Chapter Text
Jack Fenton was excited.
He was often excited, so that wasn't really noteworthy, but the reason he was excited this time, as opposed to all the other times was.
Jazzy had talked Maddie into going to a Women in STEM conference together during Presidents Day weekend, and that meant that it would just be him and Danny for four whole days, and he was excited. It was rare that the two of them had a boys' weekend together where they didn't have to be the ones getting out of the house. As much as Jack loved fishing, he had other plans for this weekend.
"Rise and shine, Danny boy!" Jack shouted boisterously into his son's room. "The early bird catches the ghost."
Danny groaned and sat up in his bed. He glanced at his alarm clock. "What early bird?" He asked. "Dad, it's almost ten."
"Well... it's just a metaphor," Jack said.
Danny shook his head and chuckled.
"Are you excited for our boys' weekend Danny? I've got big plans!"
"Oh yeah? What are they?"
"It's a surprise!" Jack shouted, absolutely giddy. "Now put this on and meet me in the lab downstairs!" He threw one of Danny's white Fenton jumpsuits at him.
"Let me guess, does it have something to do with ghost hunting?" Danny asked, holding up the jumpsuit and ripping off the picture of his dad's face.
Jack tried not to be too offended. He probably just wanted to match his father, since Jack's own jumpsuit didn't have any sort of logo on it.
"That's just the half of it," Jack started to say, then cut himself off. "Ah! You won't get any spoilers from me! And don't worry about about breakfast! I packed plenty of beef jerky, cereal bars, and fudge in the Fenton GAV."
"Alright Dad, I'll meet you downstairs in a few minutes," Danny said.
"The hunt is on!" Jack shouted, before leaving and closing Danny's door behind him.
Danny chuckled as his Dad left his room. Most of the time, their father-son activities were more... fishing and catch. You know, standard things like that. As much as mom wanted her kids to be capable of fighting ghosts, training them in martial arts and marksmanship, she was a lot more hesitant to let them actually fight ghosts. She thought that they should be older before they entered the dangerous world of ghost hunting.
But when mom was away, well, that was when their dad would take the kids out on ghost hunts so they could have some real-world experience. Jazz had always hated them, but Danny had absolutely loved them when he was little. They never actually found anything back then, of course, so it was kind of like going camping and saying that you were hunting for Bigfoot.
Once the portal opened, and there actually were ghosts around—not to mention the Danny was one of them—Danny had been dreading he next time Mom went away and Dad would take him 'ghost hunting' again, but now that it was actually happening, that childish glee of being able to do something 'grown up' with his dad was coming back anyway. That illicit excitement of his father taking him to do something that his mom wouldn't approve of, something they'd have to keep a secret.
Besides, there may have been actual ghosts now, but that didn't make his dad a more competent ghost hunter. And even if they did catch something, Danny could pretend to fall or fumble and let the poor ghost loose. He knew Dad might be a little disappointed at losing the ghost, but it wouldn't get him down for long—and with how often he fumbled things himself, there was no way he'd hold it against Danny.
So Danny pulled on his jumpsuit, brushed his teeth, ran a comb through his hair, and then headed downstairs to the lab with a smile on his face.
"Danny-boy! What took you so long?" His father greeted when he entered the lab.
"It's only been five minutes," Danny pointed out. "So what's the big surprise?"
"Oh, you're gonna love this!" Jack said. He grabbed the Fenton Finder and held it up in front of Danny, who instantly tensed. "Fenton Finder, locate ghost."
The small dish on the device swiveled and the radar beeped, and Danny held his breath.
"No ghost detected," came the Fenton Finder's cold, robotic voice.
"What?" Danny asked, surprised.
His dad was practically jumping up and down. "It's the new jumpsuit!" he explained, beaming. "Ever since your accident, you've been pinging on all our devices, and your mother finally figured out that you were probably contaminated with ectoplasm during that incident. I knew I couldn't take you out ghost hunting if you were just gonna throw off all our instruments, so I designed a new jumpsuit for you and sewed it myself.
