Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In this book lies the rules for Amity Park, an ever evolving document that all citizens and guests should follow when inside of the city. 

Written by the students and teachers of Casper High

-p.s. unofficial rule #1: do not let Mr. and Mrs. Fenton or the Guys in White view this list.

Chapter Text

It all started, as most things in Amity Park tend to do so, with an explosion.

No one had really paid the ghost any attention when the Box Ghost had flown down the street, they were all too used to the sight of a spirit from the Ghost Zone wandering around within the human world, enough so that the smaller ones - like the Box Ghost and the little wisps that sometimes seemed to follow Phantom on lazy days - were generally ignored unless they did something that warranted attention. Just flying through the air as the ghost screamed his usual Beware! didn't really do that anymore.

Desensitization the citizens of Amity Park - other than the elder Fentons - called it.

Too tired of ghost bullshit to give a damn when it wasn't a problem, was what Danny liked to call it as he watched the ghost with a bored gaze while walking to school, which just happened to be in the same way. Though, he supposed that desensitization was a bit on the shorter end.

It was when the ghost spotted the mail truck that all things started to whatever passed for hell in this strange town that the teen lived in.

That was when the explosion occurred.

Danny had just made it to the mail truck when the Box Ghost had swooped down within it with a bout of glee that made the teen groan, something that more than one of the other residents on the street that had seen that did as well. They all had an idea of what was coming. In a way at the least.

It was only a moment before all of the doors to the mail truck bursts open, packages upon packets flying out of it as some of the boxes started to open up in the air, the contents within forming a pile beneath the Box Ghost. The mail man could only climb out of the truck as this occurred and watch as his bags were toppled and the boxes taken by the ghost of them.

Danny watched as well along with the rest of the people on the street. Right then, with the permanent bags under his eyes, and the green tinted bruises still healing beneath his shirt from patrol the night before, the halfa didn't even think of changing form. If he was being honest with himself, he was too tired to be thinking much of anything right then as he opened his mouth speak… which was probably the reason that he did just that instead of running like he usually did, even if it got him called a coward most of the time.

"Hey!" Danny screamed out, the familiar sound of his voice making the ghost look at the half - dead teen, along with just about everyone else around them. "Isn't that illegal?"

It was a stupid sort of thing to ask, the only law that any of the ghost within the Infinite Realms answered to was that of Walker when they crossed his territory on accident, and the ghost king that Danny had beaten the shit out of a little while before. They didn't answer to the laws of mortals, to that of the human world, especially not when it went against their obsession as this sort of seemed like it would have.

But, he had asked it all the same, and that very fact had made the other ghost still.

"It might be," the full ghost conceded after a long moment of confusion all around before seeming to find himself once more. "But I am the terrifying Box Ghost, and thus they are mine!" he yelled in that usual voice of his.

And Danny knew right then that he really should run off behind a tree or something of the like and transform into his other state, that he didn't really have the time to be standing there, dealing with this, when he needed to get to school, but then he saw it.

Among the floating boxes within the air that the other ghost had taken control of, among the few of them that had not yet been opened, there was one with his name and address written out upon it. Danny knew what was in it; a book on astronomy that his mom had gotten for him, the ghost hunter just happy that he wanted to read at all, that was due to be delivered today.

He had been waiting all week to get his hands on it.

"Hey, one of those is mine!" The teen found himself yelling out in indignation once he realized what was floating so close by, point at the object as he did so.

The Box Ghost didn't say anything right then as he looked at it as well, silently floating the box close, opening it, and then giving it to the younger ghost in human form.

Danny snatched it from the air with something of a feral look in his eyes, as he hugged the package to his chest as if he thought that the other might try and take it away if he didn't.

The Box Ghost found himself wanting to flinch at the glare that the other gave him, something ancient hiding beneath it that had been slowly growing since the halfa was made but had sped up since the fights with Fright Knight and Pariah Dark.

Danny didn't notice that right then though, even if some of those around them noticed the ghost acting a bit weary.

He didn't notice because he was too busy having an idea.

"How about this?" The teen started once more, with a smile playing across his lips that the Box Ghost know from being it right before getting sucked into a thermos too many times to count, and the residents around found a bit familiar even as they couldn't place it. "You can have all of the boxes that you want from the truck, so long as you take the stuff within them to the houses that they were supposed to be delivered to first," the teen offered, feeling that it was a pretty decent sort of deal. "Because otherwise, it won't just be ghost hunters of the town hunting you down, but likely everyone that you have taken from, and broken the things of," he continued, pointing to the small pile of discarded things.

