had varying versions of 'are you serious?' written on them.
Tucker responded with a slightly high-pitched voice. "Look, I would have brought a charger, but I didn't think we'd actually be looking for the Infimap today! Do you guys really expect to find it when it can literally travel anywhere in the space-time continuum?"
"Last I remembered," Sam countered, "we know a certain ghost who can do the same thing."
"Clockwork?" Danny blurted incredulously, and the goth turned towards him with an earnest nod.
"You don't think he'll help?" She asked, raising a manicured eyebrow.
Sighing, Danny sat in the air with his legs crossed between Sam and Tucker's chairs, "I think his definition of 'help' isn't going to be the same one in the dictionary." He grumbled, "he's got his whole 'The Timeline Must Stay Pure' mumbo-jumbo." Danny topped off his fake baritone with air quotes.
"You'd think that the Infimap being stolen would be enough for him to intervene though, right?" Sam asked, and Danny hummed in agreement. The noise bounced around the metal speeder with an echo, like a hulking ship pulling into an empty harbor.
"You'd think. It'd make our lives a lot easier."
He sent Tucker a warning glance before he could make a joke about the obvious.
"You seriously don't think he'll help us?" The other boy cleared his throat nonchalantly, brow furrowed as he clutched his dying phone to his chest like it was an infant.
Danny groaned, rubbing gloved hands over his face, "The dude's practically a cryptid, guys. Who knows, maybe this was supposed to happen."
His friends didn't seem particularly happy with his resolution, so Danny added, "besides, I'm like, 90 percent sure you need to be summoned to his realm. I don't think we could find it if we tried."
"You say that," Sam said as she pressed a few buttons, "and yet we have no other leads."
That was horribly true.
"...No ecto signature?" Tucker asked eventually.
"Nothing that shouldn't be there." Danny confirmed.
Tucker let out a stumped sigh, and they tapered off into silence for a few minutes as they weighed their options. As benevolent as most of the ghosts in the G.Z. tended to be, it wasn't like they could go knocking from door to door asking if anyone saw anything suspicious. That would be like asking for a very particular needle in a haystack full of other needles.
It seemed the Specter Speeder made up their minds for them, because a wailing from one of its many sensors was set off a moment later. Danny cringed and slapped his hands over his ears as Tucker lept to the control panel to find the problem.
The techie silenced the alarm first, and Sam was already into a much more alert position, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "What is it?" She asked, purple gaze flickering across the green sky expertly.
Danny let his ghost sense expand to search within a mile's radius. The one in the Speeder actually worked quite well, but it was times like this where the ghost boy trusted his own judgment over any technology.
"Not a ghost," Danny answered with a confused tilt of his head after a minute or so. He shrugged as he pulled his ghost sense back in.
"Actually," Tucker said, pointing at the panel that rested between him and Sam, "I'd say it's quite the opposite."
A stab of worry entered Danny's stomach at what Tucker was implying. The ghost boy flew forwards, setting a hand on his best friend's shoulder as he looked at the blinking monitor in front of them.
"(1) earthly life substance detected", the screen blinked in red lettering at them, and Danny's chest tightened with his core.
"There's a human in here?" Sam asked, did a once-over of Tucker, and then herself, "...another human?" She corrected herself.
"Apparently," Danny muttered and reached forward to click at the screen until the GPS popped up.
There was a silence for a moment as the three teens took in the information on the screen.
"That's fifteen miles from here – as the crow flies." Tucker said and pointed somewhere off to their ten o' clock, the techie glanced up to Sam, who was shaking her head.
"You don't think…" She muttered, and Danny knew that she had the same thought he was having.
"I don't see how it could be anything else," he agreed.
"Well – regardless," Tucker shook his head as if to clear his head of his previous apathy, "We're totally checking it out, right?"
Danny didn't think he could ignore it if he wanted to. A human in the Infinite Realms was a human in danger. His core was practically screaming at him at that point.
As if to second that choice, the alarm went off again. "(2) earthl – (3) earthly life substances detected" the robotic voice spoke over itself.
"What, is there a parade or something?" Danny heard Sam sigh as he phased through the wall of the Specter Speeder. He felt his legs meld into a ghostly tail as he shot off, not caring to wait to see if they were following.
He didn't know what exactly his top speed was – it seemed to gain a few miles every few months, and the last Danny, Sam, and Tucker had checked had been just before school started. Back then, it was somewhere between 200 and 250 miles per hour, and the Specter Speeder was very much capable of reaching those same speeds.
And with a driver like Sam, whose lead feet weren't just a metaphor, an island appeared on the horizon in a manner of minutes.
Danny spared a glance to his friends just in time to see Tucker wave frantically to him. He held up ten fingers, paused, and then held up one more.
Eleven? Eleven of what? Humans? It better not be humans, because there was no way the Speeder could comfortably fit that many people into it.
Maybe this wasn't the thief of the Infimap, Danny began to wonder as they soared over a ghostly pine forest, maybe this was the result of a natural portal spawning in the midst of a much too populated area.
