Chapter Text
—
“Oh, great,” Danny mumbled, squinting at the ghost. “Who are you supposed to be?”
The parking lot around them was a disaster zone, with broken glass and crumpled frames strewn around. The night hadn’t been long, but it had been bad, and now someone’s car business wasn’t going to survive if it didn’t have really good ghost insurance.
His back hurt, and he really wanted to go home.
“Rather less refined than expected,” the ghost sneered instead of answering. “Rumors painted you as far more.”
“You sound like my English teacher,” Danny informed him.
Normally he took ghost’s appearances with a grain of salt, but this ghost had stepped out of apparently nowhere after the last ghost got thermosed, and something about him was setting off alarm bells. His fur cape and weird historical armor should’ve looked ridiculous, but it didn’t. The jeweled sword at his side should’ve looked flimsy, but it looked dangerous, and like there was some kind of power running along the blade. Something electric.
He looked like a headache and a few hours of fighting left, and it was the last thing Danny wanted to deal with.
“I was promised a battle worthy of retelling throughout the generations,” the ghost growled, raising the rapier to eye level. “You will prepare yourself. And if you fall, then my prize will be your screams.”
“Super. Do I at least get time to–Ah!”
Danny threw himself back, narrowly missing getting run through at the neck. He dropped, but the other ghost kept the distance closed, following him through what immediately became a scramble.
There was no time for fancy planning. Danny clapped his hands together, charging them with a roar of ectoplasm that burst outward like a small bomb. It wasn’t enough to hurt like he’d hoped, but it finally bought Danny space, and Danny followed it up with a couple of twisting kicks that threw off ectoplasm in arcs. The ghost sliced the arcs to ribbons before they hit, and Danny danced back further, both of them measuring each other up.
“Okay, back up,” Danny called, not daring to put his fists down. “You want to fight me, and I don’t even know who you are. Why are we doing this?”
The ghost’s lip curled. This time he swished his sword up and aside in some kind of salute. “I am the Herald of Devastation. You may call me Harald.”
“Herald, Harald. I like it.”
“And as for why, the answer is obvious,” He continued, as though he didn’t hear. “Why does anyone seek to conquer? What draws the souls of man to test their mettle at the teeth of darkness and fate?”
“I don’t know,” Danny sighed, tilting his head back expressively. (Not far back enough to lose sight, though.) “For the plastic trophies and the victory ice cream after?”
The silence that followed was charged, and maybe he shouldn’t be this flippant around a ghost he didn’t know, because the glint in those glowing eyes gave him a bad feeling.
“You will show me respect, boy, or this night will end before it’s truly begun. En garde!”
The next few seconds happened in a rush that compressed itself into basic snapshots. Harald the Devastator’s sword flashed, and the energy dancing on its edge exploded in lightning. Everything was bright. Every inch of him was on fire, and up was down and spinning left and right. He slammed full-body into something flat, and it tore through the brick wall like paper. Another hit, and he was lying on the ground, staring at the spinning sky.
“Holy shit,” He wheezed. “Ow.”
Metal boots clanking told him the ghost had landed and was walking towards him. Danny scraped his senses together, phasing intangible through the ground and getting some distance behind him. Seeing him now showed that his sword was darker, as though it needed time to build up another charge.
Danny’s first burst of ectoplasm made the ghost pause, but it was the sharpened barrage that had Harald bring his sword up and deflect them in earnest.
It kept him distracted enough that Danny coated one of his own boots in ectoplasm, and he leapt down for a kick that he knew for a fact hit like a truck. It barely knocked Harald off balance enough to stumble, but the ghost caught himself, eyes bright.
“So there is strength to show,” he crowed. He looked energized, fired up like this was everything he wanted. He looked like he could keep this up indefinitely.
Danny couldn’t do that. He was tired before the fight started, and if they fought much longer he was going to screw up. He might’ve already screwed up by not fleeing, and as it was he was in trouble, and he needed to be smart about this. The only weapon he had on him was his parents’ thermos. Maybe he could lead him somewhere–
He dove out of the way at another charge, and this time something sliced this shoulder and arm and left burning lines in their wake. He twisted and pulled up in a hard loop, and it was enough to get out of reach. He kept up the maneuvering as he raced in the most direct route he could, and it turned out to be lucky that he did, because ectoblasts chased him closely.
