Chapter Text
Danny was happy to report that the weapons that Huntr/x used to fight demons were very effective against ghosts. Not only could Mira’s polearm cut through Danny’s spiritual ‘flesh’ as easily as a properly sharpened knife would normal skin, but reinforcing his body with active ectoplasm, a trick he had picked up when he was sixteen to help deal with some particularly aggressive lion ghosts with claws longer than his fingers, did little more than slow the weapon down. Now, granted, Mira’s blade wasn’t able to hurt him if Danny went intangible, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have any effect when he did that. It was just that instead of cutting him, it made the site of the would be wound numb, and if Mira’s blade went through an entire intangible limb, everything that would have been severed basically became a wet noodle from how numb it became.
Granted the cuts and such healed at Danny’s usual accelerated rate, but most ghosts and spirits didn’t recover as fast as Danny did, and he theorized that a ‘lethal’ strike from a Huntr/x weapon would essentially knock a ghost out for at least a few minutes. Probably longer.
All in all, Danny was happy with the results, confident that if any of his enemies tried to go after Zoe that they would be in for a very rude awakening. Mira on the other hand looked a bit annoyed at what they discovered. Apparently Rumi had told her about him blocking her sword with his ice and she was now confused at how said ice had been able to do so when Danny’s energy charaged skin and muscle were as vulnerable as they were to her weapon. Which was a good question. Not one that Danny had a real answer to, but still a reasonable one.
Putting their questions aside for the time being, with Danny silently vowing to ask Frostbite for the yeti’s insight regarding his ice, the two rejoined Rumi and Zoe in front of the TV to watch… well, Danny didn’t actually catch the name of the show. It was some overacted romantic drama that had far too much going on for Danny to understand. But the girls seemed to be enjoying it and Zoe had decided to curl up against his side and pull his arm over her shoulders, so Danny wasn’t going to complain.
“Hey Mira,” Zoe softly called over to her friend.
“Yeah?”
“Do other rich people actually have this kind of relationship drama going on behind the scenes?” she asked.
Danny was pretty sure that using clarifying the ‘other’ rich people thing was a bit hypocritical given the relationship related drama that they just got done dealing with, but whatever.
“Not that I’ve seen,” Mira shrugged. “I’m sure there is some accusations of paternity over extra-marital kids, and I know that some people cheat on their spouses and stuff, but usually things that can be considered embarrassing are kept behind closed doors. Can’t really blackmail people if you tell everyone the dirty details before the payout hits.” She scoffed, “I swear the amount of bullshit that goes on between some of the people I grew up around is insane. Half the time it’s like watching a snake eat it’s own damn tail.”
That made Danny frown. Hearing Mira’s words made him think about Vlad. Even if they were on better terms now, Danny remembered what is was like when his godfather was actively trying to make Danny his apprentice. The older man had threatened and taunted Danny ruthlessly. And nearly every time Danny came close to backing the man into a corner, he reminded him that he could handle being exposed as a halfa, he had a fortune and a home of his own to fall back on if Maddie and Jack rejected him after all, but Danny, teenaged Danny, had none of that. And even if the GiW hadn’t been jokes, they would have had no chance against Vlad, his connections, and his resources in the ghost and human worlds while Danny would have been left to either face them on his own or retreat into the Infinite Realms since few, if any, of Danny’s allies could abandon their places there to help fight against a problem in the human world.
The day that Danny beat Vlad in a fair fight for the first time. The day that Danny showed Vlad that he didn’t have all the power anymore, had been… he didn’t want to say the turning point, but it had been a shift. It had happened only a few weeks before Danny had started crashing Ember’s shows, and the last time they ever fought before Danny started feeding on the heightened emotional energy of humans. It was a victory with no excuses, and fuck had it felt good.
