Work Text:
_______
POV of the Ancients from the last one-shot.
_______
The ancients felt the tug of Danny's new ally had called for help, and they couldn't wait to use their powders full tilt for the first time since Danny's coronation.
They followed Optimus to Darkmount, pulled away the exhausted and beaten Autobots, and dug in.
This was going to be fun.
It took less than an hour for Darkmount to fall.
Toppling the tower wasn't even the hard part. Killing every single Decepticon was.
Megatron was dragged into the Infinite Realms by Danny, whining about his status as the Herald of Darkness the whole way down to the pits.
And all the ancients dined on vehicon energon, under the guidance of The Ghost King's ally.
Optimus Prime, God-King of Cybertron.
_________
Dani popped by the firehouse to say hello, wearing an old t-shirt dress instead of her usual hoodie and jeans. Cody and Frankie wanted to hang out with the newest princess of the Infinite Realms, and Frankie was no doubt going to have a set of questions for her to answer.
Eventually, they got bored, and ran off into the forest with Dani Burns and Blades.
They came across a small cluster of trees, a vine and bush of blood red flowers. Cody touched the petals, not quite thinking of any danger. He would wash his hands when he got back to the firehouse.
Dani crept closer to the tree, keeping a cautious distance away. She examined a few of the plants, being sure not to touch it. Unfortunately, Cody was not as cautious, and accidentally got the pollen all over his hands.
Dani brushed against Cody's jacket, the cuffs now covered in pollen.
She recognized the flower just as she got close enough to the tree to breathe in the pollen.
These were blood blossoms.
The reaction was instant.
Dani immediately shot back as if she was hit. Her nose started to bleed rust tinged ectoplasm, and she started to vomit straight blood.
"Blood blossoms, their poison. Makes ghosts unstable." She wasn't breathing now, not that she needed to, but her slow heartbeat was even slower, parts of her fading from existence as she struggled to keep herself together.
She started to fall out of the sky, Blades grabbing her and racing away. Dani tugged at the place her ecto-dejecto pen was under her skirt while Dani Burns focused on stabilizing all the wrong things. Dani Burns finally stopped long enough to see the injection pen, and spiked it into her thigh. She started to solidify immediately, getting better as the ecto did its work.
They took her back to the firehouse, where Dani Burns called Danny.
Danny burst out of a green portal in a ratty t-shirt and basketball shorts, obviously rolling right out of bed. He has an entire duffle bag of ectoplasm and even more ecto-dejecto, even a Fenton Thermos.
"Blood Blossoms are ten times as potent as an exorcism, and twenty times as deadly." He said, popping off the top of an ectoplasm thermos. Dani chugged it, her form growing more solid. She looked more lively, chatting with Frankie like nothing happened while Cody used the back door to head to the showers.
The firehouse was set up in a way that there was a separate door for when Kade came back from a rescue too covered in soot or contamination to change in the common areas. The entire place could be hosed down with no damage to the house. Cody grabbed a duffle bag filled with a change of clothes in his size, making sure not to open it until his stuff was on the washer and he had taken a shower.
In the main garage, Danny looked relieved, and exhausted.
"I had a bit of a flashback to when we met." He admitted to Dani Burns. "Dani was incredibly unstable when I was pitted against her. After I defeated her, she needed half a dozen of those ecto-dejecto pens to even be solid. I had to put her in a thermos anyway."
A green portal opened, and a redhead with a slightly haunted baseball bat left the portal. She wore a steel toed boot on one foot, and a walking boot on the other. A flaming circlet framed her brows, giving her the appearance of an eldritch general. Her smile was a bit too sharp as she smiled warmly towards Dani.
"Ellie! Danny said something about a patch of blood blossoms? I guess I need to make them even more extinct."
"Yeah, Cody found them. He didn't know they were bred to torture ghosts. He touched them, I didn't realize what they were, and now I am gonna be Frostbite's favorite patient for a little bit."
"Yeah you will. Hey, I'm Jazz, the only being in the Ghost Zone that can touch and kill Blood Blossoms without dying that can fit into this room. Can one of you robots come with me? We are burning this stuff in a place where the ashes can be safely disposed of. Blood Blossoms are nasty."
Heatwave went with Jazz to dispose of the deadly plants. Jazz summoned a bucket of blue greek fire and burned every last vine, along with the tree.
She left to join her younger brother and sister, being sure to dismiss the flames fully before leaving. Heatwave was shocked to find no coals or ash left where the tree once stood. Just an empty hole.
____
They came back.
The whole island was buzzing about the eccentric couple asking around for their teenage children. Most of the townspeople got bad vibes, the holsters under their lab coats technically legal but very frowned upon.
It didn't take long for the firehouse to be called for shots fired, when a harmless blob ghost hanging out at a local Cafe. It had become a little Like a shop cat, taking pets from customers and occasionally stealing sugar packets and even entire cups of coffee. Maddie and Jack threw a fit when the owner refused to hand it over, and Maddie shot the ecto blaster
"I found more love in a palace of ghosts, than either my own parents. You would have my baby brother and sister killed before you have barely a conversation with either of them. I can't love you anymore. Not in the way I love my family." Jazz fired the ecto blaster, and Maddie stumbled into the street.
Nobody saw the speeding delivery truck coming.
There wasn't even enough left intact of her to take a pulse from.
Jazz stumbled back into the doorway of the coffee shop, the owner pulling her into the shop and to a table that wasn't facing the picture windows.
Dani pronounced Maddie dead, and helped the local funeral home remove the body. The whole process had to be sped through, due to the fact that she died on Main Street.
Jack went ballistic, nearly breaking his restraining order against Jazz.
Jazz had tried to get a restraining order from both her parents, but only succeeded in getting one from Jack. The courts couldn't believe Maddie, tiny, lying, crowd pleasing Maddie, could let lab accidents happen in the same house as her children.
They even cleaned the house for the inspection, somehow getting tipped off before they arrived.
But that wasn't here or there.
Heatwave hosed off the road, cleaning it of the biohazard.
Jazz wasn't in this plane of existence, numb and detached. Danny came out of some dark corner, in an old hoodie and basketball shorts. He, at least, was crying, shaking Jazz out of her stupor. She gave him a hug, and Danny coaxed her to come outside of the crowded coffee shop, as Chase used it as an evacuation funnel.
Charlie caught them before Danny could make them disappear. He offered his condolences, and asked Danny about Jack. Danny bluntly told him that he was directly responsible for half the scars he had, and it's best if Jack obeyed his restraining order. He then opened a portal in an alley a little ways away from the coffee shop, and left, leaving Charlie to handle the arrest. Jack Fenton still violated a court order against a minor, and turned himself in without a fight.
Inside Phantom's keep, Danny and Jazz sat in silence in Danny's room. This wasn't how they wanted to cut contact, and they knew that the Burns would ask questions they wouldn't like the answers to.