The blasts stopping was a short warning. Danny caught movement from the corner of his eye, and he only just stopped in time to not spear himself on the end of Harald’s sword, now extended ahead of him.
“You would flee from the glory of battle,” the ghost growled. “Your heart is weak, and thirsts for victory no more than a coward’s.”
“My heart ‘thirsts’ for my warm bed,” Danny snapped back, trying not to look at the pool behind him. Electricity plus pool plus ice–useful, right? Just a little further. “And maybe a good eight hours of sleep, if I’m feeling wild.”
The ghost’s eyes grew calculating, and he abruptly straightened. “If the warmth of the hearth is what drives you, then perhaps those stakes will put true fire to your spine…”
“Huh?” said Danny. Before he could say anything else, the ghost turned heel and started flying away. “Hey… Hey, wait!”
He dropped anything like a fighting stance and dove after him. It was hard to keep him in sight, and no matter how fast he flew he had a nagging feeling that the ghost was going just slow enough not to lose him. It was almost enough to consider giving up and trying to catch him some other night, except something about this was setting Danny on an edge he couldn’t describe. He’d messed up back there, somehow, and this sudden change in direction was a threat, not a break.
The ghost slowed and Danny didn’t understand until he saw the Fenton Ops Center looming ahead.
“Hey, why are we headed to the portal?” Danny called, pulling almost even.
“It’s not the portal,” The ghost called back imperiously, cape billowing from the flight. “I seek what will stoke a beast’s spirit within you. What more, than to spill the blood of your dearest kin?”
“Whoa, whoa!” Danny shouted, putting on a burst of speed to pull ahead. He put his arms in the shape of an ‘X’. “Hands off, the family’s off limits. And they’re ghost hunters anyway, so you really don’t want to bring them into whatever stupid mess this is.”
“We shall see,” Harald rumbled, and he weaved past Danny in a motion he couldn’t quite track.
“No–hey, stop!”
They phased through the walls of the house into the living room. His parents were in the kitchen, Jazz was halfway up the stairs, and everyone was looking at him, and for a moment he wished the ground would jump up and swallow him and his enemy both.
“Ghost,” his parents howled, springing into action. Jazz bolted up the stairs, and Danny fired ectoplasm in streams from both hands, forcing the ghost back through the wall and outside.
“You are a bastard?” The ghost sputtered, off guard.
“Excuse me?” Danny shot back, narrowly missing with a punch coated in green. The sword came back into play, and he danced back, but he was pressing a brief advantage.
“No–less than a bastard…” He paused with the sword brought back into a guard, concentrating. “A stray?”
“Is any part of this ever going to make sense?” Danny shouted, clapping his hands. Instead of ectoplasm, a jet of ice shot through the air, and this time it actually tore a strip through the cape.
“Cease!” the ghost roared, and Danny pulled up and back, ready to shoot more. Far down below he could hear his parents causing a commotion, but they felt far away.
“I have challenged you to a rite of warriors, and you showed yourself to be unworthy of your supposed standing. I have seen your soul, and truly, you are about to learn more than most opponents ever will: My power lies not in the sword, but in my eyes, and my sense of that which ties and that which does not.”
“You have powers about…” He closed his mouth and opened it.”.... I need you to treat me like I’m failing high school English, okay? Because I am!”
“You will take this new challenge, or suffer the results.” Harald swiped his rapier vertically, lining it up with his face. “If you do not defeat me, I will destroy that which truly holds true power in life: the blood of your line, through whatever kin lives on. Face me on these grounds, and fate will show who is truly the most worthy.”
“How about I just face you now, huh?” Danny shouted back, and he shifted to avoid a shot from the ground that would’ve taken out a leg. “We can fight now! Not do–whatever else you’re implying you’re about to do!”
“You will best me in this hunt,” The ghost said with finality, locking eyes. “Or they will fall.”
“Wait!”
Danny lunged, pulling out the thermos, but the ghost burst into motion that left a small shockwave in its wake, and when he’d blinked again he was invisible.
“... Fuck.”
—
“Jazz-I-have-a-problem!” Danny blurted, and Jazz shrieked, swinging a book up like a weapon.
“Danny! You didn’t knock!”
“Sorry,” He said honestly, triggering his transformation back to a human. “I’m kind of freaking out, I think that ghost outside just went off to kill people, and I’m not fast enough to beat him to wherever he’s going. And I don’t even know where he’s going.”
