Work Text:
Danny looks exhausted and ready to fall apart, and Dani actually is ready to fall apart, but trying to smile for him. She’s built up a resistance to Ecto-Dejecto–a tolerance, maybe–and it’s become a problem.
It’s become a big problem, because she’s already almost destabilized three times in the past week, and the Ecto-Dejecto is helping less and less. And if they have to give her much more anytime soon, she might just overdose on it, and they don’t have clue zero what’d happen then. If it’d kill her or maybe only kill her human half or do something totally different and even worse.
But Tucker’s not gonna let his best friend watch his little sister/daughter/clone destabilize and die or turn into some freaky feral super-monster kaiju of a ghost, alright? He’s gonna figure something out. He’s a tech guy, admittedly, not a biologist or a geneticist or whatever a genetically unstable super-powered hybrid clone actually needs, but–look, he’ll figure it out. He will.
Somebody has to, and he’s the fixer here. Danny’s got the unbelievable ghostly superpowers and Sam’s got the occult pragmatism and Jazz has the emotional maturity and Val’s got the vicious weaponry, and he’s got the tech, the tools, the tricks. He’s the one who figures out how to actually rig the plan, how to make the plan work. He’s the one who supplies the shit they need and makes it all come together. The tech support, and the support-support.
So he can do this. He can fix this.
He can.
“We’re gonna help you,” Danny promises.
“We’re definitely gonna help you,” Sam agrees as she folds her arms.
“We’ll do everything we can,” Jazz says, frowning in concern.
“We’ll do whatever we can,” Val cuts in, clenching her jaw.
“Yeah, I know, guys,” Dani says with another forced smile. She looks weak and pale, and her human form isn’t holding. She’s accidentally phased through the floor twice today, and Danny had to catch her both times.
Tucker doesn’t say anything.
“Good,” Danny says, and then he reaches out and grips Dani’s shoulder and gives it a little squeeze.
Or he tries to, anyway, but his hand goes right through her. He snatches it back in alarm–trying to make sure he’s not about to trigger another destabilization, probably–and she flinches; bites her lip in an obvious attempt to hide the tremble in it.
She doesn’t cry like she did last time, but that very obviously doesn’t make anyone else in the room feel any better.
Dani’s fourteen, technically. Like–she looks fourteen. Definitely acts fourteen.
But also she’s two, and Tucker can’t stop thinking about that fact lately. And Danny died when he was fourteen, and he can’t stop thinking about that either. Which, like–it’s not even comparable; not the same thing at all.
But he can’t stop thinking about it anyway.
“It’s–fine,” Jazz says, trying to sound confident. “It’s fine! You didn’t fall this time, right?”
“Right,” Dani says with a rough swallow. “Didn’t fall this time.”
Tucker is gonna lose his whole entire ever-loving mind about this. This is just–this is not his wheelhouse, but it’s his job, kind of! Sort of! He’s the tech guy, he’s the one who handles this stuff! Danny’s parents sure as shit aren’t concerned with keeping ghosts intact, much less fixing them. Much less half-human ones who are kind of their kid that they also know nothing about and can’t be trusted to know anything about!
So this is Tucker’s problem to solve. This is his thing. And if it’s not, then he just has to make this his thing.
He just–doesn’t know how to, yet.
Things have been pretty . . . steady, is the thing. Like, lately. Vlad’s being a weirdo and a creep like always, and Danny’s parents are being their own kind of weirdos and not creeps, exactly, but also dangerous, and the GIW is just being, like–shitheads, basically. Like–just the worst, pretty much.
Well, as close to “the worst” as anyone in direct competition with Vlad Masters can get, anyway.
Screw that froot loop, seriously.
But the ghosts have been more contained and controlled, more willing to listen, easier to work with and either win over or chase back into the Ghost Zone. And Vlad and Danny’s parents and even the GIW, well, they all suck in different ways, but they know how to work around them now, plus Val’s on their side and Jazz is covering for Danny with their parents and Dani isn’t working for Vlad and they’ve got established plans and strategies and emergency kits and literal go-bags and, like–they know what to do, at this point. They’re fucking genre-saavy in their own lives, at this point.
And they’re an actual fraid now, not just a bunch of freaked-out amateurs who don’t even know what’s going on and just end up fighting each other half the time.
So like–things were getting better.
But now . . .
The others talk for a while longer, reassuring Dani–and Danny–as best as they can. Tucker doesn’t talk much himself, because he’s thinking.
Ever since Danny died, their lives–hah–have gotten wild. Tucker didn’t really consider his life particularly boring before they got Danny killed, but nope, no, naw, he was in fact very, very wrong about that fact. Like, he was so many kinds of wrong about that fact.
All things considered, after defeating a literally countless amount of ghosts and also some various ghosthunters and government agents and, again, Vlad and his whole . . . everything, high school was going pretty good. It’s been a year or two since anyone tried too hard to destroy Amity Park or conquer either the world or the Ghost Zone, and Tucker actually mostly has a normal, stable schedule right now? Like, as normal and stable as he wants it to be, anyway. Danny’s grades are even up! Like, consistently up! Things are going great! Things really are getting better!
Or they were, until Dani started destabilizing again.
They could ask Vlad for help, probably. But also, Vlad’s an opportunistic asshole of a half-human being and also the guy who made her an unstable clone to begin with, so what’s the prick even gonna do anyway? They need somebody who’s not completely clueless here, or at least somebody who’s got a new lead to follow and won’t just be taking shots in the dark and lying to them about knowing what the fuck they’re doing so they can take advantage of the situation. Vlad doesn’t know anything new. Vlad probably doesn’t know anything at all; again, he made Dani unstable. Like, he is clearly not the level of cloning expert that they currently require, on account of he’s a freaking hack and a weird creepy loser and not even slightly an expert at all. So like–obviously, that’s bottom-of-the-barrel territory there. So they need somebody better.
Or like, literally anyone else at all. Like. Literally. Literally anyone. Any option at all.
Tucker would call up the friggin’ Box Ghost if he thought the dude could help, seriously. He’d call up friggin’ Johnny 13! Where’s that damn skeleton key, he will go knock on Pariah Dark’s door if he’s gotta! Literally! Literally anyone it took!
Unfortunately, though, they have no idea who it’s gonna take.
Tucker really wishes they did.
The fraid makes some plans–they’re flimsy, useless, placebo plans, but still technically plans–and then they split up for the night. Danny and Jazz hide Dani in Danny’s room to make sure their parents aren’t gonna come home unexpectedly and see her, and the rest of them say their goodbyes and head out before, again, the Fentons can come home and see anything. Too many people in the house means there might be questions, and also means an increased risk of somebody slipping up. The more people are around, the more opportunities for one of ‘em to make a mistake or say something they shouldn’t. So they’re clearing out, and they’ll meet up again in the morning and maybe get going on those placebo plans, but hopefully have just thought of something better by then.
Even if it burns Tucker’s fraid bonds to leave any of them like this right now.
He can’t imagine how it feels for Danny and Dani, considering the two of them are way more ghostly than the rest of them. They’re all just a little bit liminal, after all. Hell, Val’s the least liminal of them all, and even she looks like it burns to leave them.
“This isn’t safe,” she mutters at the end of the sidewalk, looking back towards FentonWorks.
“Literally nothing has been since we were fourteen, but thanks for noticing,” Tucker says. She glares at him.
“You know what I mean, Foley,” she snaps. “If Danny’s parents find Dani and see her have an episode–”
“Yeah, obviously, we know!” Sam hisses at her, throwing her hands up. “What are we supposed to do, huh, go preemptively shoot ‘em and hope they don't get out of the hospital ‘til this is fixed?!”
“I’m open to that, if that’s what it takes!” Val hisses back, clenching her fists. Tucker is also open to that, at this point, and is very sure Sam would be too if it actually came to it, but they’re all upset and feeling increasingly hopeless and Sam and Val would both fight literally any god that even mildly inconvenienced them, so . . . yeah, well, no surprised they’re snapping at each other right now.
He should fix that. Talk them both down, or distract them, or–something. He doesn’t know. Just–fix it. That’s all.
He needs to fix Dani right now, though. She’s the priority. She’s the one who needs his help.
But he doesn’t know how to fix Dani, so instead he gives Sam and Val his best disarming grin and holds up his hands, and says whatever stupid thing it takes to keep them from biting each other’s heads off right now, when they’ve got bigger problems to problem about. Like–way bigger. So, so much bigger.
Tucker doesn’t know what they’re going to do about this.
Sam and Val both call him an idiot and storm off in opposite directions, their fraid bonds all twisted up in grief and fear, and he exhales roughly and just . . . checks the settings on his PDA. Runs a couple virus scans.
Walks home.
Things really have been going good, lately. Like–they really were.
