Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Being the star quarterback of Casper High’s football team had a lot of demands. For starters, there was all the girls chasing after you, constantly wanting your attention. For another, there was the way teachers all wanted to be personally responsible for your academic success, so that you might remember them years down the line when you were rich and famous and they were on the county pension. And of course, there were the satellite kids, the ones who orbited around you in the halls and in the cafeteria, catching brief reflections of your popularity.

But that was just the social demands. The physical demands were equally, well, demanding. Practice six days a week, including early Saturdays, a strict diet focused on protein and carbs, and of course, needing to stay in peak shape with exercise - both cardio with running, and strength training via weight lifting.

Luckily, both of the latter were covered with Dash Baxter’s favorite sport: nerd hunting.

“Hey, FEN-TINA!”

The scrawny little twink had exactly two seconds to freeze up, eyes locking with him in the halls. Then, without another word, he turned tail and sprinted like the scared little bunny rabbit he was. Dash was after him immediately, barreling down the halls full tilt as he tore right past the other two losers, who did nothing to stop him as he chased down Danny.

No one ever did.

He was a fast little bugger, Dash would give him that. He had to be, since they’d been doing this song and dance a while. But as fast as Fenturd was, it wasn’t going to matter, not when everyone knew the real key to winning in football.

The flash of scraggly black hair darted towards the exit doors, slamming his whole body into them because his scrawny little arms didn’t have the strength to shove the door open properly. Even with his full weight, the door barely swung open, but it was enough for him to slip through the opening and -

- there was a yelp, and then a crash, and Dash let a manic grin spread across his face as he made it to the exit himself, blood pumping and heart racing as he flung both doors open wide. Because, unlike some people, he wasn’t a wuss afraid to make an entrance.

In the alley by the school parking lot, Fen-toilet was laid out, flat on his back and clutching his nose.

“Whoops,” Kwan said mildly, lowering his arm. “Ran right into my fist, officer.”

“Ran right into my fist ten times,” Bryson joined in, giggling hard.

Dash swaggered onto the scene, making sure that when Fentastick finally uncovered his face, the first thing he saw was him.

“You had them hanging out by the exit, huh?” Fentalio grumbled, his voice slightly nasal.

“Everyone knows the real key to winning in football is to know where to put your players,” Dash said, smugly exchanging high fives with Kwan and Bryson.

“Great. You finally learn how to use your brain and the first thing you do with it is torment me,” Fentissa groaned.

“Duh, what else am I gonna do?”

“Study?”

The two of them stared at each other in tense silence, before breaking out into laughter. The other two jocks behind him laughed along.

“Oh, man…” Dash said, wiping a tear out of his eye, “heh, good one. You got me laughing pretty hard, Fenton.”

“Really? Hard enough that you’re in a good mood now and you feel like letting me go?” Danny asked, drawing out the first half of the question before rushing through the rest in a hurry.

“Ah hah… you know what, I am in a good mood now,” Dash said, enjoying the way Fenton’s mouth quirked up in a nervous, hopeful smile, “... so I’m gonna celebrate with my favorite exercise.”

The smile disappeared faster than Fenton during a ghost emergency, as he tried to leap up and run yet again, the little coward. But Dash had him by the collar of the shirt in no time.

Hefting the nerd up, he kept one hand on his collar while grabbing at his belt loops with the other, lifting him bodily over his head. As far as deadlifts went, this one wasn’t particularly impressive - the twink had always been rail-thin, and as they went into high school, while everyone else was starting to grow and pack on muscle as part of puberty, Fenton actually seemed lighter than before.

Still, what made Dash's feat impressive was keeping his balance and his grip firm while Fenton floundered like a fish on the line and the other jocks gleefully opened the lid of the dumpster. “What do you say, Fen-twink? Help me count!”

“Should have figured he couldn’t,” Dash heard him grumble, more to himself than the others, but that just made him laugh harder. That was why picking on Fenton was so fun. He never knew how to make it easy on himself.

“One,” Dash said, swaying the body dangerously towards the dumpster before just as suddenly jerking him back, “two… three!”

After a few false starts to get Fenton screaming, he finally flung him bodily into the dumpster, its contents making a disgusting squelching sound as he landed. Fenton’s whole face immediately scrunched up in disgust, but before he could say anything, Dash was back in his space, still grinning. “You can thank your girlfriend for this one, by the way. Still glad she led that initiative to have all the meat past expiration inspected and thrown out every single week?”

“She’s not my -” Whatever Fenton was about to say was cut off by the sound of the dumpster lid slamming shut on him, yelping again as it knocked against something solid.

“Just doing my part to help keep the school clean and free of unwanted dead meat!” Dash said cheerfully, leaning on the lid to keep Fenton from pushing it back up as the others enacted the final phase of their little plan. Stacking plenty of trash bags and boxes on top of the lid, it would look to the passing observer like the dumpster was just overflowing. “Hey, think of this as your own personalized weightlifting regime! Go ahead, you can leave whenever you want!”

“You don’t say,” came the dry response, echoing in the dank dumpster.

Dash patted the lid of the dumpster affectionately. “Catch you later, Fen-turd.”

And with that, he swaggered off with the other jocks towards practice, satisfied with his warmup routine before training really began. He didn’t bother looking behind him, which was just as well, because he’d have had a hard time explaining the strange flash of white light that came from underneath the weighted lid.

Practice had ultimately been little more than a warmup, since the home game with Blairstown had been pushed up. Dash sat on the bench inside the locker room, changed and ready except for his helmet on the bench beside him, staring at his brick of a cell phone.

It was five minutes to kickoff. As the quarterback, he should be out there any minute now. He stared at the digital display, watching it tick over. Four minutes to kickoff.

The phone buzzed in his hand, and Dash eagerly flipped it open. But it wasn’t a call, he found, smacking the side of it as the screen flickered (something that all Amity Park residents were more than used to at this point). It was a text.

Dad (5:56 pm)

Can’t get away long enough to call. Good luck in the game. Remember, you’re a Baxter. Baxters aren’t losers.

Dash (5:56 pm)

Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll pummel em.

Dad (5:57 pm)

That’s my boy.

Hastily stuffing his phone inside his locker, Dash grabbed his helmet and jogged to the field where Kwan was waiting for him.

“Where were you, man? It’s almost kickoff time!”

“Sorry, had to take a call. You know what parents are like.”

“Ugh, tell me about it, man,” Kwan commiserated, rolling his eyes.

“Enough about that, though,” Dash said, striding up to his team and holding his helmet aloft like the trophy they were going to pick up later. “Let’s CRUSH ‘EM!”

The team erupted into hoots and cheers, and they took the field. Dash cracked his neck, staring down the other team. This right here, this was his home turf. And he wasn’t gonna let some upstarts think they could waltz in and take it from him. On the field, he felt like the commander of his own private army, every single teammate silently deferring to him.

He caught the other quarterback’s eye and grinned, letting his mouth guard mangle it into something grotesque. Bullying the other team may not be allowed, but there was nothing quite like a little psychological warfare.

A shrill screech of a whistle signaled the kickoff, and the game began.

Somewhere else, nearby, a haunting purplish tinge crept up the horizon as the atmosphere shifted. The cheering was so loud that no one heard a teen-sized crash into the East Wing wall.

A ways away, a faint shrill noise temporarily distracted Danny. He glanced back the way he’d come, in the direction of the school. If the game was starting, that meant class had gotten out two hours ago, which meant he should be allowed to go home -

- a nasty ball of ecto-energy slammed into him, and he tumbled through the air before righting himself.

“Distracted?” Desiree asked, sickeningly sweet. “Why, dear ghost boy, is there something you want? Perhaps I can help…”

“No thanks! I have a firm no solicitors policy,” Danny quipped back, raising up his hand to fire off an ecto-blast of his own.

“Such a shame,” the Genie-woman cooed at him, gracefully dodging the blasts as her tail flickered around like a ribbon dancer. With a snap of her power she suddenly vanished in a puff of purple smoke, reappearing behind Danny to slam into him, hard. “For starters, I could grant your wish for a bath,” she said, laughing. Danny grimaced.

“Great. Now the ghosts are getting in on the joke, too. How the hell did she get so powerful this quickly, anyway?!”

“Alright, Casper High, lemme hear it!” Paulina said, the cheerleaders lined up in formation.

“I wish for strength, to keep us going!”

“I wish for youth, to keep us growing!”

“I wish for spirit, to keep on shouting!”

“I wish for victory, and send them pouting!”

“Casper High, Casper’s bright, send your wishes to the sky!”

The girls finished their routine, with Paulina as the flyer, leg hitched and arms outstretched in a V position. The base girls, Ashley and Brittany, held her firm, one hand planted on the bottom of her sole to take her weight and the other around her ankle to help her balance. Starr, who was usually up front until last week when she had made the mistake of telling Paulina she liked her old shade of eyeshadow better, stood in back as spotter.

Up in the stands, Sam made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Can you believe them? All that athletic ability that they put all that work into, and they just use it to sit and look pretty in front of Casper high’s meathead population.”

“Is it just me, or is that new cheer kinda weird?” Tucker wondered out loud, tapping on his PDA with a stylus.

“Casper High, let’s hear those wishes!” Paulina called out.

“I wish that guy liked me back,” one girl sighed from the back.

“I wish I could actually open the card I wanted,” said one of the geeks, who had ignored the football game in favor of organizing their latest haul from the trading card game they were playing.

“Man, we’re not doing so great out there,” sighed Dale, still in his Jersey despite being out with an injury. “I wish Fenton were here to whale on for good luck.”

Sam suddenly shot ramrod straight, grabbing Tucker and yanking him down as a streak of light fell from the sky out of nowhere, shattering a spot of the (blessedly empty) bleachers which collapsed into a hole. Danny slowly picked his way out of the crater, holding his head as his eyes refocused gradually.

“Hey,” Tucker said.

“Hey,” Danny replied, rubbing his brow as he started to move.

“Rough day?”

“Yyyup,” Danny replied, popping the ‘p’ as he cast his gaze up to the sky where Desiree was appearing, swirling into visibility from a great spiraling cloud of ghostly energy with all the grace and subtlety of a siren. Down on the field, the Blairstown players had stopped midway through their formation to gawk in shock at the supernatural phenomenon that had appeared above them.

Dash, seeing his opening, whistled to Kwan, who went long, sprinting hard and darting in between the frozen defense, catching Dash’s throw with grace and continuing to run on and on.

A touchdown with just one down on the books. Now that was something recruiters were going to see. Dash and the other Casper High players erupted into cheers.

… And then quickly vacated the field as Phantom flew overhead, smacking the genie ghost into the turf below. Casper’s students may have been used to ghost attacks, but even they knew when it was time to evacuate.

Escaping to the sidelines, Dash met up with the Phanclub.

At least, that’s what he called them in his head. They didn’t have an official name, and they didn’t even hang out outside of ghost attacks. But it was unmistakable who Phantom’s real fans were. The ones who stayed behind to watch (at a safe distance), trying to get snaps of the action on their cameras and Paulina's fancy new phone that took pictures (many of which ended up either blurry or pixelated - ghosts, man), and cheer Phantom on.

The Phanclub consisted of himself, Paulina, Starr, Kwan, Jazz (sometimes), and the two losers who always hung out with Fenton, but Fenton himself never showed. The coward. Dash was glad he was still probably in that dumpster, long given up trying to lift it and calling for help instead. Amity could do without wimps like him.

The fight wasn’t going so well for Phantom right now, but Dash wasn’t too worried. Even though he winced seeing the size of the crater Desiree had created when she backhanded him hard into the field, he knew Phantom was more than capable of taking it. It was one of the things he admired so much about Phantom - he wasn’t that big, or that strong, compared to most of the ghosts around here, but he was full of plucky spirit, and he never, ever gave up. He was the kind of guy Dash would love to have on the team, if he could put on about thirty more pounds. Then again, while he wasn’t big or bulky, he did have a sort of wiry strength to him that let him beat up opponents so much bigger than him, so maybe he’d have some kind of strategy for being rushed -

“Danny, look out!” Sam bellowed, and for the briefest second, Dash snapped his head up to scan for Fenton before he remembered Phantom’s name was also Danny. See, this was why you had to distinguish them. At least Daniel A. in math class was willing to go by Daniel to help ease the confusion, but still. Come up with a more original name next time, parents.

Up in the air, Danny - Phantom, that is - tucked and rolled in midair, narrowly avoiding a beam of green ghost power as the genie lady seemed to grow even more in size, laughing. Phantom grit his teeth. Determined not to let her get any more of the upper hand than she already had, he circled around her, both getting into her blind spot to shoot and also drawing her away from the Phanclub.

Dash winced again as the ghost deflected his shot and sent it back to him, knocking him backwards in the air.

“Man,” he said out loud to Kwan, “I wish Phantom had our helmets and padding. He could really use it.”

And he could, because just as he'd said that, another beam hit Phantom right on, sending him cartwheeling through the air. When he came to a stop, though, he was very much unharmed and rubbing the top of his brand new helmet, disoriented. He blinked down at a brand new set of kneepads. Even the ghost seemed flummoxed, pausing in her attack to gawk.

“Dash, what the hell are you -” the goth chick rounded on him, before suddenly freezing up in shock and realization. “That’s it… that’s it!”

She rushed forward a few steps, shouting to the sky, “I WISH DANNY PHANTOM HAD AN ECTO BLASTER!”

“... And a functioning targeting reticle!” the nerd followed up, leaping to her side.

Sure enough, with a soft ‘pop’, Phantom was suddenly holding a huge, dangerous looking bazooka that Dash was pretty sure he’d seen Maddie Fenton packing at one of the many ghost safety lectures the student body had had to attend this year. Another ‘pop’ and he was wearing (over his new football helmet, which looked identical to Casper High’s but in black and white with his DP logo on the side) some kind of cyborg looking targeting reticle which Dash thought he’d seen in some movie a while back.

Phantom was the first to recover, aiming a nasty grin at the genie lady, who threw up her hands in defense. “No… no!”

“I wish Danny Phantom could move fast and agile, just like us!” Star piped up, getting into the spirit of things.

“I wish Danny Phantom was strong enough to lift a truck!”

“I wish Danny Phantom could teleport at will!”

“I wish Danny Phantom would fall madly in love with - hey!” Paulina snapped, scowling at the goth girl who had suddenly turned around to slap her upside the head with a matching scowl. “Ugh, fine, I wish Danny Phantom would save the day.”

The ghost, despite her size growing with each wish, seemed to be struggling to keep up with the sudden power boosts that kept falling into her opponent’s lap. Green beams started flashing across the sky as Danny pushed the offensive, each connecting blast eliciting hisses and screeches from the genie. She started drifting downwards, too busy keeping her arms in front of her to pay attention to staying aloft, and as the wishes kept pouring in (“I wish Danny Phantom could use the Konami Code!” “No one knows what that is, Tucker!”), it wasn’t long before they were at ground level and the ghost had been reduced to a much more humanlike size.

The fight was, as far as Dash could tell, basically over. Phantom touched down next to them, turning the pockets of his new football gear inside out as the ghost started to beat a retreat.

“Whoo!” Dash whooped it up, racing forward to clap Phantom on the back. It seemed like his battle reflexes were still activated, because he flinched a little. But he eased up soon enough, casting Dash a small, unsure smile. Behind him, Kwan bent and scooped him, hoisting him on his shoulders like a champ. Dash followed suit, taking part of the weight onto his own shoulder… not that Kwan actually needed the help. Phantom’s weight was strangely reduced, like he was underwater. Dash figured it must be a ghost thing. I mean, it wasn't like he’d ever tried to carry a ghost before.

Usually, it was him up on Kwan’s shoulders, especially after a game where he’d technically thrown the winning pass, but for Phantom? The guy who’d saved their town again and again? Yeah, he was cool making an exception.

Phantom, it was pretty obvious, wasn’t used to the attention. He gripped Kwan and Dash’s shoulders nervously as he readjusted his balance, letting out a shocked laugh and smiling weakly.

“Uh, wow, hey, um, citizens. I thought you all would have taken cover by now?”

“And miss seeing you lay the hurt on that ghost?” Dash asked, pounding his fist into his palm for emphasis. Phantom winced a little, ducking his head modestly.

“Oh, you know…”

“I thought it was so hot,” Paulina sighed, resting her head in her palm as she gazed at him in a mirror of how most boys stared at her in the hallway. Phantom’s shyness evaporated somewhat, perking up with a “Really?”

Then the two losers stepped in. Usually Dash would have shoved them back, made a comment about how they weren’t popular enough to talk to someone as cool as Phantom, but he figured they could have this one. After all, they’d at least been brave enough to stick around and cheer him on, unlike someone.

“That was a pretty intense fight,” the goth said, looking Phantom up and down. “How are you holding up?”

“Alright,” Phantom replied with a smile of his own, more and more of his shyness fading away as he seemed to get comfortable with the group. “That health pickup really helped… great idea, by the way. Can’t believe we - I never thought of that before.”

“I can,” said the geek. He threw up his hands as his goth friend shot him a look. “What? He didn’t even think to wish it permanent! Or to wish for a million dollars and for all ghosts to stay in the ghost zone! Or to have Brittany Spears as my girlf-”

“Aaaaand, that’s more than enough insight into what you’d do with all that power, Tuck,” the goth sighed. Dash wondered if her face ever got tired from scowling all the time.

“Well, lucky for us, Phantom’s the one with all the power!” Dash broke in, adjusting his shoulder to give the ghost a little more spotlight. “You’re welcome, by the way. You look good in armor!”

“Uh…” Phantom only stumbled, a little bit taken aback.

Oh no.

“Not like in a weird way!” Dash clarified quickly, suddenly hyper-aware of their point of contact. “Just that it suits you. And since you only have that suit anyway…”

“R-right,” Phantom let out a strained chuckle, before suddenly frowning and looking down at himself. Was he feeling self-conscious about the football padding now? Dash opened his mouth, trying to think of some other way to reassure him without making it gay, but just then, Phantom slid off.

And by ‘slid off’, he meant ‘lifted off’, as all he had to do was raise himself slightly above the group to be off of their shoulders. Flying sure was weird. Phantom suddenly cast his gaze around the area, frowning with a distant sort of alertness.

After a moment, he glanced down at the Phanclub assembled before him.

“Uh, you guys should head home, now,” he said, pitching his voice down to try and give it some sense of authority, “I’m sure this’ll be on the news soon, and your parents…”

Dash, who’d been about to protest, suddenly froze. His phone was in his locker where he’d left it. It was well after the game by now.

“Uh, yeah, alright!” he said, trying to inject some confidence into his tone. He wasn’t being dismissed by Phantom, he was choosing to leave. “I’ll catch you later, Phantom!”

“Yeah… probably…” he heard Phantom mutter, as he began flying up higher, in a circling pattern above the field.

Dash made a quick beeline for the locker room, Kwan in step behind him. Paulina and Starr were breaking away from the group, headed towards the parking lot and showing each other the pictures of the fight they’d gotten on the phone.

The locker rooms were deserted. Almost all the players had either finished up or headed straight home to shower and change in the relative safety of their own homes. Kwan hit the showers immediately, while Dash stayed behind to fetch his phone. The screen glitched again - Phantom, probably. A quick whap to the inside of his palm and the screen cleared.

No missed calls

No unread texts

Well, that was just as well, anyway. Dash wasn’t exactly in the mood to tell his parents what had happened at the game. They listened to the Fentons way too much, in his opinion, and it further cemented that Jazz was like, the only normal one in that whole family.

Flicking his phone closed, he saw Kwan coming out of the showers, one towel around his waist with another on his neck to catch the droplets from his hair, plastered to his skull by the hot water. Coach always got on him about taking his showers too hot like a girl, but Dash didn’t care one way or the other.

Kwan looked at the phone in Dash’s hands, a frown starting on his face, but when Dash just shook his head and waved him off, he shrugged and smiled, an easygoing grin on his face as he sauntered over to his locker instead. That was what Dash liked about Kwan. He didn’t make it weird by trying to talk about his feelings or whatever.

Since he’d had a head start while Dash wasted time on his phone, he was done well before Dash, who shooed him away and went through the routine of changing and showering himself. It wasn’t the first time he’d been left to lock up, so it wasn’t like he didn’t know what he was doing. The locker room was admittedly kinda creepy when it was dark and empty, but Dash easily countered that by picturing what he’d do if that ghost lady from before showed up. If she thought Phantom could give her a pounding, he’d totally crush her!

Dash was surprised when he locked the outside door to see Phantom still hovering over the field, searching for something. He was tempted to run up to him again, see if maybe he could help Phantom with whatever he was searching for, but for whatever reason he didn’t feel like it right away.

Instead, he just… watched. It wasn’t very often he got to watch people like this, see how people acted when there weren’t any popular kids or teachers around. Phantom was surprisingly focused, his expression too distant to make out, but his face didn’t waver. Amity Park was pretty lucky to have a ghost like him on patrol all the time.

His hair had a strange habit of floating up, unaffected by gravity like it was also underwater, and Dash had a weird fleeting moment of wondering if it would stay that way if he ran his hand over it, or if it would become more solid under his touch the way his weight did.

He wondered what that was like, being completely weightless. Unchained by gravity, able to fly up and see the whole city spread beneath you like ants. To walk through walls that couldn’t hold you. To disappear if you didn’t feel like talking to anyone. To fly away if you were in a weird mood. Being a ghost must be the most freeing thing in the world.

It was almost enough to make you forget the price.

Did Phantom miss being human, he wondered? Is that why he hung around humans and protected them? Or did he see himself as the Linebacker, protecting the weak little runts who couldn’t take a hit?

Which one would Dash feel, in Danny Phantom’s position?

But Phantom must have noticed that Dash was standing on the edge of the field, gawking like some kind of idiot, because he was flying over.

“You, uh, need something?” Phantom asked, hovering just a little bit out of arm’s reach.

“Nah. Do you, though?”

Phantom blinked, like he wasn’t expecting the response, then looked around them. “I was just, ah, sweeping the perimeter,” he said, that same sort of authoritative air he put on when he was in full hero mode.

“Heh, I wouldn’t worry, you showed her. She’s probably long gone by now!”

“Yeah… hopefully,” Phantom agreed, glancing over the field again.

Dash was going to blame a combination of the crash from all the earlier excitement and the weird mood he’d been in for what came next.

“Hey Phantom, why do you do this stuff?”

“Why… what?” Phantom turned back around, thrown for a loop.

“I mean… with your powers, you could do anything, right? Go wherever you want, do whatever you want,” Dash said, feeling his tongue start to trip, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re a hero, like, really glad, but… I just… why?”

Phantom stared at him for a long, long moment, his face completely unreadable. Dash couldn’t remember the last time he’d been stared down like this. It was like all his father’s lectures mixed with Paulina looking at another loser who’d dared to come up and talk to her during lunch mixed with the look Lancer gave him when neither parent showed up for the parent-teacher conferences and he had to mark them anyway.

Finally, Phantom spoke.

“Maybe you wouldn’t understand,” he said with surprising venom, and Dash didn’t even have a chance to respond before he continued, “but I do this because I’m the only one who can. Because I have these powers and I want to use them to help people. I don’t care about power for the sake of it, I want people to feel safe! If I don’t stop those ghosts, everyone else suffers for it, because no one else in the Ghost Zone or otherwise seems to care about who gets hurt, as long as they get what they want!”

Dash stared at him for a moment, then shook his head.

“No, you don’t get it! I think that’s so cool, and awesome, and selfless, and I… I wanna be a hero like you! I wish I could have ghost powers like you, so I could make a difference, be a real hero, someone who’s actually cool!”

Phantom gave him that look again, the one Dash couldn’t quite figure out, but before he could respond, a woman’s voice spoke instead, echoing around them as though it came from the whole field at once.

“So you have wished it…”

Phantom - well, if he were capable of getting any paler, he probably would have just then. He froze for a split second, going stock-still, and Dash had a single moment to wonder why that expression felt so familiar before the smoke began pouring in from all around them, and he heard Phantom shout, “NO!”

“... so shall it be.”

Chapter Text

Usually, Dash took time to wake up in the mornings. School at eight o’clock meant getting up at six-thirty, seven at the latest, and Saturday practice wasn’t much later. Usually, then, it took multiple alarms of varying frequency, his mother’s impatient knock at the door, and an enthusiastic chihuahua to drag him out of sleep and into the day.

The absence of any of that was the first sign that something wasn’t right.

The second sign that something wasn’t right was the unfamiliar room he woke up in. Dash jolted upright in a panic. Unfamiliar… and yet not, at the same time. For a moment, he just scanned the room, staring blankly at his football posters and memorabilia, the Chicago Bears helmet sitting in its case… even his plushie collection, brought out from its hiding spot in the closet and instead given a place of honor on a repurposed bookshelf.

The room itself was spacious, almost twice as big as Dash’s actual room, and the bed was in the middle rather than against the corner. The window cast a bright sunbeam to the side instead of on his face, and the digital display on the alarm clock read seven o’clock.

Dash continued to stare, even as his brain started to come online. He was… how had he gotten here? Where was here? Why was his stuff here, he wondered, and more urgently and with a stab of panic, who had seen his plushies and brought them here too? No seriously, where was here?

A sharp rap at the door brought him to earth as a vaguely familiar woman’s voice echoed through.

“Honey, it’s seven! You’ve got thirty minutes to catch the bus!”

“Uh…” Honey? Who was that? Why did her voice sound familiar? There was another knock, more insistent this time.

“Up and at ‘em, sweetie! There’s breakfast on the table, so hurry up before it gets cold!”

Breakfast. Dash’s stomach rumbled. That was right, he hadn’t eaten since the game. And that had beeOH GOD THE GAME!

He jerked upright, the memories of what had happened last night rushing back. The genie woman’s final words to Dash, just before… before he’d… fallen asleep? Was that what had happened? Had the genie brought him here? Was he in the Ghost Zone now? Worse, had he died and now was he a ghost living in the Ghost Zone and the Ghost Zone was some kind of weird purgatory that looked like his room but not and there was another ghost who thought he was her so-

“Sweetie, third knock! Tell me you’re awake and moving or I’m coming in!” the woman’s voice called, grounding Dash yet again.

“Uh, I, yeah, I’m awake!” he stammered back through the door, half wondering if she would recognize his voice as not belonging to her son, the way he knew that hers wasn’t his mother’s voice.

She didn’t, for better or worse.

“Okay, well, hurry up and get dressed! Your father made his famous Fenton flapjacks!”

What.

Fenton. Flapjacks.

‘Your’ father.

His father?

Made Fenton Flapjacks. Flapjacks but for Fentons.

With a jolt, Dash realized why the woman’s voice was so familiar. It was Maddie Fenton, the one who was always speaking at the ghost safety meetings. He’d gotten so good at tuning her out that it had taken him a minute to place it, but now he was just…

This was a prank. It had to be. Revenge for the dumpster incident yesterday. Admittedly, he wasn’t sure how Fenton had done all this in the span of a single night. Presumably he’d kidnapped him from a ghost, and this also meant he’d seen the dolls still in plain view in Dash’s room and he’d have to kill Fenton to keep him quiet, but this wasn’t the first inexplicable revenge prank he’d pulled off. Fen-turd was shockingly competent when he actually had the spine to retaliate.

Okay. Alright. This was starting to make sense, sort of, as long as he didn’t think about it too hard. He flooded himself with righteous anger at Fenton, and his stupid prank, and what the hell did he think he was doing…

Dash flung the blankets off of him, leaving the warm (unusually large) bed and ignoring the slippers by the side of it so he could storm to the door, flinging it open and shouting “FENTON!” in warning.

Maddie paused, turning around with one foot on the staircase.

“I didn’t realize you were so excited,” she said with a laugh. “I should have guessed. The game was on last night, wasn’t it? Oh, your father was gushing nonstop about it, I’m sure he’ll want to go over the whole game with you play by play.”

Dash paused. This wasn’t exactly how he’d anticipated it going. Maddie (who he’d only ever seen from a distance and wanted it to stay that way) seemed to be… playing along. Maybe Fenton (Danny Fenton, that was) had somehow gotten her in on the joke? The only indication she was pranking him was how unnecessarily thick she seemed to be laying it on, all but cooing at him with that dumb maternal smile on her face like she was an actress on TV or something.

She cocked her head at Dash, who was still frozen.

“Is everything all right?”

“Where’s Danny?” he asked. Demanded, really.

“Danny?” Maddie echoed.

“Yeah. Your son?” He pressed, annoyed. Maddie just looked confused.

“Honey, are you… still half asleep?” she said, bemused, but stepped back up the stairs to come up to Dash, who had to fight his instinct to back away from her. She stripped a glove off of one hand, pressing it to his forehead in a practiced motion. Some distant part of him wondered just how often she wore a hazmat suit as part of her morning routine, and if that ever got inconvenient. “No fever,” she said to herself, taking the hand back as Dash stared at her like an idiot.

“I’m not sick,” he said. “Seriously, though, where’s Danny?”

“Honey…” Maddie let out a huff-laugh, like she wasn’t sure if he was being serious or not. “We don’t have another son. Just you.”

She believed it. That was the thing. That was what confused and scared him the most. He wasn’t sure why or how or what Danny Fenton had done, but Maddie Fenton was completely and utterly convinced that she had two kids, and one of them was Dash.

He’d followed her down the stairs in a numb sort of haze, coming to himself as he stared at Jack Fenton. Jack Fenton grinned back, also in a hazmat suit, though he’d thrown an apron over it in what seemed to be some attempt to bend to the reality of existing in a kitchen.

“Dash, my boy!” he said, pulling up his spatula arm from the stove to wave. A Fenton Flapjack went flying and stuck itself to the ceiling along with it. He didn’t seem to notice. “Did’ya see the game last night? Man, those Packers sure could pack that ball! And the Bears, well son, I wasn’t sure what to say when they scored that hat trick and did a free pass, but if the umpire didn’t penalize them for traveling, why should we? Haha! Why, you and your old man should sit down after school and you can teach him a thing or two about how to play striker when your opponent is on left field.”

Before Dash could even begin to process that, there was a shuffling from the door Dash had come through, and he turned around to see Jazz Fenton like he’d never seen her before. At school, in club meetings, and even when she took him home to tutor him, she’d always been put together, polished, exactly the kind of girl you’d expect as valedictorian.

He wasn’t quite ready for how she looked half asleep, hair mussed and half hanging in her face, in nothing but a worn out Ember T-shirt and Yale sweatpants. It wasn’t like Dash was the kind of guy who thought women needed to be dolled up all the time, that wasn’t really him, and besides that, Jazz was definitely not the kind of girl who needed makeup to be pretty. But still, there was something about seeing her with the mask down that left him kind of tongue-tied.

She glanced at him, rubbing one eye with a mumbled “G’mornin’” before sitting down at the table.

“Jazz, hey! I was just telling Dashie-boy about the big game last night!” Jack said, still oblivious to the flapjack hanging off the ceiling above him like the pancake of Damocles. He’d already replaced it with more batter and laid a plate down in the center of the table. It was a massive stack, already ready to go with butter and syrup on the table next to it.

“I could hear,” Jazz said, giving Dash a commiserating eye roll, but then paused when he just kept staring at her. “Erm, everything okay, little brother?”

Before Dash could even think of a reply to one of the hottest girls he knew calling him little brother, Maddie stepped in.