“... Oh,” Jazz said faintly, paler than before. “That’s–that is really bad, actually. Um.”
“I know.” He put his fists against his head, then started pacing. “He said something about going after my blood kin, and he kept saying things like how you and Mom and Dad aren’t actually my blood, and that his freaky ghost powers told him so. Which is stupid, because I’m obviously their kid, and your brother, like I have been my whole life. So he’s wrong, what do I do now?”
“A–a ghost says his ghost power said you’re not blood related to us?” Jazz sputtered.
“Exactly!” Danny threw his hands up. “Really stupid, right!”
“Yeah!” Jazz said, and then blinked at him, studying him hard. “Um. Right.”
He was going to ignore that. “Right. And anyway, I can get through the Fenton DNA lock on the gate and everything, so it’s extra dumb.”
“The Fenton DNA lock doesn’t check for genetic similarity,” She pointed out slowly, still studying him. “It just–matches the signature to whatever’s saved on file, like fingerprint matching.”
“Oh.” Danny’s pace slowed. “Well. That still doesn’t change anything. Because we’re all blood related, and it’s stupid that we’re even considering this at all, and he’s just trying to get in our heads and distract us. Right?”
“Right,” Jazz said, but her brow was still furrowed. “Right. You’re my annoying little brother, I’m your responsible older sister. And–we can confirm this for real, and maybe call the others to see if they have any ideas for where to figure out where this nut job ghost is going.”
“We don’t need to confirm it, but you can knock yourself out as much as you want,” Danny replied, voice not nearly casual enough. “Because. It’s not real. I’m gonna call Sam and Tucker and tell them what happened and maybe we’ll come up with some idea about what fake family he thinks he’s going after, and then we’ll figure this out and all go to sleep without anyone dying.”
“Right,” Jazz said, rushing out of the room.
Danny pulled out his phone and called his friends, waking both of them up.
The call lasted a while, long enough for all three of them to get a solid start. Tucker was making a family map of everyone related to the Fentons, and Sam pulled up the hand-drawn charts they’d made of the best ways to cut through the ghost zone. If Harald the Herald was going towards Aunt Alicia, for example, they’d need to get there fast. Danny was making a list of every distant relative that he knew–
Then Jazz came in, holding a box Danny dimly recognized from the back of their parents’ closet. “Move over,” She elbowed her way to her desk.
“Mom and Dad are still out?” Danny asked. To the phone he said “I’ll call you back,” then hung up.
She nodded, absorbed in opening the box and skimming the hanging folders inside. Then she pulled one out, flipping through pages rapid-fire.
Then she stopped. “Here’s my birth certificate. And here’s–” She flipped the page. “... Yours.”
She didn’t turn.
“Jazz?”
She didn’t answer, and Danny leaned over to take the file from her hands. “What’s it say? I’m–”
He fell silent, staring at watermark on his own page, and at the differences to hers. They looked different.
Too different.
“You’re from New Jersey?” She mumbled, trying to sound light like it wasn’t a surprise.
He was. Gotham. The names under ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ weren’t Madeline or Jackson. They were Sheila and Willis, and his own last name wasn’t Fenton.
“Daniel… Edmund… Todd?” Danny said numbly.
The room was silent, just like the rest of the world. Like his head.
“I’m.. I…”
He fell silent again.
“Well, this kind of makes sense,” Jazz mumbled.
Danny shook himself out of his shock enough to stare at her. “How?” he demanded plaintively.
Jazz winced, holding up her hands. “It’s not something I can really explain! Just that–you don’t look like dad, really, do you? I look like Mom when she was younger, but you don’t look like either of them. And we still have a box of my old baby stuff, but there’s no boxes of any of your baby stuff... I don’t know.”
Danny looked back down at the birth certificate. No one had ever told him he was adopted–and if Jazz hadn’t known, had they ever told anyone? Were they ever going to tell them?
(And why keep it a secret? Had there been something embarrassing about it? About him?)
Danny shook his head, pressing his knuckles to his forehead. “I can’t deal with this right now. There’s a ghost out there, and he’s trying to kill my family. My other family,” he added, backing up and sitting on the edge of Jazz’s bed.
Jazz turned towards him, and he fought a grimace as her silence shifted.
“Do you wanna talk about i–”
“No, I do not want to talk about my feelings about this,” he interrupted.