This . . . this is not any kind of “good”.
.
.
.
Tucker gets home and shuts himself up in his room and doesn’t sleep. He doubts Danny is either, and probably not Jazz. Sam and Val, it’s fifty-fifty.
Dani just isn’t gonna have a choice. She doesn’t have the energy to stay awake that long anymore. Couldn’t if she tried.
Not without risking destabilizing again, anyway.
Tucker should sleep. He needs to sleep. Needs to be able to focus. Think clearly. Be at his best.
But also, he can't calm down enough to sleep and he's literally so desperate for a fix for this situation that he’s about five seconds from typing “clone” into freaking Bing and going to the second page of search results. Maybe even the third! He’ll do it! He’ll do it if he has to! He’ll take any resource he can freakin’ get, at this point!
It’s not like the world is spilling over with clones, is the thing; especially not genetically stable super-powered hybrid clones with–
Wait, Tucker thinks, and lifts his head to stare blankly at the poster on his bedroom wall. Well, there’s a lot of posters on all of his bedroom walls, admittedly, but a specific poster on a specific wall.
Tucker is generally speaking not a superhero fanboy, due to way too much superhero-support being involved in his regular day-to-day life kind of taking the shine off that particular super-penny. Like, it’s just not really a thing for him. He is vaguely approving but otherwise neutral about the existences of ninety-nine point nine percent of superheroes; it’d be like geeking out over the friggin’ garbage man. Like, he very much appreciates what the garbage guy does and thinks he and all his co-workers deserve a fair wage and very generous benefits and not to be attacked by supervillains for just doing their damn jobs, but he doesn’t, like, read articles about any of them or follow their Twitters or care who they’re dating or anything like that. Effectively everything he knows about not-Danny superheroes he learned by osmosis more than anything else, and frequently against his will because either the news or the internet or just whoever else was in the room at the time just wouldn’t shut up about them.
So yeah, no. Tucker’s not a superhero fanboy.
But he very much is a fighting game fanboy, because fucking duh he is, and that one weird and niche only-arguably-licensed one that was based on that whole mess in Metropolis with Doomsday and everybody thinking Superman was dead for a while last year is actually pretty good. Like, the borderline so-bad-it's-good kind of “good”, so far as the story missions go, but it had surprisingly fun and weird mechanics and pretty solid graphics and real cool character designs, and the overall game balance is actually–
The point is, he liked it enough to buy the special edition when it came out a couple months ago, and the special edition came with little mini-posters of some of the members of the main roster, and he liked them enough to actually hang up a few of them. Steel, obviously, and also Supergirl, but also–
“You’re a genetically stable super-powered hybrid clone,” Tucker says to his poster, still staring at the digitally-rendered face of a teen idol superhero and the bright yellow “S” on the back of his leather jacket that he’s posed to show off. Superboy continues to smirk cockily back over his shoulder at him, because he’s a special edition poster and obviously isn’t gonna stop doing that. Like, unless the poster gets possessed or something, because again: genre-saavy in their own lives at this point.
But . . .
Tucker, very slowly, reaches for his phone and types something into Bing after all.
Superboy’s official fansite is unfortunately lacking in public contact information, but there is a scheduled list of appearances on it. He’s due to be a celebrity guest judge for a beachside beauty contest in O’ahu in two days.
Okay then, Tucker thinks, and immediately goes to steal his dad’s credit card and buy a plane ticket.
He’ll deal with being grounded unto his next five reincarnations later.
.
.
.
So Tucker ran off to O’ahu with the barest scrap of a plan to attempt to pull together and absolutely zero notice given to anyone else. Like, possibly he should’ve told somebody where he was going and why? Maybe? Just vaguely.
Well, he texted Danny “brb” from the runway, at least.
He just really doesn’t wanna give Dani false hope at this point, if this idea is gonna be a dead end. Like–he definitely doesn’t wanna do that. Or give Danny false hope, either.
Definitely, definitely he doesn’t want to do that.
It’s a hot, crowded day at Waikiki Beach, and there’s a loud crowd full of tourists all clustered up by a big stage full of very attractive women in very attractive–and very skimpy–swimsuits. Normally Tucker would be more interested in that, just like as a thing that was happening and all, but he has a best friend whose little sister/daughter/clone is destabilizing to death and therefore he has another clone to find. Specifically, a genetically stable super-powered hybrid one. So like, that’s taking precedence right now, all things considered.
Unfortunately Superboy is probably not gonna be all glammed up in a skimpy swimsuit like the contestants, but also Tucker doubts he’d look as good as they do even if he was, so whatever.
. . . something about that thought was weird, he recognizes briefly, but then things get distracting because that’s when a giant shark-man comes up onto the beach and starts attacking everybody onstage while screaming disparaging threats about Superboy. Possibly it’s a publicity stunt or something, but if it is, Tucker’s pretty sure nobody told the contestants.
Superboy isn’t even here yet, he thinks in vague exasperation as he whips out his PDA and tries to figure out if he can do anyone here any good before someone gets, like, possibly actually literally eaten, from the way this guy is talking. Well, there’s screens and amps so maybe if he hacks the amps and plays a very loud sound or–actually, this dude’s a shark, so how strong are his electromagnetic senses? Like, are the shark head and gills more an aesthetic thing, genetically speaking, or . . . ?
Okay, if this guy is electromagnetic-sensitive–well, Tucker has an idea or two about what to do about that.
The shark-guy jumps at a pair of screaming contestants, and Tucker hits one last button on his PDA. Every single speaker on stage screams with feedback twice as loud as the contestants, and the shark-guy recoils reflexively with a pained scream of his own, staggering backwards into a row of chairs and knocking them over.
“Okay, that’s a start,” Tucker mutters under his breath, then presses a few more buttons and does some very quick typing. Liminally-quick, one might even say. He redirects as much power as possible into the speakers and they scream even louder, though it’s really the overwhelming rush of electricity that that he’s concerned with causing and the noise is more a side effect. He’s definitely gonna burn out at least a few of them either way, though, which is a shame because they are nice speakers, but Tucker’s willing to make that particular techie sacrifice in the name of presumably-innocent people not, you know, dying horrible avoidable deaths.
. . . mostly willing. They’re really nice speakers.
Yeah, this is hurting him a little.
Next step in plan. The shark-guy is snarling viciously, whipping his head around like he’s looking for something–which admittedly he probably is, and probably that something is “whatever’s overloading the speakers”, and therefore that something is Tucker–and the speakers are still screaming with feedback. Tucker makes sure to make them vary in tones and volume so the guy won’t get too used to either the electromagnetic pulses or the sound and adapt, and then–whoops, yeah, shark-guy’s just started punching out the speakers now.
Shit.
This is a tragic waste of friggin’ gorgeous high-end AV equipment, but it is giving the contestants more time to flee for their scantily-clad lives, so Tucker just sighs regretfully and sets a few more speakers a-screamin’. The shark-guy roars and punches through a few more of them. If he were closer to the stage, Tucker would definitely be trying to figure out a way to sabotage some of the equipment into electrocuting anyone who was asshole enough to punch it, but for now he’s gotta settle for just trying to disable all the safety precautions he can find in the software here and overclocking everything he can get his techie little liminal hands on.
Like, metaphorically, obviously. His actual techie little liminal hands are busy PDA-ing right now. But same difference, right?
Tucker checks for any more useful equipment with wi-fi access that he can hack while the shark guy’s busy with the speakers, because there are definitely only so many speakers. There’s an unfortunately limited amount of stage lights, given the whole “broad daylight on a sprawling Hawaiian beach” thing, but there might be . . . hmmm, yeah, that looks like . . .
Oh, sick.
Tucker grins, and then he drives the unoccupied Tesla some moron somehow got onto this beach full-speed into the shark-guy’s face.
They’ve got insurance, probably.
Also, let’s be real, it’s a Tesla, so really he’s saving their lives twice over here.
The shark-guy goes down with a furious roar of pain, and some thirtysomething white dude in a cheesy Hawaiian shirt and cheap suit and flashy jewelry screams “MY BABY!”, which is presumably in reference to the Tesla and not the shark-guy, but Tucker doesn’t know this dude and his incredibly loud shirt’s life and isn’t gonna judge.
Well, he’ll judge if it’s the Tesla. The shark-guy is pretty buff, though, so objectively speaking he can see why maybe somebody with a kink or whatever might–
The shark-guy rips the Tesla in half.
. . . Tucker understands slightly more about why somebody with a kink might wanna tap that, yeah. Uh. Wow.
Geez.
Learn something new about yourself and your own kinks every day, okay, he reflects. Not that he’s actually into dudes, obviously, he’s just comfortable in his masculinity and again, this is objectively speaking.