“He’s had a bad sleep, I think. Earlier this morning, he was convinced he had a brother named Danny!”

That wasn’t at all what he was convinced of, but Jazz was giving him a thoughtful look over the pancakes she’d shoveled onto her own plate (were they supposed to serve themselves?).

“Ah, wanting a little brother, huh?” Jack said with a laugh. “I know you just want someone to take under your wing and show them how to make a free pass. Still…” he paused and made meaningful eye contact with Maddie by the fridge, punctuating it with an absolutely motifying eyebrow wiggle.

The only saving grace here was that both Jasmine and Dash’s disgusted groans drowned out whatever response Maddie gave.

“Still… a dream so vivid you were convinced of it even after waking?” Jazz pressed, looking at Dash with a frown. She seemed more alert now. “I know that can happen if you slip into a very deep sleep, or have trouble processing reality as it appears to you… have you been experiencing any out of body symptoms or disassociation?”

“Diss-wha?” Dash said, as Maddie came over and forked at least three pancakes onto his plate for him. She even set a bottle of honey on the table beside him without being prompted, and okay, how the hell did Fenton know how he liked to take his flapjacks?

“Disassociation. It’s a state of disconnection or detachment from one's state of self or surroundings.”

“Oh, uh… I… I guess… maybe I…” Dash wasn’t sure what to say to that. He felt like he’d stepped into some bizarro world, an alternate universe where the Fentons were his parents and they’d all been controlled by magic -

- Wait. Magic. The genie ghost.

No. No way. No freaking way.

Dash swallowed hard around the lump of pancake in his throat.

“I gotta get dressed for school,” he said, standing abruptly.

Jazz frowned at him, the perfect picture of polite concern, and started, “We don’t have to discuss anything that makes you uncomfortable, Dash, but if you’re experiencing trouble, know that I’m always here to…”

He didn’t hear the rest of her sentence between the sudden distance and the ringing in his ears as he beat a hasty retreat back up to Danny’s (his?) room. He shut the door, hard, and leaned his weight on it. His breaths came fast and hard. His eyes scanned over the room again, the strange mix of old and new, familiar and unfamiliar. Finally, they settled on the computer in the corner. He’d never been in Fenton’s room before, had no idea what kind of password Fenton would put on his own computer. But… if it was really his…

Dash slowly sat in the chair, wiggling the mouse to wake it up from screensaver mode. The password screen stared back at him, same profile picture he was used to and everything. He typed his usual password in, and when it opened to his desktop, Dash slumped over the desk.

Okay. Okay. Either Fenton was also clever enough to make his password ‘Password’, or this was outside his capabilities as a prankster. He sucked in another deep breath, and started going through the pictures saved on his computer. There was… him. Him and the geek, at various ages and in different styles of clothes. Him and the goth, clearly more recent but nonetheless him. Him smiling with the Fentons in front of some dorky looking waterfall, him awkwardly sitting on Santa’s lap while what looked like Maddie Fenton was yelling at some poor elf in the background. Him standing with the Fentons and a man in a dark suit he didn’t recognize, the man’s arm draped around Maddie while Dash gave him a cold look.

An entire family album’s worth of content. And he was in it all. He scooted back so he could lean on his knees, thinking. Okay. Alright. So… what had happened? Last he remembered, the genie ghost had been there, Phantom had won, but she’d come back, and… something. Had it been something he said…?

“I wanna be a hero like you! I wish I could have ghost powers like you, so I could make a difference, be a real hero, someone who’s actually cool!”

Aw, heck. He’d said the cursed word, hadn’t he? They should put a ban on that word on school grounds, like they did with ‘twat’, ‘fuck’, ‘bitch’, ‘shit’, and ‘union’. Then they wouldn’t be in this mess.

Except… that didn’t make any sense. If he remembered it right, he’d wished to have ghost powers and be a hero like Phantom. So what did sticking him in Fenturd’s life have to do with it? What, were popular kids from normal families just not allowed to be heroes?

There was another knock at his door, and Jazz’s voice sounded out from the hallway.

“Dash, are you in there? We can still talk about your feelings if you need to.”

Aw, hell.

“Don’t come in, I’m not decent!” he shouted through the door, quickly stripping out of his pajamas and into his regular school clothes. Thankfully, even though his closet was different than he was used to, it was organized more or less the same. Although, why his letterman jacket was in a crumpled heap at the back when he was usually so careful to hang it up was beyond him.

When he swung the door open, Jazz was still there, although whatever she’d been about to say was stopped by taking a good look at him.

“Oh, you’re… you’re gonna wear that?” she asked.

“Huh?” He glanced down at himself. The jeans weren’t torn, the shirt smelled okay, and he had clean undies on. “Yeah.”

“Oh, well, I… I’m proud of you, for what it’s worth. I just want you to know that we’re here for you, all of us, and if you need -”

“Thanks so much but I gotta catch the school bus-!” Dash cut her off, squeezing around her.

“I can give you a ride to school if you need -”

“No thanks!” He all but tore down the stairs, taking them two at a time as he grabbed his backpack and swung it over his shoulder. “Byeguysseeyoulater!”

Maddie turned around, frowning. “Is it just me, or did Dash seem a little scattered this morning?”

Jack shrugged. “Probably just mood swings. You know how teenagers are.”

A flapjack fell off the ceiling and landed on his face with a splat.

Chapter Text

The school bus was as loud and crowded as Dash remembered. This was why he’d started taking rides from Kwan and Paulina as soon as both of them turned old enough to get their learner’s permits. He’d much rather have gotten a ride from one of them, but between Maddie’s earlier comment about the bus and the fact that he wasn’t sure if his phone’s contacts would still work in this bizarro world, he decided it was better not to chance it. The only phone numbers he had memorized were his own and his parents', which… no. Even if they somehow believed him, he couldn’t for a second imagine they’d be able to help him with something like this.

And if it seemed like the whispers and giggling seemed a little louder than he was used to, he didn’t pay it any mind. He had bigger things on his plate.

Dash had had the fortune of being the only one in his aisle, giving him the window seat and letting him stare blankly out the window. That lasted until the bus stopped by a different block, and several other students were let on. It seemed the universe was convinced to not let him have his breakdown in peace, dammit.

“Morning!” The geek from Fenton’s gang caught the side of the chair in front of them and swung his weight around, landing with a thump on the seat next to Dash. Tucker Foley, if Dash remembered right. He planned on asking to know what the hell he thought he was doing, but Foley continued without pausing. “Man, the game last night was pretty embarrassing, huh? Good thing I had already accounted for their running back having that sprain three weeks ago - that stuff lasts, y’know?”

He pulled a PDA out of his backpack (was that thing glued to him or something?) and shoved it in Dash’s face. “Looks like my fantasy football team is doing better than yours.”

Dash scoffed. “Do they call it fantasy football because you winning is a fantasy?”

“Nah, that’s the cheerleaders.” Tucker said with a wiggle of his eyebrow. Dash barked out a laugh in surprise.

“Yeah, okay, you got me there,” he said with a grin. “Fantasy cheerleading would be a heck of a league on its own.”

“Could always make our own.”

“Dibs on Jenni Croft.”

“Oh - hey, no fair!”

Dash grinned, momentarily forgetting himself. At bare minimum, Foley had good taste.

One of the students seated in front of them suddenly turned around, on their knees to peer over the high backed seat at the two of them.

“So, like… did you change your mind or something? Or are you trying to fake liking girls?”

“What?” Dash asked, thrown for a loop, but Foley suddenly glared, good mood evaporating.

“Hey, man, we’re having a private conversation here!”

“Okay, okay, geez… just wondering.” The kid turned back around and rejoined his own conversation. Dash looked at Foley, confused.

“What was that all about?”

“Just ignore them, man,” Foley said in a reassuring tone. Dash finally just shrugged. He had enough to process as it was, he wasn’t going to let some no-name unpopular kid bother him with whatever was going around.

One (blessedly short) bus ride later, Dash and Foley got off the bus at school, beelining for their lockers… or at least, trying to. A simple “hey man, where you going?” from Tucker reminded him that oh, right, technically speaking he wasn’t in the same place as before. If his last name was Fenton (and didn’t that thought make him shudder), then he’d have been assigned a locker in a different spot, near Foley.

This came with a problem. He stared blankly at the school-issued lock, willing it to open by magic. Tucker glanced over at him.

“Forget your combination again?”

“Uh… yeah.”

Tucker glanced left and right furtively, then leaned in and asked, “Well, why don’t you just reach inside? No one’s looking.”

Dash stared back at him. “It’s locked.”

Foley returned his bemused stare.

The first bell rang, signaling them all to go to their classes.

At the very least, Dash could be grateful that even in a strange alternate universe where he was friends with losers (Manson kept trying to pass him notes in class, which he studiously ignored, pretending to be super focused on the lecture), at least Mr. Lancer’s dull, droning voice was exactly the same as he remembered it.

Although the fact that he had no homework to turn in was… a bit of a bummer. Dash knew that he had his homework done (well, okay, he’d had an extension due to being busy with the football team, but that was basically the same thing), but apparently this alternate universe version of himself couldn’t be bothered to get off his lazy ass and do his homework on time. The disapproving cluck of Lancer’s tongue told him this likely wasn’t the first time, either.

They had Lancer for the first half of the day, then P.E. with Ms. Tetslaff after lunch, and study hall after that. He knew this because Foley complained about it to him, something about ‘waste of a perfectly good co-ed program’ and asked him something about meeting up to talk in study hall, which Dash gave a neutral answer to.

He was able to give him and Manson the slip without too much trouble. Sure, Foley was maybe not the worst, especially in this universe, but like hell he was gonna be sitting with them at lunch. He needed to find Kwan and Paulina, neither of which had been in Dash’s morning classes.

He didn’t find Kwan and Paulina. He only passed by Jazz, whose attempts to flag him down were cut off by the class bell. At least he could be glad that the Freshman lunch was different from the upperclassmen lunch, so he didn’t need to worry about giving her the slip then. He still hadn’t figured out exactly how he was gonna deal with her thinking he was her brother, and wanting him to tell her about his feelings… best to avoid her as long as possible. It worked whenever his teachers started to pry.

Dash couldn’t actually remember a day feeling this long before. It had felt like ages before the lunch bell finally rang, and he was out of his seat in an instant. It wasn’t hard to find the A-listers’ table - Paulina’s gorgeous hair always stood out in a crowd, to say nothing of the sea of letterman jackets. At last, his people. Dash walked up, tray in hand.

“Hey,” he started, a grin on his face, but it froze and faded quickly. They were all giving him variations of the same cold look they usually reserved for losers who were arrogant enough to think they belonged at their table.

Dash glanced behind himself to see if there was someone there, but no. They were looking at him.

“Fenton?” Kwan asked. “What are you doing here?”

Dash frowned.

“What do you mean, ‘what am I doing here’? I’m getting ready to eat my food. Or whatever you’re legally allowed to call this stuff,” he said, looking with disgust at his plate.

“Um, not to be rude or anything,” Starr said rudely, “but you kind of don’t belong with us.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“She means get lost, Fentissa,” came a voice from behind him. He turned and gawked openly.

There was a student standing there that he didn’t recognize, which was in and of itself a shock because he was positive just by looking at her that she had to be an A-lister. She was gorgeous enough to give Paulina a run for her money, dark hair drawn back in a ponytail with a few bangs left to artfully curl around her face, baby blue eyes, and a delicate frame. She’d be a lot prettier, of course, if she wasn’t sneering at him - he wasn’t into that. Not on the first meeting, at least.

“Dani!” Kwan said, perking up like a puppy. “Over here!”

“No, over here, Dani!” Paulina called, squishing up against Starr and shoving her almost off the bench to make room.

The person that they were calling ‘Danny’ was unmistakably a girl. She was looking at him with the same look that Paulina liked to grace Fen-turd with - that ‘ew, I found scum on the bottom of my shoe’ face, nose wrinkled and one moment away from a scoffing laugh.

No way. There was absolutely no way that this was -

"At a loss for words, Fenton?" she said. The caustic tone and ensuing eye roll was so Danny Fenton that it threw Dash even further for a loop coming out of a hot girl's mouth. "Figures. That's not exactly a new one."

Dash was almost as confused as his dick was.

"You're - you're supposed to be a boy," Dash said, a limp finger pointing at Danny (Dani?). She raised an eyebrow.

"Ooookay," she said. "That is a new one."

"Like, Dani, just ignore him," Starr said. "He's probably just being gay in some new, yuckier way."

"I'm not gay!" Dash protested. It was ridiculous, after all - there was absolutely nothing gay about thinking a girl was hot that reminded you of a boy you know.

“Right, of course, how silly of me,” not-Danny said, examining her nails for chipping, “I guess you’re just off the team for being a terrible player, then.” She smiled sweetly, and it was like poisoned chocolate. “Not much of an improvement, but I guess you’ll take what you can get.”

The table erupted into laughter, and Dash felt a cold stone settle in the pit of his stomach. Sure, Fenton had always had a few biting remarks up his sleeve. It was what made picking on him so fun. But now, the shoe was on the other foot, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

It wasn’t as funny when they were laughing at him.

Dani tossed her hair back, artfully tussling her bangs as she gave him a blatant up and down, and he had the strangest feeling of being scanned, like she was ruffling through a book of his biggest insecurities.

“Decided to put back on the jacket, too, huh? Couldn’t live without it.” She shrugged. “Hey, look on the bright side! It’ll look great with your gas station uniform in five years.”

Again, the table erupted into laughter, Dale having made the misfortune of taking a drink of his milk. The noise was drawing attention from the other tables. Dash swallowed hard. He wanted to tell her off, he wanted to walk away, he wanted to do something other than just stand there and listen to freaking Fenton tear him a new one, but his throat felt strangely tight. Hysterically, he wondered in the back of his head if punching Dani counted as hitting a girl if he (she?) wasn’t supposed to be a girl at all.

But Dani looked to be getting bored of this game. She sat down next to Paulina with practiced grace, resting her chin on the back of her hands.

“Kwan?” she asked. “Don’t you think it’s time to take out the trash?”

Kwan froze, a bite halfway to his mouth. He took the bite anyway, taking longer than normal to chew.

“Hey, come on, he’s not exactly hurting anyone…” he started, halfheartedly.

Dani fluttered her eyes at him. “But it would please me,” she added in a singsong voice.

Kwan sighed. And stood up.

“Sorry, Dash,” he said, taking a step forward -

“Hey, I have a fucking idea!" A new girl’s voice cut across the noise, and Sam Manson shoved her way between him and Kwan to stand protectively in front of him. Foley joined her, crossing his arms and scowling. "How about you bigots pick on someone your own size!”

“Oh, great, just what I need,” Dani sighed. “The rest of the loser patrol. Don’t you people have some kind of freak convention to attend?”

“And don’t you have some college exams you should be studying for?” Sam asked, then scoffed. “Oh, who am I kidding. They don’t make college for airheads.”

"Hey," Kwan protested. "She's a solid C student!"

"Shut up, Kwan," Dani said, without even missing a beat. Her condescending smirk was still in place. "Nice one, Manson. You know he still won’t date you, right?”

Sam flushed bright red, even as her face exploded into shock and fury.

“You little bi-”

“At least she could actually get a date with a bi guy, you’re just bitter you couldn’t get a date with a girl even if you wanted one!” Tucker snapped back, and Dani’s mouth dropped open, matching Sam’s expression.

“You absolute sh-”

“Pride and Prejudice, people, what is going on here?”

Dash had never been more grateful to see Mr. Lancer in his entire life. Dani didn’t hesitate, pointing her perfectly manicured finger straight at Dash and the others.

“He came up to our table and started bothering us, and when we asked him nicely to leave, he wouldn’t!”

Sam pointed right back, unflinchingly. “These as- jerks were bullying a student for coming out! That’s completely against school code!”

“I’m not gay,” Dash mumbled from behind her, and was summarily ignored. Lancer scanned across both groups, his expression tight.

“Alright. Manson, Foley, Fenton, Baxter, you all come with me.” Turning on his heel, he began to lead them out of the cafeteria, which was finally beginning to go back to its business with an air of disappointment that a fight hadn’t actually broken out and given them something exciting to watch.

“Mr. Lancer,” Sam started, “Dani was the one who -”

“- single-handedly led the cheer squad to state finals, and is therefore above scorn,” Lancer interrupted. “You three, however, have a lot of explaining to do. While of course Casper High is considered a safe space for LGBT students, you must understand that this is not a bludgeon for you to use however you like…”

Dash drifted back, hissing to Sam and Tucker.

“Will someone tell them I’m not gay?”

“We know you’re not gay, you’re bisexual.” Sam hissed back. “We’ve been over this before.”

“What? That’s ridiculous!” Dash sputtered. “I’ve had sex way more than twice!”

“You don’t gotta rub it in, man,” Tucker grumbled.

Dash groaned.

Lancer stopped outside the faculty office, pointing to the chairs outside the door in the hall.

“You’ll all wait here while I interview each of you one by one to get your story,” he ordered. “Miss Baxter, you first.”

Even with the ‘Miss’ qualifier, Dash instinctively perked up, intending to follow before he remembered where he was and what was happening. From the sneer on Dani’s face, she hadn’t missed it either. As the door closed behind the two of them, Dash groaned and sank into the nearest chair.

After a few moments of silence, he turned to the others sitting there.

“Um… thanks. For, you know. Standing up for me.” The words felt awkward on his tongue.

“Would’ve been a lot easier if you hadn’t been avoiding us, dude.” Tucker said dryly.

“I mean… yeah,” Dash said, confused, “but… if you knew I was avoiding you, then why’d you…?”

Sam punched him lightly on the shoulder.

“‘Cuz we’re friends, man. That’s what friends do for each other.”

Dash swallowed, unsure how to respond in a way that would seem ‘in character’ for the person they clearly thought he was.

He’d have been happy to let the moment sit, then, that strange warmth flooding through him as he sat with his two so-called loser friends in the hall, but suddenly the atmosphere shifted around them. Dash shuddered, a chill running down his spine as if someone had dropped an ice cube down his jacket. He let out a gasp, a wisp of fog escaping his mouth and curling upwards into the air.

What…?

Sam and Tucker glanced at him, suddenly serious.

“What is it, man? Ghost nearby?” Tucker asked.

“Huh? I dunno?” Dash said.

“Do you guys hear that?” Sam asked.

Echoing down the hall, there was the sound of… a motor? Dash stood, squinting down the hall as he tried to get a view of what was making the sound.

… And promptly hit the deck, as some incorporeal jackass on a motorcycle drove right by them, fast enough and close enough that he felt the wind tug at his jacket. Dash shot his head up just in time to see him drive right through a wall.

“That’s - a ghost!!”

“Dash!” Sam said, tugging him back to the seats and watching where the guy had went. “We’ve gotta stop him, before he gets someone hurt!”

“We?” Dash echoed disbelievingly, and Tucker scoffed.

“Sorry, dude. You’re not blowing us off that easily. We’re coming with you, like it or not.”

Before Dash had time to ask where exactly they planned to go ‘with him’, Sam was already tugging them both by the arm.

“I’ve got a spare thermos in my locker!”

“Oh, that’s good,” Dash said faintly. “I didn’t get a chance to eat.”

As they turned the corner, the door to the faculty office started to open.

“Alright, next up - Gone with the Wind!” Lancer cried, crumpling a piece of paper in his hands as he stood over three newly empty chairs.

Meanwhile, back at Sam’s locker, she tugged the strangest thermos Dash had ever seen out from behind a stack of books, giving it a shake and pushing a button on the side. It started to glow.

“Okay, safety’s off.” She glanced at Dash. “... Why aren’t you going ghost?”

Dash stared back at her.

“Going ghost?” This day was long and tiring and confusing and he wanted it to be done already.

The instant he said it, though, he felt it deep inside of him. An instinctual tug, a cold sensation not unlike the chill up his spine from before, but localized. The cold split in two, starting at his abdomen and working its way up and down his body, spreading out to the tips of his limbs and the top of his head, and he suddenly felt a strange sensation of weightlessness, like jumping into a cold pool on a hot day.

He opened his eyes, strangely adjusted to the odd atmosphere that always seemed to crop up in the presence of ghosts - he could see everything in the hallway clear as day. So, when he caught his reflection in Sam’s mirror on the inside of her locker door, he saw himself clearly.

And started screaming.

Chapter Text

Sam didn’t even get a chance to react to Dash's outburst before the motorcycle jackass made another pass, tearing through the hallways and coming to a screeching, sliding stop in front of the two of them. He leaned over the bars and smirked.

“What’s wrong, kid?” he taunted Dash openly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

Dash grit his teeth. Screw this guy, screw his stupid motorcycle, screw this stupid wish, screw his life.

“You’re gonna regret picking a fight here, pal!” he snapped back. “I’ve been having the worst day ever, and now I’ve finally got something familiar…” he slammed his fist into his open palm. “A punk I can whale on!”

“And they told me to send him to therapy,” Tucker snarked behind him, voice proud.

“Johnny, what the hell are you doing here in the school?” Sam snapped, behind him. “This is against the deal!”

“What deal?” The ghost - Johnny, apparently - shot back, leaning his front half even further on the handlebars in a way that looked uncomfortable, but also somehow casual at the same time. “Last I checked, deal’s off.”

“Did you seriously come all this way to -”

Dash was done listening to other people around him have conversations he half followed while he struggled to keep just a few steps behind. There was a target in front of him, he could apparently turn into Phantom at will (was he Dash Phantom?), and he had the power it took to take this guy down. He threw himself bodily at the guy, still adjusting to the strange weightless sensation of flying as a ghost.

“Whoa!” Johnny ducked and sent a kick out to Dash’s legs to get some distance before revving up his motorcycle and turning, kicking it into gear as he roared down the hallway. Dash followed, hot on his heels, doing his best to keep up with the motorcycle (was the motorcycle a ghost too, or was it just a regular motorcycle that he happened to own? Was it a part of him? If Tucker died while holding his PDA, would his ghost -)

He shut down that line of thought. It wasn’t helping him keep up with Johnny. Instead, he focused on doubling his speed, pouring it all into advancing on the bike.

“Not bad, kid!” Johnny called behind him, “but can you keep up when we shift into high gear?”

As the motorcycle gave an answering roar, Dash realized it was now or never to grab hold of it. He dove for it -

- and slammed headfirst into the wall, which Johnny sailed right on through. Dash groaned, slowly picking himself off. The good news was, however ghost anatomy worked, he didn’t seem to have any broken bones. Possibly because he didn’t have any bones, period. Ghosts were weird.

Gritting his teeth, he tried to focus. He’d seen Phantom and other ghosts do this dozens of times. It couldn’t be that hard. Pressing his palms up against the beige painted brick he’d just crashed into, he tried to imagine sliding through it the way Johnny just had. For a second, it seemed like it was just as solid as ever, but then, suddenly, it gave way. Or rather, he gave way, his arms turning transparent as he pushed his way through the solid layers of brick and mortar as if striding through a waterfall. There was just a brief moment of blackness and he was on the other side, his head and torso sticking out of the second floor of the school. He let out a triumphant laugh, taking in the brand new view.

With a rumble of the motor, he remembered what he was out here for. Johnny had circled back to see him, hovering well out of reach and holy shit his motorcycle could FLY. Dash felt a stab of jealousy that seemed wildly misplaced coming from a guy who could also apparently fly.

“Have trouble there, pal?” Johnny said, still smirking at him. It felt strangely friendly, like the way Kwan and Dale used to give him crap about being terrible at the footwork exercises during practice. It pissed him off more, coming from a guy he was totally gonna pound the second he got his hands on him.

“I’d start driving if I were you!” Dash said, starting towards him -

- and just as suddenly being yanked back as if by an invisible tether. What the heck?

He glanced down. His foot was still in the wall behind him. Annoyed, he gave it another tug, but whatever zen crap he’d used to go intangible had apparently worn off, because it was stuck firm in the wall behind him. Johnny let out a laugh.

“Yeah, I think I’m good,” he said, making an exaggerated show of kicking back on his bike, reclining against the back seat. “Today’s really not your day, huh, pal? Why don’t you relax, take it slow, enjoy the sights… no shortage of cute guys and gals at this school, huh?”

The reminder made Dash clench his teeth even tighter. With a sharp yank, he finally tugged his ankle free of the wall and launched himself at Johnny, fist drawn back for a punch and a furious yell. Johnny’s eyes widened in shock, but something retaliated, a black curtain of spectral material that flung itself in front of Johnny to take the hit, backhanding Dash towards the earth below.

Unused to flying as he was, it sent him farther than it probably would have sent Phantom. He landed with a solid WUMF onto something soft and squelchy, a rank smell assaulting his nose. He fought the urge to gag violently. Against all odds, the little freak had somehow managed to land him right in the strangely open dumpster outside the school.

The expired meat definitely didn’t smell much better after a solid day of sitting in a metal box in the sun.

With a growl, Dash forced himself upright and back into the air, flying towards the ghost(s, plural?) who was (were?) surprisingly still there.

“Yeesh, you weren’t kidding about a bad day,” Johnny said mildly, before turning his bike back around. “I’ll, uh, leave you to it, then.”

“Oh no you don’t!” Dash snarled, and the same rage built up in his fists, the desire to grab this guy by his stupid fancy leather jacket and punch him his in stupid smug face. And then that rage coalesced, shimmering into life with energy that glowed green on his fists. Dash had seen this one before.

He flung his fist out the same as if he’d thrown a punch, and the energy shot from his fist, sailing across the short gap beneath them as it smacked Johnny hard in the back. “Ah, hey, watch it, dude!”

So anyway, Dash started blasting.

Now this, this he could get used to. Chasing the punk down, past school grounds and city streets, through the neighborhood and around familiar buildings, cornering him in the junkyard by the weird old Axiom research facility.

Dash let out a genuine laugh, finally feeling a little like his old self. It wasn’t that different from chasing down nerds, once he’d figured out how to use his powers. Being a ghost was awesome! Now he could chase losers in three dimensions, and punch them from a distance!

With a solid slam, Johnny hit a pile of junk, which toppled over on top of him. Finally separated from his annoying shadow-thing and his too-fast bike. Dash planted a foot on the pile on top of Johnny, keeping him squarely in place.

“Bad luck for you, huh?” Dash said smugly. Johnny gave him a sheepish look.

“Call it even?”

“Mm, nah. I don’t do even. I do revenge.” Dash punctuated it with a mean smile. For a guy in real danger to his wellbeing, Johnny seemed… remarkably unfazed?

“Whatever, man. Just hurry up and use the stupid thermos already.”

“Thermos?” Dash’s face suddenly dropped. That weird thing Sam - er, Manson had been going on about?

“... You forgot the thermos, didn’t you.”

They stared at each other in silence for a beat, then Johnny’s face twisted in a mixture of sympathy and dark amusement.

“Man, this really isn’t your day, huh?”

Dash scoffed. “You don’t know the half of it,” he grumbled, the victorious energy and anger from before ebbing away. Now, he just felt… tired.

Johnny’s face twisted further into something uncomfortable.

“Do you want to, like… talk about it?” he said reluctantly, as if the words physically pained him. Dash glanced at him in surprise.

“I… dude, I literally just whaled on you. If I had the thermos you’d be… uh, something.”

Johnny shrugged, a gesture Dash could only really see by the way the junk around him shifted up and then settled.

“Yeah, but I also showed up at your school to mess with you. Figure that makes us even, probably.”

Dash was at a loss for words, then, because while the act of whaling on a punk was very familiar, he was pretty sure he’d have no idea what he’d do if midway through stuffing Fenton in a locker he suddenly stopped to ask Dash about his feelings.

He was saved from having to think about this further, though, as the rumble of junk and debris cut them both off and saved them from this awkward conversation.

Dash got into a ready stance, prepared to tackle down whatever was coming their way - and by the sounds of it, it was big, heavy footsteps lumbering towards them as the same strange shiver ran down his spine and out his breath. It was another ghost. Dash spared a moment to wonder when the last time was that he’d picked on someone bigger than him and how that would change his approach, before the ghost turned the corner and Dash got a good look at it.

And cooed.

“Awwwww, look at you, buddy!!” Dash said, dropping out of his stance immediately. The ghost, a dog the size of a small bus, immediately went from a guarded growl to breaking out into a puppy smile, his mouth dropping open to pant as his tail started to wag back and forth. It whipped dangerously against a broken down washing machine in the pile of junk and made a loud clanging, but Dash paid it no mind, using his flight to soar up to the dog’s face. He let it sniff his hand politely before moving it back to scratch his ear, a feat which required his whole hand but rewarded him with the dog immediately closing his eyes and headbutting himself into Dash’s body, chasing the good scritchies.

“Hey, Cujo,” Johnny sighed, phasing out of the junk and patting some dust off his jacket.

“Cujo,” Dash chuckled, “the ghost dog. Oh, that’s rich.”

“Uh, yeah, you named him,” Johnny scoffed. Dash took a moment to take that in.

“... He’s my dog, huh?” he said, trying to phrase it as both a statement and a question.

“Yeah, man.” Johnny shrugged. “Figure if he had an owner in the Ghost Zone, you would have heard about it by now.”

“Dash! Johnny!” Sam and Tucker came running into the junkyard, then, the latter gasping for air.

“Finally… hah… found you… hah… I should charge you for making me… hah… do this much exercise,” Tucker managed to complain in between breaths.

“You came and found me?” Dash asked, stupefied.

“Sure,” Sam said, “Like we said earlier, you’re not doing this alone. Although…” she trailed off, looking at the thermos in her hand and Johnny standing innocently behind Dash and Cujo, then shrugged. “Well, whatever. Better to have it on hand.”

A warmth settled over him, somewhere in his abdomen, and briefly he was afraid he was getting gross gushy feelings or whatever. Instead, as it swept up and down him, he felt… normal again. He glanced at his hands. Huh, no more gloves. He took a fleeting moment to wonder what the deal was with the uniform, but was interrupted by the unsettling extra-cold feeling of a ghost dog nose pressing into him.

Cujo nosed at Dash, seemingly curious about his pocket. Confused, he stuck his hand on the inside… and winced. “Ugh…” he mumbled pulling out what would have looked like a beef patty, if it weren’t for the strange multiple colors. He glanced over at Cujo, then, who’d obediently sat on his haunches, giving Dash a pleading look.

Briefly, he considered it, then shrugged. “Lay,” he ordered the massive dog, putting his palm flat and lowering it down. If it was his dog, then surely he’d trained it on his hand signals. Sure enough, Cujo immediately dropped into a laying position. Testing, he flipped his hand over, twirling it a little as he did so, and the dog immediately rolled over, bonking into Johnny, who let out a protest and was ignored.

“Good boy,” he cooed at Cujo, tossing him the rotten meat, and he scarfed it up in a single bite. Then, in thanks, the dog squirmed into his space, giving him a lick with his massive tongue and covering Dash from the front of his shirt to the side of his face in ectoplasm. Dash let out a sharp, surprised laugh. “H-hey, watch the jacket, haha!”

Sam wrinkled her nose at the display.

“Uh, I’m all for the touching story of a boy and his ghost dog, but that’s… a little much.”

“You’re telling me,” Tucker said, “I’m gonna be smelling ham and jerky on him for months!”

“I didn’t even know he had Cujo trained,” Sam said. Tucker crossed his arms.

