Work Text:
Mist
When Danny went to New York for his internship, he fully expected a normal experience with normal people, late nights working, an overabundance of coffee, and nothing out of the ordinary. But Danny never gets a break, so that is exactly what did not happen.
After his run-in with the prospecting thief, he thought that his summer would return back to normal. After all, he was in normal New York and not abnormal Amity Park. But, it turns out New York was not as normal as he thought.
Following Danny’s first week there, he became accustomed to the sights of superheroes around the city; he had heard of the Avengers before, but hearing and seeing were totally different things (and he was surprised at how common it was for these supers to be out since the news reaching in Amity Park never showed that). It was odd, he thought, how they were always (okay, 99% of the time) viewed admirably, since it was not like that at all at home. And he should know; he had plenty of personal experience.
New York was an interesting place, and Danny thought it could not get any odder, but then it did.
It was still the beginning of summer, and some schools hadn’t even ended at that point. Danny was glad that the schools in Amity Park ended right at the beginning of June because it allowed him to have a really long summer since college started in September. So, even though it was the weekend, Central Park was not that busy. Danny did not have his internship that day, so he decided to take in the New York sights and cross off his bucket list.
That morning, Danny had already made it to the Empire State Building, Times Square, and Rockefeller Center. Danny stopped off at a sandwich shop near the park along with the Levain Bakery which is known for its large scone-like cookies. Then he headed to the park with his lunch and sat down at a bench near a grassy clearing.
It was when Danny finished his sandwich and started taking a bite of his heavenly cookie when things started to get weird.
An absolutely normal passerby walked by Danny: a teenager with messy black hair, jeans, a t-shirt, and a backpack. That was until a projected facetime call appeared right in front of him. Danny abruptly paused while eating his cookie; sadly, the cookie would have to wait for later.
The teenager seemed panicked and quickly walked off the worn path to underneath a tree, the projection thing following. It seemed as if he was trying to find cover, but that was kind of hard in a park. However, besides Danny, it did not seem as if anyone paid any special attention to the teenager with the projection. Maybe this is a normal New York thing? Danny thought, Maybe this is some technology that I haven’t heard of before. But Danny doubted it. With his parents engineering all day and with his internship he most likely would have heard about it.
Suddenly the blonde-haired girl in the projection started talking, “Percy! You need to head to camp right now. Things are getting serious.”
The teenager — Percy — who looked a bit anxious over the out-of-the-blue projection suddenly turned to looking serious and worried. “I’ll head right over,” Percy said, and then he swiped his hand through the projection, and it dissipated into mist.
It was then that Percy realized that Danny saw all that had just happened. “You didn’t see anything,” Percy said a bit warily.
“Yes, I did. It wasn’t that hard to miss.”
Instead of replying, Danny noticed that Percy did something weird with his hands and then repeated, “You didn’t see anything.”
“Yeah, I still saw that,” Danny said with a smirk. Percy mumbled to himself.
“Well, uh, I can’t really explain,” Percy said while fidgeting with his backpack’s straps nervously, “But you have to believe me that you don’t want to become tangled up with whatever you just saw.”
“So, don’t get involved with magical Facetimes and all that. I can handle that.”
“Just, forget what happened here. I really have to go.” The teenager almost left but stopped as if he realized something. “But if you see anything else weird or anything happens, just call this number,” he ripped a corner of a paper from his backpack and used a pen from his pocket that looked a little odd, “Here, this is my home phone … Just, stay safe.” Danny grasped the slip of paper, and right when he did, Percy turned back to the path and began to run away like he was in a marathon.
“Well, that was odd,” Danny mumbled to himself as he looked back down at the paper. His eyebrows furrowed when he noticed the odd golden color and sheen to the ink. “Very odd.”
Danny did not see anything weird again that summer, well, weird in that classification, so he did not call that number. But, he still wondered what exactly happened, what he saw, and what sort of thing he was almost pulled into. New York was definitely not what he figured it would be.