But also, shit. Okay, what else has he got to work with here. The remaining speakers and sound system, the audience’s cell phones, the video cameras, a handful of laptops and tablets, and . . .
“Hey!” a voice yells from overhead, and Tucker looks up.
And a superhero, apparently.
Okay, well, that’s more like it. And also more like what he’s used to.
“Superboy!” the shark-guy snarls. Superboy smirks down at him just as cockily as Tucker’s digitally-rendered special edition poster of him, though it is way higher def like this. He’s floating in the air maybe a hundred feet up with his arms folded, wearing the exact same superhero suit and branding-iconic leather jacket and opaque sunglasses from the video game, which is really the only thing Tucker’s ever seen the guy wear at all, come to think of it. Not that he tends to keep up on any superhero fashion choices, except maybe Power Girl and Starfire’s. Because, like, Power Girl and Starfire. And Superboy is just not measuring up to either of those two right now, that’s all Tucker’s gonna say.
Maybe if he added some costume cutouts or something, Tucker muses. Cutouts might do him some good.
. . . there was something weird about that thought too, he notices, and frowns to himself.
“The one and only, chump bucket!” Superboy taunts, and the shark-guy roars up at him and then chucks one of the broken amps at him. Superboy dodges, unconcerned, and spreads his arms in mocking invitation. “Oh, so close! Got another quarter for an extra life? Maybe a one-up up your sleeve? I mean you’d have to start wearing shirts, admittedly . . .”
“Get down here, you cheap knock-off!” the shark-guy screams, along with a slew of real creative insults and curses that Tucker definitely could not livestream on a family channel, put it that way. Somebody needs anger management, sounds like.
“Hey, rude,” Superboy says, folding his arms again with a mock-offended expression. “That's like, a clone microaggression, you know. Am I calling you a fish fry?”
Tucker is pretty sure the “chump bucket” pun should count as a shark-guy microaggression if “cheap knock-off” counts as a clone one, but it doesn't seem like the time to split hairs, really. Maybe just some feedback to offer the dude later, he doesn’t know.
The shark-guy picks up another one of the bigger crushed amps and hurls it at Superboy too. He darts out of the way in the air again. Tucker is vaguely concerned that somebody’s gonna get squashed at this rate, but he’s not the pro superhero here so he assumes Superboy’s got a plan or–nope, nooooope, that amp definitely just landed on the lifeguards’ Jeep.
Okay then, not ideal. Though admittedly there weren’t any lifeguards in said Jeep, so maybe Superboy just isn’t the type to give a shit about property damage. Fair enough for somebody who can’t go intangible, probably.
Either way, the shark-guy better not kill Superboy. Tucker needs the dude alive. Well, like, maybe just a DNA sample or two would be good enough, but breaking into a morgue to steal DNA from a dead guy feels kinda supervillain-ish and pretty disrespectful of bodily autonomy or whatever, though if he absolutely has to–anyway! Off-topic!
Supervillainy can wait ‘til it’s definitely necessary, Tucker figures. Danny doesn’t need the stress of a supervillain BFF in his life right now. Also Val would kick his ass. And Sam. And probably Jazz, too.
Yeah, definitely Jazz would kick his ass, and do it while saying a lot of painfully honest and emotionally scarring and psychologically destructive things.
Jazz is scary.
Tucker cranks up the feedback on the amps–Superboy doesn't have super-hearing, he's pretty sure, and definitely doesn't have any sensitivity to electromagnetics–and then goes looking for another Tesla or something out there while the shark-guy’s busy screaming in pain. There's an unfortunate lack of Teslas, it looks like, but there are a respectable amount of camera drones flying around, both professional and personal.
Yeah, Tucker can work with that.
He takes over every single drone he can find and starts dive-bombing the shark-guy with them one by one, figuring they’ll be decent enough distractions for Superboy to take advantage of. He aims for the gills and eyes, since those are probably the closest things to “vulnerable” spots this dude has, and the shark-guy yells in fury and tries to swat them all away.
Tucker is pretty sure this dude needs that anger management therapy, yeah. Then he decides to just go all-in on this one and sends all the remaining drones at him at once.
Superboy, fortunately, is apparently down with the distraction, and he takes full advantage of Tucker’s multi-drone strike to come down on the duly-distracted shark-guy’s head feet-first in a missile dropkick, which is very pro wrestling of him. Which, like–Tucker knows that is absolutely not a legit move outside of a ring or whatever, but two years of Danny being half-dead has more than proven to him that superpowers kinda throw off the baseline human “actually reasonable moves to actually use” fight scale, especially when somebody’s got some real altitude to start from.
Also, sue him, it looks fucking cool. Like, badass as hell.
The shark-guy goes down under the impact with a roar, and so does the stage–it splinters underneath them, and Superboy smashes the shark-guy into a crater right in the middle of it. Wood and metal and sand all go flying every which way while people scream in terror, and a few small fires break out as a few of the amps inexplicably explode. Who even knows why, at this point. Tucker doesn’t question these things anymore, after Danny’s technically-still-a-life happened to him and also Danny and Sam and, like, all of Amity Park.
Huh, he thinks as he stares at the cratered-in and smoldering stage and Superboy straightening up in the wreckage to stand over the unconscious shark-guy with a smug smirk as he shakes off the rubble and smooths his hair back off his face in full “Cool Guys Don’t Look At Explosions” mode. Tucker blinks stupidly and cannot even “objectively” this situation, or even just go with “cool” or “badass”.
Yeah, no, that was just fucking hot. Like. On several levels. All over.
. . . okay, Tucker’s stupid hormone-addled brain thinks blankly while it’s making a valiant but feeble attempt to reboot: actually Superboy probably would look as good as the contestants if he were all glammed up in a skimpy swimsuit, because, like . . . wow.
Wow.
Mark him down for at least a “one” on the Kinsey scale, he guesses.
The guy in the Hawaiian shirt and cheap suit and flashy jewelry ensemble runs up to the edge of the remains of the stage and starts yelling at Superboy about property damage and ruining the event, which sounds ridiculous to Tucker because what, would the guy rather have gotten shark damage and had the event ruined by getting bitten in half? But whatever; not his circus, not his monkeys. He just needs to get Superboy's attention before the dude clears out or gets dragged off for questioning or whatever; Hawaiian shirts and cheap suits and flashy jewelry are not a relevant concern right now.
Or, you know. Ever. But especially not right now.
Tucker forces his way through the remaining crowd the best that he can as quick as he can, heading towards the sound of full “Karen” levels of “I want to speak to your manager” screaming and the gaudy reflection of fake jewelry. Superboy only seems to be sticking around to check out the contestants at this point, judging by where his line of sight is and how entirely uninvested in the “conversation” he looks, so Tucker probably doesn't have much time here. Or, like. Any. Any time here.
Admittedly a bunch of pretty ladies in swimsuits who are probably grateful to have been saved from ending up fish food might be a reason for Superboy to stick around, but they'd also be a very distracting reason for Superboy to stick around, and Tucker does not wanna have to pry a horndog teen idol superhero out of a pile of grateful beauty queens. Especially not a horndog teen idol superhero with touch-based telekinetic super-strength. That's just not a fight he's gonna win. Like, ever.
Maybe he can just bribe the dude into hearing him out or something. But the level of bribery he can personally afford versus the immediate gratification of a bunch of hot babes in bikinis just seems like maybe a doomed plan? Like, statistically and all.
. . . no trying to dig up blackmail on the teen idol superhero, self, Tucker reminds himself. He needs the teen idol superhero to help him, for one. And the rules are that blackmail's only for emergencies. Not that this isn't an emergency, obviously, but he can at least try appealing to the guy's S-shield first.
Or just use Sam’s level of “can personally afford” bribery. Sam would go for it, obviously. Like, Sam would literally shove the money down Superboy’s throat, if it meant helping Dani.
Tucker doesn’t actually know if renting Superboy’s services to handle a personal emergency is a thing, considering he’s a superhero and that’s not really a “superhero” kind of thing to do, but also the guy puts his name and face on literally everything that pays, so like . . . well, he’s not ruling the option out, put it that way. And again: Sam’s level of “can personally afford” could definitely handle the expense, no matter how expensive Superboy just so happens to be.
. . . in, like, not a weird kinky way, he means. He really did not mean that in a weird kinky way.
Whatever. Worst case scenario, they'll steal one of Sam’s parents’ credit cards, Tucker figures.
He squirms his way past the last of the crowd, dodges a couple of dudes who look like very stressed-out security guards, and walks straight past the screaming guy in the cheap suit to pick his way through the sandy wreckage of the stage and tap Superboy on the shoulder. Looking like you know what you’re doing and where you’re going is very helpful in getting places somebody normally would’ve stopped you from getting, in Tucker’s experience.