“Yeah, man, didn’t it cause a lot of trouble for you a while back?”

“Man, seriously, you didn’t know?” Johnny said, stepping a little bit to the side to be out of range of the dog’s tail, which was now whipping back and forth at a concerning speed and catching the occasional junk pile. He ducked as a washing machine was flung over his head and out of sight, followed by a crash. “He’s had Cujo for ages now. He loved that dog more than me, even when we were dating.”

“Even when we were wh-” Dash started, losing his balance with a yelp and being knocked to ground by Cujo’s enthusiastic form of love. “Wh- ha- hey, Cujo, no, down -”

“Oh yeah, speaking of, how is Kitty, actually?” Tucker wondered.

Johnny scoffed and kicked a can to the side, hands in his pockets.

“She’s in one her moods, you know. Funny enough, she’s pissed at me and Dash, too, for being each other’s guy-awakening. Says ever since then I’ve ‘doubled the number of people I’m ogling while she’s right there’.” He put the last part in finger quotes, let out a ‘tch’ sound, and shrugged. “Whatever, man, she was cramping my style, anyway.”

“So what you’re saying is, she’s single now?” Tucker asked, and Johnny rounded on him with a glare.

“Don’t even think about it, punk. Even when she’s not my girl, she’s still my girl, ya dig?”

“Why do I get the feeling you two don’t have the most stable relationship?” Sam muttered, doing nothing to actually save Tucker from the consequences of his own actions.

Dash, finally untangling himself from the ball of fur, brushed himself off with a laugh. “So, uh… you guys… don’t think it’s weird?” He asked the two humans present.

“Dating a ghost?” Sam asked.

“Dating a dude?” Tucker asked.

“... Yeah,” Dash said, already regretting having asked.

The two shrugged in unison.

“I’m more judging you for your taste, if anything,” Sam said, casting a critical eye over at Johnny. “Seriously, the roadie look is so Eighties. Leather jacket and trenchcoat combo? Pick one.”

“Hey man, I’m right here,” Johnny complained.

“Yeah, but he’s got a motorcycle that flies,” Dash said, before he’d even thought about it. He winced, but Sam just laughed and shrugged, as if to say ‘point taken’.

“Sooooo…” Tucker began, drawing the word out. “Since we probably aren’t getting back to school before the final bell anyway… wanna crash Dash’s house and raid their fridge for snacks?”

“Seriously, dude, can’t you get your own snacks?” Dash groused.

“No way, man, your parents buy you Captain Crunch! My parents won’t buy me any sugar cereal, they say it’s not a ‘healthy breakfast’ or whatever,” Tucker complained.

“Man, that’s so not my problem,” he said, but he was already starting to relax. Bantering with Tucker and Sam was easy, natural. They took his teasing in stride, and even dished it out from time to time, but beneath it all there was this weird comradery, the idea that even during a ghost attack they were still behind him. It was like his best moments with Kwan, except…

Different, somehow.

Johnny leaned up and stretched.

“Alright, well, I think I’ve caused enough chaos for now,” he said mildly. Sam wiggled the thermos at him and he put his hands up in mock surrender. “...or for the next couple days!”

Another threatening shake.

“... A week?”

“We’ll take it,” Sam and Tucker sighed in unison.

Chapter Text

Dash hadn’t thought about it at the time, but it was actually pretty good that Sam and Tucker had decided to walk home with him, because he’d taken the bus to school and it wasn’t until they were already walking that he realized he didn’t actually know the way back to Fentonworks on his own. Following the other two’s subtle cues and strategically falling a few paces behind at any turns, he let them guide him, at least until he could see the giant… thing sticking out of the building’s skyline. That couldn’t possibly be up to code.

He didn’t have any keys in either his backpack or his pockets, but that didn’t matter, since the front door had been left unlocked. Evidently, they weren’t too worried about security… that, or there was some hidden security in place that he really, really didn’t want to know about.

The front room, getting a better look at it now that he wasn’t rushing out the door, was broad and open. There were large front windows to let in natural light, and a long sofa and a coffee table, on which laid an in-progress cross stitch project. Dash blinked. He didn’t realize Maddie Fenton did cross stitch. Honestly, he’d assumed her whole life revolved around ghosts.

Speaking of Mrs. Fenton, he heard her voice drifting in from the kitchen. He tensed up. She sounded upset.

“... if Casper High had been committed to protection from the very beginning, there wouldn’t have even been an incident in the first place… yes, I’m aware of his attendance… yes, I know… well, I certainly know how committed you are to fixing that problem, when school funding is reliant on attendance, but when it comes to the actual safety of our children-!” There was a tense pause. “… No, I am taking this seriously. I will talk with Dash, but you will talk with Principal Ishiyama, because I’m not going to punish my son for - well, then, I guess I’ll see you at the PTA meeting, won’t I, Ronald?”

There was the plastic rattling of a phone being slammed on its receiver, and Dash flinched involuntarily. Tucker shut the door behind them, too loud, and the shadow in the kitchen turned and grew bigger.

“Dash, honey, is that you?”

He didn’t answer. But he didn’t run, either, as Maddie Fenton stepped into the open doorway, looking over her son with a concerned eye.

“Hey, sweetie. I just got off the phone with Mr. Lancer.”

Oh no. It figured. Dash didn’t have the same deal with Mr. Lancer in this world that he did in the other. He braced himself.

“He says you left school early, after he pulled you out of the cafeteria at lunch,” Mrs. Fenton said, and then paused, looking at him. When Dash said nothing, she continued, “He claims that several kids saw you harassing that Baxter kid, but when I pressed him for who, he admitted it was all kids from the old football team.”

Another long pause. Dash wasn’t sure where to look that was safe. He settled for her mouth, since that was close enough to her eyes. But then he had to watch the way her lips pursed in displeasure, the silence continuing on long enough to keep her talking.

“Honey… was the football team still giving you grief? All because of what happened?” She pressed, and stepped forward, gently setting a hand on his shoulder. It was that grounding touch that shook him out of it, blinking and finally making eye contact for the first time. Dazed, he realized that while she was very clearly angry, it wasn’t at him.

“That’s exactly what happened, Mrs. Fenton,” Sam broke in. “We saw the whole thing too.”

“Yeah, it was Dani Baxter, you know, the cheer captain? She was picking on Dash.” Tucker added, and Maddie leaned back, crossing her arms.

“Did you two happen to hear what was said?”

“... A little,” Sam admitted, “but it was enough that it was obvious, she…”

“... She said that Dash was off the team for being bi and a bad player,” Tucker said, and Mrs. Fenton straightened up, furious.

“She what? Why, that’s ridiculous! Dash threw four winning touchdowns in the past season alone, the idea that he could possibly have not made the cut -”

“Four touchdown passes,” Dash corrected in a mumble, but it didn’t really matter exactly, not with the way Maddie was raving.

“And I might not know exactly how he’s a good player, but my baby boy is a damn good player and that’s final!” Maddie finished her rant. “Casper High is supposed to be a safe space, and the fact that my Dash is being bullied, I don’t stand for that!”

She set her hand on Dash’s shoulder firmly, and Dash just barely managed to avoid backing away from her.

“Dash, sweetheart, listen to me. It’s true I haven’t been exactly thrilled with your attendance lately, or your grades,” she said. “You know how important it will be to getting into a good college, even if you do manage to snag a good scholarship or be picked up by a recruiter. They still look at stuff like that, you know? But if anyone ever treats you like that, like you’re not deserving of the exact same opportunities as everyone else, know that it’s okay for you to leave. I’ll never blame you for wanting to protect yourself.”

This was surreal. Dash felt like he must be having a stroke. Was this what a stroke felt like? Could ghosts get strokes?

“I…” Dash managed, caught off guard for what felt like the fiftieth time today. Finally, he settled on a nod, and Maddie pulled him in for a firm hug. He sat there, blinking for a moment, before remembering she probably expected him to hug her back. God, was he an elementary schooler or something? He reached up and awkwardly patted her on the back, and that seemed good enough.

“So what are we going to do, Mrs. Fenton?” Sam pushed. “It’s obvious the school administration won’t do anything about it.”

Maddie frowned, crossing her arms. “I intend to meet up with Mr. Lancer in person and have a proper conversation with him about this… and Principal Ishiyama, if I can. If they don’t listen, well, they’ll certainly listen when his father and I come to the next city hall meeting.”

“Uh, aren’t you giving a city hall lecture on ghost safety and security?” Tucker asked.

“Two ghost birds, one ectoblaster.” She shrugged.

“You, uh, you wanna give a lecture at city hall… to try and get me less bullied?” Dash asked, trying to wrap his head around it.

“More than that,” Mrs. Fenton scoffed, “I’m not going to rest until your position on the team is reinstated! This is a serious matter, not just for you, but how many other LGBT students are in the closet at Casper High, and don’t feel like they can come out safely? This is important for all parents who care about their children.” She nodded firmly. “I even called up Vlad to tell him about it, and he was so upset.”

“You… called up Vlad?” Sam asked.

“Oh, he was upset, I bet,” Tucker said through gritted teeth.

“Yes, I did. I know he doesn’t live in this state, but, well… I hate to say it, but in this world, money talks, and Vlad had the money and social power to get things to happen. It’s not something I plan to take advantage of, but…” She looked at Dash with a soft expression. “This is worth it.”

“I’ll talk to my parents too, if you want,” Sam offered, nose crinkled. “You know they love Dash.”

“Thank you, Sam, I really appreciate that,” Mrs. Fenton said, relaxing as her stubborn, combative nature bled away without a solid target. “Frankly, I think the best way to send a message to the school board is to make it clear that the parents are not going to tolerate this sort of bigotry in our public schools. We don’t pay our taxes so that schools can alienate our children. We pay taxes so that the government will alienate other people’s children!”

“You guys pay taxes?” Sam mumbled.

“Different brackets, Sam.” Tucker replied. Then he made an exaggerated groan, clutching his stomach, and batted his eyes at Maddie. “I, uh, don’t suppose you have snacks, Mrs. Fenton? It’s just, because we didn’t get to each lunch on account of being bullied, we’re sooo hungry…”

“Oh, of course!” Mrs. Fenton said, beaming as she straightened up, “You came just in time, actually! I’ve recently been working on a new recipe for my ecto-cookies! It’s a great way to use up the leftover ectoplasm we have with our experiments, and they taste just like ginger snaps, but with an extra kick.” She grinned and winked. “Be careful, though, when you bite them, they bite back!”

Saying this, she turned and went back to the kitchen.

“She’s kidding, right?” Sam asked.

“Better not to know,” Tucker said.

“Come on, we’ve got an escape,” Dash said, quickly darting up the stairs to his room.

They managed to escape just in time, as just moments later, Maddie came through the door holding a tupperware box that mysteriously shook and jumped every so often.

“Hm… where’d they go…?” Maddie wondered. After a moment, she shrugged. “Oh well, more for me,” she said to herself, opening up the box and biting the head off a ghost shaped cookie.

Dash had thought that maybe, just maybe, it was over, but he really should have known better. It was never over.

"Can you believe this?" Sam said, the moment they crossed the threshold into ‘his’ room. Tucker slunk over to sit in his computer chair and Sam started to wear a rut in the floor pacing, both of them looking completely at home. Furtively, Dash kept stealing glances at his plushie collection, but thankfully neither of them seemed to even give it a second glance. "Vlad!? This is his fault in the first place!"

"That I'm ga- uh, bisexual?" Dash asked. He wasn't sure how it could be the fault of some rich guy from out of state that he - or rather, the version of him that his wish had conjured up - was apparently into men, but if it meant that he wasn't on the hook for all of this, he was ready to believe it.

"No, man, don't you remember?" Tucker said, already on his PDA doing something or other.

"Yeah, he only outed you to the entire school for threatening to join the Bears to play against the Packers," Sam said. "Which might be a tiny problem with calling him in to deal with your homophobic bullies!"

Dash rubbed his temples. He had envisioned being a ghost superhero as a lot more fighting ghosts and a lot less people calling you gay. He wondered if Phantom ever had to deal with this. Probably not.

Wait, if Phantom was gay, er, bisexual, maybe that was what this was all about. Yes, it was probably him dating Johnny 13 and whatever other gay stuff Dash had allegedly gotten into in this bizarro world. Wait, did that mean that Phantom had a boyfri-

Dash backpedaled out of thinking about Phantom's gay love life like he'd been burned. Right, Sam had just said something patently insane and was clearly waiting for a response.

“Yeah man, Vlad is, uh, such an absolute dick,” he said, trying to inject some heat into his voice, “I can’t believe he did that, on top of… all those other things he did!”

“Tell me about it,” Tucker agreed, ticking one insane accusation after another off on his fingers. “Trying to kill your dad, trying to blackmail you to his side, using his half-ghost powers for evil, hitting on your mom-”

“Wait, what was that part?” Dash asked.

“Hitting on your mom?”

“No, before that.”

“Trying to kill your Dad?”

“No, after that!”

“Blackmailing you?”

“In the middle!” Dash said, teeth gritted.

“Using his half-ghost powers for evil?”

“THAT one!” Dash said, pointing at Tucker. “He’s, uh, I still can’t believe he’s a half… ghost.”

Sam and Tucker looked at each other for a moment, then back to him.

“Yeah, it’s…” Sam sighed. “I’m sorry, man. It sucks. The only other half-ghost in the world out there, and he’s a capital-A Asshole with ego issues and a need to be in control of everything, all the time.”

“Yeah…” Dash agreed, only half paying attention.

The only ‘other’ half-ghost? Was that… him? Was that what he was, why he could somehow turn into a ghost and then turn back?

Discretely as he could, he checked his pulse, pretending to be rubbing the back of his neck. They’d taught him how to do this in physical training, what ranges were ideal for working out and what a good resting heart rate should feel like. The steady pulse under his fingers felt about right for him. Resting rate, albeit slightly elevated. Which wasn’t too surprising; he was stressed as hell.

So, he wasn’t dead, then, right? But then, if he wasn’t dead, how could he suddenly become a ghost? He hadn’t thought about it too hard at the time, too busy dealing with the five other earth shattering revelations he’d had since waking up this morning, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t normal for ghosts. Wait, if he could turn into Phantom, did that mean Phantom could turn into a human at will? But if that were the case, why wouldn’t he have seen him around?

And then it hit him, straight to the gut like a linebacker’s tackle.

Danny Phantom. Danny Fenton.

Unconsciously, he started breathing fast and hard again, staring into nothing as a long, long line of things he’d never really thought about started clicking into place.

Fenton’s habit of disappearing whenever there was a ghost attack. How he didn’t want to be in any clubs or sports. The way he stuck to Sam and Tucker, who were clearly used to dealing with ghosts. The inexplicable revenge pranks Dash had had no explanation for, even when Fenton had fessed up to his face. How strangely light Fenton was when Dash lifted him up. Phantom’s complete awkwardness and discomfort around Dash. Why, when Dash had made that wish, it had stuck him in Fenton’s life. The venom in Phantom’s voice when he’d sneered that you wouldn’t get it, why he’d chosen to defend the city.

God. All this time, all these months, and the whole time, Fenton had been quietly protecting the city and the school from ghosts. The city that hated Phantom and the school that hated Fenton, that thanked him with government agents shooting lasers and bullies throwing him into dumpsters. He’d saved Dash’s own life multiple times, too, after all of that.

Danny was right. Dash didn’t get it.

Why?

Chapter Text

“Dash? You okay, man?”

Dash blinked, coming back to himself with no less than two concerned sets of eyes on him. How long had he been spacing out?

“I, uh… yeah, I’m good. It’s just, uh…” He glanced at them both, trying to figure out the best way out of this conversation fast. “It’s, a lot, you know? With… Vlad and all.”

Sam chewed on the inside of her cheek.

“I hate to say it, I mean really hate to say it, but… we could always get Jazz? If you wanted to talk? Or -”

“Or we could just forget about it and play Doomed,” Tucker said.

“Yes, that one.” Dash leapt at the suggestion. “Let’s just forget about everything and play Doomed!”

Tucker immediately got up and started fiddling with the computer in the background, pulling up the Doomed launcher, while Sam rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like boys.

“You should see the most recent mod, someone made a golf level!” Tucker began enthusing, “And like you have to hit the golf ball into the hole and when cyber demons pop up, you have to hit the ball at them to kill them before you get to the end. It’s sports and casual violence! And then there’s a new update to Brutal Doomed -”

Sam let out a disparaging scoff.

“Seriously? Don’t play Brutal Doomed, that mod is so lame.”

“What do you have against casual violence, huh?”

“Aside from the fact that it’s part of the reason my parents have the totally wrong idea about Doomed? It’s like, baby’s first blood splasher. No one over the age of thirteen is impressed by shooting one body and having it spray everywhere like a watermelon,” Sam said, ignoring the fact that they were all technically over the age of thirteen by a very small margin.

“Man, I shouldn’t be surprised a girl wouldn’t appreciate the thrill and delight of exploding your enemy into a million bloody bits,” Tucker said, rolling his eyes.

“So what I’m hearing is you do not want me to carry you past the hospital level?”

“Hey, whoa, wait wait wait -”

Dash let the casual bickering fade into the background. It had the same familiar underlying fondness that existed between him and Kwan, and he had a feeling they weren’t actually pissed at each other. Instead, resolutely not thinking about Danny Fenton-Phantom, he settled in, trading places with Tucker at the computer while Tucker loaded it on his laptop on Dash’s bed.

In truth, he’d only played a little bit of Doomed, when a couple guys on the football team had been into it, and they’d mostly just dicked around in the lobby and opening levels. He’d been around the community long enough to know who Chaos was, though, and good GOD. He shot his head around, staring at Tucker, before… aw man, they had to be kidding him. FryerTuck was already logged in, which meant… no way.

He whipped his head back around to look at Sam, who had finished ranting about the pointlessness of certain ‘edgy’ mods (whatever that word meant) and had pulled out a high-end laptop of her own. Holy crap, not only did she have a powerful laptop, she had a powerful avatar?! And that username, he realized. To grab such a common name without any numbers, she must have been a day one download.

Man, he’d totally not seen that coming.

Still, he was having more fun than he thought he would, playing video games with nerds. With Chaos to cover their backs and give them console cheats from the developers (and wasn’t that something he was dying to ask how she knew), and Tucker to come up with formations with, the game was a lot more fun. As soon as he’d figured out how to convey football plays to the others without jargon, he was delighted to learn most of them still worked out okay in the game. Although it stung his ego to let Chaos be the quarterback instead of him, he still enjoyed putting his old plays into practice. It was something people didn’t really think about when they considered football, all the plays and positions they had to memorize, the codes for delivering those plays without the opposing team knowing, trying to guess what they were going to do and outpace them…

“WHOO!” Tucker whooped, throwing his hands up as the Cyber Spider Matriarch went down, beginning a fifteen second long death animation.

“Nice one!” Sam joined in, air high-fiving him from across the room. “Having Tucker stand by with the grenades was brilliant! How’d you know it was gonna charge?”

Dash shrugged modestly, although it was betrayed by his big grin.

“The real key to winning in football is to know where to put your players.”

“No kidding!” Tucker laughed.

It wasn’t football. But it was fun, easy. The longer he spent with these two, the more he found himself relaxing, smiling, joking around. They took his jabs in stride, and they weren’t afraid to snark back, either.

It was almost enough to make a guy forget that Sam and Tucker weren’t really his friends. It was a real shame he was gonna have to go back to whaling on Foley when this was all over.

The downside of occupying himself so that he didn’t have to think was that he’d managed to forget that he’d given Jazz the slip for the better part of a day. With the Fentons’ house as basically the only place for him to stay at the moment, he wasn’t in a position to be able to avoid her forever.

So when she knocked on his door and asked to come in, he really had no excuse this time.

(He’d briefly considered the ‘I’m not decent’ card again, but given that he and the others had been pretty loud playing the game, it really wouldn’t help him beat the bisexual allegations.)

But when Jazz came in, it wasn’t to ask him about his feelings or spout more psychology at him.

“I think… I feel like something’s wrong,” Jazz announced to the room.

“Like what?” Sam pressed.

“Like…” her eyes briefly flickered to Dash, and then away again. “I don’t know, I can’t put my finger on it. But… my gut’s been bothering me all day long, and I can’t get it out of my head.”

Dash felt the nerves from earlier seeping back. She couldn’t have figured him out already, could she? He’d been so careful and deceptive in figuring out what was expected of him in this weird bizarro world! A few feet away and oblivious to Dash’s inner turmoil, Tucker sat up.

“Well… if you don’t know what’s wrong, how are we supposed to know?”

Jazz bit her lip, thinking.

“It’s like… normally I’d chalk it up to a case of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I know I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, or maybe if it were severe enough, I’ve recently been looking into Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder. But my symptoms don’t match, exactly, it’s more like…” She looked around at all of them. “You guys remember when you pulled that prank, a few years back, where I left for the weekend to tour the Harvard campus and you all moved all the furniture in my room two inches to the left?”

Sam snickered.

“It’s like that,” Jazz said, giving her a look. Dash wondered what the hell was going on with those two.

“Ooookay, well,” Sam said, glancing deliberately and exaggeratedly around the room, “survey says everything’s in place here.”

“Yes, I know that, but-!” Jazz curled her hands into fists at her side, and Dash wondered if she was suppressing the urge to stomp her foot. “I don’t mean it’s literally that, I mean it’s like that! Like, something’s off, but I don’t know what, and it’s driving me crazy!”

Suddenly, her gaze was back on Dash.

“You know what I mean, don’t you?” she said, eyes pleading.

Oh no. Oh no.

It was over. It was all over. She had to have seen through him completely. Any moment now she was going to reveal him as a fraud and a liar and he was going to have to explain how he’d accidentally made a wish that created an alternate universe where he was a Fenton and into kissing boys and they were going to learn they’d put all this effort into defending a straight guy…

But she didn’t, was the thing. She just kept looking at him beseechingly, waiting for him to be the one to come out with it. He felt like he’d seen this exact strategy used on him from teachers and counselors before, at least before he'd gotten good enough at sports that they’d had people start putting pressure on to make them go easy on him.

He swallowed, his throat way too dry.

“I, uh, I’m not quite sure exactly what you mean,” he said, convincingly, “but I could, um… look into it? As a gh…” Wait, did Jazz know about that part?

Her face fell a fraction, before she covered it, but he’d seen the disappointment on her face. Ah, hell.

“If you could look into it, I’d appreciate it,” she said neutrally, nodding.

Sam shrugged. “I guess if it’d put your mind at ease, it wouldn’t hurt to… investigate.”

“As Ghost Getters?” Jazz said.

“For Team Phantom, yes,” Sam said with an air of exaggerated patience, and, yeah, no, whatever was going on there, Dash wasn’t touching it with ghost powers and a ten foot pole.

“We could always check the Ghost Zone,” Tucker said thoughtfully. “It’s an inverse of our world, after all, so if something’s wrong here, fundamentally, then surely something will be off there.”

Jazz brightened.

“That’s a great idea! I can get the Specter Speeder up and ready, and we can take readings from the main computer terminal!”

“But what about Mrs- uh, Mom and Dad?” Dash asked, stumbling over the names of his parents like a good and smooth liar. Really, it was a wonder how Jazz had detected something was wrong.

“Don’t worry, I have an idea for how to get them out of the house,” Tucker said, pulling up his PDA and tapping a few things.

It seemed things were settling into place, whether Dash wanted them to or not. He braced himself. True, he’d known this couldn’t possibly last forever, but he’d hoped to keep his ghost powers and superhero life just a bit longer. Maybe get to the fun stuff.

… Wait.

“You want me to go into the Ghost Zone?”

Whatever Dash had expected the Ghost Zone to look like, it wasn’t this. He didn’t really think of much as beautiful - except for girls, that was - but there was something about this place that felt like a painter had sat down and tried to make something that would stay with whoever looked at it. There were so many doors, and it went on… forever. To someone like Dash, who had few dreams bigger than college football, it was unlike anything he’d ever imagined. The kind of thing he’d maybe count as a perk if he was a half-ghost superhero, getting to experience something like this.

Briefly, he wondered if Fenton felt the same.

If the others’ barely-contained bickering in the background was any indication, though, maybe the novelty had worn off. Still, no one seemed to judge him for taking time to admire the sights, the doors and islands bobbing up and down strangely serenely as though caught in an invisible current. It reminded him a little of pictures he’d seen in science class of deep space, or the bottom of the ocean.

“Readings are mainly normal,” Jazz said over the comms, her eyes scanning over what had been, the last time Dash had looked, a completely incomprehensible series of squiggles. “Increased ecto-activity to the South.”

“So, we go South?” Dash asked. He wasn’t sure what any of this meant, but if he was gonna get to kick some ghost butt, that sounded good.

“Not necessarily,” Sam said. “We could always head over to the Northwest. I’m pretty sure Clockwork’s tower is that way, right?”

“Clockwork, right,” Dash said neutrally.

“You wanna ask the weird time travel guy for help?” Tucker complained.

“I mean, if anyone is in a position to know if something’s gone wrong, it’d have to be him, right?” Sam said. “He's super-powerful.”

“I guess?” Tucker said, crossing his arms, “I’m not actually sure it’s a good idea, though. I mean, you remember what happened the last time we ended up at his place, right? I’m way too young and handsome to have another existential crisis!”

“Seriously, what is it with men and asking for directions?” Sam complained.

Time travel, right, of course. Dash couldn’t even find it in him to be surprised at this point. Still, if what Sam had said was true, then this Clockwork guy might be the only one in a position to know just what had happened - and how to fix it.

Then again, if he went the other way, there could be ghosts to fight. And when given the choice between risking blowing his cover trying to get his situation across to some kind of Time Boss while the others were right there (asking a person in a position of authority for help in general, really) and beating the snot out of a bunch of losers, Dash knew which one was getting his vote every time.

“We’d also have to go up, I think, to get there,” Jazz said, squinting at the hand drawn map.

“Up?” Tucker said, “I think you mean North.”

“No, I mean up, as in above us.”

“Come on, haven’t you ever read Ender’s Game?” Tucker said. “There is no up or down in space, how are we supposed to keep that straight?”

“I’m talking about the area above us, how is that hard to understand?” Jazz asked, visibly frustrated.

“And I’m telling you, in a 3D space you can’t assume that one person’s ‘up’ is the same,” Tucker said, with exaggerated patience. “What if someone came barreling into the ghost zone headfirst? Or if we had to make a sharp turn and banked without realizing it? Then ‘above us’ would actually be…”

Yeah, okay, that was enough. It had been kinda funny at first, but now the chatter was getting distracting. Dash was just gonna ask for directions. Which he could in fact do, thank you, Sam.

He glanced around, and then did a double take. There was a ghost chick in red hanging out on an asteroid, kicking her legs idly as she filed her nails. She was kinda hot, in a punk way, and another day Dash might have actually considered shooting his shot with her. For now, though, he was focused on something else.

“Hey,” he said, flying up to her, “don’t suppose you could tell me how to get to -”

Her head snapped to glare in his direction the second she heard him, her face twisting into something ugly.

“You,” she hissed, furiously.

Uh oh. This ghost didn’t look like any of the ones he’d seen Phantom fight, so he’d hoped (foolishly, naively) that it meant they weren’t enemies. He was beginning to regret that now. He should just ask Sam and Tucker to give him a full list of every ghost he’d ever fought, at this point. It was getting ridiculous.

“Uh, look, I don’t want trouble,” he started, and she laughed disparagingly.

“Oh, you don’t want trouble, huh?” she snapped. “Well I don’t want a cheating dirtbag as a boyfriend! Looks like neither of us get what we want, huh?”

“Oh, man,” Dash complained, more to himself than anyone, “Can’t I catch a break?”

“Sure, you can catch a break,” the ghost Dash was pretty sure was Kitty sneered. “Here’s a freaking BREAK for you!”

And with that, she flew up to him, fist glowing with a blue light as she charged it up.

Dash threw up his hands. “Just so we’re clear, I have a rule of not hitting gi-!”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. She slammed into him, blasting him away with all her might. Dash was thrown back, tumbling head over feet through the Ghost Zone, the bickering of his team getting quieter and quieter until his headset’s signal winked out, leaving him alone in the void.

Alright, it was official: Dash was on Tucker’s side on the ‘which way is up’ debate. Even after he’d finally gotten his bearings and shook off the worst of the blast, he’d realized with alarm that he had no idea where he was. The asteroid… island thingies he’d been using for landmarks had a tendency to look completely different from the other side, and he was pretty sure he’d passed by the exact same door at least five times.

He was just kind of floating there, trying to figure out if it would be better or worse for him to pick a direction and start moving, when a shadow of movement out of the corner of his eye drew his attention. Attention drawn, he saw something that took his breath away.

There, floating in the middle of the Ghost Zone on an extra large island, stood what he could only describe as a palace. It looked like something out of Aladdin. The movement that had caught his eye turned out to be…

Dash’s breath caught. The genie looking ghost from before! Without thinking, he took off after her, following her towards the palace.

A flick of her hair, and the woman suddenly slowed down, turning to look at him.

“My, my,” the genie said, “if it isn't the ghost child himself, or should I say…” she giggled, “the new and improved one?”

Dash slowed up, eyeing her up warily. Unfortunately, she was hot.

“You’re the one who did… all this!” he said. “Stuck me in Fenton’s life, gave me ghost powers!” Made me half-gay, he just barely managed to not say out loud.

“Oh, please,” the ghost said, waving her hand as if shooing away a fly. “I certainly granted your wish, but I wouldn’t say it’s all on me.”

“How is it not on you?” Dash said. “Who do you think you are, just running around and, and, and making people live weird not-lives!”

“Oh, dear,” the ghost said, “you really don’t know what’s going on, do you?”

Saying this, she started towards him, and Dash squared up, fists charging, but she turned slightly before she was on him, instead encircling him like a snake.

“My name is Desiree. I have quite an impressive amount of power at my disposal, but with one little little catch. You see, I can grant wishes, but never for myself.” She shrugged one shoulder gracefully. “Unfortunate, right? Ghosts don’t seem to do the trick, either. It’s got to be mortals making the wish.”

Dash’s brows knitted together, still watching her warily. “You… grant wishes for mortals because it’s all you can use your power on? But, why?”

She grinned. “Simple enough. The more wishes I grant, the more powerful I become. All I need is someone selfish enough to make a wish,” she said, and he really didn’t like the way her eyes bored into him on that word.

“So, because I wished to become a hero, you got to rewrite… everything,” Dash said, catching on. “You got to make me a Fenton, and give me new friends, and a new life, with new powers…”

Desiree grinned. It was not a friendly smile.

“Yes. Quite the powerful wish you had. I should thank you for it!” She laughed. “The ghost boy who tormented me with that stupid thermos is gone, and in his place is a new ghost boy, one who doesn’t know what he’s doing or what’s happening. One who has no hope of stopping me now.” She stared down at him, showing him her teeth. Dash’s hands curled into fists.

“But why’d you make Fenton a girl?” he snapped, unable to keep the question in.

Desiree actually seemed caught off guard for a moment. Then she shrugged.

“I can tell you that wasn’t a deliberate use of my power, only a consequence of your wish. I couldn’t tell you why everything in your world is as it is, only that one thing leads to another. Throw a rock in a pond, and to the frogs on the other bank they’ll see only a great wave.”