Another, more pessimistic, part of Danny's mind was telling him that whatever took the Infimap was purposely throwing humans into the Infinite Realms. For what? The ghost boy didn't particularly care. He'd stopped trying to rationalize the actions of many ghosts long ago. Two years into this business, he was fairly certain he was prepared for anything.
Well. That's what he thought, anyway.
The sight of four dragons – none of whom were Dora (or her brother) – flailing in the air with saddles, and humans on their backs was enough for Danny to retract that statement.
He slammed on the breaks with a gasp, legs popping back into existence as he flailed: a summersault that ended rather ungracefully in his surprise.
Danny watched as one of the dragons – did it have two heads? – reared to the right just in time to send a spark that triggered a pretty gnarly explosion.
Something red reared backwards with a screech, and as the smoke cleared Danny felt his brain pull out a memory.
"A behemoth?" He thought out loud, head tilting to the side as he felt the Speeder creep up beside him. Even though Sam and Tucker couldn't hear him, he turned and spoke anyway. "I thought those things only hung around Pariah's castle?"
He spared another second to watch the battle, trying to count the number of humans on dragonback. They seemed to be holding their own for the time being, which was surprising on a completely different level from the whole dragon-thing, and Danny would really like to know who was friend and who was foe before he hopped into something where he could be very easily outnumbered.
Four people in the air with the dragons, he checked them off. Danny's gaze fell to the island where the Behemoth was slithering and caught sight of three more beings – two humans and another dragon were scrambling much too close to it for the ghost boy's liking.
That made eleven, which meant that these dragons weren't of ghostly origin and…hopefully, if the saddles on their backs were any indicator, weren't going to be an issue to him.
Huh. Real, living, dragons. Danny heard himself scoff incredulously. Who would have thought?
"So what's the plan?" he heard Sam ask, and in alarm, he turned to find that she'd flung open the door of the speeder and was testing the buoyancy of the air.
With a glower, Danny rushed over and pushed her back into the aircraft.
"You two are staying here, out of sight." He stated firmly, gripping the door handle and sliding it shut.
He only barely saw Sam's face begin to contort into a scowl before a yell brought his attention back to the battle – it sounded…European? Danny wasn't good with languages, but whatever it was, the black dragon on the ground fired two purple-ish shots towards the Behemoth.
Danny cringed as the ghost contorted its form to avoid the blasts, before cracking his knuckles preemptively.
"Okay, playtime's over!" He called to himself; his core jumped at the murderous gaze the Behemoth was sending the two figures on the ground.
The ghost boy shot off as the ghost raised a meaty paw and a projectile that had previously gone unnoticed shot into the air with it– it was tied to the blonde person with a rope, which her companion was currently trying to break her free of.
They weren't going to be able to block it.
Danny's core sparked in desperation, and he thrust out a fist at the same time that the Behemoth brought its own down.
A force field blinked into existence around the two people just as Danny jumped in between them, grabbing the arrow mid-flight and flinching at the tiny knick it gave him.
He tore up gray grass as he landed, sending chunks of it flying and then rebounding off his force field. He could feel the pitiful plunks echo in his core, like an extension of his senses.
He summoned an ectoblast and sent it flying into the Behemoth's chest, buying himself a few seconds to turn to the two people behind him.
He flashed a smile once he saw them relatively uninjured. He hoped it looked comforting – most ghostly attributes, alas, were not to human instinct – and the ground shuddered beneath him as the Behemoth fell.
"Are you okay?" he asked, not entirely expecting an answer. These people didn't look to be from Amity Park, and seeing a ghost for the first time was often jarring enough to leave people tongue tied.
But he did get a nod! It was from the brunette, and Danny was so happy about that, he returned the gesture before spinning back to the Behemoth.
The giant ghost was trying to rip the arrow out of Danny's hand – he could feel its energy encompassing the projectile as it wriggled like a snake in his glove.
"Sorry I'm late to the party," Danny looked up to the Behemoth, which had managed to right itself in the last few seconds, "If I'd've known, I would have brought a present."
He let his aura flare, like he was raising ghostly hackles, and the behemoth's attitude quickly deteriorated from an angry threat to a wet kitten. Danny couldn't deny the feeling of satisfaction that rose in his gut at the sight.
With that, he clenched down on the arrow, feeling both the wood and the Behemoth's hold on it break under his fist. Danny let the projectile drop with, perhaps, an overly dramatic tilt of the wrist as he charged up another ectoblast in his other hand.
Behemoths were actually quite easy to take down. They had very little stamina, not a lot of ghostly brains, and an easy weak spot to hit. Perhaps, if he'd been just a little less tired, Danny would have thought about that before assuming that this was the ghost that stole the Infimap.
But at the time, he'd been more pressed with figuring out whoever these people were, because they'd put up a damn good fight, leaving Danny with only the honor of delivering the final blow.
So he probably hadn't been as careful with the portal as he should have been. The Behemoth clipped it on its way down, and much in the way that most un-stabilized portals tended to do when something barged into them, it fizzled out of existence like the remaining bits of water down a drain.
