Danny has found a small-ish floating island in the Zone that isn't claimed by anyone. Dibs.
He starts altering it, and finds out that for ghosts it's like, super easy. He's literally just grabbing bits of ecto and forming it into what he wants, like putty.
He takes inspiration from his favorite Animal Crossing save, and shapes this floating island to be a place for him to just...go chill.
He names it the same thing he named his Animal Crossing island; Potato.
Potato soup perhaps?
“I can’t believe this place functions as well as it does,” Jazz said brightly, picking up a cheap warding necklace from a vendor as she passed by, before placing it back and giving the vendor a polite wave. Far more polite than she was to Danny, because older sisters had something of a superpower when it came to being supportive and condescending at the same time. Or maybe that was just Jazz.
“Ha ha,” Danny intoned. “Well, I’ll have you know I totally knew what I was doing from the beginning. Maybe Animal Crossing isn’t a great model for human economics, but it’s just fine in the ghost zone.”
“Danny.” Jazz quirked her eyebrow at him, a playful and oh-so-smug smile tugging at her lips. “You went into horrible debt in that game. And then you reset your save file.”
“Tom Nook is a horrible, greedy little raccoon. If he were a ghost, he would have accepted a cool-looking butterfly as payment and we would have been chill,” Danny argued, fake indignant. He cleared his throat. “ANYWAY, enough about that. Because I, in real life, am totally rocking this adult stuff, I have the filing cabinet you asked for set up.”
“You’re twenty, little brother,” Jazz corrected. “Hardly a full adult yet.”
“Says you.”
She blew a raspberry at him. “But thank you,” she continued, like her lack of pristine-ness never happened. “I do feel much safer keeping our documents here.”
Danny grimaced alongside her. Neither of them needed to vocalize how tense things were getting back home, with all of the sweeps and checks the GIW gained the authority to do across. They had all more-or-less escaped Amity Park, with only Mom and Dad remaining there to annoy and distract the GIW from the important stuff. Their portal was long gone now, by necessity, and Danny’s ability to open his own was a well-kept secret, surprisingly. However, it didn’t make travel back and forth any easier when punching a hole through reality was the most subtle thing in the world. For that reason, he either stayed put in the college dorm or—like this past semester—holed up on Potato Island and attended all of his classes online. Getting a degree in engineering was mostly a consolation prize, at this point, but he wasn’t feeling up to quit just yet. Even if the GIW and the government’s hunger for ecto-based weaponry made actually having a life on Earth—in the U.S., that is—more and more difficult.
Tucker took a study abroad to France to provide temporary relief. Sam, ever the adventurer, was starting to look into other dimensions with similar Earths, because she didn’t care about uprooting herself from family she didn’t care about. Jazz, who had been the most vocal about trying to stick things out, was now moving more and more of her belongings to the Ghost Zone.
Danny practically lived on Potato Island now. Which was weird, even though he had snagged the empty haunt somewhat for this reason; that reality had seemed less pressing a few years ago, though. It honestly wasn’t that bad, because Potato Island had exploded in function when he had been more preoccupied with graduating high school and getting into a college and out of Amity without getting screened by the GIW. It was a whole city now! Unfortunately, it meant that everybody thought really highly of Danny, as if he was some mysterious leader. Vivian actually ran everything, and he was more than happy to let her; Danny was just scary enough to keep things calm in this neck of the woods. He was perfectly content with that.
Unfortunately, his impulse project came with administrative duties all the same. Maybe Jazz was onto something when she called Potato Island a miracle.
“Phantom, yer’ presence has been requested,” Daryl dutifully reported, appearing next to Danny and Jazz at his front door in a flurry of hooves. Between Vivian the multi-armed ghost of a city planner and Daryl, the enthusiastic centaur ghost of a Pony Express rider, Potato Island really, really didn’t need him beyond his ecto. They were scarily efficient. And very intent on including him on stuff.
“Can it wait?” he asked, already dreading it. If it was that pumpkin merchant again…
“Who is it?” Jazz also asked, more interested in the situation than he was.
“A traveler,” Daryl reported, to his surprise. “A real potent one, that one is. He asked for the leader of the haunt. Hannah said he was real polite, too.”
Polite? That was a new one. Okay, he’ll bite.
One step ahead of him, Jazz nudged him forward. “Go. You’ll be useless when it comes to organizing papers anyway.”
“Thanks,” he deadpanned, but he flew off to where Daryl directed him without much more fuss. Usually, ghosts that wanted to meet with him were ones interested in setting up shop here. As much as he would love to delegate that too, haunts were really picky about the permission stuff. It was, however, rather bemusing for anybody to be noteworthy in their politeness; ghosts were usually too straightforward for that.
Danny found his answer quickly enough, because it wasn’t a ghost he was meeting: it was a young, teenage, living boy.
Potent, sure. He reeked of magic, like the few living visitors of the island usually did. As long as they didn’t cause trouble, Danny didn’t care. This was a kid, though—floppy black hair, bright blue eyes, and all thin and gangly. For a split moment, Danny had to wonder if somebody cloned him again. It was uncanny.
“Um, Mr. Phantom, sir?” the kid started. He eyed Danny carefully, a bit warily, but not really scared. Still, Danny dialed back his presence, aware that the voids in all of his blacks were getting a little too deep in his startled confusion. “I’m Billy Batson. I was, uh, wondering if I could stay here? I can work for it.”
This was a kid. Ancients, a kid. A living kid. What the heck?!
Then the request hit him. “Wait. You know you’re living, right? Like, fully living. Sure your magic protects you, but I don’t think you would enjoy the Realms past the forty-eight-hour mark, bud. What do you mean, live here?”
Billy frowned and sighed with way too much exasperation than what had to be healthy for his age. Danny was immediately reminded of Ellie. Which as far as normal kid benchmarks went, was not a good sign. “I could last longer than that,” Billy argued. “And I would be in and out. I can portal here.”
Danny floated a bit closer to the ground. “Look, I’m just trying to understand something here. You’re a living human who can apparently portal between the veil. So why live here, on the side that’s not good for you?” Danny’s brain caught up a few seconds later; having once been a powerful but scrawny fourteen-year-old, he could think of a few reasons. None of them were particularly. “Are you… okay?”
Billy curled in on himself a little bit, half wilting and half defense. He squinted at Danny long and hard. “For such a famous and powerful ghost, I didn’t expect this many questions,” he muttered.
“I’m also a strange ghost,” Danny quipped, more than a little aware that young Billy here might have expected someone closer to Pandora or Overgrowth, all reverberating might and confidence. “Now, come on man, I’m not going to eat you or anything. If you came here looking for an agreement, you would know that these kind of haunt contracts demand honesty. I’ll start by saying that I’m not going to use this information against you unless you’re, like, trying to hurt me or Potato. But you gotta work with me.”
This time, Billy definitely wilted. After an agonizing minute of deliberation, he sighed. “I just… don’t have anyway else to go,” he admitted.
And Danny—
Well, Danny always had a soft, impulsive heart. He got it from his dad. And currently, it was melting.
“Okay,” Danny said, mouth moving faster than his brain. Jazz could yell at him for it later. “Okay, we’ll… figure something out.”
(What Danny had not figured out yet at all is that this was exactly how to accidentally adopt a superhero from another dimension.)