“How could that not be magic?” Dash snapped back, “You’ve got to… look, I don’t mind the ghost powers and some parts of this hero life, but you’ve got to change Danny back to himself and… and give me at least my parents and my spot on the team back!”

Desiree let out a sharp tut, glaring at him. Dash felt a sudden whiplash as her good mood evaporated.

“This is what I can’t stand about you mortals,” Desiree said, low and dark, her red eyes glowing. “Nothing’s ever enough, is it? No matter what you wish for, no matter what I give you, you still want more. More, more, more! Is it not enough for you to get what you asked for? Must you always blame me, that none of you mortals ever know what will make you happy?”

Her voice was growing louder, echoing around them in the empty space into what felt like forever. She seemed to grow, forcing him to look up as power licked at her hands and raised her hair as though by static.

Dash started to back away. This wasn’t fun like fighting Johnny had been, and it wasn’t as cool as seeing Phantom fight her on the football field. He didn’t have backup, or an advantage, or anything that could turn the tides in his favor as Desiree grew several times his size and towered over him.

“You know what, fine!” Desiree snapped, hands glowing white-hot and crackling. “You wished to be a hero so bad? You can die like one.”

Power erupted from her fingertips.

Chapter Text

Technically speaking, Pookie wasn’t actually Dash’s dog.

He hadn’t even been a dog guy for most of his life. Sure, he’d liked dogs well enough, he wasn’t a monster, but he hadn’t really wanted one of his own. He’d had his own stuff going on - junior football and track practice, getting to know his new friends, trying to keep up with school even when they’d done stupid stuff like putting the alphabet in math.

No, Pookie was his mom’s dog. It said so on the registration papers, and his dad had said so when the little guy had popped out of an ornate gift box in front of her. He’d been a tiny little thing. Smaller than a football with a triangular head that was nearly bigger than the rest of his body, with ears to match. His huge, wet eyes had taken in their living room with a mixture of alarm and excitement, tail wagging back and forth.

It hadn’t really been a “surprise”, exactly - his mom had been dropping hints for months that she’d wanted one of Mrs. Delphine’s new puppies, and her Christmas presents had been a disappointment in her eyes that year. So Dash couldn’t say he hadn’t been expecting it, and the same probably went for his mother. But that didn’t stop her from squealing, scooping the small dog up in her arms and smoothing it in kisses, cooing over it. Pookie had been named less than an hour later, and his father had brought in the bowls and the dog bed. A collar and leash for walks, a bone to chew on, and that’d been that. Dash had gone back to his room and his fantasy football drafts, then.

As cute as the puppy had been, the complications that came with a puppy had been less cute. Dash had had to grit his teeth and avoid shouting with every new chewed cord and pen and whatever else the damn dog had got its teeth into. His mother had huffed with frustration with every morning she’d gone out into the living room and found a new “present” waiting for her, no matter how much she tried to potty train it to at least use the pads they’d bought a week into owning a puppy. His father had sat at the kitchen table managing their weekly budget and grumbling about vet bills for every single shot and checkup a growing pup needed, before eventually deciding they’d get the most important shots and see a vet if something seemed off about Pookie.

After a while, the novelty wore off, and Dash had gotten used to living with a new housemate. Just one that barked constantly and occasionally piddled inside.

It probably would have stayed that way if he hadn’t sprained his ankle in eighth grade.

Tackle landed wrong - it happened in football. He’d been lucky he hadn’t needed crutches or anything like that. He’d just been benched for several weeks to rest and recover. Being benched always sucked, though, because working his way back up to baseline fitness after weeks of rest was pretty hard. It was hard not to go right back to his sets, but coach had been adamant he needed to work his way back up slowly, and had advised walking over jogging.

The solution? Take someone along who would force him to walk instead of jog.

Pookie had been uncertain about the whole thing when Dash first brought out the leash, unused to regular walks as he was. The second Dash opened the front door and started leading him down the sidewalk, though, he’d shot forward, tugging at the end of the leash as he strained to sniff and inspect every single thing they passed. Dash had never thought the neighborhood was particularly interesting - it was all just townhouses, anyway - but Pookie chose the weirdest things to stop and examine. The mailbox, the neighbor’s flowerbed, and even a gutter full of leaves. The fire hydrant he’d expected, he’d seen that in cartoons often enough, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what was so fascinating to Pookie about the ankle-high brick formation in front of a neighbor’s house.

So, the only natural conclusion: ask someone who knew a lot about dogs.

“You do dog walking on the side, right, Andrew?” he’d asked one of the nerds, who’d been, at the time, lifted by the back of his sweater by Dale. Dale had been on nerd bullying duty while Dash was out with his injury.

The kid had initially just whimpered, but eventually nodded.

“D’you know why dogs suddenly stop for no reason?” Dash had asked.

“Huh?”

“Like, when you’re walking them, sometimes they just stop and sniff random stuff. Why?”

“Uh,” Andrew had cleared his throat, eyes darting back and forth as if checking for a hidden camera, or maybe a third, stealthier jock set to punch him for having the wrong answer. “Well, dogs’ most powerful sense is their sense of smell. It’s how they see the world around them.”

Dash had made a ‘go on’ gesture.

“So, even though we can’t see what’s going on, they’re probably experiencing lots of scents. He’s probably getting to know the other dogs in the neighborhood.”

“Huh. He can do that?”

“Yeah, it’s like, uh, it’s like when dogs, you know, do their business, they’re leaving a message behind, you know? And your dog can read that message by smelling it.”

“Whoa, so you’re telling me every time my dog does his business, he’s actually writing ‘Pookie wuz here’ on the sidewalk?” Dash had laughed. “Awesome!”

Andrew had let out a half-laugh in return.

“Your dog’s name is Pookie? Uh, I mean -” he’d said, backpedaling quickly, “- you know, it’s kinda cute. M-my dog’s name is Princess, so you know…”

Dash had rolled his eyes. “He’s not really my dog, he’s my mom’s but, I’m kinda getting used to him, you know.”

Andrew had recovered, slightly, as the punch he’d been fearing didn’t come.

“Oh, if you’ve got a new dog, I could give you a book about dog training? It’s been really helpful for leash breaking Princess.”

“Thanks, man, I’d appreciate that,” Dash had said, and gestured to Dale, who’d promptly stuffed him in the locker.

The book had turned out to be pretty complex. He’d had to spend several months’ allowance on a kennel for Pookie, which was unfortunate, but within just a few months Pookie had stopped pottying indoors altogether, and would go to his crate when told. The regular walks helped with his energy level, since the book advised excessive barking was usually a result of boredom. Dash guessed he got it. If he had to stick around that lame-ass house all day every day with nothing to do, he’d scream too.

It had taken a lot of work, especially since Pookie had no longer been a puppy and thus had not been as trainable, but eventually Dash had gotten ‘sit’, ‘stay’, and ‘come’ worked out with Pookie, and once that was done, he’d felt comfortable taking him out to the park to work on ‘fetch’, ‘find it’, and ‘leave it’.

Technically speaking, the park didn’t allow dogs off leash there, but Dash figured that was for bigger dogs who could actually hurt people. Pookie, who fully grown was still barely the size of one of Dash’s footballs, didn’t really count.

Every time Pookie had brought him the ball on command, or sat with just a gesture from Dash, he’d felt a rush of satisfaction he usually only felt when winning a football game or whaling on nerds. The dog wasn’t actually that annoying, Dash had come to realize, as Pookie had brought him the ball yet again, tail wagging, the ball only slightly bigger than a ping pong ball but designed for his tiny teeth. A toy, training tool, and toothbrush all in one. Dog people really thought of everything.

“Good boy,” he cooed happily at Pookie, rubbing his ears and bending down to smooch his forehead the way he liked it. The book had said positive reinforcement was critical, almost more so than negative reinforcement, because the most important thing was that Pookie saw him as a friend first and foremost. Pookie rolled over for a belly rub and Dash indulged for a minute before picking up the ball and giving it another toss. “Go get it, boy!”

But Pookie just stood there, staring at him. His tail wasn’t wagging any more.

“What’s wrong, boy?” Dash asked. “Fetch!”

Pookie’s ears flattened back, like he was nervous.

“Come on, buddy!” Dash said, kneeling a little to look him over. “Fetch?”

Pookie took a step back, as his tail tucked between his legs.

“Hey, Pookie, it’s okay,” he tried soothingly, worry trickling in further. “Pookie…”

Just as he started to reach his hand out to Pookie, not wanting to pick him up, just offering him a sniff, Pookie leapt forward and barked, not the little yaps he was used to, but a full bodied bark from the chest, too loud and too deep, and suddenly his teeth were too large and too sharp, and his eyes glowed with a ghostly neon light, as drool hung from his mouth and he roared -

Dash jerked awake with a strangled gasp. Even that breath hurt, everything hurt, oh God he was still in the Ghost Zone -

He wasn’t alone, though. Something was dragging him by the leg, the leg that hurt so bad, hurt worse than when he’d sprained it, and he was rethinking that ‘no bones’ theory from earlier because it sure felt like there was something broken inside of him.

Mustering up all his strength, he forced his abs to contract long enough for him to crane his neck up and see what had his leg, and what he saw immediately made him slump back as relief spread over him.

“Good boy, Cujo,” he croaked out, “Good boy.”

Cujo gave a concerned whine, dragging him through the Ghost Zone at a steady lope. Dash wasn’t exactly sure if Cujo was going anywhere in particular, but he quickly decided that was solidly a ‘later’ problem. Anywhere was better than here.

He hadn’t intended it, but he must have blacked out, or at least lost consciousness a little bit, because he didn’t really register the glowing light of the portal or the shift from the Ghost Zone to the real world. He only registered something had changed when they suddenly went from floating to Cujo dragging him across cold, hard tile. He gasped a little, opening the eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed and blinking the brown spots out of his vision as he heard too many voices clamoring at once.

“Dash! Are you okay -”

“Where were you man, we were freaking the hell out -”

“- looks bad, I’ve got the first aid kit -”

“- Cujo, drop it, yes, good boy -”

There was too much noise, and he shut his eyes against the sensory onslaught, only opening them again when he felt ready. He was back in the lab, on the floor in front of the portal, and Cujo had - did Cujo shrink? Jazz was hovering over him, a case the size of a kit he’d seen in the hands of an EMT open beside her as she cut his jeans open. Dash realized, blinking slowly, that he was wearing jeans, and he could feel the cold of the floor seeping slowly in on his torso through his letterman jacket. He was flat on the ground, not hovering over it. When had he changed back?

“Wha’ happen’d?” he managed, his throat scratchy and raw.

“You ditched us again, that’s what happened!” Sam yelled, throwing her hands up in the air.

Tucker put his hand on her arm, and she huffed as she reigned herself in. Neither of them were very happy with him, though, if the glare he was sending Dash’s way was anything to go by.

“We were talking about something stupid, and then I turned and looked and you were gone,” Jazz said quietly, and something inside of Dash clenched at the raw look she was giving him as she wrapped his torso.

He swallowed, or at least tried to, between his dry mouth and scratchy, raw throat.

“Saw a ghost I thought might know something,” he said, deciding to go with the version closest to the truth. “Desiree.”

The three of them groaned in unison.

“That’s a fair idea,” Sam said, sighing as the line of tension in her shoulders went down. “I remember when she used her powers to rewrite the timeline so that you and I never met. That was… definitely a wish that changed a lot. Maybe so much that someone like Jazz might’ve noticed it somehow.”

Dash froze as the implications of that ran through him, but the conversation continued.

“That’d also explain how Dash got his ass to handed him,” Tucker said mildly, then threw up his hands in surrender as both Sam and Jazz rounded on him with a glare. “What? I’m right, aren’t I?”

“She gets more powerful the more wishes she grants… and the bigger the wish…” Dash mumbled.

Jazz looked lost in thought, but finished off his bandages with a neat cut and tuck worthy of a field medic. Sam tugged out a rolling chair, slumping in it.

“It would all make sense. I guess now the only thing we gotta figure out is what she’s up to, and how exactly she got so powerful so fast.”

“She gets her powers from wishes,” Jazz repeated softly, “and the bigger the wish, the more power she gets.”

Sam nodded. Tucker rubbed the back of his neck. “Just goes to show you how small people’s wishes usually are, y’know? Like, they don’t even think to wish it permanent! Or to wish for a million dollars and for all ghosts to stay in the ghost zone! Or to have Brittany Spears as my girlf-”

“Aaaaand, that’s more than enough insight into what you’d do with all that power, Tuck,” Sam sighed. Dash suddenly felt the air leave him in a great huff, his muscles spasming as he broke out into hysterical laughter that was just as painful as it was a relief. He wasn’t actually sure how long he laid there, laughing his ass off, but he was pretty sure it was long enough to warrant the concerned stares he was getting from everyone as he finally calmed down.

“Just… deja vu,” he said, finally.

“Glad you’re laughing, at least,” Tucker grumbled. For all their looks, though, the tension did seem to drain out of the room somewhat. Dash even felt well enough to sit up and accept the plain unmarked pills that Jazz put into his hand with a bottle of water.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” Sam warned him. “I’m still pissed that you ditched us to try and solo a ghost for the second time today.”

Man, had it really only been a single day? It had felt so much longer. Waking up in Fenton’s bed and thinking he’d been punked felt like it had been days ago at this point. Just thinking about that made him feel exhausted, and he slumped back on the floor.

“Yeah,” he said, for lack of anything else to say, “sorry.”

Jazz leaned back on her hand, searching his face. “What’s wrong, Dash?”

He couldn’t deal with this any more. He couldn’t deal with her earnest face, desperate to understand. He couldn’t deal with Sam and Tucker knowing he was ditching them and still choosing to save his ass anyway. He couldn’t deal with the idea that they’d sat there, portal open and med kit at the ready, waiting for him to come back so they could patch him up while he just lay there like a pathetic little girl.

Not even that, he thought to himself, glancing over at Sam, who was putting all the medical equipment back in it’s place, and Jazz, who was still watching him with that patient, caring look.

He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve them.

“I just…” His throat closed up. How the hell was he supposed to explain without explaining? “I just… thought I could handle it on my own.”

“You don’t have to handle it on your own,” Jazz said. “We’re here, all of us. You don’t have to be strong for us, little brother.”

This was too much. It hurt too much. Dash wasn’t sure if it was the emotional pain, the physical pain, the long, long day, or the pills he’d been given that he was pretty sure were not your average painkillers, but he suddenly just felt so, so tired.

“Okay,” was all he said, before he slipped into a long, dreamless sleep.

He woke up hours later, in his (Fenton’s) bed. Tucker and Jazz were still there. Jazz handed him a sandwich the moment he stirred, and a glass of milk, and he devoured both eagerly, barely even taking the time to sit up first.

“Sam had to go home,” Tucker said, tapping on his PDA. “I already called Dad and told him I was staying the night with you.”

It was said so casually that Dash knew it must be a regular occurrence for him and this world’s Dash. He nodded.

“Also…” Tucker winced. “Um, I hate to do this to you, but…”

“Is now really the time to bring it up?” Jazz asked, and Tucker shrugged at her.

“Better to rip the band-aid off now, yeah?”

“What is it now?” Dash said, sitting up further. With food and rest, he was feeling a lot better already. Was that a half-ghost thing? Did he heal faster or something, or was it just like, ghost attacks were more painful than long lasting?

Jazz sighed. “It’s… we don’t always know how ghosts open the portal from the other side. So when we go in, it’s safer to leave it open.”

Dash nodded slowly.

“And then, when you went missing… we sent Cujo after you, but we didn’t know when you’d be back, and we didn’t know the condition you’d be in, and if you were being chased, or…”

“Okaaaaay,” Dash said.

“What she’s getting at, dude, is that the portal was open a long time, and we were a little focused on you.” Tucker said, rubbing his neck. “So, you know. We’re, uh, probably gonna be dealing with a ghost wave for the next couple days or a week or so.”

Oh.

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Tucker said. “We’ll help, obviously, especially with the small ones -”

“I’ve already snuck the Jack o' Nine Tails out of weapons storage,” Jazz said, and holy shit he did not want context on that one. “So you won’t have to do it by yourself. Please don’t do it all by yourself. Maybe save your energy for the big guys?”

Dash, who had lived in Amity Park for the entirety of the Ghost Attack Era, had seen his fair share of ‘the big guys’.

This was going to suck.

“Yeah,” Dash said. Well, he’d wished to be a hero like Phantom and stop ghosts… “Yeah, I can do that. How soon do we start?”

“How soon do you feel ready?” Tucker said, flashing him a smirk and showing him the PDA screen. On it was what looked like a map of Amity Park, but with strange glowing green dots. A lot of them.

Dash forced himself to smirk. This was just like playing the big guys in football. They were only champs until they faced him.

“Lemme raid the fridge first. Sandwich was a good start, but I’m gonna need more protein than that.”

Dash had been so focused on everything going on that he was almost surprised when he came down the stairs and saw Mr. and Mrs. Fenton in the kitchen. A device was laying across the kitchen table with its circuits and wires and other innards barfed out all over the rest of the table, covering every square inch of free space and a decent amount of the blueprint spread under it. The air smelled acrid with solder.

Dash paused in the doorway, taking it in.

“Jack, we’ve been over this,” Mrs. Fenton said. “I’ve run the calculations and there just isn’t an efficient way to transfer energy across the threshold without requiring a battery bigger than the containment chamber.”

“Mads, I’m telling you, if we just move the chamber closer to the -” the Fentons broke from their extremely important engineer debate to beam and wave at him dorkily so quickly it almost gave Dash whiplash. “Dash, my boy, good to see you! Football practice wear you out?”

“Jack,” Mrs. Fenton hissed, and his face was blankly confused for a moment, before it dawned on him.

“Oh, right, uh… well, school’s just tiring in general, isn’t it son? I understand, I flunked every math class I was ever in, but just look at me now!” he gestured to himself, the kitchen, and Maddie in one proud sweep of his arm.

“Uh, yeah…” Dash said, turning towards the fridge, before an idea stopped him in his tracks. He turned back towards the table. “Hey, um, is that ghost hunting equipment?”

“It sure is, sweetie!” Mrs. Fenton said, and even through her hood and goggles he could see the pride in her.

This was brilliant, actually. Maybe Danny Phantom had never wanted to share the spotlight, or felt like ghost matters should be handled by other ghosts or something, but he was Phantom now, and he was gonna be smart about it.

“Actually, I was wondering, if there was, say, a sudden wave of ghost activity, do you think you’d be able to handle it?”

“Oh, by Nelly we’d be able to handle it!” Mr. Fenton boomed, quite literally jumping out of his chair and producing an ecto-gun from… Dash wasn’t actually sure, but he ducked slightly as Mr. Fenton waved it around, as though expecting a ghost to jump out from anywhere.

“Of course, we can, honey. We’re preparing for just such an eventuality,” Mrs. Fenton said, patting the gutted weapon on the table.

“You betcha! When the Fenton Juicer is fully operational, ghosts will be a thing of the past!” Mr. Fenton said, clapping his hand on Dash’s back as he guided him forward for a closer look.

“That’s such a relief, actually, becau- wait, did you say juicer?”

“You betcha, son! This baby is cutting edge! And by that I mean it literally has a cutting edge!” Mr. Fenton said, picking up a part off the table that would have looked a little like a cross between a bladed claw and a drill, if it weren’t for the faint green glow it gave off. “With this baby, we’ll be able to snag ghosts by shredding them into little tiny pieces of ecto-energy and then suck the stuff into a storage chamber here!”

“Uh,” Dash said.

“Your father had the idea after he got that chunk of ham jammed in the garbage disposal,” Mrs. Fenton said indulgently, smiling fondly. “And just think, with this there’ll be enough pieces left over for samples!” She clapped her hands giddily.

“Uh,” Dash said.

“We know for a fact it works on those blob ghosts and the squishier ones,” Mr. Fenton said, “but your mother really wants to see if we can use it to get a sample of the more anthropomorphic looking ones!”

Mrs. Fenton beamed. “Just think, we could get a full specimen, ooh, maybe even a live one if we go for a less vital area!”

“UH,” Dash said.

“Ah, look at you, son, so excited you can barely speak!” Mr. Fenton said, the hand on his back coming around to his shoulder to tug him in to his side excitedly. “I know exactly how you feel!”

“Oh, but you were worried about some kind of mass outbreak?” Mrs. Fenton asked. “Is there something wrong, sweetie?”

“NO!” Dash said, an octave too high. “No, no, just, uh, so curious, about your… very very cool… ghost, um, liquefying machine. I gotta, um, I have homework to do!”

“Do you need any help, son?” Mr. Fenton asked, brightening up. “You know, I might not be the best at math, but if it’s science you need help with, I was always a wiz at biology -”

“No thanks, it’s algebra!”

And with that, he speed-walked out of the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time.

“Guys,” he said, bursting through the bedroom door where the others were waiting, “we have got to catch those ghosts and put them in the thermos thingie.”

Chapter Text

They caught those ghosts and put them in the thermos thingie.

For a week.

Dash had never been more exhausted in his life, and he’d had practices that had put him on his last legs. Ghost hunting, it turned out, meant being on-call basically all day every day. There was a bloody thrill in beating them up at first, but they just kept coming. The ghosts turned up while he was in class. They showed up while he was doing homework. They showed up when he was in bed trying to sleep, the telltale cold exhale jerking him out of almost-sleep more than once.

It was an endurance sport, and if Dash had had trouble with algebra before, he was in real danger of failing now. Barely any of his assignments got turned in, and calling it “attendance” was starting to feel like a joke at this point.

At least it gave him a good excuse to bail when Dani-not-Danny kept trying to corner him. She’d been throwing him glances since that first day, and then stares, and by the end of the week, she was actively trying to corner him in the halls. Dash got really good at disappearing around corners and into closets and, by Wednesday, had developed a sixth (he guessed seventh, after the ghost one) sense for when she was coming.

“The literary device of irony! Mr. Fenton, care to enlighten us how it applies to this situation?”

Mr. Lancer’s voice cut into Dash’s second involuntary nap of the day. He jerked up, wiping the beginning of a drool trail off of his face. He heard tittering behind him.

“Chapter fifty-one, page 437,” he heard Sam hiss from her seat next to him. He looked down at the beat-up copy of East of Eden they were reading from and hastily flipped to the right page, scanning the lines.

He knew that he had to tell his guilt to his father and beg his forgiveness. And he had to humble himself to Aron, not only now but always. He could not live without that. And yet, when he was called out and stood in the room with Sheriff Quinn and his father, he was as raw and angry as a surly dog and his hatred of himself turned outward toward everyone—a vicious cur he was, unloved, unloving.

Then he was back in his room and his guilt assaulted him and he had no weapon to fight it off.

A panic for Aron arose in him. He might be in-jured, might be in trouble. It was Aron who couldn’t take care of himself. Cal knew he had to bring Aron back, had to find him and build him back the way he had been. And this had to be done even though Cal sacrificed himself. And then the idea of sacrifice took hold of him the way it does with all guilty-feeling men. A sacrifice might reach Aron and bring him back.

Cal went to his bureau and got the flat package from under his handkerchiefs in his drawer. He looked around the room and brought a porcelain pin tray to his desk. He breathed deeply and found the cool air good tasting. He lifted one of the crisp bills, creased it in the middle so that it made an angle, and then he scratched a match under his desk and lighted the bill. The heavy paper curled and blackened, the flame ran upward, and only when the fire was about his fingertips did Cal drop the charred chip in the pin tray. He stripped off another bill and lighted it.

… Irony. He was supposed to be figuring out how this was ironic.

“I guess… it’s uh, ironic, because he could have just given the money away if he didn’t want it?” Dash tried. The tittering grew louder. He snuck a look back to see Starr and her friends losing it at his expense while Dani, next to them, stared a hole in the back of his head. Kwan waved from next to her; she turned to glare at him, and the wave wilted and died.

Mr. Lancer didn’t seem impressed, but he didn’t seem upset, either. He raised an eyebrow and nodded at Dash.

“What should he have done with the money, instead, then?”

“He, uh, he could have… given it to charity?” Dash tried again, and the giggling was getting annoying at this point. “I mean, it’s like… who does this actually help, right?”

“That’s a very good question, Mr. Fenton. Who does the act of burning the money help?” Follow up questions were a double edged sword. On the one hand, usually if a kid answered a question with something stupid, he’d scoff and move on. On the other, Dash was kind of flying blind here. He glanced down at his notes, hastily scribbled between ghost sightings while floating above the financial district late last night.

“It, uh. It doesn’t really help anyone?”

Mr. Lancer nodded again, and when he said good in that tone, it reminded a little of Dash when he was first trying to leash train Pookie, coaxing him forward inch by inch.

“It doesn’t help anyone, so…” Seriously, how the hell was this situation supposed to be ironic, again?

Right as he started to fumble and falter yet again, the giggles and laughs starting back up, Sam threw her hand up in the air, speaking without waiting to be called on.

“I’ll tell you what he should have done. How about instead of donating it to charity, Cal could have given that money back to the farmers he took advantage of to make that profit in the first place!”

“Very good, Ms. Manson, but I was wanting Mr. Fenton to -”

“Steinbeck has always included themes of capitalism as a shorthand analogy for evil in his work, and that’s because he understands that when the Great Depression struck, it was because the people who were supposed to be in charge of the country with all their ‘great fortunes’ didn’t actually use any of that money responsibly and ethically, and that their constant growth and hoarding of resources was unethical and unsustainable,” Sam pushed on, heat starting to enter her words, “and this act proves that even though Cal is trying to be a good person, and wants to act with morals, at the end of the day he cares more about himself and his own feelings than how he could actually do the most good for the community. He doesn’t want to give the money away, he wants to feel better about himself.”

“Thank you, Ms. Manson, for your insightful critique of capitalism as always, a very helpful tool to look at when examining Mr. Steinbeck’s work, but if you would kindly let me get on with the lesson,” Mr. Lancer said, exasperated. Sam put her hand down, and this time Dash could somehow feel most of the popular kids were tittering at her now instead. He caught her eye and shot her a grateful look; he’d never in a million years thought he’d be grateful for one of her many classroom-derailing rants on social justice.

“And the doctor is out!” Tucker crooned, snapping the cap shut on the Fenton thermos as the last remnants of Bertrand sloshed their way in.

Dash descended towards the floor in a wobbly sort of float, hitting the ground of the wooded area of the park and staying there belly-down. He groaned into the dirt and leaves.

“Who’d be dumb enough to buy ‘natural cures and remedies’ from a dump like this, anyway?” he asked, tilting his head to see the cart that had been upended into the treeline. Tucker, who had started picking through the remains opportunistically, stayed his hand over a sachet of what looked like dried herbs.

Not for long, though - the spoils started to make their way into Tucker’s bag.

“Hey, we should be grateful he wasn’t teamed up with Spectra this time,” he pointed out, eyeing and discarding a magnetic bracelet. “She would’ve been selling straight up poison!”

Dimly, Dash remembered the therapy ghost. Like all counselors, she’d been out to make him feel bad about junk that didn’t matter, but unlike most of them, he hadn’t been able to ignore her. Yeah, even after a week like this, she was in the running for his least favorite ghost.

“Who says I wasn’t?” came the husky voice of an older woman, and Dash pushed himself up from the dirt to see the ghost herself.

Tucker sighed.

“Great,” he said, and flipped his bag, emptying his backpack of the collected bottles with a shake. “No resale value.”

“Come on now, don’t be like that,” Spectra cooed. What was it with ghost women and being so weirdly flirty all the time? Dash wasn’t used to flirting as a threat, and it was weird. “After all, who doesn’t want to look young forever? With a little bit of ecto-oil, all those wrinkles and lines will be a thing of the past! You can’t blame them, just as much as you can’t help but want to snatch up every last little bit of their insecurities and feast!”

She didn’t get to go on much further, though, as Dash hit her with a solid ecto-blast (he’d finally decided that hitting girls was okay as long as they were ghosts, but he still generally avoided using his fists). After several ghosts back to back, each with their own monologue, his patience was wearing thin.

Spectra turned on him with a surprisingly animalistic snarl as she flung herself forward, perfectly manicured nails slashing out at him like claws. Dash caught her first hand, trying to deflect it, and for a minute they tangled, wrestling in midair, before Spectra got the upper hand. She shoved him against the same tree the cart had landed in earlier.

Dash hissed, struggling, as she raised her hand back for another slash. Somewhere outside his field of view, he heard Tucker yell “Dash, through the tree, duck!”

On pure instinct, he phased through immediately, retreating into the dark oak and emerging the other side just seconds later to the crash of glass shattering and a furious, pained cry from the ghost woman. By the time he ducked around to investigate, the human facade Spectra had been wearing had melted away, leaving her a shadow of her former self - literally.

“Ecto-oil, huh?” Tucker said with a cocky smirk. “Guessing it’s great for wrinkles, not so great for ghosts.”

Spectra let out a furious howl and rounded on him, but Tucker was prepared, another bottle already in hand as it smashed against her again. She threw up her hands and screamed, the glowing green substance sizzling and letting out an ominous looking steam like water on a hot griddle.

“See, this is why you always gotta check the label on these things,” Tucker said with a shake of his head. “Alright, get ‘em Dash!”

Dash grinned, timing his landing so that he landed down hard on Spectra, pinning her in place as he aimed and pointed the Fenton Thermos.

“Think it’ll get cramped in there?” He asked Tucker offhandedly, who shrugged. “Eh, fair enough.”

“You’re welcome, Bertrand!” Tucker said, cupping his hand around his mouth like he was whispering to the thermos, and Dash laughed.

Dash kept telling himself it was going to be a shame when he went back to whaling on Tucker when this was all over. It was starting to feel a little weak even to him, but he had to keep telling it to himself.

They split not long after, heading to their respective homes. Dash gave himself exactly thirty minutes to lie on his bed staring at the ceiling with his brain turned off. Then, with a heavy sigh, he rolled off the bed and went to fetch his backpack from downstairs where he’d left it.

Jazz was in the kitchen, her homework in front of her. Though he’d planned to pass right by, he hesitated just enough for her to look up at him and smile tiredly.

“Mom and Dad are out tonight,” she said. “They have that city hall presentation. You know the one. I made mac ‘n cheese if you’re hungry.”

Dash slowed his steps, glancing over at the stove. He didn’t feel very hungry, in fact he didn’t have much of an appetite at all, but…

“That’s probably a good idea. Been working hard. No clue how many calories fighting ghosts burns, but it sure feels like a lot.”

She chuckled.

“I’m willing to bet. I cut up some hot dogs and mixed them in, too. I know you’re always focused on getting protein.”

Dash swallowed. “That’s… thanks, Jazz.”

On top of everything else that had happened because of this crazy wish, he was pretty sure his longtime aspiration to get with Jazz Fenton was never going to recover from a full week of being treated as her brother. He hadn't even thought about how hot she was more than once today.

Jazz waved her hand.

“No biggie. It’s not that hard to make, anyway.” She glanced at his backpack, slung over his shoulder. “Lots of work?”

He sighed. “It’s actually a pretty light load, all things considered. Sam couldn’t go out hunting tonight, so she volunteered to do my math homework instead.”

Jazz did her absolute best not to wince. And failed. But she at least held her tongue.

“... So instead the only thing I gotta worry about is some dumb reading comprehension stuff.”

“What book?”