“Hey, I have a life-or-death emergency I need specifically you for,” he informs Superboy, immediate and matter-of-fact and in hopes of getting his attention off the pretty ladies in bikinis for long enough to make his pitch here. Superboy glances towards him, possibly just because he's surprised to not be being yelled at, but Tucker’ll take it. “Like, very specifically you. You are literally the only person on the planet I think can help me right now.”
“Right now I am specifically distracted, buddy,” Superboy says, tilting his head meaningfully towards the knot of contestants off to the side. Tucker immediately regrets not bringing Sam or Val or Jazz to be his mouthpiece here. Hot goth girl, badass superhero beauty, or terrifyingly emotionally aware redhead would all definitely make for a better “help me, Superboy, you're my only hope” attention-grabber than he’s gonna be able to. Like, he needs a Princess Leia here, and he is not even at a C-3PO right now.
He is such a dumbass. He is spoiled for hot chicks in his fraid, and he decided to go recruit Superboy of all people for help without bringing a single one of them?
Man, he knows better than that.
“I was in no way exaggerating the ‘life or death’ thing,” he says, hoping that'll be enough to score him a semi-private conversation with the guy. Superboy just raises an eyebrow, looking skeptical.
“Don't ignore me, you little shit!” the guy in the cheap suit yells. Superboy rolls his eyes behind his sunglasses. Then he lowers his sunglasses, opening his mouth to presumably say something, but the sunglasses are now no longer distracting Tucker from his face and–
“You actually look like that?” he blurts in disbelief, which is definitely not helpful right now. He just really, really assumed that was Photoshop all this time, though. Like, he definitely assumed that was Photoshop all this time. So much Photoshop.
So, so much Photoshop.
Jesus. Again: learn something new every day.
Also, he’s maybe registering a “two” on the ol’ Kinsey now. Like. Possibly. Is that how that works?
Is Super-sexual a thing, maybe, because–no, no, that just sounds weird, that’s very weird and something Tucker needs to just never think again and definitely never say out loud. Ever.
Seriously, though, why does Superboy look that good? Superman doesn’t look that good. And if anyone should look that good, it should be Supergirl! Supergirl would absolutely be the one who should look that good!
“Custom-designed to, man,” Superboy says, raising an eyebrow at him again as he gestures at his own face. “I'm Superman's clone. That is literally my whole entire thing. Do you not get out much, maybe?”
“Superman does not look like that,” Tucker retorts accusingly. Superman is just fine, aesthetically. Like, generically handsome from an objective standpoint, but whatever. Superboy is the prettiest bastard that Tucker has ever had the misfortune of not being remotely “objective” about. His hair is all flawlessly windswept glossy black curls and he’s got a perfect tan and perfect complexion and looks a little mixed, maybe–like, like there's a bit of Japanese or something in there, maybe?–but also has straight-up inhumanly blue eyes, and it all really fucking suits him.
Superboy scowls and folds his arms. Tucker realizes he may have phrased something badly there. Or like–everything. Just phrased everything badly there.
Uh. Whoops.
“I know what fucking Superman looks like, thanks,” Superboy snaps, glaring at him. Unfortunately, he continues to be gorgeous. Tucker is not good at handling “gorgeous”, especially when he was really not expecting it. Especially when it's up close and personal and a dude, apparently, because he really did not think he was actually into–
“HEY!” Cheap Suit yells, shoving in closer to jab a finger into Superboy's chest and attempting to shove Tucker aside as he does. Tucker is used to pissed-off ghosts and his very tough and badass fraid members trying to shove him places, though, so he moves absolutely not an inch and just barely resists the urge to pistol-whip the guy with his PDA. “Do you think this is funny, you little shit?! You think we couldn't sue your ass for this?! You think we won't sue your ass for this?!”
“I think you're pretty ungrateful about not being shark food, dude,” Tucker says, eyeing the guy sourly. He has way bigger concerns here than putting up with this hack, whoever the frick he actually is, and distracting Superboy from a whole bunch of recently-rescued hotties with bodies is gonna be hard enough without Cheap Suit trying to get in Superboy’s face about stupid shit.
“Yeah, you definitely are,” Superboy agrees with a scowl, planting his hands on his hips. Dude still looks fucking gorgeous, Tucker notes, which is not fair. “If it's such a friggin’ problem I could go wake up King Shark for you, see if he's in the mood for an after-asskicking snack.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat?!” Cheap Suit fumes indignantly, and tries to shove Superboy this time. Which, wow, that’s optimistic.
It, very obviously, does not work out for him. Superboy doesn't even do anything; he just stands there and the guy bounces off him like a freaking pinball and sprawls backwards into the sand with a yelped curse.
“That was kinda sad, man,” Tucker observes pityingly, looking down at him. The guy deserves it, in his opinion. Thirtysomething grown-ass man trying to push around a couple of teenagers and also threatening to sue the specific teenager who just saved half this beach while accusing said specific teenager of threatening him?
Yeah, he definitely deserves it, in fact.
“That was assault!” the guy yells, clutching at his own arm like he did not, again, start this shit. And also like he didn’t just land in a pile of sand anyway?
“This beach is full of cameras and he literally did not even touch you,” Tucker says dubiously as Superboy glares down at the guy.
“You’re lucky I didn’t touch you, prick!” he snaps. “I could disassemble your ass if I felt like it!”
“Okay, now we’re just unnecessarily escalating,” Tucker says as Cheap Suit scrambles to his feet with more sputtered accusations. “But also yeah, man, you should go.”
“This is a public beach and I’m running this event!” Cheap Suit yells. Superboy rolls his eyes, then kicks a surprisingly impressive amount of sand all over his shoes. Cheap Suit starts cursing him out again. “Those are designer, you little bastard!”
“Those are shitty knockoffs,” Superboy says dubiously, looking bored and pushing his glasses back up. It’s unfortunately no longer a useful distraction from his face now that Tucker’s actually seen the full picture of it live and in-person, insanely pretty eyes and all. “You done bitching yet, old man?”
“Old–?!” Cheap Suit screeches furiously.
“Hey, whose Tesla was that anyway?” Tucker asks, putting on a show of peering over his shoulder towards its wreckage down by the tideline and just taking a toooootally unfounded guess. Really. Just out of nowhere. No reason. “Looks like the cops are taping it off, maybe . . . ?”
“MY BABY!” Cheap Suit wails in horror again, and immediately bolts off towards the cops to become their problem instead. Tucker feels very validated about himself and also his deductive capabilities. He taps a couple of buttons on his PDA to brick Cheap Suit’s phone, just to be petty, and also to control who in this conversation has said conversation recorded. He doesn’t know if the guy actually was recording, but better safe than sorry.
Also, the guy’s just a total pill who deserves way worse. Tucker hopes he loses all his work contacts and has to track them all down again from scratch, the sleazeball.
“What a prick,” he mutters under his breath.
“Unfortunately, yeah,” Superboy snorts, glancing back towards the contestants and starting to lift off the sand a little. “Listen, man, I appreciate the assist and all, but–”
Fuck, Tucker thinks, and then maybe panics a little. If Superboy leaves right now–
“My best friend's sister is destabilizing!” he blurts in a panic, and Superboy–pauses.
“‘Destabilizing’?” he repeats slowly, still hovering a foot or two off the sand. Tucker tries to look believable and trustworthy and not like a supervillain-issued trap, though he's not actually sure how to do that. Like–not even slightly, actually.
“She's a clone too,” he says, which is slightly more information than he wanted to give before Superboy agreed to at least coming to Amity, he was just gonna mention the “half-human with superpowers” thing, but . . . “Another hybrid. Her DNA is trying to go . . . soup, basically. She's already destabilized more than once and she's building up a resistance to the treatment faster than it can fix her.”
Superboy stares down at him blankly. Doesn't say anything. Tucker tries not to freak out about that.
“Your best friend's . . . ‘sister’,” Superboy says after a long, long moment.
“Yeah,” Tucker says, trying not to fidget like a weirdo and wondering why he said “sister” like that. It's not important right now, though. “Her name's Dani. Danielle. Well, sometimes we call her Ellie ‘cuz his name is also Danny, but like she was real married to being also-a-Dani so now we pretty much just stick with that so–sorry, uh, this is not actually, like, relevant or useful information, just, uh–look, man, she's like two, or fourteen, it’s kinda nebulous, just–she doesn't deserve this and Danny is losing his whole-ass mind and I need to fix it. Her. This.”
Superboy gets a weird look on his face and shifts his center of “balance” backwards in the air. Tucker tries not to freak out about that either. It doesn't mean the guy’s leaving, necessarily. Maybe he's just shifting his weight in general! He might just be shifting his weight in general! While . . . floating, yeah. Totally.
Ancients, please do not let him be leaving.