The Behemoth screeched in pain before retreating back into its woods. Danny extended his ghost sense, making sure it chased the creature until it was far enough away for him to feel safe.
Once it left his sensing radius, Danny held out a hand, palm towards his force shield, and retracted it from the two people behind him.
He kept his gaze trained on the treeline as the couple scrambled to their feet.
It was a good thing he did, too, because that black dragon from before was making a beeline straight towards them, and it looked very pissed.
Danny gulped and his eyes narrowed, bringing his fists close to his chest in case he had to attack.
He didn't want to admit it, but he was sure he wouldn't have hesitated if he hadn't seen the saddles from earlier.
Instead, the brunette – a tall, lanky guy dressed in mostly-leather, now that Danny had the capacity to register that, yelped out something that sounded like a plea, putting himself between him and the dragon.
And he was facing Danny. Which the ghost boy didn't know how to feel about. On one hand, he literally just saved their lives, shouldn't he get some slack for that?
But then again on the other, how many people can say they were considered a more dangerous threat than a dragon?
Miraculously, the black dragon stopped directly behind the guy to instead curl around him protectively. It bared a mouth full of fangs and hissed, and even though it didn't have a ghostly echo to it, the human part of Danny still shuddered at the noise.
The ghost boy held up his hands in surrender and took a couple steps back, settling back into the air in a way that he hoped looked non-threatening. "Woah there, my guy, I'm not here to fight you." He chuckled nervously and tried to catch the other teen's gaze to plead for him to back down.
The other person that was with them, a blonde girl with – did those shoulder pads have spikes on them? That was so cool! – came up next to the guy, holding a sword that Danny hadn't previously noticed. Where does someone get a sword in the 21st century?
"Um…" Danny trailed off, because it was obvious these people didn't speak English, "No habla Espanol?" He tried with a nervous pitch in his voice.
His company side-glanced each other, obviously not familiar with Spanish, either. Danny gave a disappointed sigh and brought a closed fist to his forehead, wracking it for any other phrases he knew.
"Hvat - hverr eru þú?"
Danny blinked rapidly, not at the language, but at the way his core responded to it. The hand that was on his temple moved to his chest slowly as he felt confusion take root.
Why did that sound familiar? It shouldn't sound familiar. Danny was a painfully monolinguistic person.
At least…he was a monolinguistic person for the living.
But that didn't make sense, he thought, these people are very much alive.
A brief, desperate part of Danny that he'd been pushing down for the better part of two years was screaming 'halfas' to him, but he would never allow himself to give into those thoughts.
"Gerþúr óderstanð oss?" The guy in front of him spoke again, voice strained in a very wary way.
There it was again, that feeling in his core. Something was going on here, Danny paused to tap his foot against an invisible floor before his attention darted to the Speeder, which was still floating just over the treeline.
"Uh," Danny hesitated, gesturing with his hands to try and convey 'stay here', "I'll be right back," he sent another smile as he zipped back up to Sam and Tucker, phasing through the walls of the Speeder and turning immediately to his parents' storage closet.
"What's going on down there?" Sam asked.
"Did you get rid of the Behemoth?" Tucker chimed in, and Danny nearly forgot to answer them as he shuffled a slew of half-finished inventions around.
"It's gone for now," he muttered under his breath, "Are there any extra recorders lying around?" he asked upon finding the closet void of any.
Danny turned to his friends, and to say they looked confused was an understatement.
"Uh, I don't know about recorders," Tucker supplied as he popped open the glove compartment, "But we do have these…"
Leaning over Tucker's shoulder revealed him to be holding a pair of Fenton Phones, and Danny let out a triumphant hum as he grabbed one and strapped it to a pointed ear.
"Alright – boot up the language detecting system and crank the volume on these things up. I'm gonna test something."
"Why don't we all just go down there together? This'll be easier in person –" Sam started.
"Absolutely not." Danny put his foot down with a warning glare, "these guys are already wary of me, I don't need them hurting you guys, too. Please, just – get the language detector booting up?" He pleaded and then phased through the speeder's walls again.
He didn't need to check to see if Sam and Tucker would do it, he knew they would. He could picture them sending each other that oh-so-exasperated look they tended to share – it had grown more frequent these last few months – and he would thank them later, but right now he had a small mystery to crack.
As Danny neared the two people and the black dragon, he noticed that the rest of their company had managed to float their way along next to them, too. They were obviously arguing: body language aside, they were speaking over one another with words that Danny felt he should understand, but didn't.
They tapered off almost instantly as the ghost boy neared, and it was only then that Danny realized that the four humans that remained in the air were also currently trying (and failing) to plant their feet onto the ground.
"That's, uh, not gonna work." he tried not to chuckle at the sight of another blonde trying to use her dragon's head – or one of her dragon's heads, rather – as an anchor to hold herself to the ground. As her feet kept phasing through the grass, her disgruntled face reminded Danny very much of Valerie's first escapade into the Infinite Realms.
The group jumped at his voice, falling into various stances of uncertainty, and Danny allowed his flight to slow to a crawl as he came within punching range.