The Box Ghost should be glad that it was just clothes right then, cause if it had been anything breakable yet, some people were going to be pissed more so than they were already. Which was saying something as more than one of the citizens around them were nodding, but their eyes were mentally wondering how to kill a maim a ghost.

"You win, you win!" The Box Ghost decided, somehow finding this worse then the usual beat down. At least those were fun.

The spirit was quick to fly off with his loot, the boxes floating and opening behind him as the contents went to their rightful doorsteps. Just the boxes.

Danny stared at the ground that was litters with envelopes and some of the boxes that had been beaten around the sides in transport enough so that they no longer really looked cubic at all anymore, and mentally rolled his eyes as he kept walking. If he was quick, he could still make it to school on time, no thanks to a box obsessed ghost that had left everything else behind.

Danny isn't the only one that notices this.

It was after a very short - almost record breakingly so - mail run that the mail man, John, found himself walking into his boss's office that day, the woman sighing as she saw him approach.

"Let me guess, ghost?" Linda asked, knowing that there weren't many reasons for someone with a full truck to be back to soon and seeing her.

The man nodded.

"Old Boxy," he reported, taking the seat before the woman’s desk. "Broke into my truck and started stealing. Might have been here even sooner if he hadn't made a mess while at it. Though, I did notice that he - true to his name - only took the boxes, just the nice ones at that too. Completely abandoned the envelopes and beaten packages."

It was that last part that made the woman smile.

The day after the 'mail truck explosion' as some had taken to calling it, since explosion events had to be classified in this town now, the post office announced that all packages should be cylindrical, hexagonal, in an envelope of some sort (i.e. not cubic) for surety of them reaching their intended destinations.

No one was surprised to hear it, following the rule quickly throughout the town and not complaining when packages came looking a bit worse for wear on the outside or shoved within a box that had been made to look so once it had reached the post office.

And thus, the first rule was made.

-p.s. see Rule# 2 for what to do with leftover boxes.

Chapter Text

It didn't take Danny long to realize that all of the packages that were now coming in and out of Amity Park were rounded in shape, hard to when not even the grocery store was spared. He and Jazz had taken to removing the cereal bags from the boxes before their parents could notice just how unbox like the cardboard had actually become.

Not that they paid all that much attention in the first place.

Still, between the postal service and every single other business within the town that used some sort of box for their work, the ghost knew that the Box Ghost was soon going to grow frustrated by the lack of his obsession when he escapes to the mortal realm. It was the same with most of the fully formed ghosts from the Infinite Realms, they all went a bit crazed when their obsession was lacking and sought to fix such a thing. For ghosts like Undergrowth, this meant taking over the town and turning it into a ghostly nock off Amazon Rain Forest. Not great, but straight forward enough.

For ghosts like old Boxy whose obsession couldn't be so easily filled in such a manner, it meant break in and robberies and other acts of vandalism and theft like the spat that had created such a system as the one in place right now. Danny figured that the full ghost wasn't likely to stop at just mail trucks this time when he couldn't find what he wanted as all of the mail trucks were bound to prove lacking for the foreseeable future.

It wasn't long after that the half ghost had an idea though.

Danny was moving around in the kitchen one night, long after the rest of the house had gone to bed. Long after he was supposed to have as well. But, holding patrols was a bitch and didn't care for the fact that he had school the next day, just that there was some sort of ghost or another reeking havoc in his town until late.

At least this time it was just a cat that the kids in the town had tried to raise from the dead and not one of the more powerful spirits of the Infinite Realms. The little punks had watched Pet Cemetery over the weekend and had gotten the idea with how close it was to Halloween. And, given how close it was to that holiday - to Samhain and to Día de los Muertos as well - the veil between life and death was steadily becoming thin once more. Natural portals were popping up more often.

Which meant a cat that missed its owners was able to fully manifest and cross over to the world of mortals.

At least the kids had been freaked out enough by it actually working that they hadn't been or angered or sad when the teen had stolen the other ghost away and given it to Pandora. He figured that the Ancient would take care of it better than letting the poor thing wander to and from like Cujo liked to, or ancients forbid, giving the ghost kitty to Clockwork. There were way too many places for a cat to hide within that clock tower, and no one needed it knocking Dan off the shelf.

So, yeah, he found himself in the kitchen at who knows what time eating the last of the cereal - actually enjoying the slight green glow that it had to it in a way that he was sure was toxic to the rest of the full mortals in the house - and went to go ahead and put out the new bag that they had of it. It was when he was deciding what to do with the box that they would usually throw away and nothing more, that he decided to take a small pivot from the norm, given the ghostly problem at hand.

The teen spent the next few minutes gathering up all of the boxes that they had folded by the trash and bringing them out to the curb, a not tapped to the top of them for anyone that might come across them.