“East of Eden,” Dash said, and then on a whim set his backpack down on the table, tugging the book out. Jazz actually brightened, something he usually didn’t see in response to someone talking about a gazillion page novel from like fifty years ago.

“Oh, I remember that one! We had to read that in my class a couple years back. You must be around the same point in the curriculum as I was!” She cocked her head. “Well, I’m not gonna do your work for you, but was there something about the reading comprehension questions you weren’t sure on? It’s been a little while, but I’m sure I can explain it to you if you need.”

“That’d… actually be great,” Dash said, surprised, as he sat down properly. “So, there’s this guy Cal, and he runs a racket where he buys these beans from local farmers for dirt cheap…”

“So then, Mr. Lancer gave you a bonus question where he wanted you to answer why Cal burned the money instead of giving it away?” Jazz said, tapping her fingers on the tabletop thoughtfully.

“It’s what I get for making the mistake of answering a question in English,” he grumbled. “But… I need the extra credit.”

“Well, let’s work through it. What was your first thought when you read that chapter?”

“That this guy was stupid and I wished the book would be over already,” Dash said dryly.

Jazz let out a fondly exasperated huff. “Okay. What makes him stupid?”

“Burning money is just stupid. Like I said, he could have given it to charity, or Sam said he could have given it back to the people he scammed.” Dash shrugged.

“Those are good ideas. So, if we want to understand why he chose what he did, let’s run through why he didn’t make those other choices. Why didn’t he give it back to the farmers?”

“I dunno,” Dash said, thunking his head on the table. After a few moments, though, begrudgingly wracking his brain, bits and pieces of previous chapters floated by him. “Uh, I think the family was in trouble a while back. The boys got made fun of because their mother is a wh- a prostitute. And… I think there was something about them being poor.”

“And what does that have to do with the farmers?” Jasmine said, but by her tone it was obvious she knew.

“If he gave it back to them… he’d have to admit that he scammed them. He’d have to own up to the fact that he screwed them over to get rich, and he only wanted to be rich to impress his dad in the first place.” Dash brought his face off the table, resting it in his crossed arms instead. “The whole thing was selfish, but it’s like…” he trailed off. “I mean, it’s not, like, that bad, is it?” he said suddenly. “Like, yeah people would probably get mad at him for making a profit, but he didn’t actually scam them, he just sold their stock where it’d be more valuable.”

“War profiteering,” Jazz provided.

“Right, that. So okay yeah it wasn’t the best thing to do, but he just wanted his dad to like him, y’know? Like, we spent the whole however many chapters watching his brother Aron get all the love and all the attention, and have everyone gush about what a good person he is, meanwhile Cal does everything for his dad and he gets barely anything at all, like is it really a crime? Would it kill their dad to just hear him out?” Dash hadn’t realized how carried away he’d gotten until he blinked, back straightened up and hands gesturing wildly. Jazz was giving him what he’d mentally dubbed the Therapist Look, that aggravating mix of carefully neutral but understanding and sympathetic.

“Dash… you know your dad loves you, right? You know that he’s proud of you?” Jazz said softly, and for a moment, Dash couldn’t speak through the hot ball of something that had lodged its way into his throat and behind his eyes. Fortunately for him, though, she kept on talking. “Like, I know he’s not the best at keeping in contact, and I know he can be… kind of off in his own head. And I know a lot of the time it feels like they focus on my achievements. But mom and dad love you, they really do.”

Right. Dash was still in the upside down bizarro world where everyone thought Jack Fenton was his father. He swallowed hard, pushing down the tight wad in his throat and blinking rapidly.

“Yeah,” he croaked, then cleared his throat and tried again. “Yeah, I know. I was just… I was just saying for the book, y’know? If he gave the money back, everyone would know what he did. Everyone would think he’s a selfish sack of shit, and he wouldn’t have his father’s love or any respect.”

Jazz’s look softened, and for a moment Dash was afraid she was going to push harder, dig more into something he wouldn’t want to unpack even if he could tell her without sounding insane and giving away the lie. But instead, she nodded down at the paper under his hands.

“I think that’s a pretty good answer right there.” Her nose wrinkled. “Maybe don’t use those exact words, though. I don’t know how academically professional it is to call a character a sack of shit.”

Dash barked out a laugh, caught off guard, and she smiled at him.

Living with the Fentons was weird. The parents were gone half the time, and the other half they were smothering in their affection and the way they’d hug him and reassure him like he was a little kid. Jazz was more doting and open, called him ‘little brother’ and fussed over him…

And yet, as he sat there at the dinner table arguing about which required reading assignment was the absolute worst over bowls of cold instant mac ‘n cheese, he couldn’t actually remember a time he’d felt more comfortable.

Two and a half hours later, he knelt over Tucker’s bleeding body, hands applying pressure to the deep gouges across his chest. The sound of Sam screaming Tucker’s name and Skulker retracting his gauntlet both seemed far, far away over the pounding in Dash’s ears and the hoarse, raspy wheezing of Tucker’s breath.

Chapter Text

About an hour before that…

“So, I was thinking… we’ve got all the big players taken care of, right?” Sam said, her voice coming through the tinny speakers in Dash’s - Fenton’s - computer. Dash raised his voice to be picked up by the microphone where it lay on his desk, several feet away from where he was flopped over sideways on the bed.

“More or less, I think… Tucker’s scanner thingie is still picking up some spooks, but none of those big blobs.” As an afterthought, he added, “Haven’t been freaked out by my own breath in a bit, either.”

Tucker snickered. “Saw II is gonna be so small time once it finally comes out.”

“Seriously, you’re going to see Saw II and not The Amity Park Horror?” Sam complained. “Where’s your sense of loyalty to our fair town?”

Dash snorted at the sarcasm in her voice, letting the two get enveloped in their own argument about what movies coming out next year were definitely going to be great, and whether Bloodrayne or Alone in the Dark was going to be the worse movie. He tuned out a bit, letting them geek out in peace while he stared at the ceiling, enjoying the feeling of finally letting himself rest after a full week of being constantly on the go. Even the time he’d taken the team to nationals, he couldn’t remember a more stressful or physically demanding week.

He finally tuned back in, though, when Sam said, “So what I’m hearing is, movie night at my place?”

“You’re on,” Tucker said, daringly. “First person to jump and spill their popcorn loses!”

“Sure you wanna make it a bet? I can think of some pretty great punishments for the losers.”

“Your place, huh?” Dash said, pulling himself up with a sigh. “Can’t we make it my place instead? I don’t wanna go out again tonight.”

“What? No way, dude!” Tucker said. “No offense, like your setup is fine and all, but you know Sam’s got the best popcorn, and the comfiest seats!”

Dash thought the sofa and widescreen TV in the Fentons' living room was pretty sweet, all things considered, but he didn’t really feel like arguing. At least, not until a specific problem occurred to him.

Where the hell was Sam's place?

“I mean, yeah but, uh…” Dash cast around hastily. “What about… well, I’m just feeling lazy tonight, after everything.”

“Really, dude?” Tucker said. “Too lazy for Sam’s setup? You could take a nap through the movie if you really wanted to.”

“Oh, you won’t be sleeping through The Grudge, trust me,” Sam said confidently. “But yeah, we could always turn the massage chair on. C’mon, my parents are even out for the night. Off at some musical in Chicago.”

Reflexively, Dash got his hopes up for a whole half a second at ‘my parents are out for the night’ before remembering that he didn’t even like Sam that way.

“Uh, right, I mean…” Dash fumbled, resisting the urge to bury his head in his pillow, “but I just… come on, Tucker, won’t you at least walk with me? It’s late, and there’s gonna be freaks and weirdos out.”

“You mean, like, you?” Tucker said dryly. “You’re the one who can turn invisible and fly, dude.”

“Mm,” Sam said, and Dash could picture her brows pinching. “If you’re really that tired… tell you what, I’ll just have Hobson pick you up.”

“You’ll just… uh, sssssure…?” Dash said. Was Hobson her… dad? Stepdad? People called their stepdads by name, right?

“Hey!” Tucker complained. “How come Dash gets to be picked up when he’s the guy who can fly? I’ve been out almost every night with him, you know!”

“Oh my god, you’re such a baby,” Sam said, rolling her eyes. “Fine, I’ll have him pick you up too, you big wuss, but just for that, you’re bringing some of your dad’s salsa.”

“Sure,” Tucker said.

And that was that. Dash sighed and reached for his letterman.

Hobson, as it turned out, was likely not her stepdad. Unless her mom was into a very specific type of older guy. Instead, Dash had moved on to a new theory, that he must be her granddad or maybe uncle. Great uncle? He was pretty old looking, with wispy grey hair and prominent jowls. Why he was wearing a suit when it was almost nine o’clock in the evening was beyond Dash, but he supposed it was possible he’d just come off work or something.

Dash had gotten into the car without too much fuss, waving goodbye to Jazz before he left. It could have just been his imagination, but it almost seemed like she’d been relieved when he told her where he was going. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder (he’d long since learned it was better to have a thermos on hand at all times than to be caught without), he’d headed out and into the waiting car, the smell of leather and that strange new car smell washing over him.

“So, uh, Hobson,” Dash said, trying to figure out if this world’s Dash would already know him or not, “how… are you?”

Hobson glanced up at Dash, meeting his eyes through the rear-view mirror. He seemed to have read the same therapy books as Jazz, if his bland, politely neutral yet listening face was anything to go by. He couldn’t read this guy for the life of them.

“... Quite well, Mr. Fenton,” he answered, after a moment. “Seatbelt, please.”

“Uh, right…” Dash mumbled, fumbling with the seatbelt as he tried to figure out who else besides a teacher would call him Mr. Fenton.

He decided to give up on small talk after that.

Hobson-whoever-the-hell-he-was picked up Tucker next, who swung into the seat with practiced ease, tugging his seatbelt on without being prompted and then immediately leaning forward to put his fist out.

“Hobson! How’s it hanging?”

“Quite well, Mr. Foley,” Hobson replied in the exact same stiff tone. He returned the fist bump as if he’d never actually done one before in his life. Like he’d only read up on the theory of fistbumps and this was his chance to observe a fistbump in the wild.

“Car smells new, is it a new car? Love that smell,” Tucker said.

“Yes, Master Manson decided it was time for a change. The oil was ‘running low’ in his old car, you see.”

Tucker snickered. “Bet Sam was thrilled about that.”

“He didn’t have to trash the old one,” Dash said unthinkingly. “I coulda changed it, or fixed the leak if it was leaking.”

Tucker blinked in surprise, casting a glance over at him.

“Dude, since when do you know how to work on cars? You don’t even have a permit yet!”

“Ah, oh, uh…” Dash stalled out for a moment.

“I believe that basic vehicle maintenance is on the driving test for Amity Park’s DMV, is it not?” Hobson said. “They have questions on things like what to do in the event of a flat tire, or a potential overheating problem.”

“Right! That’s right,” Dash said, having never researched the driving test in his life.

“Oh, dang, you’re serious about it, huh?” Tucker said. “Too bad it’s been so hard to convince your folks.”

“Yeah,” he said, before hurriedly changing the subject to Tucker's new PDA. He was such a geek, but Dash guessed it could come in handy sometimes.

Good news: he’d finally figured out what Hobson’s deal was. That was a single question answered, to be replaced by about five hundred more.

“You’re rich,” Dash said to Sam, out loud, because he was so good at playing along and pretending to be this world’s Dash who knew Sam Manson very well and apparently also knew that she was richer than Paulina’s parents, which was insane to him. For crying out loud, Paulina’s family had a fountain in their driveway! Sam’s family, meanwhile, had a chandelier in their front room (or ‘fore-yay’, whatever that was, which in and of itself had to be some rich people shit), an electronic lock on the front door, and a goddamn butler that Sam could apparently send out to pick up her friends at 9 o’clock at night without so much as an eyebrow raise.

Not only that, she could also order enough pizzas to feed a small party, each of their favorite flavors, plus cheesy breadsticks and cinnamon monkey bread, and she could also apparently get this order placed even though delivery was supposed to be closed for the night. Dash was pretty sure he had seen her slip the delivery kid a Franklin as she thanked him profusely for being willing to come at this hour.

Tucker snickered at Dash’s outburst, and Sam shot him a look that was half affectionate exasperation and half… embarrassment?

“Yes, Dash, we’ve been over this,” she huffed. “Now carry your damn pizzas already and let’s go to the theater.”

The theater. The indoor theater she owned, right next to the indoor bowling lane that had all the latest releases straight to DVD in a long, long line of shelves, just next to the at-home popcorn making machine and -

“Why are you rich?” Dash asked out loud.

Tucker’s snickers turned to full blown laughter, and Sam… huh. For all the times he’d mocked her or Tucker had ribbed her, he’d never seen her blush before.

“I’m rich because our society is designed so that those of us who already had money to begin with can rig the system to continue to reap the benefits by stepping on the backs of the people who got them there,” Sam rattled off in the span of a single breath, storming down the stairs.

“Uh… what?”

“Her great grandpa was an inventor who made a bunch of patents,” Tucker whispered. “Any company who uses their machines owes Sam’s family royalties, so now they make bank by sitting around doing basically nothing.”

“O-oh… right,” Dash said, brain chugging to keep up. “So then… what do your parents, uh… do all day?”

“Here we go,” Tucker muttered.

“Well that’s just it, isn’t it?” Sam fumed. “They do nothing. All that money, all that social influence they could be leveraging in the name of the common good, and what does Dad do? Just plays golf all day! Mom at least tries to leverage her social influence, but it’s always about stupid stuff like ‘the effects of video games on the youth’ and not important things like stopping global warming or protecting the environment! Hell, if they wanted, they could buy up all the land in the former Potawatomi nation and just give it to them. It wouldn’t even hurt our quality of life!”

Dash was beginning to suspect that Sam was what some adults called “a rare breed”. It was dawning on him that she could have bought herself into the A-listers multiple times over. Hundreds of times over, by the sound of it. But she never had. Had hidden her wealth and stayed friends and pariahs with Tucker and… Fenton. Danny.

Why?

Dimly, he registered that she was still talking. Something about decriminalizing homelessness, whatever that meant.

With a feeling like getting an ice cold bucket of water splashed on him, it hit him. She just… cared that much? Enough to not care about being popular?

Dash's entire world tilted on its axis for a second as he processed this possibility.

What would that even look like? Caring so much about doing the right thing that it didn’t even matter what other people thought about you? That would be like, like… like playing football even if it didn’t get you money or attention from girls. Or being a superhero even if everyone in the city hated you and thought you were an evil monster without any feelings, even your parents. Or playing for the Cleveland Browns - wait, he’d already said that one.

All that work, all that suffering, and for what? The warm fuzzy feeling you get from doing something nice? Who could possibly want to waste all that effort?

“Am I a bad person?” Dash said out loud.

The other two paused, midway though what looked like examining an innocent pizza.

“Nooooo?” Tucker asked, nose wrinkling.

“I mean, I still think it’s gross that you’re cool with slaughtering an animal to get enough protein to fuel your workout when I’ve showed you before you can get as much from plant and bean based products, but like…” Sam paused, her own confusion mirroring Tucker's, “... that’s never stopped you before?”

“No way, man!” Tucker said. He didn’t seem fazed by Sam giving him a reproachful look for backing Dash up on meat-eating, barreling along without a beat. “Remember when you turned invisible and snuck into Dani’s Home Ec class and added reaper pepper oil to her chocolate chip cookies? Or when you overshadowed her to make her tell Mr. Lancer she was into bald dudes? Or when you -”

“Tucker!” Sam snapped. “I - look, Dash, you’re a good person in spite of all those things - STOP SNICKERING, BOTH OF YOU!”

“Did I seriously do that?” Dash asked, because man, that sounded funny. But wait, hold on, if he had supposedly done that, then Danny back home must have done that to Dash and didn’t that explain a number of canny revenge pranks Fenton had pulled lately - “Did he seriously do that?” But wait, hold on, if it wasn’t fun from his point of view, then maybe…

… Maybe it wasn’t… right?

Wait, hold on, was Danny Phantom still a good guy if he spent his time and superpowers pranking his bullies back? Dash groaned, scrubbing his face with his hands.

“What even makes someone a good person, then?” he asked, looking at Sam, who was giving him another look like he’d slipped up somewhere.

Sam opened her mouth, looking confident as ever that she was about to pull out yet another carefully researched criticism of societal injustice or the importance of radical kindness.

“Ah,” she said. “Um.”

Tucker scrubbed a hand down his face.

“So much for your plan,” he mumbled to Sam.

“Your plan?” Dash asked.

Sam sighed, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Yeah, I… I know this week’s been rough on all of us, really, but you especially,” she said. “I thought that maybe… it would be nice to spend a night not worrying about things like ghosts attacking the city, or the mayor weighing in on anti-ghost policies, or your parents being… your parents.”

Right. Because he currently lived in a world where doing whatever he wanted and actually having fun most nights… didn’t happen. Because he was a hero.

Was being a hero just a long, long series of doing things you don’t really wanna do, for people who won’t appreciate you, against bad guys who could kind of care less about you if you weren’t in the way, for no thanks whatsoever? And then you just kept doing that forever until you died?

What the hell was the point in doing the right thing or being a good person?

“Sam even set up your favorite movie,” Tucker said, oblivious to Dash's inner turmoil as he held up a DVD copy of Lady and the Tramp.

A tight wad of something ended up in Dash’s throat again for the umpteenth time that week, days of no rest leading to him having feelings over stupid shit like…

“You don’t even think I’m gay for liking it,” he sniffled, honest to god sniffled pathetically.

“Oh, Dash,” Sam said sympathetically. “We don’t think you’re gay for liking Lady and the Tramp.”

“We think you’re bi,” Tucker said, with that same syrupy sweet tone. Sam rolled her eyes and started ushering them to their seats, pizza in tow.

Of course, because Dash was living Danny’s life right now and he was quickly realizing that Danny’s life sucked, they didn’t even make it to Mr. Busy freeing Lady from her muzzle before Tucker’s PDA gave an ecto-alert, and all three of them groaned simultaneously.

“... It’s a small one?” Tucker tried, but even he didn’t seem convinced.

“We could always just wait for it to cause tro-” Dash started, only to break off in another groan as a bluish wisp escaped him with a shudder. He flung his head back in resignation.

“Aaaand that’s our cue,” Sam finished, pausing the movie. Dash reluctantly pried himself out of the massage chair, stretching his neck out and rolling it around.

“You sure it’s small?” he asked Tucker. His sixth ghost sense was definitely more art than science, but after a full week of near constant use, he’d started to get pretty decent at telling not only when a ghost was nearby, but roughly what direction they were in and how tough they were. The wisp of fog had felt pretty urgent, but that could have just been the accompanying shock, like a jolt of adrenaline straight to his system.

Tucker’s eyebrows creased.

“Well, there’s one ghost we know of that shows up weak on the radar and strong on the ghost sense,” he said, giving Dash a meaningful look.

“And… they’re not… good news,” Dash tried. It seemed he was on the money, because Tucker opened his mouth, and -

- let out a high-pitched scream as he was wrenched up and away from the group, a sharp vice digging into his midsection as he was all but flung up into the ceiling. He didn’t even feel himself go ghost, or even turn intangible, just the whipping of being jerked up through the ceiling and into the floor above them, a (thankfully empty) kitchen.

“Well, well, ghost child,” a deep, menacing voice drawled, and Dash whipped his head around quickly to the source of it. He… he actually knew that voice. The ghost stepped out of the shadows, a metal carapace decorated with deadly looking weaponry wreathed in a halo of flaming mane and okay, this was so not fair, why was every single ghost in Amity Park hot for some reason?!

… Except Bertrand?!

But no, wait, okay, pushing down that questionable line of thought, he knew that ghost. Phantom - Danny - had saved him from this exact ghost last year. While tiny. And changing outfits.

“Skulker,” Dash growled, balling his fists. He wasn’t puny this time.

Skulker grinned at him, staring him down intently.

“A good hunter always knows the opportune time to strike. You’ve been working hard all week long, haven’t you? Feeling tired yet?”

“Like hell,” Dash snarled, ignoring that that was a technically honest answer, as the ghost form he’d gotten used to calling on enveloped him in two bright splitting rings and he experienced that familiar sensation of weightlessness.

“No? Well, I’ll give you something to tire you out!” Skulker said, giving him a nasty grin as he jerked hard on his right gauntlet, holding some sort of - OW RIGHT THE VICE.

Dash yelped as the claw he remembered too late yanked hard on his chest, Skulker stepping aside and twisting his arm to fling him hard into a series of pots and pans hanging above the stove.

Dash grit his teeth through the nasty clatter, remembering his practice phasing to get through the heavy metal holding him.

Except the biting grip of the claw didn’t let up, and neither did the strange glowing thin cord it was attached to. Dash reached out and gripped it, feeling the solid tension of it even beneath his intangible fingertips. Seeing an opportunity, he wrapped his hand into it, bracing it against his arm and taking away some of the leverage Skulker had on him.

He wasn’t puny this time.

“You like?” Skulker asked, apparently eager to keep bantering. “You seemed to have so much fun with that fishing rod, I thought to myself, ‘hey, why don’t I give that a shot?’ and wouldn’t you know it, it’s just the thing to add to my collection!”

Dash forced himself to smile back, calling on all the times he’d menaced an opposing quarterback from the other side of the field.

“Sure! Happy to share with you, since your own lame gear couldn’t get the job done.”

That wiped the smirk off Skulker’s face, all right. With a snarl, he tried to fling Dash into another wall, but Dash was ready this time, digging his heels into… well, okay, digging them into thin air, but he was flying so it gave him the same leverage as digging them into the dirt. Calling on all the hours spent doing tug-of-war in practice, he gripped hard on his point of leverage and yanked back, taking Skulker off guard and forcing him to readjust or be ripped off his feet.

“Having trouble?” Dash taunted, feeling the rush of victory, of being stronger wash over him. He wasn’t puny this time! In the other room, he heard the heavy thump of human feet on the stairs, and forced his shoulders against the pull, readjusting the angle and forcing Skulker to adapt his own stance again, keeping him on his toes. “You’ve got the fancy tech, I’ll give you that, and you think you’re so great at hunting, but I can do you one better - I know the key to winning in football.”

A pause then, as the source of the footsteps overheard him and softened. Dash didn’t dare break eye contact with Skulker, not willing to risk giving the game away, but he bared his teeth anyway. Skulker snarled. “Keep that look on your face. It’ll look lovely over my mantle, where I hang it.”

Dash’s expression dropped for a moment. “Ew, dude.”

That was enough of an opening, then, as Skulker raised his left hand, and Dash saw too late there was another claw on that gauntlet too. Okay, he was crying foul, how come Skulker got two and he didn’t? He braced himself, free hand preparing to blast it away as he grit out -

“The key to winning in football… is to know where to put your players!” He flashed Skulker a victorious grin as he gave Tucker the signal.

Then, several things happened all at once.

Tucker burst into the entranceway where he’d been lurking, Fenton Thermos at the ready.

Skulker turned to look at the new arrival.

The change in Skulker’s stance slackened the line and threw Dash off balance for the briefest fraction of a second.

The left gauntlet, already primed to fire, shifted targets.

Dash felt the cocky rush of victory drain out of him and be replaced with ice cold dread.

The claw spat out, racing forward like a speeding bullet.

Tucker’s eyes widened, his hands jerking up and away on reflex as the thermos glowed.

Dash tried to fling himself forward, but he was too slow.

There was a mechanical cling, and somehow it sounded a lot louder coming from several feet away than when he’d felt it on himself, scarlet blooming slowly across Tucker’s shirt.

The thermos hit the floor.

Tucker screamed.

Sam kicked open the door on the other side of the kitchen, her face quickly draining of color.

Dash, seconds too late, finally caught up with Tucker, his hands hovering ineffectually over where the claw had dug in, too late to catch it, too late to stop it.

Time slowly resumed, but he still felt weirdly divorced from it all, like he was in this weird little bubble with Tucker and nothing else existed. He met Tucker’s eyes, and he couldn’t take what he saw there. There wasn’t any anger or hatred, there wasn’t any blame. Just wide green eyes, unfocused with shock but still locked on him.

Dash didn’t get it. He had been winning. He wasn’t puny anymore. He’d known exactly where to put his…

His…

He was a bad person.

Chapter Text

“Tucker!” Dash heard Sam scream. The sound pulled his eyes off of Tucker's wounded body long enough to register what was going on.

Sam was still there, eyes wide, frozen in the doorway. Skulker, though, was just standing there. The worst part of all was that he didn’t look upset or horrified. He didn’t look shocked. He didn’t even look smug or triumphant, like those evil villains Dash had seen in his cartoons. He just looked… put out. Like he’d been enjoying a game and some loser had come along to interrupt. Like Tucker was an inconvenience, a distraction, but not even a good one.

Dash saw red.

It wasn’t whaling on someone, not the way he was used to. There weren’t any fists, there weren’t even ecto-blasts. He opened his mouth and a scream ripped its way out of his throat, and with it went everything.

Every single painful, complicated emotion he’d had since the first morning he’d woke up in Fenton’s bed, every understanding look and kind word, every friendship he hadn't earned and didn’t deserve. Dinner prepared the way he liked it, his favorite movies without judgement, invitations to talk that never seemed bitter when he didn’t take it, all this kindness and understanding and patience and feelings for a selfish, shallow bully, a puny, pathetic, angry little boy who couldn’t even make it one week in his hero’s shoes -

“...ash… Dash!”

Hands on his shoulders, shaking him.

Dash drew a ragged breath. The raw, hot ball of emotions had finally released, and with it a flood of wetness on his cheeks. He realized belatedly that his lungs were burning, begging for air, and he sucked in deep gasps. It wasn’t until then that he realized his lungs were even working at all, that his body was back to flesh and blood, that his ghost form was gone.

But that icy cold still lingered in the pit of his stomach.

He looked back at Skulker, but there was no Skulker. In fact, there wasn’t even a kitchen. The back wall had been blown completely open like a fist through tinfoil, bricks dropping into a thick cloud of mortar and dust that hung heavy. He was pretty sure he could hear the trickle of water through burst pipes, and beyond it, the sounds of the street filtered in through the haze.

He didn’t know Phantom could do that.

Finally, as if in a dream, he looked back at Sam. “Tucker?” he rasped, and his throat felt raw, worse than any cold he’d ever had. Even worse than that time he’d been invited to his first ever frat party and had spent the entire next day in bed puking up his guts until nothing remained.

Sam winced. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

It was the worst thing she could possibly have said.

He forced himself to his feet on legs that felt numb and unresponsive, only allowing them to buckle when he was back beside Tucker, who was still moving, still breathing, thank God, but didn’t respond when Dash called his name.

“Apply pressure,” Dash mumbled in a daze, carefully bunching up his jacket and pressing down, staunching the blood flow as best he could. “... Little blood flow can keep the wound clean, try not to lose more…”

“Dash,” Sam said tightly, but there wasn’t much more to say.

According to the first aid they’d been forced to study in those lame days they’d spent learning instead of practicing on the field, you could lose up to fourteen percent of your blood before it became dangerous, and thirty percent was the point at which most people would pass out. Dash stared blankly at the brownish-red fabric that soaked through beneath his hands.

He’d never cursed his D- in math so much before.

There was a hiss, then, some kind of futuristic machine whir. For a single, terrifying second, Dash was afraid it was Skulker, back again, and he wasn’t sure if he was more worried for what would happen to him or to Skulker, but it wasn’t, it was…

“Red Huntress,” Sam said coldly.

… Yeah sure, okay, whatever. Dash turned back to Tucker in a numb haze.

“I got a sudden spike in ecto-signature -” The Red Huntress’ voice suddenly went from cold and businesslike to human in a heartbeat as she moved further into the destroyed wall and got a good look at the kitchen, “oh - my God - Foley!”

Dash’s head snapped up. He knew that voice too. “Valerie?”

The Huntress froze up, as did Sam, and they probably would have had a very cool and awesome standoff if it weren’t for the fact that -

“Tucker needs a hospital,” Dash rasped out, urgently. The Huntress - Valerie - turned her head towards him, but stayed frozen for a moment longer, so he insisted. “Valerie, he’s hurt bad. Skulker got him -”

“Skulker? The freaky hunter with the weapons?” Valerie asked. Dash nodded.

“He got Tucker,” he rasped out. He got Tucker because I was too slow. He got Tucker because I wanted to leave it to him. He got Tucker because I was a cocky shit.

Valerie swore under her breath, stepping closer to get a good look.

“I don’t… the suit doesn’t have much in the way of first aid,” she said. “It’s mostly… preventative. I could fly him, on my hoverboard, but…” she glanced back the way she’d come, back to the hole Dash had blown in Sam’s kitchen wall, and man wasn’t he glad Sam’s family was rich.

“Valerie, you gotta. He needs it,” Sam said urgently.

“But… Skulker’s out there still,” she said.

“Oh for fuck’s sake - Valerie, what matters more to you?! Your vendetta against ghosts? Or Tucker’s life?!”

That seemed to spur her on, as she gave a jerky sort of nod. “I… right, you’re right,” she mumbled, stepping forward towards them, before hesitantly dropping her mask. Literally dropping it, the mask receding into the suit like some sort of cybernetic enhancement, and man if Tucker could see that…

Dash swallowed hard. “Valerie, I, uh…”

“Shouldn’t be surprised that you’d recognize me now, of all times,” she grumbled, kneeling gingerly as she looked over Tucker for the best way to lift him without jostling any injuries.

“I’m so sorry we kicked you out of the A-listers for being poor,” Dash said, with all the sincerity in his heart.

Valerie stared at him.

“He’s in shock,” Sam said. She didn’t sound too good herself.

“I’m going to take Tucker now,” Valerie said flatly. “You might want to call 911. You know, for the gas leak.”

“Gas leak?” Dash echoed.

“Yeah. The gas leak that blew out your kitchen wall.”

“Right,” said Sam, coming around to take Dash by the shoulders. “C’mon, Dash. We’ll meet Tucker at the hospital later.”

“And after you went to all the trouble to carry him through the hospital level in Doomed,” Dash mumbled. Sam’s hand squeezed tighter.

The rest of the night and the next morning flew by in a haze. Dash remembered spending a few hours at Tucker’s bedside, but not if he’d used his ghost powers to get there or how he’d gotten home after. He remembered Jazz asking him what had happened and not giving her much of anything, because the words were too hard to string together. He remembered, mostly, getting up that morning and going to school after assuring everyone that he was fine.

It was lunch when the gears started turning again. It hit him mid-lunch-slop like the clouds parting to reveal the sun: He needed to talk to Valerie.

Valerie was his friend. She’d always been smarter and tougher than she looked, had always been reliable (before they’d dropped her without a second thought), and surely, surely, if anyone could figure this out, Valerie could. If she was some kind of secret ghost hunter, all the better. He would apologize until the cows came home, get her back into the A-listers, hell, sell her his firstborn child if she could just help him fix -

“Fenton.”

- fix whatever part of his life had made him its punching bag for some reason.

It was Dani, with an ‘i’ and not a ‘y’. Dash glanced around. A couple people were in the halls, but no one was really watching them too much, with the exception of the satellite kids who were always staring at Dani with open admiration. He'd been so caught up in his singular life mission to come crawling back to Valerie to beg her forgiveness and try to fix things that he’d let her get the drop on him after a whole week of playing keep-away from her dogged attempts to corner him.