“Her name's–Dani?” Superboy asks hesitantly, and Tucker relaxes a little. Okay. Not leaving yet, at least. “What's her experiment number?”
“Hell if I know,” Tucker says, genuinely baffled by the question. Why would he know that? Like, how is whatever random froot loop-style label Vlad scribbled on her petri dish back in the day a thing any of them would know or care about? As far as he knows Dani doesn’t even know that.
Maybe this is a clone culture thing. Like, as much as clones have an overarching culture; Tucker’s just assuming they’d at least have some similar well of experiences and behaviors they’d be drawing from. So like, maybe that's what this is. Superboy came from a way more professional lab than Dani did, obviously, and one with a lot more other clones in it. Not any other genetically stable super-powered hybrid ones, Tucker’s pretty sure, but definitely a lot more clones in general. So–yeah. Maybe that’s a thing, for them.
“Oh,” Superboy says. His face still looks–weird, yeah. Tucker resists the urge to start babbling away like a dumbass or something. He just really, really needs Superboy to agree to at least trying to help them out here. And he really, really should've brought one of the girls along if he actually wanted to get him to do that on, like, effectively no real information whatsoever.
Frick, how did he not think of that? If nothing else, going to recruit a superhero is probably kinda dangerous and the whole shark-guy thing would’ve gone way better with Val and her Red Huntress gear here to back him up, or at least Sam or Jazz and the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick! Like, so much better! Like, he handled it, obviously, but still! He could’ve gotten eaten or something, he doesn’t know, and then Dani would’ve definitely melted into clone soup and it would’ve been all his fault and–
“So you need help for your buddy's . . . sister,” Superboy says slowly, and Tucker nearly sags in relief as the other’s feet finally settle back down into the sand. “Treatment works on him, though? Or like–he's just not destabilizing at all? He a different production run or something?”
“Uh,” Tucker says, briefly confused before realizing Superboy thinks–“Oh! Uh–no, that's not–he’s not a clone. He's, like, the involuntary gene donor who an asshole supervillain with shitty ethics made her from. They're both ‘Danny's ‘cuz said asshole just named her after him, because, like, he’s extremely uncreative I guess. Or just a prick with unrealistic expectations about how she was supposed to turn out, one or the other.”
Superboy stares blankly at him. Tucker feels like he just said something wrong again, but has no idea what it would've been.
“Told you, we tried pitching ‘Ellie’, man, she just wasn’t having it,” he tries, hoping he can still fix whatever he just fucked up. “I mean she was like physiologically twelve at the time but also just a few months old, and there was just a lot of other shit going on we had to prioritize, so finding something she liked better never really worked out, she shot down all the other alternatives anyway, and then everybody was just used to it and, uh . . . I dunno, we kinda just figured if she wanted to be a ‘Dani’ too, it was her business?”
Superboy is still staring at him.
“. . . please help,” Tucker says, swallowing roughly. “I don't know what we're gonna do if she dies, man. I don't know what he's gonna do if she dies.”
Hopefully not kick off the bad timeline, but . . . well, all things considered, Tucker maybe wouldn't blame Danny if he did.
Wouldn't even remotely blame him, actually.
“. . . what do you want me to do?” Superboy asks with a frown, and Tucker isn't sure if he imagines him glancing away behind his sunglasses. The lenses are pretty much opaque; it's hard to tell for sure.
“I mean, I don't know how much you specifically know about DNA, but–like, she's the same category of build you are,” Tucker says. “Hybridized between standard human and, uh, something . . . not-so-standard.”
“So alien?” Superboy assumes. “Like what, Tamaranean or something else solar-powered? ‘Cuz I gotta tell you, man, DNA aside I didn't really get much ‘solar’ in my powers.”
“Uh–not alien, no,” Tucker says, wondering how that’s even a thing. That seems weird, is all. Like, shouldn’t that be weird? “Or solar-powered. Kinda, um . . . actually, can we maybe talk about this somewhere with fewer cameras and microphones and, like . . . witnesses?”
Which is a screamingly suspicious request to make of a superhero, he's pretty sure, but if the GIW or Vlad or who-the-fuck-ever picks up a single fucking thing about this situation on the news or from some random internet forum or whatever . . .
Yeah, that wouldn't go well. Like. At all.
Superboy frowns at him, just a little, and then leans in a bit closer towards him. Tucker tries to, like, not look like a supervillain or a creepy weirdo or just an asshole.
He still has no idea how to do that, unfortunately. Growing up in Amity Park has really not made him good at, like . . . being a civilian, let’s say? Civilian-ing in general.
Look, he’s working on it. Kinda. Sorta. Maybe.
. . . he’ll figure it out when he gets to college, okay? Lots of people do that, probably! That’s probably totally normal for people to do!
Well, it could be, okay?!
“There is sort of a shitty dubiously-legal government organization and also at least one froot loop incel of a supervillain who’d be a dick if they found out about her being sick right now, that’s all,” Tucker admits with a wince. “And like . . . this entire situation, basically. Like very much so would they be dicks, and then we’d have a harder time helping her and maybe wouldn’t be able to help her and if that happens the world might literally end, it’s complicated, okay, but the bad timeline is–!”
“Oh my god, shut up,” Superboy says, then scoops him up bridal-style and shoots straight up into the air. Tucker blinks in surprise, immediately throwing his arms around his neck out of Danny-ingrained habit and adjusting himself to settle more comfortably–and superhero-conveniently–in his hold. “Huh. You do this a lot?”
“You have no idea,” Tucker says, peering down at the half-wrecked beach below. “So, uh, was that a ‘yes, we can talk about this somewhere with fewer cameras’, or an ‘actually I’m just gonna ditch you at the police station’? Because I really don’t have time to get arrested right now, man.”
“‘Arrested’?” Superboy asks, wrinkling his nose at him. “For what?”
“Annoying a superhero while the wrong color,” Tucker replies frankly, because it’s not like it takes any more than that. Superboy–frowns, then makes a face.
“Yeah, no, fuck that,” he says. “I was just gonna take you to the boba place and get us a table in the back.”
“I’m amenable to that,” Tucker says in relief. “How’s the local boba? Good?”
“I like the mango one,” Superboy says with as much of a shrug as he can manage without dumping Tucker out of his arms and into a few hundred feet of freefall. “And the brown sugar’s pretty good.”
“I’m not really a mango person, but I could get down with some brown sugar,” Tucker says, then hopes that doesn’t sound fucking weird or anything. Like . . . he really didn’t mean it that way. If he’s gonna lay the cringe-worthiest lines possible on the prettiest dude he’s ever met, he’s at least gonna do it on purpose.
Not that this is either the time or the place for that, and not that he actually feels, like, any form of comfortable with actually hitting on a dude, prettiest one he’s ever met or not. Even if the prettiest dude he’s ever met is wearing a skin-tight bodysuit and a lot of strappy belts and black leather while holding him cradled in his arms in a way different-feeling way than Danny ever has and also–
Actually, especially because of that. Like, very especially because of that.
Man, this is a weird day. Like, doesn’t even crack his personal top ten so far as “weird day”s go, but still. Weird.
. . . well, technically ghosts are normal in Amity Park, and gorgeous half-alien super-clones and pissed-off shark-guys are not, so arguably–
“Return all tray tables to their upright positions and hold onto your asses!” Superboy announces cheerfully, then dives down out of the air. Tucker is weirdly unaffected by the sudden burst of speed, considering how fast they’re going. When Danny goes this fast, he always feels nauseous and usually gets kinda lightheaded. Like–Danny avoids going this fast with passengers, especially since the time Sam puked all over his boots.
Weird, Tucker observes with a little frown, and then they’re landing on the sidewalk in front of what is, in fact, a boba shop. Superboy lets him down. It continues to feel . . . weird, yeah.
Tucker is very used to getting carted around by people with super-strength, given his life experiences up to this point, and it doesn’t feel like this. Like, it’s way more uncomfortable than this. Stuff digs into you at weird angles and you feel all heavy and awkward and floppy and only arguably secure and–
“Is this a TTK thing?” he asks, squinting at Superboy, who looks puzzled.
“Is what a TTK thing?” he asks.
“. . . never mind,” Tucker says, because honestly it was way more comfy than he’s used to and had better lumbar support than Danny ever has, and if he questions it Superboy might stop doing . . . whatever he’s doing. Or worse, he might just be that down bad for a guy he met five minutes ago and is therefore feeling more “comfy” because of that, and that would just be too mortifying to ever either realize or admit to. Like, ever. “Um, so–bubble tea and awkward conversations, then?”
“After you, man,” Superboy says, flashing him a grin as he opens the door for him with a theatrical little bow. Tucker boils in embarrassment, then rushes into the tiny shop and nearly knocks over a table that is way too close to the door. Like, at least within six feet of it. So way too close, yeah.