Boxy,

Take these instead of breaking into anywhere this week.

-Danny

The note was simple, quick. It didn't need to be anything more than that for the message to get across to the other ghost as Danny crawled up the stairs and went to sleep early that Friday morning.

The boxes were gone by the time that he woke up in the morning, taken in sometime that the teen could only guess was around the witching hour.

His friends weren't as impressed as he was when hr told them before the start of school about what he had done.

"Why?" is what Tucker asks first, not understanding what could have made the other boy decide to do such a thing as this. It wasn't bad or dangerous, not like some of the other things that his best friend did each day, but it still raised questions all the same.

General exasperation, he supposed.

Danny just shrugs, drinking a bit of the slightly glowing drink that he had crafted from what was left of the contaminated milk and ice cream. A morning ecto-shake he supposed.

"I figured that it might work to scratch the itch," the halfa answered casually, not having to quite explain what he meant even if the other two didn't have it anymore.

When both of them had been taken over by ghosts in one manner or another, they had felt what it was like to be one. At least for a bit, mutely so. None of them liked talking about how much stronger the urges were for Danny himself than they had ever been for either of them. How much more like a real ghost.

It was something that they all sought to ignore.

It was something that they ignored right then as the ghostly teen acted a bit like a ruler trying to care for one of his subjects and his haunt all at once, even if the air of annoyance was still there.

"You want us to go along with this as well?" Sam asked, not as bothered by this as Tucker seemed to be. It was good for the environment after all, less trash to be pilled up somewhere.

"It would be nice," Danny admitted, and how could they refuse?

"Yeah, alright," the goth teen agreed, Tucker following along as they both knew that he would.

—-

It was after English that Danny found himself talking to Mr. Lancer willingly for the first time in his life. No detentions or late assignments to speak of.

Naturally, this made the man wary when the three teens walked up to his desk as the class ended. It had been the same with all of the other teachers that they had spoken with that day.

"Yes? Mr. Fenton, Foley, and Miss. Mason?" the man asked when the three stopped before him, looking between the three teenagers as if he expected one of them to throw a firecracker down upon his desk and then run.

Something that Danny couldn't help but think was rude, after all he was much more ice affiliated.

"We were wondering if you had any empty boxes that you weren't using that we could have?" the ghostly teen asked all the same, deciding that dealing with ghost attacks to come was more important than his affinity for the cold.

"Why?" the english teacher asked, skeptical and rightly thinking that this might have something to do with the ghost that most of the town had heard of the teen yelling at just the other day.

Lancer had been shocked to hear of the youngest Fenton doing that, everyone in the school knowing of the teen's fear of the spirits of the dead. Yet, the fifteen year old had yelled at the Box Ghost and all but scolded the being.

And the ghost had listened.

Something that no ghost had ever done with a mortal before.

It was the sort of action that had some of the town watching to see what the boy would do next. To see if he would become stranger still.

Apparently the answer was coming sooner than most had thought.

"I'm planning on giving them to the Box Ghost to keep him from trying to steal more boxes from people that still need them," the halfa answers easily with a shrug. "Personally, I actually like some of the stuff that comes in boxes, like mac and cheese and muffin mix, and I don't want the him to start robbing places again for kicks."

It was a half truth in a way, as Danny knew that it wasn't enjoyment that the other ghost was seeking, but fulfillment. He didn't think that this was something that he should run around saying to his english teacher though.

"Its basically recycling," Sam adds when she seen the man looking skeptically between the three of them, as if he thought that they were pulling his leg or about to use the boxes to try and take over the world. The last one wasn't even all that plausible anymore, they had all had their fill of doing just that.

Danny nods, knowing that most adults liked to feel better about themselves by doing things like that, and hoped that the other was no different.

"Plus," Tucker starts, shifting the attention to himself, "once the Box Ghost tried to steal my Xbox when he heard the name, so we're really trying to keep him from his clepto ways. You know?"

Sam sighed something that sounded a lot like idiots as Danny nodded in agreement once more.

Lancer looks between the three and wants to sigh as well. Trust Fenton, Foley, and Mason to only get involved like this when there was ghosts involved. Never mind all the school work that the youngest Fenton missed.

Still…

"When and where do you put the boxes out?" the english teacher asked, the man rather having a system of his own than having Fenton lugging boxes around the school constantly.

The three smiled a bit like demons in their glee.

"Put them out on Thursday nights," Danny said, "Boxy picks them around the witching hour on Friday morning. Maybe leave a note too, the first time at least."

Lancer doesn't even ask why the son of ghost hunters was talking so casually about 'witching hour' pick ups, or helping ghost, just sends the three on to their next class and calls it a day.