He landed on the ground and turned to the other blonde girl, who was still sandwiched between her dragon's chin and the ground. Hesitantly, Danny held out his hand (the one that wasn't cut).
"Here. Let me help you."
He wasn't sure if she was going to take it, but if she did, then it would be a win for him. Apparently scaring off a Behemoth wasn't enough to gain their trust, so he was jumping at any other opportunity to do so.
She sized him up, blue eyes lingering perhaps just a bit too long on his hair before she visibly swallowed. She turned her head – slightly awkwardly, because she'd begun floating back up and her cheek was now resting against her dragon instead of the top of her head – to a boy to their left. He looked too similar to be anything but her brother.
"Ruffnut, óless þú hafar andlát-wish ek pleað þú gereigir –"
The blonde girl took Dannny's hand and turned with a mischievous grin to the black-haired boy that had spoken.
Quickly, as to not scare the group off more than they already were, Danny let his aura enter the island below the girl's feet, forcing it to solidify and match her wavelengths.
Gravity didn't exist in the Infinite Realms, so its inhabitants had to rely on matching frequencies to interact with anything. It was why humans tended to pass through most things. Danny had to wonder what the Behemoth's thought process was when he let the former three land on the island.
The girl gasped as her feet stuck to the solid ground, and though she practically ripped her hand out of Danny's grip, her smile was enough for him to know that she hadn't been repulsed by him.
Actually, quite the opposite now. There was a curious gleam in her eye that could register as malicious, and Danny took a couple steps back as she tested the ground beneath her feet.
He turned to find the rest of his company staring, open-mouthed in a few cases, at him. He felt his face flush with ectoplasm, and he gestured vaguely towards the girl and then the ground, "It, uh, needs a nudge in the right direction," he started to explain but gave up upon the reminder that they wouldn't understand him.
Instead Danny lifted a finger, dragging it along the underside of the Fenton Earphone until he found the power button, and switched it on.
"Sam? Tuck? Everything good to go up there?" he asked, eyes looking towards the treetops, where he could imagine the Speeder was floating.
"All good on this end, now could you please tell us what this is about?"
"And also why there are freaking dragons?!"
"These people don't speak English," Danny said and decided not to explain his sinking suspicion that Google Translate wouldn't work on them, "I just need you guys to tell me what language they do speak."
"Uh…" Tucker sounded entirely unconvinced, "Sure, no problem."
Danny turned to his company again, who were staring at him like he was, well, a ghost. He shrugged apologetically before turning over to the blonde girl he'd helped earlier.
"Ruffnut, right?" He asked, because that was one word in the sentence that his core seemed convinced to be a name.
She reacted viscerally to it, so Danny assumed he'd hit the nail on the head. His gaze flitted briefly to the black-haired boy as he squeaked out something that sounded like a prayer.
He turned back to Ruffnut when she answered, "Já. Hvernig gerði þú geratr?"
Even though his core lurched at the sentence, Danny still didn't understand what she said, other than it sounded vaguely like a question. Maybe it was Swedish?
He gave an apologetic smile as he pressed his finger against the Fenton Phone again.
"Did you guys get that?"
There was the sound of something electronic being fiddled with for a moment before Tucker answered, and if it was possible, he sounded even more confused.
"Uh, Danny?"
"Yeah?" the ghost boy responded, turning to look in the direction of the Speeder again, "What's up?"
He wanted to know if his hunch was right.
"...the software says they're speaking Norse." Tucker finished.
"Like, the Dead Language, Old Norse." Sam emphasized, and Danny sucked in a breath to hold it.
Right. Things were clicking into place.
"Okay." He sighed, "Thanks, guys, I'll – I promise I'll explain in a minute. Once I figure out what's going on…" Danny swallowed as he ended the transmission.
They were staring at him again, as if they'd never witnessed a phone call before. Or, a Fenton Phone call before.
Maybe…maybe they hadn't, a part of Danny's consciousness whispered to him.
Because ghost portals don't just open up in different places…And those horned helmets, well…
The ghost boy shook his head to clear it of those thoughts and tilted his chin down to the ground to concentrate.
He pulled at his core, prodding at different parts of it until it awoke the part he needed, and his ears and throat seemed to pop just slightly when he did.
He hesitated before he spoke. He'd never enjoyed using dead languages, they made his thoughts jumble and his tongue tie itself into knots.
"Uh…" he started, and the nervous chuckle he'd been holding back left his mouth, "You guys can understand me now, right?"
Danny found his gaze landing on the tall brunette from earlier, who seemed to startle under his gaze.
His adams apple bobbed frantically as he turned to the blonde at his side, who shook her head incredulously. They seemed to share an entirely silent conversation.
Eventually, though, the brunette spoke; "Uh, yes. We can – we can understand you."
And Danny could understand him back. He was still speaking Old Norse, but now the words felt just as familiar in the ghost boy's brain as English did. A surprised laugh left him as he stood up taller to revel in his accomplishment.
"Great!" He bubbled and had to force himself to remain on the ground.
"Then allow me to introduce myself: my name is Danny Phantom," he continued with a dramatic bow, "and you are damn well lucky that Behemoth was the only thing you encountered today."