Ancients, self, focus. There’s a freaking crisis going on here! A clone-crisis! A . . . clone-sis?
Well, Dani is Danny’s sister, kinda, so–
Superboy follows him in and heads straight for the counter with clear intent to flirt up all three of the very cute girls working it, and Tucker reads the menu, feeling kind of ridiculous about this whole situation. Admittedly he might flirt with a cashier a little himself under different circumstances, but not three of them at once, no matter how cute they were.
Maybe Superboy’s just got more ambition than him. Or, like, super-stamina. Super-stamina would make sense.
Tucker thinks about the idea of Superboy having super-stamina in relation to how many girls he flirts with for exactly one point five seconds and then doesn’t just boil in embarrassment: he evaporates in it. Oh god. Not the time. Seriously not. He has a clone crisis going right now, yes, but not this kind of clone crisis!
“So what’s the daily special, ladies?” Superboy asks with a flirty grin, peering over his sunglasses at the clerks, who all giggle. Tucker, unfortunately, feels a spark of jealousy, and not over the girls making eyes at Superboy. Like, the exact opposite of that, in fact.
. . . maybe it is two clone crisises, actually. Maybe that’s a thing.
“You don't think we're already special enough, Kid?” one of the girls teases, and Superboy laughs in response and is, unfortunately, gorgeous about it.
Definitely it’s two clone crisises, yeah.
Tucker gives up on life, then steps up next to Superboy again and leans into his peripheral vision. He doesn’t want them to be interesting enough to eavesdrop on here, but, like–goals. Concerns. Dani, and also Danny.
“This is very much a time-sensitive situation, man,” he reminds him, and Superboy winces slightly as he visibly remembers the reason they're here. So that's, like–something, Tucker guesses. Like, the guy’s clearly easily distracted, but at least he gives enough of a shit to feel at least a little bit guilty about forgetting.
“Uh, right, right,” Superboy says, clearing his throat and straightening up. “Can we get a mango tea and a–you still good with brown sugar, dude?”
“Sure?” Tucker says, though he honestly doesn't know if he's gonna be able to drink all that much of it. Right now he just wants to get Superboy's ear and talk him into coming to Amity as efficiently as someone who's not a hot girl in a skimpy bikini can, though, and he will drink any damn flavor of bubble tea it takes for that.
Also, like, it’s bubble tea. Not exactly an imposition anyway.
“And a brown sugar,” Superboy says, flashing a grin at the clerks again. “Sweet as you, ladies.”
“Sure, Kid,” one of them says with a grin of her own as the other two giggle. “Just as sweet as we can make it.”
The clerks make their drinks, Superboy chats them up and admires their asses in their little shorts way more than he does the drink-making process, and Tucker wonders exactly who he’s hitching his last hope to here, except he knew perfectly well coming in that Superboy is very publically kind of a manwhore and not exactly the most serious guy to ever wear the “S”, so really he’s just lucky the dude hasn’t ditched him yet and seems willing to hear him out on this.
Like, Tucker is definitely gonna have to pay for both of their drinks and will probably need to wrench the dude’s attention off the clerks with an ecto-reinforced crowbar before he can explain anything in better detail, but that’s a pretty minor thing, considering his life since a certain lab accident and all.
Nobody’s dead yet, at least, so yeah. Pretty minor thing, really.
Well, like, nobody who’s not supposed to be, obviously.
The clerks come back with their drinks, and surprisingly do not charge either of them. More surprisingly, Superboy only gives them a quick wink as he thanks them and then grabs the drinks and heads off into the back of the shop. There’s not much “back”, given how small the place is, but still, he’s willingly disengaging from the pretty girls without a fuss.
Thank literally every single dead and undead thing, Tucker thinks feelingly as he hurries after him. Not that he doesn’t understand the attraction of the pretty girls, obviously, just he really, really needs the dude’s undivided attention right now.
Superboy takes over a table in the corner, drops Tucker’s drink and straw in the middle of it, and then sprawls into the seat against the wall with his own and takes a long sip of it while Tucker sits across from him and grabs his own to pull over to himself.
“Uh, thanks for the drink?” he tries. Superboy shrugs.
“No big,” he says. “I saved the owner’s kid from getting crushed by a truck the last time Scavenger was pulling some shit downtown, so now they give me free drinks whenever I swing by.”
“Sure,” Tucker says, because that makes sense but also he has no idea who “Scavenger” is and really can’t let himself ask right now. Time crunch. Serious time crunch. Dani could be melting into clone soup right now. “So, uh, here’s the thing–oh wow, this is good, dang,” he cuts himself off with, blinking in surprise after taking a quick sip of his drink that he only took to make sure Superboy wouldn’t think he was, like, a weird ungrateful antisocial person.
He is a weird ungrateful at-best-semi-social person, but still. Manners, or whatever.
Also, it is really good.
“I know, right?” Superboy grins briefly around his own straw, then frowns a little and tilts his head. “So she’s not an alien, and she’s not solar-powered. But she’s a hybridized build, so you think . . . what, exactly, man? ‘Cuz I gotta tell you, I’m not so much the science type myself. Like, I could maybe talk to Cadmus about taking a look at–”
“Government-funded and grave-robbing Cadmus?” Tucker interrupts, making a face as he shakes his head. “Yeah, no. Never, please. I was not exaggerating the shitty dubiously-legal government organization’s existence, and if they find out about her being there or even just get ahold of her files later, that is not gonna go great for anybody. Either her or my best friend or our entire town or, uh, the entire afterlife. Or the world, maybe.”
Superboy stares blankly at him through his sunglasses. Tucker grimaces. He is not used to talking about this shit openly to out-of-towners, but . . . desperate times, yeah.
“Danny’s dead, is the thing,” he says. “Like, my buddy Danny, not his sister Dani, that's a little more complicated and–but he’s only half dead, it was a lab accident thing in his slightly insane ecto-scientist parents’ basement, so he’s walking and talking and has actually terrifying superpowers on a level that are, uh, again, actually terrifying if we think too much about their implications and extent, so we just kinda don’t get into that, usually? That bad timeline I mentioned may or may not have involved an older and way more mentally unstable version of him effectively solo-ing the Justice League, so, uh . . . yeah! Yeah, we’re all real invested in his mental health. For hopefully obvious reasons! And Dani has the same powers he does, just developmentally a couple years behind, sooooo . . . uh, so the shitty dubiously-legal government organization is just not cool about either of them, or anyone else who falls in under their classification. Their species? I don’t know what else to call it. Danny was born human and they’re both half-human, but they’re also, uh, half . . . ghost. On account of the ‘being dead’ thing. And the government is not cool about ghosts and spirits, turns out, so we are also real invested in them never finding out half-ghosts are actually a thing! Like, there are maybe three of them max, currently, but two out of those three are pretty damn important to me personally, so–uh. This is too much all at once, isn’t it. This is way too much all at once. Sorry, I’m trying to compress like two years’ worth of batshit into thirty seconds and it’s not–uh. I’ll shut up now.”
Superboy takes a very, very slow sip of his mango tea. Tucker tries not to wince and makes himself take a drink too instead of babbling on any more and dumping even more on him.
“Also, Danny’s not actually the king of the Infinite Realms, but, uh, legally . . .” he blurts, then trails off awkwardly. Superboy keeps staring blankly at him.
“How’d she die?” he asks.
“Dani?” Tucker says. “She didn’t. She was born–well, okay, so the other two halfas–half-ghosts, I mean–it’s complicated! She didn’t ever actually die, though, she was born a halfa. Some ghosts don’t actually come from dead people, they’re just, like–spirits, kinda? Like, Gotham City has a ‘ghost’, technically, but what she actually is is a spirit, we went there on a field trip last year and met her and she is amazing and horrifying and also super-hot, seriously makes crumbling granite and bloody pearls look good, but–uh. I’m doing the ‘too much at once’ thing again, definitely. Look–Danny’s half-ghost, but Dani, classification-wise, is technically half-spirit. They function mostly the same way, just the origins are different and their Obsessions are–god, I should’ve made you a primer on the plane or something. I should just have had a primer on hand already. How do I not have that?”
Superboy stares some more. Raises an eyebrow as he takes another sip of his boba.
Tucker tries not to wince again.
“Please come back to the mainland with me and let us run some scans and see if there’s, like, anything in your DNA that’ll hold hers together,” he begs. “You’re a half-human genetically stable clone with superpowers, which means you’re just about the closest thing we could possibly find to her without cooking somebody up ourselves, and we definitely can’t ask the asshole supervillain for help, he’s not even good at cloning or she wouldn’t be melting anyway so–!”
“‘Melting’,” Superboy repeats.