She was, of course, unswayed. “But you’ve just suffered an enormous shock, Danny, and you’re probably questioning your security and worth in our family system! I really think we should–”
“No! No, not doing this, I’m not listening and actually I’m texting Sam and Tuck right this second.” He grabbed his phone.
“This isn’t emotionally healthy, Danny!” Jazz snapped. He ignored her, and he could see her clenching her fists from the corner of his eye. “You’re only making it worse by repressing everything and putting it off, you know!”
“Uh-huh.”
He could feel the heat of her glare as she tried to outwait him, but he was determined not to crack. Eventually she sighed, and he felt his shoulders relax, and she looked back down at the file box.
“Before we move on completely and let this blow up in our faces some other time, I want it said that I love you and you’re still my emotionally constipated little brother whom I Iove even when he’s being stupid.”
He paused in texting, making a face. “Um–thanks. I think.”
He could hear her smirking. “Any time.”
—
The search went badly from the start. There was one record that showed him living in a foster home in Monmouth County, New Jersey, but it was contradicted in the next file. There was another identical one in Ocean County, and Jazz suggested hesitantly that someone’s files had gotten sent to the wrong place. Danny shrugged, and Tucker muttered suspiciously about a cover up.
Danny didn’t know what to think, so instead they searched digital records in Gotham.
“Bad news,” Tucker groaned. “The records here are a mess, and there’s an article about half the courthouses in that area burning to a crisp like ten years ago. And I think your parents might’ve split up, or changed their names, or–something, because nothing’s adding up like a few months in. This is going to take time.”
“Danny’s real parents might not have time, Tucker,” Sam replied.
“Blood parents,” Danny said immediately, and he could almost hear the wince.
“I meant that, sorry. Your bio-parents. They just might not have time, so–I’m going to look up a good route in the ghost zone, and we should think about maybe trying to go to Gotham and head him off.”
“We could use one of the Fenton Finders,” Jazz said suddenly. “They’re not very good here in Amity Park, but in Gotham there won’t be a bunch of ghosts causing interference. In Gotham–”
“There’ll only be one ghost besides me,” Danny realized, hopeful. “That’s a good idea. Go to Gotham, find the only other ghost, beat him up, go home.”
“And bring a secret weapon, or something,” Sam added. “Are you sure we shouldn’t come with and be your backup?”
Danny pressed his hands together until they tingled, looking down at them. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. He was–kind of faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Like, anything else, and yeah, you guys help me when I’m in over my head all the time. But if he’s fast enough to get one of you before we blink–”
He broke off, but he didn’t need to finish.
“Yeah,” Sam said quietly. “Not without a better way to shield ourselves. I don’t know–maybe Jazz can help us check the armory, maybe your parents fixed the broken specter deflectors.”
“Or maybe Danny will catch that maniacal ghost tomorrow and it’ll all be over anyway,” Tucker cut in. “Who knows?”
“Yeah,” said Sam with more feeling. “That’s probably going to be it. And at least it’s only Friday night…”
“Technically it’s Saturday,” Tucker offered.
“It’s the weekend!” Danny sighed. “That’s going to have to be enough.”
—
Danny drank an ultra-tall energy drink, patted his face to wake himself up more, grabbed a Fenton Finder, and then flew out immediately. Who knew how fast Harald The Doom Herald (or whatever he was) could go? (Who know how much time his unknown relatives had left?)
Flying through the ghost zone gave him too much time to think. What if he got there just a few minutes too late? What was his blood family like? Were they still together? Why had they left him? Did they have any siblings? Were any of his family members nice?
Maybe after all of this, would they like to meet him?
Danny shook himself hard as he tumbled out of a natural portal, one that seemed to vanish unless you looked at it just right.
“Okay…” he said, looking around the alley. After a few seconds of making sure he was alone, he floated to the alley’s mouth, then stopped. “... Whoa.”
He’d been on road trips with his family before, but for some reason they’d never picked a haunting in a city this big. Smog crowded the night sky, skyscrapers stretched like they resented how the laws of gravity kept them from competing with the ghost zone’s vertical reach. Even at the hour of the night, there were corner stores open and people walking and cars, and there were lights everywhere. It stank, and there was trash in the street, and he could tell people were staring, but for one deep moment his eyes were locked on the enormity of the city around him, awed.
It didn’t last long, unfortunately.
“Hey!” someone shouted. Danny jumped, and there was a seedy man glaring at him. Several others along the sidewalk had stopped to stare, and none of the looks were friendly.