"Danny Phantom?" Hiccup couldn't help the incredulousness in his voice as he parroted the boy-thing's introduction. He knew he had little room to judge, but seriously, what kind of name was that?
If the boy (he seriously couldn't have been older than Gustav) caught onto Hiccup's rather out-of-touch judgment, he let it slide. He instead smiled again. Those fangs that he had still didn't do much to calm Hiccup's nerves, even if it was obvious that he was trying to do just that. "That's right. Or Phantom. Most people call me Phantom, actually."
His accent was weird. It was like nothing Hiccup had ever heard before. And judging by the way he shifted, the dragon whisperer would dare to say that this kid hadn't heard of Norse until today. Which was ridiculous, wasn't it, because he was speaking it.
Hiccup had no idea what the acrobatics and the seemingly speaking-to-himself moments were about (or how he was able to control the freaky forces of this island and not them), but he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
The eyes didn't help, either. He didn't know it was possible for there to be a more acidic green than Toothless' eyes, and yet here they were.
"What are you?" Tuffnut suddenly blurted, and Hiccup could only groan at the blatant audacity.
Not that he didn't want to know either, because the kid had hurled something very similar to a plasma blast out of his bare hand and sent the apparent-Behemoth fleeing, but at least Hiccup had the common sense to not irritate him.
At least Phantom seemed to find it funny, because a laugh left him. "Good question," he started, and then paused to look at the ground. A shadow fell over his face for a split second, and then it was gone before Hiccup could register what it was.
"I could ask the same thing of you guys," the glowing boy asked, turning to look at the rest of the gang, "You certainly don't look like you're from around here."
"And where exactly is here?" Astrid bit and Hiccup moved to grab her hand, squeezing it comfortingly.
Hiccup swallowed nervously, placing his other hand on Toothless' head (who was still curled around him possessively).
He didn't consider himself to be superstitious. Maybe when he was younger, when he was out hunting for gnomes and trolls, but not now. Things that were once unexplainable a few years ago were now being chalked up to previously-unknown habits of dragons (or laws of the universe). Hiccup was at the forefront of these discoveries, he couldn't be superstitious.
But something in the back of his mind – the same thing that screamed to him whenever danger was near – was telling Hiccup, regardless of what he knew to be true about the world, that this kid…wasn't human.
Which should be ridiculous, right? Because sure, this Phantom had fangs, and green-tinted skin, and pointed ears, and was glowing, but he was still…well. Maybe he did look like a changeling, or another type of fae that also didn't exist, but Hiccup's logic refused to let him see the boy as anything other than just a boy.
Because changelings didn't exist. Neither did trolls. Those were facts, just as much as dragons being normal, regular animals were. Creatures like the one standing in the middle of them (like the one they'd fought off only minutes ago) didn't exist.
There was a logical answer to all of this.
And yet, the sky was green, half of his dragon riders were still stuck floating in the air, and the only waypoint they had back to the part of the world that did make sense was gone. And, he was pretty sure, the only reason they were all still alive was because of this glowing boy in front of them.
Why he'd decided to save them was still unknown, but Hiccup hoped it was from the goodness of his heart rather than an ulterior motive.
Hiccup knew that people tended to round up his pacifism with weakness, but if they could have a civil conversation, he'd take that over anything else any day.
Phantom seemed to contemplate Astrid's question for a while. His brow furrowed and his gaze left them to find the sky. If this were literally any other situation, Hiccup would have been concerned that he was coming up with a lie, but then the boy turned with his own question.
"Where do you think you are?" he asked, gaze briefly darting to Ruffnut as she picked up what used to be Loki's Arrow. She held it up as though Phantom was the sun to get a better look at it.
"Definitely not Valhalla…" Hiccup heard Snotlout grumble, and Hookfang rolled his eyes like he understood the audacity.
"Maybe Hel," Tuffnut countered, sounding much too enthusiastic for that notion, his chin rested on a dreamy wrist as he cloud-gazed, "The green sky is giving some serious Helheim vibes, wouldn't you guys agree?"
"Oh," Fishlegs began running his hands along Meatlug's scales nervously, "I don't even want to consider that possibility right now…"
"I think we're a little way past 'considering', Fishface." Snotlout piped up again with a shake of his head, "In case you haven't noticed, our only way out of here just popped out of existence!"
Hiccup's cousin turned back to Phantom, who was watching the exchange with a rather confused grimace, "so are we in Hel or not, Acid-Eyes?"
"Acid-Eyes?" Phantom squawked and Hiccup would have punched Snotlout if he could. But then the boy laughed. It would have been comforting if the sound didn't remind Hiccup of a less-screeching Deathsong's call. "That's a new one."
Astrid's grip tightened very suddenly at Snotlout's response, and Hiccup spared a glance to try and catch her eye. They held their gaze for a split second before Astrid let out a sigh that just sounded stressed. Empathy roused in his gut. At least Phantom had found it funny.