“Uh,” Tucker says with a grimace. “Yeah? Yeah. It’s the ghost side. Like, I was very much being literal when I said her DNA was trying to go soup. When she destabilizes, she kinda . . . melts. We’ve managed to help her reform every time so far, but . . . well. She wasn’t the only clone the asshole made. Just the only one that actually lived long enough for us to find out she existed and help her.”
God, that is not gonna sell Superboy on this idea. Literally nothing he’s said is gonna do that, in fact.
“Please,” Tucker tries, and Superboy just keeps staring at him. The sunglasses are . . . not helpful. Like, the opaque lenses and all are making it very hard to get a read on him, and Tucker’s not even that good at reading people as it is.
“You’ve got her gene donor,” he says. “Why can’t you scan him, if he’s a . . . ‘halfa’ too?”
“We tried,” Tucker says with a helpless shrug, holding his hands up. “I mean, they are genetically identical, technically, but there’s–well, it’s confusing and complicated, kinda, but he was just a normal human ‘til he died. Dani was always a halfa. And, well–you were always too, technically. Not a halfa-halfa, I mean, just–”
“Wait, if they’re genetically identical, why’s he a ‘he’ and she’s a ‘she’?” Superboy asks, wrinkling his nose in confusion. Tucker prays for Superboy to not be a terrible person, then makes a dismissive little gesture like it’s no big deal.
“Trans people exist, dude,” he says breezily, and doesn’t specify which one of them it is because, like, that’s rude shit. Obviously. Desperate times or not, he’s not gonna out Danny without his permission. Unless it’s, like, apocalypse-levels of medically relevant for either him or Dani, anyway.
“. . . only one of them’s trans?” Superboy asks, and looks–weird, briefly. Tucker shrugs again.
“Yeah,” he says like that’s not been weird and confusing and occasionally awkward for all of them too. It’s Dani’s business if she’s down with the whole “being a girl” thing, though. “So like, they’re just about as genetically identical as a clone can get, but Dani’s still getting . . . soup-y. There’s like, a stabilizer missing or something, best we can figure out, and humans don’t need stabilizers, so Danny’s DNA doesn’t have it. But maybe yours does.”
“So . . . their parents just wanna scan me for that?” Superboy asks, still looking a little–off, maybe, and Tucker grimaces.
“Okay, I was unclear when I mentioned them being ecto-science types,” he says, waving his hands. “They are not the type of ecto-scientists who wanna learn from ghosts; they are the type who wanna learn how to reduce even stable ghosts to soup. So they are not involved in this. At all. Ever. Like, Danny never even told them about dying, much less the superpowers, and he has definitely not told them about Dani. If she'd needed a place to live, obviously we’d have had to figure something out, but her Obsession is–god, there is so much I need to explain to make ghosts make sense and we just do not have the time for it right now. Like, I can give you a better run-down on the plane or whatever, long as we keep our voices down and nobody’s sitting too close to us, just–it’s a lot! It’s a lot of information! It took us two years to find out all this shit and we still don’t know jack about a lot of it. Ghosts literally have a whole other dimension they come from, usually, it’s–please stop me, we seriously do not have the time for this right now. Please just let me get you in a civvie disguise and get you to the mainland. I will pay for the ticket. I will pay for the civvies, even. I’ll pay your hourly rate, whatever that is!”
Well, his dad’s credit card will, anyway. Given the time difference and all, he probably hasn’t noticed it’s missing yet, so it shouldn’t be cut off yet. And if it is, he’ll just hack his parents’ joint account instead.
Or, like, call Sam and beg her to Venmo him. Whichever’s easier at the time.
Probably the hacking, but you never know. Life’s unpredictable.
“I don’t charge for the superhero shit, man,” Superboy says, making a face. “Unless you want me to advertise something, that’s not how it works.”
“Sorry, I’m not trying to diss your vigilante-ing ethics here or anything, just I think it’s reasonable to expect at least a travel stipend in cases of being dragged away from home and getting poked and prodded with medical and scientific equipment,” Tucker says, because this isn't exactly SOP superhero shit anyway and also he does think that’s reasonable, considering.
Especially given how much Dani hates the equipment. He wouldn’t exactly be surprised if Superboy feels similarly, as another “born and traumatized in a lab” type. Well–okay, he’s just kinda assuming Superboy got traumatized in the lab, but given some of the shit he remembers hearing about Cadmus on the news after everybody found out where the guy’d come from to begin with, and the whole overall general vibe that “mind-control-intending graverobbers with more fucking entitlement than some supervillains” implies . . .
Yeah, well. He wouldn’t exactly be surprised there either, that’s all. Again, Tucker doesn’t follow superheroes all that closely or anything, but his parents were watching all the news out of Metropolis after Superman actually went and died on everyone and at the time he’d just been crossing his fingers that Doomsday wasn’t gonna come back ecto-green and vengeful, so–yeah. Not the point right now.
Superboy is still staring at him. Or maybe that’s just the impression the sunglasses are giving, at this point.
. . . fuck, the dude really is pretty.
Also not the point right now, though.
“Please,” Tucker tries again, like he hasn’t already said it half a dozen times.
Superboy takes another sip of his boba instead of saying anything. Tucker thinks of all the worst-case scenarios he can think of and wonders how ethical it’d be to kidnap a teen idol superhero for his DNA, exactly. Like . . . just as a thought exercise and all.
He didn’t really pack to kidnap a half-Kryptonian, admittedly, but like . . . he could figure something out, probably. Jerry-rig it. Pull a MacGuyver or ten. He’s the guy who makes the plan work, after all, no matter what that actually takes.
Or he guesses he could just steal Superboy’s boba cup out of the trash once he’s done with it and try to get a DNA sample off that, if nothing else. Obviously, like, not ideal for any of this or anything, but desperate times and all.
Probably Tucker’s just gonna try the kidnapping thing if it comes to it, though. Seems likelier to get him a good enough DNA sample, and also enough good enough DNA samples. And, well, he’ll just turn himself in and do his time after. He’d feel bad about that, though, because again Superboy probably does have some lab-trauma or at least some feelings about being a science experiment, and kidnapping him to steal his DNA would probably not help him work through that. Like. Ever.
Tucker really, reaaaaally does not want to find out if he’s the kind of guy who’d do that to somebody who might already be kinda fucked-up about that kind of thing, mostly because he’s already pretty fucking sure he is and that Superboy would definitely not enjoy the experience.
Ugh. God he doesn’t wanna kidnap him. Like, generally speaking he doesn’t wanna kidnap anyone, just–this seems like an especially shitty reason to do it, that’s all? Considering?
But if the alternative is Dani ending up clone soup or worse . . . if the alternative is Danny watching her die, and die like that . . .
Yeah, well. Tucker’s the one who makes the plans work.
Whatever it takes.
“Your buddy seriously sent you all the way to Hawaii just to ask me to come over and give a DNA sample instead of just, like, emailing my agent or something?” Superboy asks skeptically, and Tucker forces himself not to jitter in his seat or start babbling again. Tea. He’s gonna concentrate on the tea. He can do that. It’s good tea! Very concentrate-able on!
The email thing genuinely did not even occur to him, honestly, but also Superboy’s agent probably gets all sorts of fanmail and scams and hoaxes and whatever in his(?) inbox, so . . .
“Well it’s less ‘he sent me’ and more ‘I remembered you existed because I really dig that one Doomsday fighting game they used you in and then immediately stole my dad’s credit card and flew straight out here without telling anyone where I was going ‘cuz your website said you were gonna be at the beauty contest today and I didn’t wanna get anyone’s hopes up while they were busy working on alternate approaches’,” he replies with a wince, because when he says it all out loud at the same time like that it does not sound like the kind of thing a normal person would hear and think made sense.
“Makes sense,” Superboy says, taking another sip of his boba.
. . . right, Tucker remembers. Superheroes are not normal people.
Kinda a relief, he’s not gonna lie.
“I’ve got that one poster of you from the special edition,” he admits. “Your animations are really good. Though I usually play Supergirl, sorry, her specials are just way more intuitive for me. Or Steel. Steel’s ultimate is the best.”
“Yeah, I just play Doomsday,” Superboy says wryly. Tucker resists the stupid urge to immediately start geeking out over the game at him–in his defense, none of his meatspace friends play it and they are all sick to half-death of hearing him talk about fighting games–and also resists the urge to ask if that’s, like, a “personal issues with Superman” thing. Seems rude or whatever. Or at least really, really stupid to be asking when trying to win him over, if nothing else. “What can I say, I like to smash shit somewhere I won’t get crap for it.”
“I mean, that whole stage is definitely scrap now and I don’t think the lifeguards’ Jeep fared much better, but I got that Tesla murdered so I don’t really have room to talk,” Tucker says with a shrug. Superboy frowns, lowering his drink for a moment.