She glanced around, saw the same thing as him, and nodded at a janitor’s closet just behind Dash. “Get in.”

If he had been asked a week ago if he would ever willingly step into a janitor’s closet with Danny Fenton, Dash would have pantomimed barfing and then immediately gone to find the nearest twink and shove him in a locker to make up for even picturing it.

Now, however, he was stuck, pinned down in place by the hard glace of a girl who looked like Fenton, and acted like Fenton, but was very much not Fenton, because he was pretty sure if Fenton had glared at him like this the first day he’d ever thrown him into a dumpster, he would have at the bare minimum spent the next week looking over his own shoulder, waiting for the wrath of hell.

Was it just because she was hot, or what?

“Are you deaf or something, Fenton?” Dani snapped. “Or are you as stupid as you look? Get. In. The closet.” She smirked. “Should be familiar territory for you.”

Wow, okay. “Now’s not really a good -”

“- Don’t care,” Dani interrupted. She reached out and put a hand on his chest, pushing, and maybe if Dash had been on top of his game or if Dani hadn’t been a girl right now, he would have shoved right back and moved on with his day. But as it was, it seemed surprisingly easy for her to just... push him backwards one step at a time, and into the janitor’s closet.

Dash grit his teeth. Whatever it was, it would be better for him to just let her get on with it, probably threaten him, accuse him of being gay for the umpteenth time, and then go and find Valerie as fast as he could.

This is what he would blame for why he had absolutely no idea how to respond when she whipped around so fast her ponytail almost hit her in the face, jabbed a finger hard into his chest, and hissed, “Don’t ever call me a boy again.”

Dash just stared at her in blank confusion, which seemed to incense her more.

“I mean it,” she insisted, jabbing him again, and this time Dash leaned back, rubbing the spot away.

“Uh, okay?” Dash said, finally, realizing she was not going to let him just stand there. “Why does it ma-”

“The hell kind of question is that?” Dani snapped back, not even letting him finish. She’d been rehearsing this argument, it seemed. "You said I was ‘supposed to be’ a boy, like it’s my fault for being born like -” her voice caught, but before Dash could so much as think of a response she barreled on, “- born a girl. You can’t just choose to be a boy," she said, and there was an edge of hysterics to her voice. "It doesn’t work like that. I mean, if you could, why wouldn’t you be a boy?"

Dani had never looked more like Danny. She had cornered him, but Dash saw it in her face - fear. Desperation, like a trapped animal looking for any angle of escape.

If there was one thing Dash knew for sure, it was what Danny Fenton looked like when he was cornered.

"It's just not possible," she pressed. It was an order. It was a question. It was some nebulous mix of both, a challenge that wanted an answer.

It hit him, then. He knew that feeling. He'd been feeling it for the last week straight. He couldn't be into dudes. It would ruin his life. It had, demonstrably during the course of this crazy thing, ruined his life and everything he'd ever worked for.

It just wasn't possible.

In that moment, eyes meeting those baby blues, he didn't see Dani. he saw Danny - Fenton and Phantom both. Hero or not, comfortable in his own skin in a way that Dash had never been. The kid who always, always sassed back, no matter how badly he got whaled on and no matter what insanity happened when ghosts attacked. He always made it harder on himself. But he was himself, in a way that Dash wouldn't - couldn't be.

(Cherished plush toys given a place of honor. Sam and Tucker throwing themselves in front of the A-Listers’ wrath without hesitation.)

Dash didn't get it. He didn't know if it was - was a ghost thing or a magic timeline thing or what, or how it worked, but the real Danny Fenton was in there trying to get out of the box that Dash hadn't even noticed existed until this very moment. A box that only existed because in this universe, Danny was the Baxter.

Danny was the one leading his team onto greatness. Danny was the one surrounding himself with popular kids, the one basking in the glory of being wanted, of being envied. Danny was the one who shut down all attempts at talking about his feelings, because that was for girly girls, for the weak. Danny was the one who spent minutes before and after every sporting event, hanging on desperately for a single text, a kind word, anything to prove that what he’d done was enough.

Anything to make them proud of him.

(Maddie Fenton yelling at the school over the phone. Jack Fenton’s jovial tone as he flipped pancakes.)

Danny was the one who had to make sure that no matter what, he couldn’t be a weirdo, couldn’t be gay, couldn’t be someone to be ashamed of, or else he’d lose everything.

(Meetings at City Hall to get one kid back on the team. Just because he loved football enough to want to be there.)

Dash stared straight into Danny’s eyes, and said, “I’m sorry.”

Danny stared back, on the precipice.

“Yeah… don’t… don’t ever call me that again.”

“No,” he grit his teeth. If he was gonna jump, then he was gonna make sure that Danny jumped with him, dammit. “I’m sorry… that you can’t be yourself around anyone. I’m sorry that… that the A-listers’ll drop you, just like they dropped me.”

“Wh-what?” Danny said, thick with emotion, rage and fear and… something else.

Dash took a deep breath. Got ready to speak it into existence.

“I think… I might be into dudes,” he said, and then swallowed thickly. The uncomfortable realization gripped him as his heartbeat started thumping in his ears. “For real. And that sucked, for me. But it’s… who I am.”

“Shut up,” Dani whispered. “Shut up, you… fucking gay… how can you just… say it?”

“I couldn’t, for a long time.” Dash said.

“Don’t you realize what a fucking nightmare you’ve made for us?” Dani hissed in fury, eyes wide and wild. “Now everybody’s scared someone else is gonna be next! We can’t even joke around any more - Starr won’t change in front of anyone in the locker room-!”

“That’s not ‘cuz of us, though, don’t you get it,” Dash said back, the same emotions he’d been wrestling with last night, before… before everything, rushing back. “It’s not because we’re wrong or bad or broken, it’s because - because other people -”

“Don’t fucking include me in this!” Danny lunged forward and grabbed his shirt, bunching up the fabric in whitened knuckles. But Dash was still going, unable to stop now that the dam had broken.

“- want to stay exactly the same, and that’s what I thought I wanted too. I thought I was a good person,” he stopped, letting out a soft hiccuping laugh. “Can you believe that? I really thought I was okay, even though all I did every day was find people who - like Tucker -” He almost choked on the words, “- t-to torture them -”

“What? I feel like we’re having two separate conversations here -”

“- and I would have done it to you too. If you were a boy, I…” his voice dropped off as he looked Danny in the eye. His shoulders were hunched up, his eyes wide.

“Stop saying that,” he whispered. “It’s not possible. I can’t… I don’t get to…”

Dash looked Danny, his victim, his hero, his fault dead in the eyes, and grabbed her/his hands intently.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I know what I have to do. I’m gonna fix this.”

And with that, Dash slipped right past him and out of the janitor’s closet, walking with purpose as he speedwalked through the halls, detouring only into the boys bathroom where he knew Danny(i) wouldn’t follow him to go ghost and fly out of the school undetected. Valerie was… more than he deserved, frankly, but she wasn’t enough. Sam wasn’t enough. Even Jazz wasn’t enough. If he was gonna fix this, he was gonna have to go to the biggest fish he knew about. Someone who might be able to undo a screw up this big.

“Johnny,” Dash said, startling him slightly from where he was working on his motorcycle in the junkyard. Cujo popped his head through an old washing machine curiously. “Do you know how to find Clockwork?”

Chapter Text

The Ghost Zone was just as eerie and beautiful as it had been yesterday. Dash couldn’t put his finger on it, but somehow traveling through it was different with a ghost than with his fellow humans. Johnny’s motorcycle hummed underneath both of them, the roar of the engine carrying far across the empty space. Cujo raced at their heels, able to keep up rather effortlessly despite Johnny keeping the engine revved.

Dash readjusted his grip on Johnny, trying to figure out a way to hold onto him that was both not gay, and also not not gay since he had just made that really beautiful speech about accepting himself.

“How long did it take for you to be cool with it after you figured out you were gay?” Dash asked, out loud, to the only other guy in the vicinity.

“Dude, I’m bi. I like girls and guys. You know this. We’re both bi. We went through this already.” Johnny said incredulously.

“Right, I mean, uh,” he fumbled. “The gay part of bi.”

There was a long beat of silence, then, during which Dash might have been worried he’d actually lost Johnny if it weren’t for the fact that he was clinging onto his hips in a not gay but apparently bisexual way.

Finally, Johnny just snorted. “And they say I’m out of touch with the times.”

“Hey, I’m working on it!” Dash protested.

“Whatever, man, you do you. Although…” Johnny waggled his eyebrows at Dash suggestively in the rear view mirror, “... I know I promised Kitty I’m going on the straight and narrow from here on out, but if you need a mentor in the fine art of suc-”

“Maybe we should stay focused,” Dash said, already regretting this line of conversation, “so, uh, Clockwork, right? You know anything about this guy?”

Johnny scoffed. “Only that you’re a real doofus for seeking him out. You wanted to go from half ghost to all, there are easier ways to do that.”

Dash repressed a shudder. He’d been trying so, so hard not to think too much about what being half ghost meant for his mortality. Or his potential football career. Or what would happen if the Fenton Juicer was used on him…

… He’d been trying pretty hard not to think too much about anything at all, really.

Fortunately, Dash was very good at that, as his solid D- average could attest. Unfortunately, he was starting to get the sneaking suspicion that some problems couldn't be solved by not thinking about them. Which meant that he should probably make some kind of attempt to think this through.

…

…

…

“I wish things weren't so complicated,” he groused.

Johnny scoffed. “You and me both,” he grumbled. “I’ve told Kitty before, I’m totally devoted to her, I just can’t help myself if I wanna sample around, y’know? But just because I’m sampling doesn’t mean I’m not faithful to her either, y’dig? I’m still coming home to her at the end of the…”

Yeah, okay, Johnny wasn’t going to be much help. Dash cast a look down at Cujo, still happily running alongside the bike, seemingly unperturbed by where they were going. Although, it was debatable if Cujo even knew where they were going at all, or if, like most dogs, he was just happy to be here.

Dash felt more than saw the shift in atmosphere, not unlike when a ghost appeared in the human world. Something deep in his chest registered that things were different here, although he was having trouble understanding how, exactly. Johnny, who had mercifully stopped talking about his relationship issues, slowed the bike somewhat, prompting Dash to look up.

Just ahead of them, the atmosphere changed. Even in his ghost form, Dash felt the hairs on the back of his neck standing up as they started to pass by huge gears, floating and clicking together at random speeds. The air, such as it was in the Ghost Zone, felt different. Charged, somehow, like every moment before every game-changing play he’d ever made.

Beyond the field of gears, a lone tower stood, covered in even more gears from top to bottom and looking an awful lot like the big grandfather clock that Dash had fuzzy memories of seeing during visits to his grandparents’ - plus or minus some very ominous looking reaper decals with long, wicked scythes out.

Something occurred to him.

“Do you think Clockwork might be around that big clock tower looking thing?” Dash asked Johnny, pointing up ahead. Johnny turned and gave him a flat look. “... what?”

Johnny pulled the bike to a stop a fair distance away from the tower, turning ninety degrees so that the tower was on their right, giving Dash a proper view of it. Johnny flipped the brake on, but he didn’t cut the motor.

“Alright, buddy,” Johnny sighed, “this is as far as I take you. Ghosts like me know to stay the hell away from ghosts like Clockwork.”

Dash swallowed. If there was one thing he hated, it was feeling puny. But standing in the metaphorical shadow of the clock tower, hearing Johnny talk about this fearsome ghost that not even other ghosts wanted to pick a fight with… he couldn’t help but feel a little puny.

He thought of Danny, and of Tucker, and his hands bunched into fists. He swung his leg up and off of Johnny’s motorcycle. “Thanks for the lift, man,” he said. “I uh, hope you work things out with Kitty.”

“Sure thing." Johnny shrugged. “And I’m sure we’ll be fine. Every day’s a new day, right?”

“Right.”

Dash turned back to the tower again, and he started to fly towards it. He heard the sound of Johnny’s motorcycle revving up in the background, but didn’t turn to look back as it slowly faded away. He did, however, turn back at the sound of soft panting keeping pace as he drew closer to the tower.

“Guess you’re sticking with me, huh, buddy?” Dash asked, grinning softly at Cujo, who barked happily in response. The grin slowly slid off his face as he thought back on what Johnny had said, though. Ghosts like me know to stay well away from ghosts like Clockwork.

Was Clockwork the kind of guy who hated all ghosts, or just low level kinda-douchebag-but-kinda-chill ghosts like Johnny? Did he care about dogs? After a moment’s deliberation, Dash settled on a decision.

“Nah, buddy. Don’t wanna risk it. Stay,” he commanded, holding up his hand firmly. Cujo made a soft whining sound, looking up at him, and Dash was pretty sure the phrase ‘puppy dog eyes’ had been invented specifically for this one exact look from Cujo.

He thought of Danny, and then he thought of Tucker.

“No, Cujo,” he said. “Stay.”

Walls in the Ghost Zone, to Dash’s surprise, were more solid to phasing than walls in the real world. Which surprised him, because if anything the real world should have been more solid than the world made of nothing but ghosts, but this was why Dash wasn’t an ecto… ghost science person.

So, instead of phasing through the wall like a proper ghost (or at least he assumed that’s what proper ghosts did, based on personal experience), he had to use the front door like some kind of loser. He stared up at the massive door hanger thingy with a loop on it, then awkwardly reached up and banged it a couple times like he’d seen in movies.

For a moment, there was no answer, but as he leaned up and tried again, knocking harder, the door swung inward with an ominous, drawn out creak, the ambient green glow of the Ghost Zone filtering into the pitch blackness beyond the door. Dash stared into the void.

“Hel…lo?” He called out. The void did not respond.

Feeling a lot like a protagonist in one of those slasher movies, Dash ignored every survival instinct in his gut and stepped inside. He forced himself to keep a proper swagger about him, and didn’t look back, even when he heard Cujo’s distant whimper. He did whip around at the sound of the door slamming shut behind him with a loud bang, but there was still no one to be seen, living or otherwise, as he cast his gaze around the dark tower.

“Must have been… the wind?” Dash said to himself, with a weak chuckle.

Casting his gaze around the dark tower, Dash swallowed. Rather than being made up of different floors like he had envisioned from the outside, on the inside the tower was almost hollow, an open, empty space of a strange assortment of things. Floating in the air all around, there were a series of circular mirrors and ticking clocks, although his reflection appeared in none of them. Against one wall, there was… Dash shuddered. A collection of what looked like scythes, just like outside but much less decorative, all hung neatly. They looked clean, but shone with the same faint glow as the ghost hunting equipment at the Fentons’. Down below the area, there was a strange assortment of what looked like knick-knacks, some vases, some mirrors, and - wait.

Dash blinked in surprise, floating a little bit closer as he recognized intimately his own… well, Danny’s own Fenton thermos.

What was one of those doing here? There seemed to be some kind of dent on one side, like a soda can that had been shaken up too much, and he curiously reached out his hand, fingers hovering slightly over the bulge in the metal. What kind of ghost…?

“It’s about time you arrived,” a voice said just over his shoulder, and Dash nearly jumped out of his skin, jerking backwards while whirling around and banging into the table. In his panic he barely caught a flash of a chubby baby face and glowing red eyes under a hood, before the rattling sound of the table caught up with him and he frantically grasped for the thermos that he’d bumped when he jolted. An arm reached out and snatched it at lightning speed, and Dash followed it back up to its owner. He realized he’d been mistaken earlier - the ghost looked to be closer to Mr. Lancer’s age, although the red eyes remained the same.

“Uh,” Dash said. “You’re… Clockwork?”

The other ghost paused, considering him, floating just a foot or two higher than Dash so he had to crane his neck to look up at him. Before speaking, he pointedly and delicately replaced the Fenton Thermos back on the shelf it had been jostled from.

“The one and only,” he replied, finally. “I know who you are, of course.”

“Wait, you do?” Dash said, blinking in surprise. Part of his hindbrain registered that the definitely-scary-powerful ghost had a slight lisp, of all things, and in his growing unease he managed to fight down the hysterical urge to giggle.

“Of course.” The ghost - Clockwork - finally turned and floated a little bit away, giving Dash some breathing room as he cast his gaze up to one of the huge clock faces in the tower. “You’re Amity Park’s one and only ghost boy.”

Oh. Right.

“Well, um, see, the thing is, I… uh…” Dash fumbled for a moment. This had seemed like a much more straightforward idea at school, after… after talking to Danny. “I’m not, actually. Is… the thing.”

Another pause, and Clockwork turned his head to look at Dash over his shoulder, his white beard trailing down. Had he looked that old a moment ago?

“You’re not?” He glanced Dash up and down, a small, wry smirk curling at the corner of his mouth. “Half ghost, half boy. Student of Amity Park. Defender of humans. Up all night for the past week or so catching wicked ghosts and sending them back here, to their home in the Ghost Zone. So then…” He faded away from sight, then, and Dash floated up towards where he’d been haltingly before Clockwork re-materialized a few feet away, idly examining what looked like an antique hourglass with ectoplasm instead of sand flowing through it. His deep voice spoke at odds with his infant-like body as he locked eyes with Dash again. “... What’s missing, do you think?”

“Uh.” Dash stared back at him. Clockwork had that same tone that Mr. Lancer had used yesterday, coaxing him through the reading material to arrive at an answer he was satisfied with. It seemed patient, almost indulgent, but unlike Mr. Lancer, there was a strange sort of detachment to the way this ghost spoke, and Dash remembered Johnny’s words clearly. “I, uh, I need your help.”

“Obviously,” the ghost said with an enigmatic smile, “but that’s not really an answer, is it?”

An answer to… oh, for crying out loud. “What’s missing?” Dash huffed out, a little annoyed. “I don’t know, a TON, but we don’t have time to go through all of it -”

“I most assuredly do.”

“I don’t!” Dash snapped back impatiently, then remembered himself, and more specifically, who he was dealing with. He stared at Clockwork, now a grown man again, and took a deep breath. You wanted to go from half-ghost to all, there’s easier ways of doing that.

Dash hated feeling puny so much.

“I… listen, it… this whole thing is my fault. I did something really stupid and selfish, made a dumb wish, and now everything is messed up.” He fought to keep his voice as level as he could, even as emotions - way too many of them - bubbled up inside of him.

“It certainly seems so,” Clockwork said, pointing his staff at a nearby mirror which cleared like a window and let him see beyond. Dash peered through curiously, and his gut sank as he found himself staring at Tucker in the ICU. Sam was there in the room’s only armchair, while an older man who looked like Tucker’s father was having what looked like a sober conversation with a doctor.

Dash winced, reaching out a hand like he could rest it on the glass, but the image fuzzed as he got close, his hand prickling and tugging like an old TV screen. He retracted it, swallowing hard.

“Yeah,” he rasped, unable to tear his gaze away from Tucker’s sleeping face, the oxygen tube running through his nose. “Yeah, it’s… I can’t cut it. Not as a hero. All I did was screw everything up.” Clockwork only hummed neutrally, and Dash resisted the urge to hate him for it. “So… can you help me?”

“With what?” Clockwork asked blandly, and Dash whirled around.

“With… everything! You… everyone I talk to says that you’re one of the strongest ghosts around, that you can do a bunch of crazy… uh, time travel stuff, and stuff, and that you’re so strong no ghost messes with you!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Clockwork said mildly, and he floated a distance away, settling into a hovering rocking chair as his ghostly body aged before Dash’s eyes once again into a decrepit old man. “Truth being told, I make it a point not to… throw my weight around, as it were.” His eyes bored into Dash’s. “I find I get better results when I don’t need to make everything about me. In fact, I tend to prefer seeing people step into their own.”

Dash’s gut sank. “So… so what, you won’t help me at all?”

“I didn’t say that,” Clockwork said, maddeningly.

Dash took a long second, his hands balling into fists, as he resisted the urge to break something. As a last ditch resort, he cast his gaze back to the vision of Tucker on the hospital bed, and it was like throwing a freezing cold bucket of water on a fire. He took a long deep breath, and turned back to face Clockwork, whose infant body now barely even reached the edge of the seat.

“Look…” he said, “I know I’m not really a hero. I know that I’m selfish, and… and kind of stupid, and… that I put Tucker in danger because I kept telling myself I didn’t care what happened to him or to anyone. And I know that I’m… I’m the reason why Danny has to live the way he does right now.” He expected a question at this stage, but Clockwork only inclined his head in a patient gesture. “And I don’t know how to fix it, but I want to. Fix it, I mean. But this wish… it’s not something I can do by myself. I need your help, because it changed everything and I can’t just… go and change it back. I can’t go through time, or change people’s memories, or who they are, or… any of that.”

He grasped for more. It felt like there should be more. But, while he cast for something else, some magic combination of words to convince Clockwork to get in the game, the ghost spoke.

“I must say that mortals can still surprise me from time to time,” he said, for the first time sounding a little less than impassive. Amused, almost. He leaned forward, resting his chubby little chin on folded hands. “Of all possible ways this conversation could have gone, Mr. Baxter, this was by far the most unlikely.”

Dash had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but it sounded encouraging, so he nodded.

“You see, when you watch people around the clock for a living, you start to get a feel for them,” Clockwork began. “What they do, how they think, how they act, the things they care about, and the things they don’t,” he continued, and as he grew into a man yet again he held out a hand, summoning a small pocket watch from the ether and clicking it open. “What makes them tick, so to speak.”

He smiled in a way that almost seemed fond.

“After a while, you start to feel like you really know these mortals. Like friends, almost, even if they don’t know you the same way. I see their challenges, their failures, their triumphs… the paths they take, and those they don't. Yes, people say that I’m cruel, and I suppose in some ways I am. But for what it’s worth, no one understands the true value of one’s time spent on this Earth better than me.” He paused then, and the silence hung for a minute.

“Yyyyyyes,” Dash said. He was not getting any better at listening to ghosts and their monologues. He wondered, briefly, if Danny was better at this.

Clockwork snorted softly, and he began winding the watch. With each twist, the wrinkles in his hands and face deepened.

“For what it’s worth, I’ve known you for a while, Mr. Baxter. I thought I knew you quite well, in fact. Captain of the football team, proud leader of the Casper High athletes, and of course, childhood bully to the greatest hero of your era.”

It was the calm, factual way he said it that made it land like a punch to the gut. Dash slumped, staring at Clockwork wordlessly. Fortunately, Clockwork didn’t seem to expect anything from him as he continued on.

“The people you surround yourself with either idolize you or write you off. They see either someone they can use, or someone they’ll be rid of soon enough. And I think you know that, too.” Red eyes pierced Dash right through. “After all, you know deep down these are the best years of your life. Don’t you?”

Dash swallowed hard, suddenly feeling very, very puny.

“You were right to fear me. I had no intention of being kind to you.” Clockwork raised himself out of the chair, looming over him. Puny, puny, puny. Dash felt like a little boy before a man, looking up and meeting the ghost’s cold, ancient gaze.

The silence hung heavy in the air between them. After a few agonizing seconds, Clockwork finally started to move again, replacing the old watch in its case with chubby little baby hands.

“And yet, here we are. You came to me of your own volition, looking to mend what you’ve broken. And, miracle of miracles, for the right reasons, too.”

“So…” Dash started. His mouth was dry. “... you’re going to help me?”

Clockwork smiled enigmatically, and glanced up to the stained glass that looked over the whole chamber.

“I already have,” he said, in the moment before it shattered.

"FOOOOOLS!"

Dash sprang back, flying out of the way as prismatic shards rained down around him. Desiree floated there in her full grand regalia, power licking at the edges of her hair and the end of her tail, as her eyes glowed bright enough to put the swirling ambient glow of the Ghost Zone to shame.

"Desiree!" Dash shouted. His head whipped around to see what Clockwork was doing, but he’d disappeared as easily as he’d appeared.

Desiree cackled like a madwoman, raising her hands as smoke-like ghostly power flowed into the area, billowing like a fog machine. "Well, well, well, we meet again, new hero. Seems you never learn your lesson."

Dash gritted his teeth. "Yeah, and it seems you never learn, uh… learn about… not granting wishes! …and stuff."

Desiree snorted and flipped her hair. "On the contrary, new ghost child, wishes are exactly why I'm here. Someone in the Ghost Zone making a wish that I can grant? Oh, now that could only be a handful of people, couldn't it?" She leered down at him, grinning. "And it seems fate has brought you right to me."

“Huh?” Dash said. “What?”

Something about the wording tugged uncertainly at Dash's gut, and he glanced around yet again, but his first assessment remained true. Clockwork was nowhere to be found.

But he wasn't alone.

With a great howl, a second huge ghost burst through the window, flinging itself onto Desiree's back and forcing her down to the floor of the tower, revealing Cujo in his monstrous form. He growled and roared in her face, and Desiree made a disgusted expression.

"Filthy mutt," Desiree snarled. "You're not getting out of this a second time, you vile little hound!" With a single backhanded slap, she launched Cujo off of her, her power sending him flying against the wall where he hit it with a pained yip.

Dash saw red.

"Don't! You! DARE!" He screamed, and the scream tore from his throat the same way it had last night at Sam's house.

Desiree hit the floor on the opposite side, the impact of her massive body causing a great tremor through the tower and the items on the shelves nearby to rattle. One object in particular caught Dash's eye as it started to roll off the shelving, and with a mean grin he caught it just before it hit the ground. A full week of ghost catch-and-release had primed his reflexes.

"Well, lady. We'll see how powerful you are from the inside of a soup can!" Dash crowed, flicking the lid off the Fenton Thermos and aiming it at the stunned ghost woman. He pressed the button,

and light

burst

out.

Dash’s eyes fluttered open. He was horizontal, suddenly, and back to squishy human form, which he only realized as he tried to float up and got nowhere, which was funny because his head certainly felt floaty. Great. If he got another concussion, coach was gonna take him out of the game for sure. Blinking slowly to come back down to Earth, he stirred, then lifted himself up weakly.

That's right, he wasn't on Earth at all. He’d been in the Ghost Zone, fighting Desiree, and talking to Clockwork, and…

… and there was a ghostly figure in the center of the room that wasn't Desiree or Clockwork. It wasn't Cujo either, although it was certainly just as massive. It was… familiar.

Muscles for days along the shoulders and arms, where it would be needed.

A tattered letterman jacket, with a rusty stain on the side.

A well practiced grin meant to inspire allies and intimidate enemies, meant to make him feel strong and in control on the field, where he reigned supreme.

"Well, well, well… what d’we have here?" The other, ghostly Dash grinned, pounding his fist into his palm as he rounded on un-transformed, human, puny Dash.

Chapter Text

The Dash that wasn't didn't waste any time coming for his counterpart. Legs jelly under him in the aftermath of another wail, Dash tried and failed to wrench himself to the side to avoid being picked up. Instead, he was grabbed by the front of his shirt - his favourite place to grab nerds by - and slammed into the scythe rack between the hanging blades.

Eye to eye, he was uncomfortably aware that Big Dash had red, ghostly eyes and a pale, almost greenish tint to his skin. His eyes were sunken and bruised. Dash only had a moment to think - deader? Did he look more like a ghost than Dash's own borrowed ghost half somehow? - before his assailant spoke.

"Call came down from the ref, pal. We're entering overtime. And for you? Let's just say it's Sudden Death," he said, in a deeper voice than Dash had ever been able to produce. It still had that embarrassing shrill quality to it that Dash had never been able to get rid of, but it was doing something to his hindbrain nonetheless.

"Who are you?" Dash rasped, casting about wildly as the adrenaline started pumping. Desiree was getting up behind his doppelganger's back, looking pissed, and Cujo -

"I'm you, remember?" Big Dash answered. "I think you called me Dark Dash."

"Okay, sure," Dash said, dazed. He did not remember, and even if he had, he would have forgotten at the sight of Cujo stirring from where he'd landed after colliding with the wall.

Desiree let out a long cackle.

"Oh, this is just too rich, too rich!" she laughed. "Taking on the ghost boy's life meant taking on all his responsibilities, of course. But to think, you'd somehow stumble right into your greatest enemy… yourself."

"I prefer the ultimate enemy, personally," Dark Dash said, releasing Dash without a second thought and turning around to address her. Like Dash was nothing. Dark Dash stretched his arms above his head and bending slightly back, loosening his shoulders and shaking them out. "Has a catchy ring to it."

"Mm, 'ultimate' as in greatest, and also as in, 'last'," Desiree said, leaning back and louging on her side in the air. Damn it, she was still hot.

Then Dash looked back at Cujo, and that fever dream passed quickly. Gritting his teeth, he ignored the laughter and banter of the two villains above him to rush to Cujo's side.

"Hey, Cujo, hey," he said softly, as Cujo lifted his head up with a whine, trying to lick Dash's hands as he tried to investigate the area Desiree had slapped. "It's okay, buddy. You gotta - we gotta get you outta here."

It didn't seem serious, just a minor cut from one of her many golden rings, but the cold green slime that came away on his hands still filled him with dread. Dread, and fury.

He turned back to them, shaking with anger, determined to pound those freaks for what they'd done to his dog. The cold white rings phased into existence around him, pulling him back to his ghost form. With a roar, he flung himself forward.

The thing about being Caspar High's star quarterback, though, was that he was a phenomenal athlete when it came to throwing and running. Quarterbacks don't tackle people.

Case in point: He may well have tried to tackle a telephone pole for how effective it was against his doppelganger.

Dark Dash barely even had to dig his heels in, completely immobile as Dash collided into his midsection. He burst out laughing, high and mean. Dash heard the sound of a feminine giggle somewhere up above him, and for a split second he flashed back to what felt like an eternity but had been less than a week ago. Standing in front of the A-listers' lunch table, feeling the full weight of their laughter and mockery, feeling frozen and puny.

Sam and Tucker weren't there to bail him out this time. He'd made sure of it.

Before he could retreat and try to think of a better game plan, a huge, meaty bicep curled around his throat. He had a split second of animal panic - an ingrained response, despite the fact he was pretty sure he couldn't suffocate as a ghost. The arm tugged and Dash went, helpless, as Dark Dash took several steps to build up momentum and then flailed him bodily into the wall. Again.

And again.

And again.

And again, and again, and again.

By the time it let up, Dash was losing grasp of where he was or what was happening. There was a faint, distinct ringing in his ears, and his eyes kept unfocusing without his permission.

If I get another concussion, he thought, delirious, coach is gonna…

Even that slipped away from him, consumed by throbbing pain.

People were talking above him, but it drifted in, hazy and indistinct. Dash lay on the ground, blinking hard to clear the spots from his vision. He'd been whaled on hard enough the past few weeks to know he couldn't afford to lose consciousness now. If his ghost form didn't stand a chance against these super powered freaks, his human form would…

Would…

Oh God, what would happen to him if he died in the Ghost Zone?

The thought was enough to snap him back to some sort of clarity. Desiree's voice drifted above him.

"I must say, I had no idea the new ghost boy had such an… impressively muscled shadow."

"Heh? You like it?" Dash never thought he'd say this, but he was really beginning to hate the sound of his own voice. "Yeah, even in that stupid thermos, I made sure to keep up with my curls."

Dash forced himself to try getting up again, try and blink away the dark spots again, and… yup, okay, his evil clone was flexing for Desiree.

"…ould use a strong, capable ghost like yourself for my takeover," Desiree was saying.

"Takeover?" He mumbled.