But the boy still had that furrowed brow at the mention of Helheim. Hiccup could admit himself that he didn't know what any other option would be at this point, but Phantom…
"I'm sorry, you're not in Helheim, or whatever. Or maybe that's good news? You guys didn't seem too fond of it."
Yeah, Phantom didn't seem to know what Hel was. How could he not know?
Hiccup saw Astrid press her hand against her chest for a few seconds. "We still have heartbeats. We can't be dead…" She trailed off.
Phantom agreed with her earnestly. "Nah, you're not dead. You can thank me for that," He flashed a cocky smile, but it vanished rather quickly as he caught sight of the forest behind them. "Uh…well, not yet, anyway."
"What?!" his dragon riders shrieked, and an array of weapons was suddenly pointing at Phantom. Hiccup narrowed his eyes. Okay, maybe he was wrong.
"Is that a threat?" Astrid exclaimed, and Hiccup kind of wished he was the one holding Inferno right then.
"What?! Oh, Ancients, no – sorry, I just –" Phantom ran a hand over his face and grumbled to himself, seemingly unaffected by the sword leveled with his chest, "I'm not good with explaining this kind of stuff…"
He sighed and then clasped his hands together nervously, "Okay, sorry, let me start over. You guys are in a place called the – well, humans call it the Ghost Zone. It's a place that's…for…ghosts…" He trailed off kind of abruptly, and Hiccup got the feeling that wasn't what he was planning to say.
Not that Hiccup was paying attention to that.
"That thing back there didn't look like any ghost we've ever heard of," Snotlout sneered, and Phantom just barely stopped himself from rolling his eyes.
"Yeah, a lot of ghosts don't look like what people imagine them to."
"Are you a ghost?" Hiccup asked, heart pounding in his chest. He was sure he already knew the answer, as impossible as that answer seemed, but he felt like he needed the confirmation.
Phantom shrugged helplessly, as if to say 'ta-da', "...it's in the name."
There was silence for a long while that Hiccup, admittedly, appreciated. He could feel a migraine coming on, accompanied with the familiar tightness of anxiety in his chest.
Toothless sensed his distress, because he crooned worriedly and nuzzled Hiccup's side until he lifted his arm, resting it on top of his head. He stroked the night fury's cheek with his thumb as Toothless rumbled.
The tightness in his chest eased slightly. "Yeah, Bud, I know." He mumbled.
Hiccup's dragon had uncurled from around him slightly and raised his head to sniff the air a couple times. He seemed to be unsure of what to make of it, because he growled and spun so that he came around Hiccup and Astrid's other side. He snorted as if to clear the scent from his nose, eyes narrowing as he settled back onto Phantom.
It was wary, but not hostile. Hiccup turned to find the ghost had a very similar expression.
Not to say that Hiccup wasn't used to those kinds of looks whenever people met Toothless – he was a Night Fury, after all – but with this Phantom…that look didn't disappear when he looked at the rest of the gang's dragons, either.
If Hiccup didn't know any better…it was almost like the ghost had never seen dragons before. Which was ridiculous, because if he was a ghost (which was still kind of boggling his mind), then Phantom would have had to have been alive at some point, and anyone who's ever lived has encountered a dragon.
"What's with the outfit, anyway?" Hiccup was brought out of his musings by Ruffnut, who he knew for a fact wasn't dumb enough to be doing exactly what she was doing.
The phantom reared back from Loki's Arrow as Ruffnut poked at the sash around his waist with it. "Uh…it's– a hazmat suit." He supplied.
Whatever that was, he said it in his native language. "It protects me from the Infini – the Ghost Zone," He gestured around them.
"Why would a supposed ghost need protection from the Ghost Zone?" Astrid asked as she lowered Inferno.
"Uh…" the Phantom hesitated, opened his mouth, and then his acid gaze darted to the trees in thought.
"Phantom?" Hiccup clenched his teeth after he spoke, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck begin to stand on end.
The ghost shook his head rapidly. " Like I said before, this outfit protects me from the Infinite Realms – uh, sorry – Ghost Zone. it's kind of…" He paused with a grimace, "poisonous? To living things? You guys are fine for now, but if we don't get you out of here soon…"
The ghost didn't need to finish the statement. The ice trickling down Hiccup's spine was back and he was suddenly remembering how thick the air felt in his lungs.
"And how are we getting out of here, exactly?" he asked, drawing Phantom's attention.
Shrugging half-heartedly, the ghost gestured to the two teens behind him, "I mean, there's really only one choice…the portal you came through was a naturally occurring one, which wasn't very stable. We need to get you back to Earth through one that is. Luckily for you guys, I know just the place!"
"And how do we know you're not gonna lead us into a trap?" Hiccup asked, falling into the unfortunate mantle of leader once again.
At the very least, Phantom seemed to be understanding of the question.
"I…guess you're just gonna have to trust me?" Phantom resolved, even though he sounded just about as confident of that prospect as Hiccup felt.
Astrid actually scoffed. "Truly an astounding plan." She muttered under her breath. "Let's just trust the supposedly dead kid to lead us, no strings attached, out of this hellhole."