Actually, come to think of it, did Vlad know that Danny gathered stamina from his fans? Or did he think that Danny just had insane stamina naturally? Eh, he guessed it didn’t matter. The two of them hadn’t actually fought since Danny was eighteen, and even if they did and Danny was without boosted stamina Danny would probably still beat him pretty easily. Now a days Vlad tried to force Danny to be on his side by making himself too useful for Danny to ignore him.
Was it a healthy basis for a relationship? Fuck no. But it was far from the worst one Danny had seen or had to deal with over the years, and it kept the peace. Or it did for now at least. And honestly, having Vlad as a looming threat did Danny good. It gave him a motivation to keep training.
“I remember my sister telling me about how humans innately crave stimulation and challenge,” Danny mused. “Maybe the reason some rich people act like that is because they no longer have the challenge or stress of earning money to keep them occupied?”
Zoe hummed in consideration. “That kind of reminds me of Star Trek. A whole society that has nothing to really worry about and limitless resources and yet everyone still has jobs.”
“There’s a saying in Christianity,” Rumi added on, “something like ‘idle hands are wicked tools’.”
“‘Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop’,” Mira corrected. “And that makes sense. Remember what happened the last time we took a week off?”
Rumi huffed at the reminder. “I said I was sorry and I cleaned the kitchen by myself. Sorry I didn’t know that baking soda would do that to apple cider vinegar.”
“... Did you never have a science class when you were little?” Danny asked. “Baking soda and vinegar is like, the most iconic science experiment for kids out there.”
“She was homeschooled,” Zoe explained. “Though why Celine never taught her how to cook is beyond me.”
“... I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Rumi grumbled in embarrassment, “but can you two just make out or something?”
“Do not,” Mira demanded. “I want to watch this, not listen to you two swap spit.”
Danny wanted to call bullshit on Mira caring about the show. She had been almost fallen asleep twice since they put it on and probably couldn’t name any more characters than Danny could. Still, he would grant her request. If only to spare himself having to deal with her threatening to continue their experiments on how her weapon could affect him.
Zoe waved her friend’s words off. “I promise if we ever make out in a common area that we’ll put on a better show than whatever is on TV,” she swore jokingly. Or at least, Danny was pretty sure she was joking. If she wasn’t he was almost afraid at what Mira would do to him.
“Hey Danny,” Rumi cut in, “what about ghosts and spirits?”
“What about them?”
“Living people crave stimulation,” she nodded at the tv, “but what about the dead? They don’t really need to worry about food or creature comforts right? So what do they do when they are bored?”
“... Every ghost and spirit revolves around a central concept, action, or memory,” Danny told her. “Most people who every studied ghosts called it their ‘Obsession’. It could be something as broad as broad as books or something as specific as a single person. And every ghost feels a drive to commit to their obsession in some way. They don’t strictly have to dedicate their entire lives to it, but just as often as they don’t, they will.” Pandora for instance didn’t forgo everything and everyone to go around collecting and imprisoning primal evil and mindlessly destructive spirits, but Ghost Writer did lock himself away in his library doing nothing but writing and collecting books and poems without any intention of letting anyone ever read them or inviting people into his haunt to discuss his favored craft. “If a ghost doesn’t have anything to occupy their time normally, they will instinctively revert to an activity closely related to whatever their obsession is. They are literally incapable of doing nothing or becoming bored because as soon as they have nothing else to do they will just do what their most basic instincts tell them to.”
“That sounds like they are addicts,” Zoe pointed out.
Danny shrugged. “A lot of them can come off like that,” he admitted, “but most obsessions aren’t inherently destructive to a ghost, and most have enough leeway that a ghost could still come off as a mostly mentally healthy individual.” Even Ghost Writer, if pushed, could still be pulled away from his keyboard to talk about one of his books. He wouldn’t seek it out, and he’d probably ask whoever was talking to him to leave after an hour, but it could be done. Heck, Danny had managed to get the guy to help him write his last Enlish paper back in high school after a bit of pestering.
“What about you?” Zoe asked. “Are you like that?”