The man continued, pointing. “Yeah, you–what’d’you think you’re supposed to be?”
“Uh–I’m a ghost?” Danny told him, gesturing. “Boo.”
The man spat at him. “I tell you what you are… Either a cape, or a god-damn rogue, with a getup like that. I don’t care what your deal is.”
“Wait–I’m not actually–” Dany started, but he was drowned out.
“I don’t give a shit! Get the fuck outta here!”
“But I’m not–”
It didn’t matter. Others were already chiming in.
“Yeah, get out of here!”
“We don’t need another rogue.”
“Fuckin metas! Mr Freeze is bad enough–”
“Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of!”
Danny backed into the alley, holding his hands up. “Okay, okay! Fine, geeze, I’ll just go and–”
He darted behind a dumpster, phasing through a wall.
A few minutes later he phased out of a wall in a completely different alley, looking completely human. “Holy shit,” He grumbled, kicking past a fallen over trash bag. “Freaking Gotham…”
This time no one replied, and he stopped in the alley’s shadow, trying to think. Maybe it was probably a bad idea to run around in spandex in a city as full of supervillain activity as Gotham, but all bets were off when he found Herald the Harald (or however it went). He wasn’t strong enough to fight him from his human form, not when he’d need every scrap of advantage he could get.
(Maybe staying human would help him stay off Batman’s radar, considering Danny’s villain-seeming history in Amity Park. Maybe this was for the best.)
A car alarm went off down the street accompanied by raucous laughter, and when Danny peered around the corner he saw a crowd of teenagers swinging baseball bats at a parked car. They were all wearing the same kind of jacket, and the street was quickly emptying.
“Fuck,” Danny whispered, backing back into the alley. He could try to stop them, but–this wasn’t his city, and this wasn’t his fight. He was supposed to be protecting his family! His family who could already be dead, just from how much time he’d been wasting.
Danny snatched the Fenton Finder from his pocket, holding it up in the shadows.
Nothing came up.
Danny slapped it on its side a few times, but the screen only glowed steadily, not a blip in sight, and Danny didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Either the stupid device had decided not to work, or he’d beaten the ghost here.
(Or his family had moved and he was in the wrong city completely, but that thought was too horrible to consider. He had to trust his friends to keep searching from back home, they’d call him if they found out more.)
Unable to stand still, Danny phased invisible, striding out of the alley.
If the Fenton Finder wasn’t going to help him, then maybe his ghost sense would. He had all weekend, he might as well start sweeping the area.
—
Gotham was… Gotham was dark. Not just physically, but–despite the concentration that it took, he found himself staying invisible even after he passed that one gang around the car. Any time he didn’t he felt watched, like he was a bug crawling on the back of a much greater predator, or a mouse unwittingly surrounded by coyotes.
He just needed to find his ghost, catch him, and get out. He didn’t want any trouble.
In the smallest of mercies, it didn’t seem like any of Gotham’s infamous rogues were making a big move tonight. Just the smaller crime.
The smaller crime and him.
Danny heard the commotion in the flickering parking lot, but he’d pulled his jacket closer around himself and sped up to pass it. It sounded like someone was hitting someone hard, and he glanced up despite himself–
A gasp escaped him, because blood and teeth were spilling down the man’s front, and a black-clad nightmare of a man was the only thing holding up. The victim’s mouth was sagging open and his eyes didn’t seem aware, and the ground was wet and littered with other crumpled people.
The second thing that hit Danny was that his own gasp had given him away, and the cloaked figure whirled around to look at him–and locked on, visible portions of his face transforming into a mask of shock and horror.
“No…” the figure breathed.
Danny stumbled back, and he slammed his forgotten invisibility back up hard enough that he was on the verge of transforming on the spot.
“Wait…” The figure–the Batman said, shaking himself from his stillness. Instead of clearing, the lower part of his face contorted further, in what looked like–grief. He dropped the unconscious man, reaching out as though in a dream. “Wait–Come back, wait, wait…”
Danny pressed his hands over his ears like they were on fire, and invisibly, he flew away as fast as he could.
—
Across the street, a teenager lowered his shaking camera after Batman finally left. That’d been…
That’d been–
Tim forced his fingers to unclench, and they tingled from how tightly he’d been gripping the plastic. He shoved the camera into his protective case, then raced home.
He needed his dark room–he needed to see if he was right.
—