"Takeover?" Dark Dash asked.

"Yes, I'm starting to think the Ghost Zone is a little bit… crowded, wouldn't you say? I think it's high time the people of Amity Park learned just what it means to be careful what you wish for."

"Go on," Dark Dash said, his eyes alight with green malice.

"These past few weeks of freedom and wish granting have made me more powerful now than I ever was. I don't even need to grant new wishes any more." She let out a laugh, half evil, but half… relieved? Overjoyed? It was an emotion Dash didn't really associate with monologuing villains. "Can you scarcely imagine how that feels? After a millenia of being enslaved to the whims of a bunch of mortals, I finally have the power to break free. And I know exactly what I'm going to do with my freedom."

She stood tall, arching up like a snake and gesturing to her body with her golden accented hands.

"I think… it's time for the people of Amity Park to meet their new sultan."

Dash's heart froze in his chest. Sam, Tucker… he'd tried so hard to keep them out of danger, but the danger was coming to them.

Dark Dash, however, just laughed.

"Sounds badass!" He said. "I'm in. I've wanted to return to my old stomping grounds for years." He flew up to her, offering her his arm. "What'dya say? Wanna be my Homecoming Queen?"

Desiree's face dropped from triumphant villainess to irritated so fast it would have made Dash laugh if he had the breath for it.

"Why don't we see how it goes?" Desiree said, lightly flicking her tail to brush him away without having to touch him directly. "Conquer Amity Park with me, and then I'll consider letting you be the first of my concubines."

"I dunno what that is, but sure!" Dark Dash said.

Dash also wasn't sure what that was, but it probably wasn't good. He needed to do something, get back to Amity Park. Maybe if he could close the Ghost Portal behind him, he could buy the town some time… his eyes cast around for Cujo, but he was gone. Smart dog - he'd probably slipped away. Probably to get help. Dash should follow that example, he thought.

As he started to edge away towards the door, though, Desiree's eyes landed on him.

"First order of business: making sure no ghost children interfere," she commanded, pointing her finger at him.

"No worries, I got him!" Dark Dash whirled on him in a second, grabbing Dash in a headlock.

"Good. Get rid of him."

The words carried a terrifying sense of finality to them. Dash's strength was absolutely nothing compared to the hulking behemoth of a ghost that had him in his grip. There was nothing he could do.

Dash squeezed his eyes shut.

"Can't, sorry."

The words took both Dash and Desiree aback, both in their meaning and the casual tone with which Dark Dash had said them.

"What do you mean?" Desiree asked, eye twitching.

"Whattd'you- yeah, what she said!"

Dark Dash shrugged, a motion that jostled Dash up and down with the rising of his shoulders.

"I need him alive. He's me, after all."

No.

No no no.

"No," Dash rasped. Coughed. "No, I'm not… you."

Dark Dash let out a chuckle, low and mean, and somehow that was even worse than the open laughter from before.

"Still haven't accepted it, hm?" He said, leaning into Dash's face. His breath smelled like ectoplasm. "Face it, kid. I'm you. Everything you are, everything you've done up 'till now, all that leads, eventually, one way or another, into me." He dragged Dash's gaze up to the few remaining hanging mirrors in Clockwork's haunt. Dash's terrified visage was too small to eclipse the grinning monster behind him.

"It's all just… a matter of time."

Dash stared at himself, his reflection and the other one, four Dashes, two and two. A long line of clues he'd ignored since stepping foot into this place all clicked into place. His counterpart in this world having met a ghost dealing in time. Clockwork's utter contempt for him. The thermos sitting innocently in the tower. They were all adding up into a conclusion he really, really didn't want to face.

Maybe on some level, he'd known it as soon as Sam and Tucker had looked to the place where heroic, selfless Danny Phantom should have been and found Dash instead.

"You're just a selfish bully," he told the other Dash, and the many reflections burst into laughter.

"We are."

They were.

Dash must have been in shock or something, because he barely even registered the blur of time between being picked up to be disposed of and being shoved in a locker.

He'd experienced enough bitter irony today that it didn't even bite as much as it should. He just sat in the dark and felt numb.

That was how the nerd found him.

He was a walking cartoon character, the rough average of every scrawny, gangly dweeb with too-big glasses that Dash had ever whaled on. He was sure that if his life were a book, Mr. Lancer would have had a lot to say about the way the nerd didn't think twice before having let him out, giving a sympathetic wince in his direction as Dash shook out his shoulders.

"Not that I don't think you don't deserve it a little, but those things sure are cramped," the nerd said helpfully.

Dash grunted. The nerd looked him up and down. The silence stretched perhaps a little too long, because he coughed pointedly.

"Heard there's going to be an attack on the living world." He clucked his tongue disapprovingly. "Short sighted. We're supposed to be balanced out. But looking after the natural order of things never occurs to bullies like them."

The word hit Dash like a slap to the face. "I'm just a - he's - that's all I am," Dash says, staring at the locker he'd just escaped from numbly. Trust himself to find one in the Ghost Zone, of all places. "A bully. I'm just a bully."

"Well," the nerd ghost said, with a sigh. "He certainly looked like you. But you can stop him, right?"

"I can stop him," Dash repeated.

The words sunk deep into his bones. They felt profound. That might be the concussion again.

"I hope so, anyway," the ghost said, and checked his watch. "Are you going to go after him? I have a chess tournament to make, if you're taking care of it."

"I can s- a chess tournament?" Dash said, instinctively wrinkling his nose, before remembering that… probably had to do with why he was in the position he was now. The dweeb- er, nerd? Geek? There had to be a word for that that nice people used - merely huffed and rolled his eyes.

"Are you going after them or not?"

"I… I am. I will." Dash said, and the words sounded like a promise. "I'll fix this. I'll fix everything. No matter what it takes."

Poindexter watched Dash fly out of the door and into the Ghost Zone at speed, disappearing into what passed for a horizon.

"Why didn't he use the mirror?" a fellow student asked, craning their head around the corner from the chess club room.

"He's kind of stupid," Poindexter said, floating over and sitting down. "Alright. White moves first, pawn to E4."

No matter what it takes. No matter what it takes.

Those words repeated like a mantra in Dash's head over and over during the mad flight back to the portal. He didn't even break momentum as he flew through the opening, flashing back to human midair and catching himself on his good leg, turning the forward motion into a hasty jog as the lab materialized around him. First stop: the Fenton Weapons Vault. Next stop, finding Desiree and his… and Dark Dash. After that…

"Step three, profit," Dash muttered, already casting his eyes around the huge, dangerous looking weapons hanging in storage. He needed something big, and mean. Unfortunately for him, someone else was approaching. And Jack Fenton was only one of those things.

"Dash? Hey, Dashy-boy, there you are, son!"

You've gotta be kidding.

Dash turned around, barely suppressing a groan as not-his-dad lumbered around the corner.

"I've been looking for you everywhere, son! Mr. Lancer called and said you'd disappeared again, and, well…" His smile dropped just a little, held up weakly by a tilt of his head, and Dash was weirdly reminded of Pookie. "I figured things weren't getting much better for you, huh?"

"It's, uh, it's fine," Dash said, his eyes straying to the wall again. Which one of these was most effective against ghost genies? "You know how it is."

"I do, son," Jack said, stepping forward and setting a hand on Dash's shoulder with uncharacteristic seriousness, drawing his eyes forward again. "So, I thought, you know, now's the perfect time for one of my patented Fenton father-son motivational speeches!"

To punctuate that, he grabbed Dash around the shoulders and tugged him to his side in a fatherly embrace. Dash groaned and tried to pull away, but the man was like an elephant.

"Uh, you really don't have to," Dash tried, pushing a little harder. "Trust me, I get it."

"Well, of course I don't have to!" Jack laughed. "That's what makes me a father, Dash. Putting in the effort! Going the extra mile! When Jazz was born, I promised myself no matter how much I love ghost hunting, I was always going to be there for…"

He kept blabbering, but Dash was focused on extricating himself from the man's grip. If Jack didn't have the threat factor of a particularly enthusiastic golden retriever, it might have been a lot more scary after what had just happened in the Ghost Zone. Eventually, he finally managed to pull himself free.

"I know, I know, I get it, I know," Dash said, stumbling back a little. "Fentons aren't losers, I get it."

"Wh-" Jack burst into laughter, startling Dash a little. "Why, wherever did you hear that, son? Of course we Fentons are losers!"

"Y… I… what?" Dash asked, lost.

"We Fentons have always been losers, for generations!" Jack said, thumping his chest, "Why, getting picked on by the idiots with too much money, that was me when I was your age. Happened a little in college too, but that's where I met Vladdy and your mother. After that, well, it just didn't matter so much."

"But… but what about…" Dash started, but trailed off, unable to articulate what was going on inside his head.

"What about what, son?"

"What about… winning?" He managed, finally.

"Well, sure, winning feels good. Always will." Jack just shrugged, unaware of how thoroughly he was stomping on the already shattered pieces of Dash's worldview. "But what's the point in winning if no one's there to celebrate with you? Vladdy always seemed so caught up in that kind of thing, but look at him! All alone in that big house, son. I'd rather hunt ghosts with your mother all my life and never catch a single one, than be successful and rich without my family."

Dash tried to picture his dad saying something like that. But he just couldn't.

The weight of Jack's hands settled on Dash's shoulders again, and he unwillingly pulled his eyes up to meet Jack's.

"Listen, son. I want you to know that win or lose, it doesn't matter to us. Fentons aren't winners or losers, we don't need that. Fentons always stay true to themselves. As long as you do that, you'll always be my son, and I'll always be proud of you."

Something hot pressed against the back of Dash's eyes, and his voice croaked when he spoke. "J… Dad, I, I don't know if I have what it takes to… be true to myself."

Jack's face fell into something solemn, smile crooked and sad. "I know. It's hard. But I promise, it's worth it. It's worth it to be able to look in the mirror and like the man you see. No matter what happens, you'll find people who like that man too. You don't need to fake it to be liked. No one does."

Dash had never been so grateful for the pounding of feet down the stairs, because another single second and he might have done something embarrassing like hug Jack and call him Dad and bawl his eyes out. And even crazier, he felt like Jack would have let him, in this messed up world he'd created.

"Guys!" Jazz gasped, out of breath. "I'm so happy for you both, it sounds like you were making wonderful progress unpacking the ideology of toxic masculinity and cycles of generational trauma, but we're out of time!"

She was already half suited up, clicking a high tech belt - The Specter Deflector, Dash's memory supplied - and strapping what looked like a set of Real Life nunchucks to the hook on it.

"A pair of ghosts just broke through the other side near Casper High. They're wreaking total havoc!"

Chapter Text

Mr. Fenton wasted absolutely no time, grabbing the Fenton Bazooka and sprinting out the vault at a speed that belied his bulk. He and Maddie were out the door by the time Jazz and Dash made it to the top of the stairs, with only the squeal of tank treads letting them know the Ghost Assault Vehicle was gone.

"My car," Jazz said immediately. "We grab Sam and move it."

Dash nodded, throwing himself into the passenger seat and putting his belt on at Jazz's nagging. She was in such a rush, they ended up moving forty in a thirty-five zone, which was positively blazing for her.

As they swerved to the curbside to pick up Sam, Dash was already in the middle of giving Jazz a (closet-conversation-excluded) rundown on the events of the afternoon.

"… and when I used the thermos, this guy burst out, and he looked just like me, except older, and evil-er," Dash was saying as the car door opened.

"Dark Dash is back?!" Sam yelled, as she threw herself in and begen to wrestle with the seatbelt.

"Uh, yeah, exactly!" Dash said.

"Who is Dark Dash?" Jazz asked, throwing her head back over her shoulder as they pulled away from the curb.

"He's this evil version of Dash from an alternate timeline where Dash never came out to anyone except us," Sam explained as Jazz shifted gears, "and when he lost us in an accident, he ended up falling in with Vlad, who tried to groom him into his perfect meathead football machine for the Packers! He's a total psycho!"

"THAT'S what happens if-?" Dash yelped, but he was cut off by a shriek from the other two as a solid thump hit the side of the car just pulling into the street, and suddenly the windshield was full of -

"Tucker!" Everyone yelled, in varing tones of elation, relief, and worry.

"The Packers?" Dash muttered, but he shook himself as Tucker pawed at the door.

"That was dangerous!" Jazz scolded, nonetheless hitting the unlock button so he could throw himself in the backseat.

"Escaped the hospital," Tucker gasped, wiping the sweat off his brow. "Never leave me in there again."

"I won't," Dash promised.

"Thanks for the dog," he said, and Dash's eyes widened as Cujo phased in through the door, just in time for Jazz to peel out back into the street.

"Cujo!" he said. Actually, he'd almost squealed, but it wasn't even important. Cujo, now in his smaller form and looking only slightly the worse for wear, climbed into his lap and accepted Dash's vigorous pets between the ears. "Good boy!"

"Why are you here?" Sam said, ignoring Cujo's reappearance to fix Tucker with a Look.

"You're still injured!" Jazz said. The girls were, for once, completely on the same side, but Jazz had no real choice except to keep driving.

"Nevermind," Tucker said, waving them off as he started to rustle around in his bag. "What'd I miss?"

"Tucker, how close are we?" Jazz asked. After the initial rush of cars trying to escape the chaos, the streets were mostly deserted, and she could go even faster, switching lanes and swerving to avoid debris.

"We're almost there." Tucker said, glancing down at his PDA. Dash understood little of the radar's more technical aspect, but he didn't need to be a techno-geek to understand they were coming up on a green blob that was very big, and very bright. Dash took a deep breath, and glanced out at the city in front.

At first, it had been normal ghost attack stuff in their way - craters in the asphalt, a streaking fountain of water from a blown off hydrant. Amity had weathered enough infrastructure damage in its time to make running for any office in the city a sucker's bet, something Dash's dad liked to complain about over the morning paper.

This was weirder. Much weirder.

Things always took on a ghostly pallor during ghost attacks, but here the effect had been amplified. Everything was cast in a sickly purple. Houses on the street seemed to flicker in and out of ghostliness, taking on the image of old buildings from far-off lands. Trees grew new, ghostly branches with leaves that Dash didn't recognize.

The further they went, the more pronounced the effect became. Something about gravity almost seemed to shift, and a harsh, cold breath shuddered its way out of Dash's throat as indistinct ghostly forms drifted past them. The car, previously filled with the sounds of bickering, had gone dead silent save for the hum of the engine.

Then Dash saw it. In one direction in particular, there was a sheen off of the top of gleaming towers high up in the sky as clouds parted. Directly over…

"I know where they're at," Dash said.

Jazz glanced sideways at him for a second before looking back at the road. "Where?"

Dash smiled, although on his face it felt more like a grimace. "Where else? Our home turf."

Casper High was no stranger to ghost attacks. For some reason, ghosts seemed to love haunting the place, and Phantom loved fighting ghosts in the place. The faculty had adapted; at this point, the school held more ghost attack drills than fire drills, and while a real attack always prompted an initial wave of panic, student evacuation was more effective than ever.

Of course, drills didn't help when a fence suddenly grew twice as tall with barbs sprouting from its chain links, or when the carefully maintained hedges animated with ghostly energy, grappling students in its leafy grasp. One of them was hooked around Starr's ankle, and several jocks rushed by in a stampede while Kwan grabbed her around the middle and tried to pull her free as she let out a shrill scream.

In the midst of all the chaos, Dani Baxter stood in her cheer uniform, a pompom slipping from her limp grasp.

Backing up in horror, she'd just turned to duck for cover when strong arms enveloped her from behind and she was treated to the swooping sensation of being lifted into the air. She screamed, driving an ineffectual elbow into her attacker's chest.

"Hey there," a raspy voice with a ghostly echo hissed in her ear. "What's a pretty thing like you doing in a place like this?"

"Stay the hell off me, you creep-!" Dani snapped, tugging her face away to see… a ghost in a letterman jacket. A letterman jacket in Casper High colors. Dani blinked. Froze, as cold realization started to set in. "No… no way… Dash…?"

The ghostly freak threw back his head and laughed loudly, displaying sharp fangs and an honest to god forked tongue.

"Really? Now you catch on?"

"I… I don't know what the hell you're on about, but put me down, you freak!" She pulled back as far as she could, and socked him in the jaw. He just kept laughing at her.

"Put you down? Sure." Dash agreed easily, and opened his arms.

Dani screamed, glancing down to see how far they were from the ground as she began to plummet.

Very far, was the answer.

She flung her arms in front of her face, screwing her eyes shut and bracing uselessly for impact.

It never came. Again, a pair of strong arms caught her, tugging her parallel to the ground and away from the field.

"You jerk-!" Dani snapped, throwing her head up to see… Phantom, not Ghost-Dash. Or, wait… "You look like…"

"Get to safety," Dash Phantom set her down on the ground carefully. "Or hide if you can't," he ordered, and immediately flew up to face the other ghost that looked like Fenton.

Dani, in a state of shock, didn't move. She just stayed where she was, watching them fight with wide eyes.

"Overtime still isn't up," Dash called up to his dark self, forcing some bravado into his tone. Dash Dash laughed.

"Guess not," he said, throwing his hands wide. "You want another beating so bad, who am I to say no?"

Dash grit his teeth. "It ain't over till the whistle blows."

Dark Dash flashed his own, pointed incisors. It was his favorite way to psych out the other team. "Then let's rock."

They clashed.

The battle was brutal, and Desiree hadn't even showed yet. From Tucker's radar, Dash recalled, she seemed to be up in that palace in the sky, doing some kind of magic to the clouds to let her continue warping reality in a wider and wider radius. The Fentons and the Red Huntress, who had showed up to the chaos, were taking potshots at her from the GAV, but for now Sam and Jazz focused on beating back the animated objects she'd summoned to terrorize the students.

The fence that had mysteriously grown a pair of glowing red eyes shrieked as Jazz slammed hard into it with a flying kick, followed up by a blow from the nunchucks. The ectoplasm shuddered and dispersed, leaving behind a throughly destroyed mundane chain link fence. Sam whistled sharply to Kwan and Starr, who were cowering. "Come on, this way!"

About fifty yards away, Dash slammed down into the halfway line, leaving a sizable crater. His eyes opened, dazed and unseeing, but he forced his body to stay ghostly as he felt the cold rings appear. He couldn't pass out now. People were counting on him. Sam and Tucker were counting on him.

Dark Dash flew down casually, looking like he had all the time in the world. He hadn't even broken a ghostly sweat. He tilted himself slightly so that he was hovering in front of Dash, perpandicular with the ground.

"Heya, chump," he greeted. "Feel like crying uncle yet?"

Dash grunted, and forced himself to sit up, preparing for another tackle, but Dark Dash gripped him by the throat. He opened his mouth, about to make some nasty comment, no doubt -

- but he was stopped dead in his tracks by the soft thump of a brightly colored pompom smacking harmlessly against his face. Both Dashes stared at each other in shock before turning in unison towards the source.

Dani was there, her hands clenched into fists.

"If you're done having your weirdo twincest moment," she snapped, and her voice only faintly shook, "you could consider actually doing something instead of sitting around on your ass."

Dark Dash stared, jaw agape at the sheer audacity. Dash felt the same.

"I mean, God," Dani said, tossing her hair back, staring at Dark Dash with the same cold disdain that she'd faced down Dash with in the cafeteria. "I thought it couldn't be any weirder with you… but then you show up as a grown adult and what are you doing? Still parading around in that tacky old jacket like it's hot shit. Newsflash, that stupid rag has always looked hideous on you. What, you wanted to relive the glory days? Couldn't find anything else to be proud of, so you have to cling onto that one time in Sophmore year you were actually important -"

Dark Dash shoved Dash into the dirt with a thud, whirling on Dani as his eyes burned with a dangerous light.

"You little bitch!" he snarled, firing a huge blast of plasma directly at her.

"Jazz, now!"

Dani winced and threw her hands in front of her face just as a blur of black flung itself in front of her. The blast of plasma deflected around them like a stream, and when Dani lowered her arms, Sam Manson was there, handheld ghost shield up.

"For the record," Sam said over her shoulder, "I still hate your guts."

"Likewise," Dani said, shakily.

"Everybody down!" Jazz had caught Dark Dash in some kind of beam. The gun thing was expanding outwards and over her hand, encasing her in a metal coat of armor as the beam began tearing at Dark Dash, who was screaming horribly. Dash was pretty sure he was going to hear that sound in his nightmares. It peeled away layer after layer, first himself as a young adult, then stripping down year after year - a flash of a ghost Dash barely recognized with a widow's peak and fangs - then… himself, Dash.

The worst part was the smell. Burned flesh and rubber and whatever else the Fenton hazmat suits were made of. One arm was licked with a long, twisting burn, terminating in a black glove blown open at the palm and charred like he'd grasped something molten. Red angry marks like snowflakes all the way up his neck and the side of his face. Gasping, the remains of Dark Dash dropped to the ground, shaking like a newborn fawn.

Dash decided not to think about this ever again as Sam's hand hovered in front of his face. He took the arm offered to him, and stood up.

"Wh-what were you thinking back there? The hell was that for?" he asked Dani.

Dani shrugged. "For getting the heat off you. Figured you could use the distraction to escape."

Dash's heart sank. Even as a Baxter…

"Don't look at me all sappy like that," she grumbled, wrinkling her nose.

"Guys!" Tucker yelled, "Incoming!"

No one had to bother asking from where - Desiree was hardly bothering with subtlety. The sky split open and she descended from on high, nearly half the size of the school at this point, with her glow bright enough to almost turn the eerie darkness into day.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Desiree sighed as she looked across the field, sounding more inconvenienced than anything else. With a flick of her hand, Dark Dash disappeared in a cloud of ghostly smoke. He reappeared seconds later near her side, gasping and clutching his chest, his form restored.

"Uh… thanks," Dark Dash managed, shakily.

"I should well have left you where you lay," Desiree grumbled. "Don't disappoint me again, or I'll see to it that you are." She raised her voice then, addressing the group. "Ghost child, I grow tired of this charade. Cease your pointless and futile struggles, and I swear to spare your loved ones a fate most terrible."

"I wish you'd stop trying to take over Amity Park and disappear in the thermos!" Tucker yelled back. Desiree gave him a droll look.

"I am terribly sorry, but the wishes of a few lowly mortals are beneath me now. My days of obeying a man's every whim are behind me. Now, a new era begins."

Dash's breath caught.

These past few weeks of freedom and wish granting have made me more powerful now than I ever was. I don't even need to grant new wishes any more.

She had said that, hadn't she?

"Crap," Sam hissed. "She's gotten too powerful. We're not gonna be able to wish our way out of this one, guys."

Desiree moved in on the others, but jolted backwards at the last second as an ecto blast sailed right by where she'd been a moment ago.

"Stay away from my children, you supercharged ecto-menace!" Maddie Fenton screamed, Fenton Bazooka in hand. Jack rolled into position just behind her, posing as well, before sliding a fresh power cell off his belt and into Mrs. Fenton's hand. In a single, smooth series of movements, she fired at Dark Dash, reloaded, fired at Desiree, and reloaded again.

Desiree sighed impatiently, and turned on the group, but was interrupted mid-flick as Huntress got a shot in on her back, flying in as fast as her hoverboard would take her. Dark Dash lunged for her, but was tugged back by Cujo, growling, his teeth sunk firmly into the back of his jacket.

"Kids, take cover!" Maddie ordered in between shots, and the team followed her advice with haste, ducking between the bleachers to slide in the space underneath. Every so often, the slats of light would flash with green from the battle outside.

"So if we can't wish her away… what can we do?" Jazz asked, breathless.

Dash looked between them, dazed.

"Don't look at me, I don't hunt ghosts," Dani said.

Tucker climbed down to the bottom bleacher.

"Dash, what's our play?" He asked, looking at him.

"Huh?" Dash said. He felt like time was moving too slowly and too quickly at once. His eyes caught on Tucker's bandages. There was red peeking out, though Tucker had clearly tried to cover it up with the hem of his sweater.

"You know the key to winning, right?" Tucker didn't waver as he spoke, even so. "You gotta figure out where to put us, man."

Dash stared at him, and then the rest of them. Taut faces looking to him for guidance as the sounds of battle continued above.

"Even after everything…?" he exhaled.

Tucker nodded. "We're a team, dude."

Dash felt like he was going to throw up.

He looked at them, then back at Desiree and Dark Dash, where the Fentons and Huntress and Cujo were fighting a losing battle to buy them time. To buy him time. He looked back to the group.

"I… I know what I have to do, but…" he started, and then hesitated.

"We've got your back," Sam said encouragingly.

There would be no putting this one back in the box.

"If we don't, it's the whole city that pays," Dani grumbled.

No time travel, no neat conclusion where no one ever knew how badly he'd fucked things up.

"It's okay, Dash," Jazz said softly. "Just talk to us."

Everyone would know exactly who Dash Baxter really was.

Dash took a long, deep breath, and looked at them.

"There's something I've gotta tell you guys."

Chapter Text

"I'm not really Phantom."

As far as openers went, it wasn't the worst, but it wasn't the best. But it was what had fallen out of his mouth, so Dash decided the best thing to do was to just roll with it.

There was a moment of stunned silence. The others exchanged confused glances with each other, and then with Dash.

"Oooookaaay…" Tucker said. "That one's… gonna need some unpacking."

Dash sucked in a breath and pressed onward.

"The reason Desiree is so powerful now… the reason she's gotten so powerful in the first place… it's 'cuz of me. I made a wish, and like Jazz said, the bigger the wish, the more power she gets from it." He slumped, the weight of his confession hanging over him. "The truth is… I'm only Phantom right now because I wished to be him. I'm… I'm a pretty lousy Phantom, actually."

"But if you're not really Phantom, then who is?" Dani pressed ahead, while the others processed. "Like, I think we'd notice if there were two ghost boys flying around."

Dash just stared at Dani, looking for the words.

"No," she said, realization spreading across her face before he could say anything. Her eyes went wide. "No way."

Dash winced and closed his eyes.

"Yeah, uh, the wish… didn't just give me your powers, Danny," he said. "It gave me your life. Your friends, your family… everything I have as a Fenton, you're supposed to have."

"What?" Sam said, confusion starting to give way to the anger Dash had expected.

"Wait, that doesn't make any sense," Tucker cut in. "I… I remember you, dude. Like, everything, our whole childhood. We grew up together, man! I remember what you looked like in Spider-Man pajamas!"

"I know it's messed up," Dash said, voice small. "But I don't, dude. I barely knew you before this all happened. But I know you and Danny were always together."

Tucker and Dani exchanged looks that started disgusted, but eventually turned thoughtful as they both digested that information.

"I can't believe this," Sam said, fists clenched at her sides and shaking. "You didn't say anything! Everything just changed around you, and you didn't think that Tucker or I could help? That's seriously -"

"Wait," Dani said, holding up a hand. Something about her face, squared up to face an uncomfortable truth, gave Sam the pause she needed to continue. "So, then… when you came to try and sit with us at lunch, and you said I was 'supposed' to be a boy…"

Dash nodded. Somewhere off to his left, he heard Jazz utter a soft "oh."

"I don't understand," Dani said weakly. "How? How could I just… be a boy? Like… that's not even physically…"

Dash shrugged.

"I dunno," he admitted, "but I know the Fentons are… nicer. Way, way nicer." He glanced at Jazz. She was pensive and drawn, eyes darting around to take in everyone else's reactions. It occurred to him that she'd barely said anything at all. "Maybe they invented something?"

"Man, you're not just telling me that we aren't really friends, but that Dani's my best friend, and also she's a guy?" Tucker broke in. "You've gotta be kidding me! What else is a lie?! Fantasy Football?"

Dash hunched his shoulders and looked away. Tucker gasped loudly.

"Fantasy Football, Dash?!"

Sam, unclenching her fists and closing her eyes, let out a big breath. With it, her anger seemed to deflate a little, and when she opened her eyes, they were sharp and tired.

"No, it… makes sense, actually," she said, rubbing her arm uncomfortably. "It's happened before. I, uh, had something similar happen with Desiree. Maybe not as drastic, but I accidentally changed the timeline so that I'd never met you… or… Danny, I guess?" she said, side-eyeing Dani, "and so you - sh- he? Never got his ghost powers. It made Desiree really strong, too, so it checks out."

"You've had this happen too?" Dash felt the tightness in his chest ease a little.

"Yeah," she said, and it looked like it physically pained her to admit. "I'm not gonna say I'm not pissed at you, but I know how easy it is to make a bad wish."

"That's great, though," Dash said. "How did you undo it?"

"Oh, it was pretty drastic," she said. "I had to re-kill you, er, Danny all over again."

"You killed him?" Tucker exclaimed.

"All over again?!" Dash exclaimed, at the same time.

"Only by half!" Sam replied, red-faced. "Tucker, you were there -"

"Wait, I died?" Dash yelped. "Danny died?"

"Aren't you a ghost?" Dani asked. "Wait - I died?"

"Yeah, but that's… uh…"

"Guys," Sam broke in, rubbing her temples. "Focus."

"Right," said Tucker.

"Sorry," said Dash.

"No, no, we need to talk about -" Dani started.

"So, what did you do after Dash - er, Danny, man that's gonna be hard to get used to - got his powers back?" Tucker asked, quickly, and weathered a pointed glare from Dani.

Sam bit her lip.

"There was a meteor shower going on. Desiree planned on using it to grind wishes for power, so she was granting every wish she heard. I don't think she was paying much attention to them, or else I probably wouldn't have been able to sneak in my wish for Danny to have his memories back."

"Great," Tucker sighed. "Well, that's out."

Dash looked at Jazz again, who was still pretty quiet. She cocked her head at him.

"You, uh… So this is probably… a lot, right?" Dash hazarded. What would a person who regularly talks about feelings want to hear in this moment, he wondered.

"Not as much as you'd think," Jazz said, the ghost of a smile appearing on her face. It was taut, and a little bitter, but she let out a little huff and shook her head. "Honestly? I've known something was wrong for days, remember? You're not that great an actor."

"R-right," Dash said. "You mentioned that. But, if you knew I wasn't being honest…"

"I figured you'd come to me when you were ready," she replied, shrugging. "It's not good to force people to come out with things. They have to make peace with it on their own."

She didn't hide the way her eyes slid over to Dani for a brief moment, before snapping back.

"You're not… mad?"

"To be honest? I haven't had time to process any of this," she said, idly running a finger back and forth over the Specter Deflector. "I'm sure I'll sort out how to feel about it later. But for what it's worth… even if all these memories of being your big sister are fake… I'm proud of you, Dash. For coming clean now."

Dash was never going to be able to date Jazz Fenton after this.

"Thanks, Jazz," he said. "I just wiiiiii-" he caught himself right as everyone leapt to cover his mouth, "- er, I want my wish to… have caused… less of this."

Jazz suddenly looked thoughtful.

"You were talking about that earlier," she said. "You said your wish made all this happen, right? Rewrote pretty much all of time after a certain point, so that you and Dani could trade lives."

"Yeah, but we already tried wishing the problem away," Tucker said. "Didn't go so well, and man am I glad she's more dedicated to making speeches than she is to just erasing people. I'm too young and handsome to die!"

Dani scoffed and rolled her eyes. "I think it's more you're so annoying she thought you weren't worth the effort to smite."

"Yeah, she said that back in the Ghost Zone," Dash said, "Something about how she doesn't need to grant new wishes anymore, because the ones she has have made her powerful enough?"

