'Alright, Maple Street.'
Danny landed in front of the house. He opened the door to find it unlocked.
"Dani?" The inside looked unlived in, save for a pile of fresh candy wrappers left on a decaying couch.
This was definitively the place. Candy wrappers were practically Dani's calling card.
Danny stepped into a kitchen he knew was there. It wasn't the first time he'd met Dani at Maple Street. He absentmindedly opened the fridge, pleased to find it stuffed with nothing but ice cubes and chilled drinks. There wasn't any utilities in the old house, so one had to improvise.
Danny shot a small ice beam into the fridge, propping up the slowly melting ice pile to last a few more days, before helping himself to a soda. He popped the tab, taking a long sip – grape soda, it was better than nothing.
"Enjoying yourself?"
Danny choked mid-sip, coughing on a cloud of fizz. "Dani!" He spread his arms wide, anticipating a hug. But Dani didn't jump into his arms, instead, her arms were crossed and she leaned against the kitchen entrance. "Did I say you could have a soda?" She snapped, green eyes flashed dangerously.
"Whoa, whoa, sorry." Danny held his arms up in surrender. "Just figured I'd get comfy." He placed the soda on a counter, holding his hands out, as if being arrested.
Dani had been scowling, but it melted into a mischievous smile. "I'm just messing with yah 'cus.' Of course, you can have a soda." She walked hunched over, slowly bumping her head into Danny's chest as a mock headbutt, before lazily hugging him.
"You've grown." The last time Danny had hugged her, she barely stood up to his waist. "Well, I'd hope so. I wouldn't want to be stuck as a teenager forever, unlike you."
Now, that was just mean. He wished he was still holding his soda, just so he could crush it. Danny was to look 14 forever yes, but no need to point it out. "You're for sure a teenager now, if you're getting a mean streak." Dani shrugged, "Implying I never had one before." Danny rolled his eyes, "Right," he took another sip of soda, "So what's up?"
Dani sighed, long and drawn out, she hugged herself.
"I'm in deep shit, that's what. I messed up bad!" Danny choked, coughing, giving Dani time to collect her thoughts.
"Ok, explain," he coughed.
"Well, you know the ghost Desiree, right?"
"Of course, the genie-lady. She's hard to forget really."
"Ok um," Suddenly Dani looked very small, "Don't be mad, but I kinda sorta made a wish."
Crunch
Danny was done with his soda, and he didn't blink once as he leveled a glare at Dani. The can crumpled into an aluminum ball against a fist, before clattering to the floor.
"What."
Dani stared at the ground, said not a word as she felt her heart-core ripple with shame, a twinge of regret.
"What. Did. You. Wish. For?" Danny asked.
She felt like crying, her lungs burned as she held her breath. But Dani steeled herself; she couldn't show doubt…weakness…not in front of Danny. She wasn't a child anymore. She was a teenager like him, and ought to act like it.
"I wished for parents."
"What?" Danny's voice became a lot softer, his face paling as the words registered. 'That's right, she's alone…when not hanging out with me.' The epiphany was impossible to swallow, he watched Dani carefully – neck tense with either guilt or denial. 'But I'm technically already her dad?' He'd been meaning to ask her how she felt 'about that,' but had always chickened out – and this time would be no different.
She turned away, barely hiding silent creeping tears, and she gestured towards the living room. Sitting down on a couch, she scattered candy wrappers around like a sad confetti. Danny sat down in the same spot Vlad had sat just yesterday, and she felt sick.
Her cousin was quiet, eerily so, as his glowering green eyes took in every crack and crevice of the room, obviously waiting for her to elaborate – and he refused to look at her, as if to give her space.
Dani steeled herself, clenching her fists.
"I wished for parents, b-because of my travels."
Danny stayed mercifully silent. His eyes glowered like an ecto-owl's against the house's empty backdrop.
"N-no no matter where I went on the planet, I found the same thing – everywhere, no matter what."
Dani stared at the ceiling to avoid Danny's prying eyes, getting comfortable on the couch, with arms tucked behind her head – as if she were in a therapy session. "I bet you can guess what that was."
"Families, everywhere, all the time, everyplace: mommies and daddies with their kids – that was the one constant everywhere –and I envied it, saw it, wanted it."
The familiar scenery of tourists dragging joyful children along, with souvenirs heavy in their arms, was a coveted image.