“Huh?” he says.
“The Tesla?” Tucker says. “The one Sharky McSharkface ripped in half and Cheap Suit was freaking out over. I kinda drove it at him. Distraction thing, you know how it is. Same theory as the drones and speakers, just hacked its onboard computer with my PDA and, you know, did the logical thing about it. Meaning, sent seven thousand pounds of sharp edges and bad design straight at the guy who was trying to murder presumably-innocent people for kicks.”
“You did that?” Superboy says, wrinkling his nose. “With your PDA?”
“I mean, yeah,” Tucker says, wrinkling his nose back at him. What, is that a surprise? “It’s custom, dude. Why, who’d you think did it? Like, do you have a tech guy or something?”
“Uh,” Superboy says, looking embarrassed. “I didn’t really think about it? I mean, I just figured King Shark smashed up the car just to be a prick, and the drones . . . well, I’ve seen people do way stupider shit to get a good shot of a supervillain fight for their stream or whatever, y’know? Usually they’re throwing themselves in the line of fire. And like, I had no fuckin’ clue what was happening with the speakers.”
“Okay, fair,” Tucker allows. “The speakers I was overloading because I thought if he was sharky enough all the electricity might throw off his electromagnetic senses, given that standard-issue sharks are really sensitive to those. I was just trying to keep him from eating anyone for as long as possible, basically. Because he seemed pretty keen on the idea of eating somebody, the way he was talking.”
“Eh, fifty-fifty, with that dude,” Superboy replies with a shrug, then frowns to himself for a moment as he takes another sip of his drink. “So your buddy didn’t even send you. You just . . . decided to come on your own.”
“He is my literal best friend in the entire world and also I’d rather die than make him watch one of his sisters die, so yeah,” Tucker says frankly, then clarifies–“Dani’s the only clone, not trying to be confusing here, he just also has an older sister he got, you know, the boring way. Like, came prepackaged with the nuclear family and all.”
“The boring way,” Superboy echoes. “Yeah. Sure.”
Tucker fidgets. Makes himself take a sip of his own drink. Superboy looks across the shop and out the front window. Tucker . . . uh, fidgets more, mostly.
“He has a normal sister too?” Superboy asks, and asks it sort of . . . carefully, almost.
“Yeah,” Tucker says. “To be honest, the definition of what Dani is to Danny has been kind of unclear and kinda depends on the day and their personal moods and what random sign the moon is in, sometimes, but we usually just say ‘sister’ because physically they look about two years apart in age and saying ‘daughter’ confuses the normies and brings up awkward questions. And a few times it’s been ‘cousin’, but yeah.”
“And there’s the asshole supervillain who made her and some shady government types sniffing around who you all need to avoid,” Superboy says slowly, tilting his cup from side to side on the table a few times. “And Dani and Danny are genetically identical, but that means she’s missing a stabilizer somewhere and he doesn’t have anything like that in his DNA because he got halfa-ized by just dying, not by getting built that way. And one of them’s trans, but the other one . . . isn’t?”
“Yeah,” Tucker confirms. “Like, that’s the basics, anyway.”
Superboy looks weird, very briefly, and then very interested in his drink. Tucker doesn’t know what he’s thinking, but–
“You call her his sister too,” Superboy says.
“Um,” Tucker says, not really getting the point of the comment. “Yeah? We all do. Well, Danny and his older sister and the rest of the fraid, I mean, obviously we’re kinda keeping a lid on a lot of this stuff and–”
“‘Fraid’?” Superboy frowns again.
“Uh,” Tucker says. “It’s a ghost thing. Like, ghost term, I mean. Like, wolves have packs and crows have murders and ghosts and liminals have fraids. Which–this is so complicated, I’m so sorry, I don’t know why I didn’t make you a stupid primer on the plane, that would really have been the smart thing to do. In my defense, I’m losing my shit over the dying two year-old right now. Like. Perma-dying. Not half-dying.”
“Mm,” Superboy says, taking a last slow sip of his boba and then setting the empty cup down. “Okay.”
“Uh–‘okay’?” Tucker asks, not sure what he means by that.
“Like, okay, I’ll come,” Superboy says, then flashes him a grin with slightly too sharp teeth in it. Tucker has to take a moment to not be a weirdo about that. Seriously, he did not think he was into guys. Definitely not this into guys. Why is he this into a guy?
Like, obviously if he ever met a girl with Superboy’s personality and looks and badass missile dropkick skills, that’d be one thing, but–
Wait.
“You will?!” he blurts, jumping to his feet and nearly knocking his drink and also the table over. “Seriously?!”
“Said I would, didn’t I?” Superboy replies with a shrug, adjusting the collar of his jacket as he leans back in his seat. “When–”
“Nowpleaseimmediatelylet’sgo,” Tucker blurts urgently, unthinkingly grabbing his arm and attempting to drag him out of the chair and towards the door. Superboy shoots him a dubious look over his glasses with his very pretty eyes and doesn’t even slightly move. Which, fair, but this is time-sensitive and Dani might melt and airport security is such a bitch and–
“Chill, dude, I’m coming,” Superboy says, then gets up, throws out his empty cup and picks up Tucker’s barely-touched one, and tosses the waitresses another flirty wink and a smirk on the way out the door. “Later, ladies!”
Tucker has never been so relieved outside of a life-or-death-or-risk-of-grounding situation, although admittedly this is kind of a life-or-death situation that is gonna involve some definite grounding, and he tries not to drag the guy out onto the sidewalk faster, though he only actually manages it because Superboy’s way too Super to actually, like, get dragged. But like, that counts, he figures. Technically. Arguably.
Tucker is doing his best here, okay?
“Thank you,” he manages belatedly, and Superboy lowers his glasses to squint at him (with his pretty, pretty eyes), then just shrugs.
“I mean, it’s not my usual thing, I’m more the smash ‘n’ grab type, but ain’t exactly out of my wheelhouse either,” he says, then holds out Tucker’s boba to him. Tucker grabs it awkwardly and makes himself, like, let go of him. Like–yeah. That. “Your frequent flyer miles or mine?”
“Uh–either?” Tucker tries, not sure what the question actually is. Though his dad is gonna be mad enough about the first plane ticket, so . . . “I mean if you’ve got ‘em . . .”
“Don’t spill your drink,” Superboy says, then scoops him up bridal-style again–which Tucker and his brown sugar are for the record both totally normal about–and takes off straight up into the air again. Tucker grabs him around the neck on the same Danny-instincts as before, but also is way more aware of how much more comfortable and supportive the ride is than normal. Like, way more.
Yeah, that’s probably the TTK thing. Huh.
Well, that’s convenient.
Also apparently Tucker’s boba is an in-flight snack now, assuming airport security actually lets him keep it, though probably they–annnnnd Superboy is not flying towards the airport. He is flying, like, the opposite direction of the airport.
. . . riiiiight. Superheroes are not normal people, and Superboy mentioning “frequent flyer miles” was definitely a joke.
Welp, apparently Tucker’s just signed himself up for a ten-hour flight cradled supportively in Superboy’s big strong leather-wrapped arms, so okay, that’s a thing. Like. That’s happening to him right now.
Bad plan. Very bad plan.
. . . then again, it’ll save them all the time it’d take to go through airport security and boarding and waiting to take off and get off and two plane tickets’ worth of being grounded, sooooo . . .
“Do you, like, need to call anyone about this?” Tucker asks.
“Why?” Superboy gives him a weird look.
“. . . because I could be a trap? Or a secret bad guy? Or literally just so whoever you live with knows they don’t have to make enough dinner for you tonight?” Tucker says, staring blankly at him. Jesus. How is this something he has to explain?
“Oh,” Superboy says, then just shrugs. “It’s whatever, man.”
Tucker has no idea what to take from that, but apparently kidnapping Superboy would not have actually been all that difficult, okay. Like, not even remotely difficult.
Jesus.
“Uh, okay,” he says, finally taking another sip of his boba as he glances down at the buildings below as they pass them by. They’re already practically back to the beach, but Tucker’s still pretty sure this is a terrible idea. But also: two-thirds less grounded while they’ve got a clone-sis crisis going, and saving hours of time that Dani might need, and Superboy seems down for it, so . . . yeah, welp, this is just what they’re doing, he guesses. Alright then.
Good thing he’s got his in-flight snack.
Anyway, yeah. This is for Dani’s sake, and Danny’s sake. So Tucker can totally do this and be normal about it. Ten hours cradled in the super-strong, super-ripped arms of the first guy he’s ever actually been attracted to? Sure, he can do that. He can totally do that, and he can totally be normal about it too.
.
.
.
He is not, in fact, normal about it.
They do make pretty good time back to Amity, though.