"It's a new type of fabric I invented, completely ecto-insulated, I call it Fenton Fabric!"
"Catchy," Danny said. He couldn't help the slight, incredulous shake of his head. "Dad, this is... amazing. I can't believe you did this.... Thank you."
"Oh, don't mention it, son!" he declared. "It had to be done for you to be able to join me on the hunt for the most elusive ghost we Fentons have ever tried to capture! That's right!" He wrapped a massive arm around his son's narrow shoulders. "While the girls are away, you and me are gonna be hunting Danny Phantom." Conspiratorily, he leaned down and added, "That's the second part of the surprise."
"Awesome," Danny said, and much to his own surprise, he didn't even mean that sarcastically.
Any other day, if Danny had heard his dad proudly declaring that he was going to catch Danny Phantom, he would have felt nothing but dread. Not today, though. Today, he would be right by his dad's side the whole time, and he even had a brand new jumpsuit that would prevent the ghost hunting tech from locking onto him. Today would be a father-son ghost hunt with absolutely no chance of success, just the way it should be.
Step one, as always, was to arm themselves.
"So, what kind of weapons are you thinking?" Danny asked. "Fenton Bazooka?"
"No!" Dad shouted, then he slouched and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "No that one is... uh... prone to overloading and electrocuting the user. Your mom was okay with it, but I don't think we should bring it along."
"Oh."
Yeah... Danny could definitely agree with that call. He had no idea there were still such dangerous kinks to work out of Fenton Bazooka. That was good to know.
"Besides, we don't want to send that spook straight back to the Ghost Zone," his father added, waving a hand as he went to his workbench full of gizmos. "We want to capture him, and study him. That's why I propose we bring the Fenton Ghost Weasel! I caught him in it once before, you know, so I know it works."
"Yeah, you've told me the story."
"You'll bring your Fenton Thermos, too, as a back-up, of course, just in case it breaks, or something. You never can know what will go wrong on a ghost hunt, so it pays to be prepared," Jack continued. "Then there's the Fenton Finder, and the Fenton Foamer, in case he brings his buddies. What do you think, anything else?"
"Definitely the Ghost Fisher," Danny said. "If he's flying and out of range, we'll need a way to pull him in closer. Oh! And a portable ghost shield. 'Cause we're not gonna be in the RV the whole time."
"Good thinking, Dann-o," Dad agreed. "But it's not just an RV today. Today, it is the Fenton Ghost Assault Vehicle, just as it should be."
Danny smiled.
"Now, let's talk weapons."
The two of them armed themselves with the usual ecto-blasters to start with. Danny grabbed a Fenton Wrist-Ray as a back-up, and his Dad grabbed a pair of ghost gloves, since he was more of a brawler than a marksman. Danny also grabbed one of his mom's plasma-staffs, just because she wasn't here to tell him he couldn't, and he'd always wanted to try using the lightsaber-esque ghost hunting bo-staff, ever since he'd seen her use it to beat the crap out of Vlad's ghostly animal minions.
Finally, they were fully stocked and setting up a mobile HQ in the GAV, and Danny finally got a cereal bar for breakfast while his father flipped switched to fully arm and activate all the ghost hunting features in the vehicle that were usually turned off for the sake of safety. Once all that was done, the GAV pealed out of the garage and tore down the road, Fenton Finder and Spectral Sub-sonar both scanning the area for any signs of ghost activity.
The most dangerous part of ghost hunting with Dad wasn't the potentially deadly homemade ghost hunting weapons and tech, and it definitely wasn't the ghosts. No, the most dangerous part was Jack Fenton's infamous driving. He was such a menace that the local news did their best to warn the people of the town when he'd be on the roads. Danny made a point of calling Channel 4 to let them know of his father's likely plans to go ghost hunting tomorrow—and thanks the that, the roads were almost completely clear, and the pedestrians were keeping a wary eye out.