"I…understand your concerns." Phantom did not seem very surprised of their cautiousness, and his next sentence sounded almost…rehearsed? "What can I do to get you guys to trust me?"
Hiccup opened his mouth with a demand, but found that…there was nothing there. He felt his brow furrow as he wracked his brain.
"Why do you even care?" Astrid asked a very important question, now that Hiccup thought about it.
Why did this ghost care? What did he gain from this? His mere presence proved the existence of an afterlife (one that wasn't seen over by the gods, and that was a whole other existential crisis that Hiccup didn't want to dive into), so their deaths should mean nothing to him in retrospect, right?
Phantom opened his mouth to answer, but his toxic gaze suddenly snapped over Hiccup's shoulder. Something that was either confusion, anger, or both crossed his features. "Sam? Tuck? What are you doing?"
Another voice responded in the same language as before, and Hiccup whirled around to find two newcomers floating in the air. Phantom flew up next to them and grabbed each in one hand, and neither flinched away.
"Right, sorry." He said and then switched back into his native tongue. He eased the newcomers to the floor much in the way he'd done with Ruffnut, except these two seemed pretty used to the transition.
"They're…human?" Astrid mumbled, and Hiccup tilted his head to the side.
She was right. Neither of them had fangs or pointed ears. The girl…her eyes were purple, but they weren't glowing. She had an attitude that screamed 'teenage audacity', and what looked like…tar on her top lip (or maybe soot?).
The boy had dark skin and a lighter color pallet for his clothing. He had some small things resembling deathsong-amber goggles resting on his nose and what looked like an iron ingot in his hand. There was something in his hazel eyes that read as hungry for knowledge.
"I hope they're not talking about us, that'd be very rude." Tuffnut rolled his eyes, and Astrid sent him a scathing glare.
"I don't know how they're gonna do that without knowing our names," Ruffnut countered.
"He knows your name," Tuffnut retorted, and Ruff immediately paled, head snapping back to Phantom.
"Hey, hey, ghost!" She called frantically, eventually drawing his attention, "I changed my mind, you don't get my name! I'll have it back, please!"
If it was possible for a ghost to be amused, Phantom certainly looked it. His toxic gaze flickered between his human companions and Ruffnut for a few seconds. "What?"
Before Hiccup could tell her to stop, Ruffnut was speaking again, "I just find it unfair that you only get to steal my name. I think this should be an all-or-nothing kind of deal, y'know?"
"Steal your na –" Now Phantom looked confused, which quickly turned into a giggle, "why would I steal your names?"
"Yeah, Ruff, that's just Fae."
"You're telling me you think this thing looks more like a ghost than a fairy, Snotlout?" Ruff scoffed, "please."
"Ruff!" Hiccup's cousin shrieked, "you just –"
"Oh for the love of –" Hiccup cut them off, pinching the bridge of his nose, "no one here is stealing anyone's names!" He turned to Phantom with an exasperated glance, "Please tell me you're not stealing anyone's names?"
He didn't like the doubt that was in his gut when he asked that. He didn't exactly know how he'd explain that to Spitelout or the Thorstons.
"I don't even know how to do that," Phantom responded with a bewildered shrug, and Hiccup let out a sigh as he let his hands drop.
"And you guys don't have to tell me your names, if you don't want to?" the ghost rubbed the back of his neck again.
Hiccup decided to take him up on that offer, just in case, and only nodded his head in acknowledgement. He dropped what fleeting eye contact they'd held.
There was a moment of silence before one of Phantom's companions cleared their throat. Phantom looked down, and she looked deliberately between the ghost and the dragon riders, crossing her arms over her chest.
Sobering up, Phantom rolled his eyes, "this is Sam," he gestured to the black-clad girl, "and Tucker." The boy in the red cap waved.
Hiccup greeted them with a head nod, if for no other reason than to be polite.
Toothless raised his head to sniff the air, and Hiccup rested a hand on his head. He couldn't help but notice the way the newcomers crowded warily towards Phantom.
Tucker said something, and Phantom waited for a moment before translating, "...he wants to know what kind of dragon that is."
Astrid scoffed incredulously at the question, and Hiccup could hear Fishlegs chuckle in the background. It was a strange one, Hiccup could admit. It didn't take a lot of critical thinking to understand what Toothless was.
Still.
"...He's a Night Fury," Hiccup answered with a twitch in his lips, forcing himself not to say anything further. That answer was just as much of a warning.
Though, that warning seemed to fall on deaf ears, because Tucker smiled back with pure excitement, and actually took a step forwards. Hiccup tensed when Toothless growled, and his hand paused on his dragon's head in worry.
With suddenly wide eyes, Tucker retreated, like he hadn't even considered that a literal night fury may be a danger to strangers.
"Toothless," Hiccup warned, clenching his teeth as his dragon turned with a wary expression.
"Hiccup, are you sure we can trust these people?" Astrid asked, "I mean they're…" She waved with her free hand, "they're kids. And that's our best bet." She cut into a whisper, and Hiccup pursed his lips.
He watched as the Phantom and his companions began speaking to each other again.
His gaze then rose to the green sky. He breathed in more oddly thick air.