'Needed it.'
Dani reached out towards the ceiling, imagining she was watching the skyline, or was craning her neck to look at the stars, as she often did when she flew across the Atlantic ocean.
"I went to Antarctica." Dani sighed, as if defeated. "You'd think I wouldn't find a family there, but I did. Some army-scientist guy at a research base had a photo of his wife and kids on his desk."
"Anyway, I didn't stay long at all, all that ice was killing my fire-core."
"Wait, you have a fire-core?!"
Dani sat up, perplexed, confused, and a touch angry at the loud interruption….but then she put the pieces together, and scowled.
"What? Did you think I had an ice-core like you? I'm not a perfect copy of you, you know."
That shut Danny up. She could be the angry one too, and it made her feel better.
"So I went to Hawaii, and played in one of the volcanoes there, don't know which one but it was fun."
Danny whistled, impressed, and began to sarcastically clap his hands together – anything to ease the tension of the conversation.
"Now that's something I'd never do, I'd melt, and I've got something called common sense."
Dani stood up onto a nearby coffee table, "Ssssure you do, and damn right, that's something you could never do!" Danny continued clapping, and Dani mock-bowed, "Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all night."
A glance out the window told them that it was, in fact, night.
"So, I'm guessing you gotta go now, huh?"
Danny's heart clenched. It was true, he usually left right after dark.
'This conversation isn't over, Dani,' he thought.
She had yet to elaborate on her wish-parents, and the whole concept gave him goosebumps, all reason in his head telling him it was grossly taboo to wish "family" out from the ether. He wanted to tell Dani that her new "parents" where fakes, that he would always be closer to her than some discount wish-hacks.
'I bet they don't even want to be your parents, the wish just brainwashed em' to be,' and if Danny had voiced his cruel but reasoned thoughts, Dani would've started crying harder than ever before – and he didn't want that – he still loved Dani, even if he never did see her.
Then he thought of the Nasty Burger explosion, and how the entire experience spiraled into an intro course to time-travel and required the meddling of a time-god to fix the situation. Safe to say, Danny would never underestimate how badly anything could go ever again.
How much smaller and unimportant things like school seemed in the wake of his friends and family dying.
He could only imagine the effort it would take to undo a bad wish, and he prayed for his and Dani's sake that he wouldn't need Clockwork's help again.
Perhaps he should tell Dani about Dan, and Clockwork? Ideally it would be his secret alone…but maybe she needed the perspective? How dangerous meddling in time and wishes could be?
"Nah, no need to rush." 'Or to give her nightmares.' He sat up straighter, edger to not be overtaken by the mood-killing conversation. It's not like he could undo the wish she'd already made; he could just control the burn, and he smiled bitterly as he accepted his fate.
He tried to make light of the situation, he wanted to see Dani smile.
"Senior year is a lost cause anyway, I'm pretty sure my parents are plotting to send me to military school." He laughed, but with no humor.
Dani's mouth dropped open dramatically. "No!"
Danny smiled woefully, "Yep, all that hero work and look where it got me."
"So, you're saying, I should become a villian, instead?"
Danny laughed.
Vlad admitted he understood Skulker now. The self-proclaimed "Best Hunter," of the Ghost Zone was obsessed with something special, and intoxicating.
A plasma-bullet peeled off into the direction of a rabbit's skull – the tiny head pocketing into a swollen lump for a nano-second, before brain matter exploded like a plugged sprinkler. Vlad's thick insulated boots, rubber and steel clad, kicked the unlucky creature into a snowbank, body now unseen on his pristine forest path.
That rabbit had been living, but no longer. If asked why he shot a living creature, he would say he mistook its white fur for a ghost under the moonlight – but of course only an idiot on the level of Jack Fenton would buy that lie. Vlad chuckled to himself, admiring his expertly crafted rifle – he'd made the blueprints and was kicking himself for not appreciating his deadly design sooner.
Why hadn't he done this before?
Hunting felt amazing. Unlike the anti-ghost weapons of the Fentons, or even the GIW – his rifle was fueled by his undead power, giving each round an extra kick of pink backscatter. Perhaps that's why he felt such a pep in his step – he could see, and feel , his power in action without lifting a finger. He targeted another white rabbit, foolishly thinking itself hidden against the snow