There was a pause as that sunk in to everyone involved. Above them, the sounds of battle continued.

"New wishes," Dani said thoughtfully.

"Dash," Jazz said, suddenly putting her hands on his shoulders. "Listen, this is important. Can you remember what your wish was? Exactly, I mean."

"What, like, word for word?" Dash said, a bead of sweat dropping down his forehead. He wasn't so good at the whole 'remembering details' thing. "Uh, I said that… that I wanted to be a real hero, like Danny. I wanted to have ghost powers and make a real difference, like Phantom."

Jazz's eyes glittered with triumph.

"Guys," she said urgently, "I think I know what to do. We just need to get Dark Dash out of the way long enough for Dash to get to Desiree."

Dash looked over his shoulder between the slats of the bleachers. Valerie, now grounded, was taking potshots at Dark Dash and Desiree in turn. The Fentons were out of sight, but there was a glowing green shield up over the GAV, which occasionally turned its central cannon and fired to give Val some relief.

It was a positioning issue?

That Dash could do.

"Okay, listen up," he said, pulling them into a huddle. "Here's the play…"

"Dark Dash!"

Dash's ghoulish counterpart swiveled his head from where he was deflecting the GAV's occasional potshot from reaching Desiree's ghostly form where it hung further up above the stadium. Jazz was walking alone across the turf towards him, cupping one hand around her mouth to carry over the din of combat.

"Great," he said, turning around and gathering ghostly energy in his hand. "I had an appointment with you later, but we can speed things up."

"Good, because we need to talk about your severe abandonment issues," she said. "Have you considered sitting down with everyone and just really processing everything that happened? You're showing clear signs of post traumatic stress!"

Dark Dash's face went flat with droll annoyance, the power in his hand fizzling a little.

"My God, I almost forgot how annoying you were," he muttered. "No, I don't want to talk about my feelings, you insufferable nag!"

"Okay, first of all, that's very hurtful," Jazz said, reaching into her purse and pulling out a notepad, "and second, have you ever stopped to think that this whole 'taking over the Ghost Zone and human world' thing is simply lashing out at a world you feel betrayed you?"

"She's got him therapy-locked! Go!"

Sam, Tucker, and Dani darted out, skirting the sidelines as they made a break for the maintenance shack on the other side of the bleachers. With Dani's captain's key, she unlocked the door. She and Tucker slid inside as Sam kept running, only stopping to flag down Valerie and whistly for Cujo.

"God, you were always like this!" Dark Dash snapped in frustration. "Always picking at scabs, always trying to play psycho-doctor. What, was being the smart one not enough for you?"

"I never thought I was smarter than you, Dash," Jazz said soberly. "I knew you were just as intelligent as everyone else in our family. And I'm so sorry if I ever made you feel like you were lesser somehow."

"Ugh, you're still doing it! Why are you like this?!"

In the shack, Dani led the way to a computer tower with a tiny monitor, boxy case yellowed with age.

"Here," she said, as Tucker made a face. "Can you get in?"

"To this dinosaur?" he said, reaching for his bag. "No prob, as long as it has a parallel port. Jeez, what's this from, the eighties?"

"Hell if I know," Dani grumbled, watching Tucker plug in and tap away at the PDA. "They always give us the leftovers."

"I'm in," he said, in his best hacker voice. "Now where are you, my precious, precious field controls?"

"I can't believe we're friends in literally any universe," Dani said, wrinkling her nose.

Out on the football field, a series of hidden smoke machines intended for the cheer squad's halftime show hissed to life, slowly but surely clouding over the field where Dark Dash and Jazz's argument - or rather, Dark Dash's vitriol towards a calm and accomodating Jazz - was growing steadily more heated.

"You don't get it, do you?" Dark Dash snapped. "It's too late! It's too late for you to fix me, and it's too late for you to save yourself! It's too late for any of you!"

"I just think if you -" Jazz started, but Dark Dash cut her off, the ghostly glow around him starting to lick and curl like flames around his frame.

"Sorry, Jazz," he said, raising a hand that began to glow with an ectoplasmic light, and Jazz took a step back despite herself, "but to me… you've been dead for years."

He flung out a blast, and Jazz screamed -

- but just in the nick of time Valerie appeared, diving in and deflecting the shot with a ghost shield attached to her arm.

The majority of the shot went flying into the air, but enough ecto-energy burned through that the shield sparked and fizzed on her arm. Tutting, Valerie raised her other wrist and rained down her own fire on Dark Dash, who deflected the bursts with a single hand in between exaggeratedly yawning and looking away boredly.

"Thanks, Valerie," Jazz said, looking up at Dark Dash. Despite his showboating, he was still eyeing the two of them like annoying bugs.

"Can't keep this up much longer," Valerie warned lowly. "I'm almost outta juice."

"Just a little more," Jazz said urgently. "Just a little more time…!"

The smoke thickened as Dark Dash continued allowing her the offensive, turning just in time to deflect another shot from the GAV.

"Oh, please," Dark Dash scoffed, looking around at the mysterious fog that had suddenly rolled in. "You think this is enough to save you from me? I'm getting bored… I'm ending this, now."

He rounded on the two girls again, floating higher as both his arms crackled with energy.

"Like hell!" Valerie snarled, lining up another shot and pulling the trigger… but it only fizzed and sputtered. She was out of power. "Oh, crap."

Dark Dash laughed maniacally, raising his arms higher…

Only to freeze as a wisp escaped his mouth.

"Dash, NOW!" Jazz screamed.

Dark Dash whirled around, but it was too late.

Dash flung himself up, his approach masked by the fog, and wailed, a long, deep, mournful screech, pouring everything he had into a point-blank shot. Dark Dash let out a pained cry and dropped into the smoke, losing altitude quickly, and Dash followed him, continuing the assault as long as he possibly could. He screamed and screamed as rings of white appeared, slowly dragging over his form as he resisted the change.

Eventually, his strength was no more, and there was a gasp and a flash of white swallowed by the smoke as he fell into the haze. Only the bright red of his jacket remained, halfway to the endzone from how far back the wail's momentum had carried him.

"Heh… heh heh heh." Dark Dash laughed, in between pants for breath, shaking his shoulders and rolling out his neck. "Not bad, me… but are you really stupid enough to think I couldn't recognize a Counter Power Play? I'm you, idiot. Everything you know, I know."

"Well… you haven't played in a while, you might be rusty?" Dash offered weakly.

Dark Dash smirked.

"This touchdown's mine," he said, and fired. The smoke curled around the shot as it burst into bright light.

Jazz and Valerie gasped. Sam covered her mouth from where she had crouched by the bleachers.

"DASH!" Dani screamed from the doorway, promptly tugged back by Tucker as the bolt of ecto-energy streaked across the field.

The attack landed home with a resounding boom - so powerful, it created a shockwave that momentarily blew back the smoke, revealing only a tattered, burnt letterman jacket.

Dark Dash's face brightened with cruel satisfaction for one moment before going totally blank, jaw slackening.

"Wait," he said, looking down at his hands and then back up to the work they'd done. "Wait, no. That can't - wait. No. I - if he - then I -"

"I'm so sorry, Dash," Jazz said, her face a mask of pained sympathy. "It was you or me."

"No, no no NO! You can't- I c-can't-!" Dark Dash screamed, hyperventilating as he shrank into himself, clutching his own letterman jacket around himself as if it could hold off the sands of time.

In the air, surveying her new kingdom from on high, Desiree scoffed.

"What an idiot," she muttered.

"Not as much as you'd think." A voice replied, and Desiree whirled around.

"What, but how? Your power should be expended -" She blinked.

It was indeed a drained and very human Dash talking to her, clad in just his T-shirt and jeans. He sat astride Cujo like an overlarge horse, gripping his collar for stability as Cujo wagged his tail and waited for the next command. His face was drawn tight and grim. "That's what we call a Counter Power Play-Action. Even the best QB's can't always call a play-action."

Desiree looked down to the remains of the Letterman jacket and Dark Dash panicking at his supposed impending doom, and huffed out a laugh.

"A clever idea, but it only bought you so much time. What do you hope to accomplish, facing me alone, without powers or gadgets to save you?"

"Jazz pointed something out," Dash said, hand stretching out to pat Cujo between the ears. "You're so big and powerful 'cuz of my wish."

"Yes, we'd covered that," Desiree sneered. "Though I suppose I can't expect one with such… stunning intellect as yourself to hold onto a simple fact like that. Are you perhaps also too stupid to remember what I said?"

She laughed, then, lightning flashing around her hair like storm clouds. Cujo whimpered, and Dash grit his teeth, rubbing him soothingly between the ears.

"Here's a review, child: You can't take back your wish, and I'm no longer compelled to grant the requests of mortals!"

"Yeah, about that," Dash said. His voice was just a touch too even, betraying his nervousness. "I don't think so."

"You must be joking."

Dash took a deep breath. This was it. Everything rode on this.

"See, the thing is, you never actually granted my wish."

Desiree scoffed, straightening herself out as she loomed over him.

"What are you complaining about now?" she spat. "You got your wish, you ungrateful brat! What more could there possibly be?! To be just like your hero, to have his powers, his life, his everything!"

"Well, that's just it!" Dash said. "I have his powers, sure, and his life, his family and friends… but I wanted to be like him. I wished I could be a hero. And I'm not like Danny. I'm still me! I'm just - I'm not a good person."

"You mortals," Desiree hissed, and she spat the name like a curse. "Youth is wasted on you. Do you have any idea what I would have given to have a djinn come to me in my time of need? To be handed everything I wanted on a silver platter? No, you don't. You can't conceive of the world I came from, the life I lived!"

Lightning and thunder cracked around her, and Cujo howled. Dash flattened himself against his back as the ghost raged.

"I had to work and fight and crawl to be recognized, to be acknowledged by the sultan!" She gestured to herself, in that odd and revealing outfit, and for the first time Dash wondered if maybe it had something to do with who she'd once been. He'd never considered the life she, or any of the ghosts, must have once lived. But she was still talking. "I wasted the best years of my life in that accursed palace! All my youth, all those years of my prime, I sought to curry favor so I could at last rest in my own palace, in my own kingdom! And what did it give me?"

Dash thought about it for a moment.

"I think… I might get it," he confessed. Desiree scoffed disbelievingly, but Dash pressed on undeterred. "No, really! I, uh, never had to deal with a sultan or whatever, but the whole 'chasing someone else's approval' thing… I get it. That was me, too."

"That was not an invitation to sympathize," she ground out through her teeth.

"It is kind of a waste. All this time, I've been... I've been doing stuff other people could be proud of. I wanted everyone to think I was the best, the coolest, the star. My dad, my friends, the teachers… these are supposed to be the best years of my life, but now that I think about it, I'm just going with the flow! Danny's gonna be the hero of our era and I'm just gonna be the guy who gave him swirlies. Because I didn't wanna be a loser."

"I don't care," Desiree said, drawing the last syllable out. Her hand began to crackle with power, and Cujo let out a low, warning whine. But Dash, emboldened by momentum, didn't stop.

"Danny wasn't afraid to be a loser. He's a hero! And - and I knew he was cooler than me! I wanted to be like him. I still - want to be a real hero like him! I want to be able to look myself in the eye! And that's why… you never granted my wish at all, because -"

- Dash snapped, pointing his finger at Desiree as she snarled, as the clouds glowed a dangerous green at the edges, as the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and as the energy at the tips of her fingers swept forward to shoot an ecto blast at his puny, human form -

"- because a real hero wouldn't take someone else's life away from them! A real hero would take it back so that Danny can be - himself!"

Desiree froze, her eyes widening. The power in her hands suddenly fizzled out.

"To grant my wish, you have to undo my wish," Dash said, as the air itself seemed to hold its breath. "And I'm guessing your magic won't like that much."

"A pubescent mortal has no concept of what my magic can and cannot do!" she snapped, and flung her hands out, lightning crackling between her fingers with renewed power. Dash threw himself over Cujo's face.

It didn't really matter, though.

Because the power she called on didn't come.

Horror set in on Desiree's face, just as hope dawned on Dash's.

"It worked?" He said in disbelief, then crowed louder, "It worked!"

"No," Desiree said, arms shaking, as she began to shrink and the magic around them started to warp and melt, collapsing in on itself like one of the screaming paintings Mr. Lancer made them look at in class. Her teeth gritted with effort as familiar words began to pass her lips. "So you have wished it… no! And so… NO! it shall… be…!"

The sky cracked open.

"No," she said, "NO!"

The world began to shift around them. Dash clung to Cujo's fur for dear life as the momentary exhilaration of the plan working left him for sheer terror, screwing his eyes shut as reality came unglued around him.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

The wind picked up to a maelstrom, the wind's howls echoing and then eventually becoming one and the same with Desiree's defiant screams. There were panicked shouts below, and before Dash could move, or even think, he was finally wrenched away from Cujo and began to fall, fall, fall towards the distant turf below., distant barks chasing after him.

In one last, hysterical thought, he hoped he didn't hit his head. One more concussion, and coach would…

The silence was deafening.

Danny's head was pounding as he blinked awake, groaning softly and grasping at his head. The disorienting sensation reminded him a little of the nights he'd had to go to school on three hours of sleep… or the weekends he'd slept for more than twelve hours and woke up to darkness outside the window and no sense of time.

Jazz had promised him if he got one more concussion from ghost fighting, she was making up an excuse for him to see a doctor and putting him 'on leave' from ghost hunting duty. Danny really, really hoped that wasn't what had happened.

Blinking, he shook his head, trying to get in the game.

What had happened? He remembered fighting Desiree, the A-listers being their usual hot and cold selves, realizing Desiree had got away in the confusion, and… Dash! Dash had made a wish, and…

Danny hauled himself to his feet so fast he nearly tripped over himself, but as he looked over the field, the smoke that had gathered was dissipating to reveal… nothing. Dash and Desiree were both lying prone on the ground and beginning to stir, but there were no signs of Dash's disastrous wish having gone off.

That didn't stop Danny's finely honed reflexes. He reached for his thermos, snatching it up and sucking up Desiree's ghostly form into its mechanism before she had time to utter more than a few wordless protests. Slapping the cap on, he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, a tenseness he hadn't let go of since the end of the game when Desiree had gone to ground finally beginning to leave him.

That left the other half of the equation.

Dash hadn't moved or said anything obnoxious in the past minute or so, which was a little concerning. Danny turned to look at him. He was conscious, at least, having gotten up to kneel of his own accord. But he was hunched over on the grass, unnaturally still and facing away from Danny.

"Uh," Danny said, then cleared his throat, trying for a more 'heroic' tone. "You… okay there, citizen?"

He didn't respond. And as Danny flew around to look him in the eye, he could see what held Dash's attention so raptly.

Dash's Letterman jacket. It had been blasted straight through, faint charring around the edges. Still glowing with ectoplasm. Dash himself seemed fine, though - except for that haunted expression.

Dash was staring the ruined jacket down with a face more shaken than Danny had ever seen on the bigger, meaner boy.

"Uh, citizen?"

Finally, Dash's head snapped up. His eyes focused on Danny, and he… froze. Like he'd seen something. A year of superhero training kicked in and Danny's head whipped around behind him, but there was nothing there. He hadn't looked away for more than a second before he heard the sound of footfalls on the grass and he looked back just in time to see Dash tearing away like the hounds of hell were on his heels.

"Hey, wait -" Danny reached out to follow, but another set of voices cut in.

"Danny! What the hell was - oof!" Sam and Tucker burst onto the scene just in time to nearly collide headlong with Dash, Tucker being sent reeling. Dash stumbled, watched Sam catch Tucker with wide eyes, and took off with a redoubled pace.

"Yeah, you better run! Jerk!" Sam called after him, shaking a fist at Dash's rapidly retreating back as Danny floated over to the two of them. "Danny, are you alright? We saw a big flash and a lot of smoke and figured you'd found her."

"Yeah, I'm fine," Danny said, holding up the thermos. "I found her, and uh - Dash made a wish, and things got hairy there for a second."

"Oh, great," Tucker said, dusting himself off. "What'd he wish for?"

"That's the weird thing," Danny said, frowning. With a quick glance around, he landed, letting the hoops of ghostly energy pass over him and back into him to leave regular old Danny Fenton standing there once more. "He wished to be a hero like me. But… nothing happened. Just a big smoke show, and we all got knocked down."

"Huh."

"Maybe that's what happens if Desiree tries to grant a wish that's not possible?" Sam offered.

Danny looked to the place where Dash had been just a moment ago. He was gone, by now, leaving only the soft nighttime sounds of Amity Park in his wake. A moment of unease passed him by, and he chuckled.

"You know what? I bet that's it."

Chapter Text

Dash went back to his life.

When he got home that night, his mom was already in bed asleep, and his Dad was watching some late-night talk show on TV with a beer in his hand. As Dash let himself in, Pookie yapped again and again, wagging his tail frantically.

He didn't say anything, just knelt down on the carpet as soon as he was in and scooped Pookie into his arms, pressing a kiss to his forehead and rubbing the back of his ears. Pookie made little whines and snuffles, trying to wriggle his head up higher to lick Dash's chin and mouth. Dash pulled away and stood, cradling Pookie in his arms.

"Missed you, buddy," he whispered.

"Didja win?" His father grunted, not taking his eyes away from the TV.

"Huh?" Dash said.

"There was a game tonight, wasn't there?"

"Oh, uh…" Dash honestly couldn't even remember. "Yeah. Yeah, we won."

"Good."

Dash took the dismissal for what it was, and retreated to his room. Locked the door. Spent a while cuddling with Pookie. When Pookie eventually got tired of snuggles and wanted out, Dash lay in the bed - his bed - for an hour or more, just staring at the ceiling. His body was exhausted, but his mind refused to settle down.

Finally, he couldn't take it any more.

He opened the door to his closet of shame, pulling his stuffed toy collection out and dragging it into bed with him. Only then did he fall asleep at last, hugging a teddy tightly to his chest.

Everyone could tell something was up with him.

Paulina scowled when she made a joke he didn't laugh at during lunch. Kwan raised a brow at him when he said he 'wasn't in the mood' for bullying the nerds, and then stopped asking after the third time. No one asked him to his face, but he could hear whispers when he left a room, see glances cast his way that were equal parts concern and suspicion.

People asked him about his jacket. He told them that he'd outgrown it.

He outright avoided Danny, as much as he possibly could. Changed his hallway routes, sat on the other side of the lunch table, even ducking into classrooms to avoid passing him. It was cowardly, and stupid, and yet another reminder of the past week-that-wasn't. How much time had he spent avoiding Dani? The tables had turned again.

Worst of all, he wasn't even convinced Danny had noticed. It was probably a relief for him, if anything. The few glances Dash allowed himself out of the corner of his eye, or on the other side of a football field, saw Danny laughing and joking with his loser friends just the same as always.

This was what he'd wished for.

It kind of sucked.

It couldn't last forever, though. Sooner or later they were bound to bump into each other. Dash had hoped that it would be something mildly embarrassing like getting paired together in PE, and not walking out of the locker room to find Danny pinned halfway up the wall, scowling at Bryson and Kwan and half of the football team.

"Can't you guys ever pick on someone your own size?" Danny snapped.

It was surreal, knowing what Dash knew. Seeing Danny just take it, knowing firsthand just how little Kwan or Bryson could do if he decided to stop playing along. He wouldn't, though. Dash gripped the straps of his backpack tighter.

"Sure," Bryson said cheerfully, "Kwan, go find Foley. We'll stick 'em together and that should make one whole guy."

Danny's scowl deepened. He tensed, opening his mouth -

"Danny is a whole guy, though."

There was a beat, and then everyone, including Danny, slowly turned towards Dash in disbelief.

"Uh, Dash?" Kwan said, the first to break the silence. He looked very uncertain, as Kwan tended to when given conflicting directions from popular people. "You feeling okay, man?"

"Yeah, you haven't whaled on a nerd in like, months," Bryson said, still not letting go of Danny's shirt. The worst part was that Danny, normally game to take advantage of an opening to slip away, was just gaping at Dash like he'd grown a second head.

"It's been like a week, dude," Dash said through gritted teeth, "and did you guys forget we have practice in fifteen minutes? We don't have time for small fry like him."

Bryson scoffed.

"Do we?" he challenged, "Or are you just getting soft, man?"

The whole hallway held its breath for a moment, the rest of the players present flickering their gaze from Bryson to Dash. Danny was the only one whose eyes didn't look away from Dash, narrowing slightly, like they were trying to look through him instead of at him.

Dash felt his heart rabbiting somewhere in his throat.

But he forced himself silently forward anyway, knowing it would psych everyone out more than any threats. He pushed his way into Bryson's space, gathering up the whole three inches he had on the guy, and puffed out his chest to be even bigger. Bryson was left with the choice between standing his ground or letting Danny go to back it up, and it took him only a moment or two to pick the second one.

"You wanna try me?" Dash said in a low, warning tone, "You're gonna see just how not soft I am."

There was a very tense moment where the two of them looked close to blows, where the air was charged with tension, where everyone held their breath… and then was just as abruptly town to shreds as Kwan let out a large, sharp snicker.

"Gaaaaaaaaay," he called, bursting into laughter.

The others joined in laughing as both boys took immediate reflexive steps back and the tension dissipated.

"Alright, alright, practice is in ten," Bryson said, laughing. "I gotta get dressed for real. Get a move on, Fen-turd, you get a break this time."

Dash smiled on the outside, but it vanished like a ghost as soon as everyone turned their backs.

Dash Baxter had fantasized many a time about what it would be like to walk up to his locker and find Jazz Fenton waiting for him. This was yet another thing that this whole ordeal had taken from him, along with his favorite jacket, blissful ignorance of what the word bisexual meant, and his conviction that he would never date someone for their car.

Or motorcycle, as the case may be.

She probably wanted to thank him for the bullying incident, or something. While Danny probably wouldn't say anything, word had had time to spread; it had been a few days.

It was a little unnerving, then, that she didn't say anything at first - just looked at him. He felt a little like he was being catalogued, measured, like facing down Clockwork had felt, and he couldn't help raising his shoulders just a little defensively.

He should probably flirt or something, if he meant to keep things normal. But he just couldn't bring himself to do it. So instead, they just… stood there. Awkwardly.

Finally, Jazz spoke up.

"I heard about what you did for Danny earlier," she said.

"They should know practice comes first anyway," Dash replied, shrugging.

"I noticed you're not wearing your jacket."

"I, uh…" This was beginning to feel pointed. "I outgrew it."

Jazz raised an eyebrow, and he had the weirdest feeling she didn't actually believe him. Jazz looked away, rallied, and glanced back. "You haven't ordered a new one?"

"It's…" Dash trailed off. How could he explain the complicated series of feelings he now had about that jacket, the one he'd gotten for taking his team to state finals, and the one he'd worn to school every day since? The one he'd apparently loved so much that even years down the line, his future self that wasn't had chosen to wear it in death.

Jazz took a deep breath.

"Mr. Lancer was raving about your reading questions earlier," she said, and yup, this was pointed. "He said you got a B+. Couldn't believe you'd paid attention to Steinbeck."

Dash froze. No way.

"Uhhhhhhhhh." He forced out a squeaky sort of laugh, feeling sweat start to drip down the back of his neck. "It was… I liked the hot chick?"

"Dash." Jazz said, giving him a flat look of disbelief. "Are you actually trying to lie to me now?"

Dash opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then thought better of it and closed it.

"It… was worth a shot?" he tried.

Jazz snorted. Dash closed his locker and leaned his shoulder against it, facing her so he could lower his voice.

"I don't understand," he said, "How'd you…?"

"I wasn't sure at first," Jazz said, "But I think… it's because I was wearing the Specter Deflector when Desiree's new timeline collapsed. I still remember the old one, now, but the new memories…"

She trailed off, her face scrunched. Dash let her, vaguely aware of the comings and goings of everyone around them. Thankfully, Jazz's attempts to tutor him last year had rendered this a normal and uninteresting conversation to the rumor mill. Hardly anyone spared them a glance.

"It's… weird," she admitted, quietly. "It's like… I'm Danny's sister, and I remember being his sister all our lives. Then for a week I remembered being your sister. But I don't have those memories any more, just memories of remembering it. Does that make sense?"

"Uh… you said memories a lot, there," Dash said weakly. She snorted again.

"I guess what I'm saying is… it was only a week, but I did care about you during that time. And… I'm still proud of you, for what you chose to do at the end there. Even if no one else remembers, I do."

Dash looked away for a bit, swallowing hard.

"… Thanks."

"I'm also so mad at you," she said, drawing herself up and poking him in the solar plexus firmly. Dash winced. "I'm glad you pulled through, but it's very hurtful that you kept us all in the dark that whole week and just now tried to lie to my face again."

This was catastrophic, Dash realized. Jazz wanted to talk about her feelings.

"I'm, uh, sorry?" he tried, rubbing his chest.

"You need to promise me you'll at least make an effort," Jazz said sternly, "to start telling me things. I know it's not easy, but you're never going to make progress if you don't at least practice talking to people about difficult things."

Dash considered saying he'd thought he'd been the only one that remembered, but then remembered that he was talking to a girl that was mad at him. Instead, he nodded, wondering how his life had come to this. Jazz's eyes softened a little.

"In return," she said solemnly, "I promise to be a safe space for you. You can tell me anything, and I promise to keep it in confidence." A pause. "Unless you tell me you're planning to hurt yourself or others, in which case I'm legally obligated -"

"Okay, I get it, cool," Dash said, quickly. "But uh, if you're still mad, why'd you…?"

"Well, because Danny thinks you're possessed, for one," Jazz said, and then lowered her voice to a whisper, looking around furtively. "It's not exactly every day that your bully becomes a trans ally overnight."

"… What's that?" Dash asked, blankly.

"Well, an ally is someone who -"

"No, what's a 'trans'."

Jazz stared at him. He stared at Jazz.

Jazz took a deep breath.

"Do you have time after practice? I feel like this is going to take a little bit to explain," she said. "But I actually needed to talk to you about something else, and I feel like if I start explaining gender theory to you, it's gonna take longer than we have."

"Uh, sure?" Dash said. "I didn't know gender had a theory? Is that like evolution, or like the moon landing?"

"Moving on," Jazz said, "I actually came to ask you two things."

"Uh… shoot."

"First, I want to make sure you don't plan to tell anyone. About Danny."

"I wasn't going to," Dash said. "Are you nuts? That's secret identity stuff."

"Right," Jazz said. "About any of it. 'Identity' stuff."

"Yeah," Dash said. "That's what I said."

There was a pause as Jazz sized him up, and then she seemed to relax.

"Second… I guess I wanted to know what you planned on doing."

"Doing?"

"Yes." When Dash just stared at her blankly, she elaborated. "You made a lot of progress coming clean with everyone in that other timeline, but if we're the only ones who remember… what do you want to do?"

"Uhhhhh…" Dash cast his gaze around the crowded hallway. Still no one looking this way, at least not for more than a second or two.

Jazz's face twisted into that annoying sympathy look she had perfected.

"It's okay if you don't have it figured out yet. It's a big thing to process. You didn't know beforehand, did you?"

Dash was not famed for his intelligence, but even he could pick up on this one. He glanced around again, shoulders bunching up as he remembered Kwan's voice. Gay. He didn't seem to have to say anything. Jazz nodded once, like she had been expecting… whatever she was expecting.

"You don't have to come out publicly, you know," Jazz said. "Danny's always been… private, about that sort of thing. And those of us who know do everything we can to keep it that way. But it is an option, if you ever want to."

Dash snorted, staring at his feet.

"Are you sure we came from the same wish-world? Why would I want that? Don't you remember I got kicked off the team? Everyone calling me gay and a fa-" his voice was getting too loud, and he cut it off sharply.

"I know." He chanced a glance up and Jazz was looking at him with a sympathetic expression.

"My friends would all leave me," he said. "I'd be alone."

"You wouldn't be alone," Jazz said. "But… yes, they probably would."

The image of Danny being held up against the wall by Bryson came to him unbidden. Gay, Kwan's voice echoed again in his head, and he felt a little ill.

"The world won't end if you don't this time," Jazz said. In the most damnably gentle tone yet. "What you do now will be entirely for you. What - and who - you can live with."

The cafeteria at Casper High was just as noisy as ever.

The students were separated as always into their own cliques - the band geeks over here, the board game losers there, the theater kids taking up a whole three tables, and the middle kids who weren't interesting enough to have a gimmick but not lame enough to be classified as losers spreading out like grass in the sidewalk cracks. The A-listers took up the table closest to the lunch line, and on the opposite end, of course, sat Danny Fenton and his friends.

"You heard about Dash, right?" Tucker said, biting into his beef jerky-pulled pork and barbecue sauce sandwich.

"He's off the team, yeah, I heard," Danny grumbled. "It would be great news for me if it didn't mean they'd gone right back to whaling on me without him. Those weeks were great while they lasted…"

"Yeah," Tucker sighed, "It was nice having a bit of a break from being stuffed in lockers."

"Guys, this is serious," Sam said. "I know he's always been a bit of a jerk -"

"A bit?" Tucker said.

"- but this is about more than just Dash, you know that, right?" Sam stood up, planting one hand on either side of her tray as she leaned forward. "Is this what we get for behaving like individuals, and not mindlessly going with the flow? Who's gonna be next to be kicked from their club because they don't fit the mold of what they think a 'good kid' should be like?"

"Yeah, and if it were a good kid, I'd probably care a lot more," Danny said, "but I just want to get through fifth period without someone spitting on the back of my head."

Sam huffed, rolling her eyes skyward.

"Then as usual, it's up to me to be the voice of reason and actually advocate for the student body here," she said, slamming a piece of paper down on the table between them. "I'm gathering a petition, and if that doesn't convince the school administration to step in, I'm going to organize a school walkout!"

"Good idea," Tucker said, "if there's one thing that's guaranteed to get people on your side, it's promising less school."

"You might want to vet your signatures, though," Danny said, picking up the paper and squinting at it. "Not that I'm not glad to have Max Gaylord with us on this."

As Sam said something that would have gotten her detention had a teacher heard it, snatching the paper back, Dash chanced a look behind him.

There were only a few tables that had space in the cafeteria, and even fewer that were willing to let him sit with them. Still, he just didn't feel ready to face Sam and Tucker… and Danny.

Being the star quarterback of Casper High’s football team had had a lot of demands. Being a loser was new.

The were no girls chasing him, now, nobody demanding his attention. Teachers took his homework, graded it, and handed it back without comment (Except Mr. Lancer, who'd become annoyingly convinced that Dash just needed to apply himself). There wasn't anyone to joke around with after practice, but he didn't have to constantly be on the lookout, making sure he always looked cool. After all, he was already the un-coolest anyone could be.

People were rude sometimes, but there was a strange weight off his shoulders in the absence of having to watch everything he said. Instead, he was just… him, Dash Baxter.

And right now, Dash Baxter needed to figure out where he sat in Casper High's cafeteria. He scanned the tables one more time, and then saw it. The seat.

There was still one more thing on his list, something important that he couldn't wait any longer on. Moving on from Danny's table, he walked towards the only other table in the cafeteria that had space. It only had one occupant, eating alone out of a brown bag lunch.

Dash set his tray on the table, sitting down next to Valerie Gray.

"Hey," he said.