"I…don't think we have much of a choice…" he muttered, and Astrid pressed her lips together apprehensively. Hiccup turned back to her, voice dropping into a whisper
"Look, I don't see why this…Phantom would save us just to lure us into a trap. We have to assume he's telling the truth about this place." He waved a hand around the endless green.
"Let's just get out of here first, and then we'll worry about whether or not this ghost can be trusted."
"You do realize that's kind of a worse case scenario." Astrid deadpanned.
"And dying in the realm of the undead isn't?"
She paused.
She glanced at Phantom and his companions. "...I guess I can see your point," She grumbled, and Hiccup sighed. "But just because he has living friends, doesn't mean that he's our friend." Astrid reprimanded.
"I know," Hiccup agreed, "I know, but I'm going to take the fact that those other two are still alive as a good sign."
Humming noncommittally, Astrid dragged her gaze away from the newcomers with an incredibly apprehensive nod of her head.
At his warble, their attention fell back to Toothless.
It seemed that the boy in the red hat had captured his attention. The Night Fury was watching him with perked ears and a curious tilt to his head.
"Toothless?" Hiccup asked, brushing his dragon's brow. He sent him a venturing glance, as if asking Hiccup if he could get closer.
Hiccup spared a glance at Phantom before looking back down at his dragon. He sucked in a breath.
"Hiccup?" Astrid asked, and he turned with a forceful swallow.
"...He was right about Dagur, wasn't he?"
"What about a dagger?" Phantom interrupted, And Hiccup snapped his attention back to the ghost to find him floating protectively in front of his friends.
Shaking his head, Hiccup cleared his throat, "Ah, nothing just, um…"
He stroked his thumb over Toothless' scales anxiously, studying his dragon. "We've…we have a proposition." He said, knowing full well that they really didn't have much room to negotiate.
Still Phantom straightened, even if he was eyeing Toothless warily.
"Let my dragon check you guys out." Hiccup stated firmly, "If-if…he ends up trusting you guys, then I guess…"
He turned to look at the rest of his dragon riders, who seemed to be in the same loop as he was. Hiccup's gaze settled on Astrid last, searching for that confirmation in her eyes that he was doing the right thing. The jury still seemed to be out about Phantom, and he couldn't blame Toothless for that, but if his dragon ended up liking Phantom's friends, then…
He found it with a nod from her, and he returned it faintly before turning back to Phantom. "Then we'll go with you."
An audible sigh left the ghost as he considered Hiccup's conditions.
But the dragon whisperer supposed the lack of negotiations went both ways, because Phantom nodded very soon afterwards. "It won't attack, right?"
"Not unless you give him a reason." Hiccup admitted.
A chuckle actually left Phantom's mouth at that. "I guess that's fair."
Nodding, Hiccup turned back to Toothless, gesturing him forwards. "Bud?"
With another warble, his dragon began inching towards Sam, Tucker, and a protective Phantom, who was watching Toothless like a hawk.
The look he was giving the Night Fury quickly turned to Hiccup himself, and a tense question was there. There must have been something comforting on his face, because Phantom nodded shortly afterwards, as if comforting himself, and retreated.
Toothless appreciated the gesture, his tail flicked happily and he trilled as he circled the trio.
The two humans grew wary as the night fury sniffed around them. Sam had crouched, and Tucker had hunched his shoulders. Hiccup couldn't tell if she was scared or curious, but then Toothless poked his head between her and Tucker, and a nervous laugh left her as she was knocked over.
Tucker let out a similar sound as his hands lifted near his chest. They wavered in the air as Toothless sniffed at his ribs.
Hiccup could have sworn there was confusion on his dragon's face for a split second, but it quickly turned back to curiosity and a gummy smile broke out on his face.
A sigh left him.
Satisfied with the two humans, Toothless then turned to Phantom, who was watching the interaction with pursed lips and a taunt brow. It looked like worry, but Hiccup still doubted if it really was.
Toothless took a few exploratory sniffs. The ghost let out an uneasy noise and began to lean backwards, but froze very soon afterwards as Toothless' head wavered near his chest. Hiccup reached for Inferno, just in case, but then his dragon sneezed.
Toothless turned back to his rider with a look that was blatantly unsure.
And, well. Hiccup supposed that was better than nothing.
Alright, lore rundown time: this is a Ghost King! Danny story because. It's relevant to the plot, okay?
I have a silly little headcanon that Danny's core can sense human emotion. that way he can know who Needs Protecting.
I also enjoy the idea that the Ghost Zone's true name is the Infinite Realms, and that "Ghost Zone" is just something that the Fentons came up with
The trio are 16 in this, it's the fall of their junior year.
Seriously, yall. I'm blown away by the support from this fic so far. If you wanna see some art I've done for it, go? check out my Tumblr? Local-dragon-haunt
"Would you be willing to date a trans girl? ...Is she hot? Uh, I-I guess? As long as she's not fuckin' ugly. I'm shallow, and misogynistic. I'm not transphobic. *Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield begins playing*" - user
Until next time, my lovelies :)
~Local Dragon Haunt