Danny, for his part, was clinging to his seat for dear life, strongly suspecting that it would be this that finally drove him into a grave. He may have been half dead already, but he was also half alive, and that half was on a roller-coaster with no safety restraints hurtling down the road—both having fun, and utterly terrified.
"Keep an eye out for any ghosts!" his father shouted over the whine of the engine and the squeal of the tires. "Even if they're not our target, any ghost we find might be able to lead us right to Phantom!"
"Roger that, Dad!" Danny shouted back, and he looked out his window, scanning the skies for any signs of that telltale green glow.
Since they weren't out to destroy any ghosts today, just capture them, Danny wasn't too worried about what would happen if they actually found some. They'd all just be put in the ghost containment cell in the lab, where Danny could 'accidentally' flush them all back into the Ghost Zone before anything bad could happen to them. He didn't see any ghosts in the sky, and his ghost sense didn't go off either, but there was a blip on the Spectral Sub-sonar.
The Spectral Sub-sonar worked by sending out periodic waves of a unique sound frequency that only occurred naturally in the Ghost Zone. It was an intangible sound, inaudible to humans because it couldn't interact with human eardrums. Danny could hear it though. It was kind of a low, resonant sound, like one of those massive orchestra drums, but quiet, and easy to ignore. It could pass right through solid objects, but bounced off anything made of ectoplasm, so it could be used to find ghosts and ghostly objects in the human world.
"I'm seeing a bogey, 9.3 klicks northwest, near the water park," Danny said.
"Well spotted, Danny!" his dad commended. "Man, we make a great team!"
The tires screeched as Dad made a sharp U-turn in that direction, and Danny tensed all his muscles to avoid getting whiplash. Then they were careening down the road toward the local Water Park. The closer they got, the more apparent it became that whatever was pinging on the sonar wasn't just near the park, it was in the water park. The parking lot was mostly empty, and Dad practically sling-shotted the GAV into an empty space... well, two empty spaces, since it was too wide for just one.
The second they stepped out of the GAV, Danny's ghost sense went off, alerting him to a ghost near by. He glanced over to make sure his dad hadn't noticed, but the bulky man was busying himself turning on the safety features before locking up so the GAV wouldn't activate against any innocent bystanders, so Danny was in the clear.
"Do you think it's that Danny Phantom?" Dad asked.
"Only one way to find out," Danny replied.
Floody Waters was still open, but this late in the autumn, there were few people there, even on a Saturday. A few families, with sopping wet little kids shivering whenever a cold breeze blew by. A couple of teenagers, the kind who didn't care if it was cold or not, and were probably planning to cause as much of a ruckus as they could manage before they were kicked out. More noteworthy than who was there was what most of them were doing, and that was screaming at the top of their lungs.
They hadn't been planning to go to the water park today, and it seemed Dad had even left his wallet (and his driver's license) at home. Still, they figured they could at least go up to the entrance and see if the park wouldn't make an exception for two ghost hunters. Much to Danny's surprise, the employee checking tickets at the entrance took one look at their jumpsuits and equipment and ushered them through.
"Oh, thank god you guys are here," the greasy-haired young man said. "It's pandemonium in there! You gotta get rid of that ghost!"
"GHOST?" Dad shouted, and tromped forward with purpose. "Have no fear! The Fenton boys are on the case!"
Danny stifled a laugh as he watched his father squeezing himself through the turnstile with absolutely no dignity whatsoever in his rush to get inside.
Danny didn't know what ghost to expect inside the water park. He'd fought ghosts there before, namely Klemper, and Johnny 13's Shadow. If it was either of them, there wouldn't be a problem. But it was a common misconception that ghosts always tended to haunt the same place, so Danny doubted it would be either of them, this time.
He was right.