None of them had noticed that they had a listener though.

Paulina had been staying behind to ask a question about the latest essay. Last year she would have gotten a nerd to do it for her, but most of them had caught on that she was never going to date them, so she was writing them herself for a while. She hadn't expected to overheard the losers talking about one of the ghosts, or that he was getting a bit antsy and taking things with just the name box in them. She was glad that she did though, she had more than one jewelry box to protect.

She knew that Star did as well, and told her about what she had heard.

Who told another.

And another.

It wasn't long before the whole town was all but sacrificing unneeded boxes to the Box Ghost by Thursday of the next week.

Danny didn't know this as he wandered down to the basement the next Thursday night and let the ghost out into it.

"If you take anything other than the boxes that have been set out for you the I will call in Plasmius and have him burn all of them in front of you," the teen threatened, his eyes taking on a green tint to them as he did so, a chill settling in the air that felt far older than the time that the teen had been dead for.

Danny didn't notice this though, even if the Box Ghost did.

Instead, the teen was thinking of his uncertainty of the older halfa listening to him if he were to ask. He knew that it was a solid 50/50 depending on the day and what the man wanted from him that week. But boxy doesn't need to know that.

He was only mildly surprised when the Box Ghost easily agrees, the older ghost just happy when the heavy feeling left the air when he did so.

That night spawned the creation of a new recycling system for all of Amity Park. Something that the Fentons didn't even notice.

Chapter Text

No one said anything when the youngest Fenton child walked into his english class late. This was enough of an usual occurrence at this point that none of them were even sure that Mr. Lancer even realized when he came in late anymore. The man had already started taking attendance later in the class time so that he would know whether to mark Danny late or absent. The only times that he even seemed to process when the teen was walking into the class these days was some of the rare occurrences when Danny was on time or even early.

…Or when he messed with the classroom door.

"Mr. Fenton," the english teacher started, lowering his chalk down as he spoke, turning to look at the boy as he walked into the class, "please close the door back before taking your seat."

At first Danny wanted to ask why. The ghost could count on his hand the number of times that their english teacher had cared about the state of the door, but he didn't do so. Not out of some sudden influx of respect or lack of imprudence, but because when he even thought of being forced to close the door that he had specifically left open out of some gut instinct, made him want to recoil.

Right then, he hated the idea of the door being closed, hated it more than he hated even Dash at that moment. For some reason that no one, not even the ghost himself, could name, he hated it. He loathed the idea of changing it from how he had left it, this boundary between the classroom and the hallway.

It needed to be open right then like the ghost portal needed to be turned on.

Still, he knew that saying any of this wouldn't go over well. That the best that he would get out of it was detention, so he closed the door even as it went against something in his chest to do. Even as it felt as if it hurt as he heard it click shut and he turned to walk to his seat, the slight smell of ozone in the air as he did so.

The next part of class passed in a blur of words that the teen couldn't hear none of his limbs seemed to be able to keep still, moving as if lighting had been injected straight into his veins.

(it hadn't, not that day at the least)

Still, it wasn't long before everything changed once more.

Danny hardly had time for the mist to spill from his mouth before there was a ghost in the classroom, one that he had not seen before and didn't want to see again, as it clacked and flew through the room.

Belongings that the students were too slow to grab a hold of were thrown about the classroom, as the sound of nails against the chalkboard caused more than one person to try and cover their ears. Panic filled the classroom as pencils flew past like small spears as everyone within the room ran for the door.

The closed door.

If it had been open then most of the students bottle necked at it might have already been in the hall, but the precious few seconds that it took for Wes to try and yank the door open proved futile as desks were suddenly pouring down from the space above, causing the red haired teen to scramble back before he was crushed by them.

No one made fun of the girl when Star screamed as they crashed.

"Knew that the door should have been left open," Danny said, the words only meant for Sam and Tucker to hear as he rooted around in his backpack and pulled out a Fenton thermos that was just different enough in appearance for no one to accuse him of having Phantom's… even if he was Phantom.

Still, even if the words were only meant for the other two to hear, the room was holding so much noise within it, that for them to do so the halfa ended up screaming over the noise. And a scream, even one in annoyance, was loud enough for everyone to hear.

No one said anything to it though, not as they realized that the teen was right. That they could have already been out of the school with the rest of the student body if it had been left alone.

If the gateway had been open.

No one said anything either as the black haired teen pointed the thermos at the new ghost, taking the creature in with a slight hiss beneath his breath as he muttered something that none of them could quite understand as he shoved the thermos back into his bag with more force than was needed.

No one may have said anything, but the next time that Danny messed with the door, it was left how he had changed it to be.