Danny snorted. “Being half human has its perks,” he told her. “Some parts of my personality are more… pronounced than what they would probably be otherwise, but I can ignore my obsession or even go directly against it if I want to. Most ghosts can’t do that, and the ones that can can really fuck themselves up doing so… Think intentionally putting your hand into a fire and leaving it there despite the pain and all your instincts telling you to pull it out.”
Zoe shuffled closer into his side and looked up at him. “So if I were a half-ghost, would that mean I’d like turtles even more than I do now? Because if that’s the trade off for being able to fly, that sounds like a pretty good deal.”
He shook his head. “Or it could be that in addition to loving turtles, you suddenly have the urge to eat strawberries for every meal or suddenly think you can fix every problem the same way you deal with demons… Plus becoming a halfa sucks. I have literally been turned into goo once and it didn’t hurt half as much as becoming a halfa did.”
“How did you survive being turned into goo?” Rumi squawked.
“I can regenerate,” Danny shrugged. Honestly of all his powers it was one of the ones that he thought about the least. Even if he used it more often than most. It was just the nature of having passive abilities he guessed.
“Okay, that’s enough. We are all being way too casual about talking about the afterlife,” Mira groaned. “Can we talk about something that won’t make me have some kind of existential crisis later?”
Fair enough. Danny had been more or less desensitized to the idea of the Realms version of an afterlife, but most people would probably be rather offput by the revelations he was spouting. More so when one considered that the girls may not want to become ghosts in death, and that they might be aware thanks to various legends and gospel that being a ghost was a rarity. He imagined that answers to one of humanity’s deepest questions only to realize none of them apply to their own situations would rather suck.
“How about you tell me about demons instead?” Danny suggested. “All I know about them is that they exist, serve some guy named Gwi-Ma, want to eat souls, and that the shield that holds them back is powered by your music.”
Mira shrugged, “That’s pretty much all you need to know really,” she told him. “We don’t really know how demons are born, though we know at least some of them willingly sell their souls to Gwi-Ma for some kind of benefit during life. And while we know how the Honmoon works now, we have absolutely no idea how the original Hunters created it. The amount of energy needed to jumpstart it would have been way beyond what a single performance in a pre-industrial society could have managed.”
“Obviously they had a way to store the power before creating the Honmoon,” Zoe waved her off. “But yeah, that’s pretty much all there is to it.”
“What about the differences in power?” Danny asked. “The ones I fought weren’t all the same strength, and one was way bigger than the rest… though admittedly they were still pretty much fodder.”
“Not a clue,” Rumi admitted. “Some are just more dangerous than others, and some are smartner… though that is pretty rare. Demons mostly just act like desperate, hungry, overly prideful idiots.”
Why did that description cause Danny to start picturing the hyenas from The Lion King? He wondered if there were any demons who were good singers… Danny chuckled as another stray thought entered his head.
“How is that funny?” Zoe asked. “We dealt with prideful idiots all the time in high school.”
“It’s not that,” Danny shook his head. “I just pictured you three facing off against a bunch of demons in a battle of the bands type thing.”
Mira’s eye roll was almost audible. “Please, we could beat any demon in a music battle without even trying. They have nothing on any of us. Hell, Rumi could probably hit a note high enough to kill a demon if she really wanted to.”
Danny’s eyes flickered over to the woman in question. The irony of Mira saying all that when Rumi herself was a demon was not lost on him. “That’s a pretty big claim,” Danny snarked, his eyes still on Rumi. “Seeing as I can scream with enough force to have the same impact as a nuke.”
“So when the time comes when we are trying to make each other scream,” Zoe teased, “everyone better hope it’s me who breaks first?”
Mira and Rumi both made sounds of disgust at Zoe’s words, with Mira throwing the cushion of the chair she was sitting in at the youngest member of their trio. Zoe just cackled at their reactions, batting the cushion out of the air and curling deeper into Danny’s side, her earlier melancholy long forgotten.