The ghost terrorizing Floody Waters wasn't Klemper, or Shadow, or any of Danny's standard rogues. It was a ghost Danny had never seen before. He couldn't tell if the ghost was a man, woman, or a genderless Zone-born ghost. All he could see was a swirling vortex of water rising into the sky, casting a shadow over the park. When they spoke, their voice sounded like waves crashing against a cliff during a storm.
"Fear me, for I am Mariner!" the ghost shouted. "I am the stormy, indifferent seas, sinker of ships, drowner of sailors! This land-locked amusement center, this domesticated sea, this farce is an insult to the vast, uncontrollable ocean! I will free it, so that it may roil and churn like the true ocean, so that it may swallow its captors like a riptide, and never spit them out!"
Danny nearly transformed on instinct, before he remembered who he was with. He glanced nervously over at his dad, but the man showed no fear on his face. He stood his ground and stared up at the swirling pillar of water, sizing up the ghost.
"What do we do, Dad?" Danny asked.
Actually fighting a real ghost was not typically a part of the father-son ghost hunting adventure itinerary. Let alone a ghost this powerful whom Danny had never seen before. They were supposed to drive wildly around town, set some traps, set up a tent in the park for an overnight stake out, go out for sympathy burger the next day after finding nothing, and go home.
"Danny, the Fenton Foamer!" Dad ordered.
Danny slung the weapon off his back and tossed it over.
His dad caught it and took aim, not at the ghost, but at the water. Right before Danny's eyes, the toxic green foam mixed with the water, swirling upward until the entire waterspout took on an eerie green color, and then it collapsed, falling all at once and landing in the pools and rivers of the water park with a massive splash that soaked everyone around.
For a split second, Danny just stared at his father, shocked and impressed.
"Shoot, Danny!" his Dad ordered, snapping him out of it.
In a single motion, Danny drew his ecto-gun, took aim, and fired at Mariner.
The ghost howled in pain as they were hit right in the middle of the back, and whipped around, glowing red eyes wide with rage and fixed upon Danny and his father.
"Stand your ground, son!"
"Right!"
Reaching behind his back, Dad equipped the ghost gloves, and clenched his fists, preparing for a melee.
Mariner raised their arms, and the water churned, but it didn't do more than churn. While it was still mixed so thoroughly with the neutralizing foam from the Fenton Foamer, Mariner couldn't exert as much control over it as they had before.
"Very well," the said lowly, though their voice carried all the way to the ground. "If you dare to contaminate the tides, then I shall drag you under myself."
The ghost dove toward Danny and his father with murderous intent, and Danny, Ecto-gun still in hand, fired upon them, trying to slow them down or stop them before they reached the ghost hunters.
Mariner swerved and dodged. Now that they could see where the shots were coming from, they were a lot harder to hit, though Danny did still manage to get a couple more good hits in to the ghost's shoulder and spectral tail.
Unfortunately, he wasn't able to stop them before they reached the ground. All he'd managed to do was piss them off, and now they were flying straight at Danny. Danny threw his hands up to defend, and braced for impact, but it never came.
He heard his dad shout, and opened his eyes just in time to see an orange blob slam into Mariner, grabbing the ghost with a pair of glowing Ghost Gloves.
It was a brawl. Dad was strong, but he could only touch the ghost with his ecto-charged gloves, which put him at a disadvantage. Still, he held on for a solid minute before Mariner grabbed him and pulled him into the water.
Danny ran to the edge of the pool, looking down, desperately hoping that maybe the foam in the water would be enough to weaken the ghost and make them let go. It wasn't. It had been diluted when it mixed with all the water. At worst, Mariner only felt a slight sting. Meanwhile, Dad was thrashing and struggling, and he couldn't breathe.
Danny had to help him, but how could he? The ray from his ecto-gun or wrist ray wasn't a fully formed ghost; it would become inert the second it hit the foam-infused water, and the Fenton Thermos would have a majorly reduced range. The plasma staff didn't have enough reach, and if Danny jumped in with it, he didn't think he would have enough control or momentum underwater. He only had one option left if he wanted to save his dad.
"I'm going ghost!"