a scooby-doo origin story where Daphne, Fred, Velma, and Shaggy are all serving detention together and none of them (save for maybe Fred and Daphne) have ever really talked before, but they talk in detention. they have fun, they're bonding, it's a real Breakfast Club situation, and as detention ends they're walking home and they see a dog digging through the garbage of a local restaurant
he's big, but he seems sweet and he's obviously hungry, so the gang approaches him to see if he has a collar. Shaggy manages to get to him first, and the dog immediately takes to him, giving him a big dog kiss and cuddling up to him, but the dog seems to like all of them
upon finding he doesn't have a collar, Shaggy, scratching behind his ears, rhetorically asks, "What's your name, buddy?"
and the dog answers, "Scooby-Dooby-Doo!"
after a minute of freaking the FUCK out and asking each other "y'all heard that, right?" the kids decide to take the dog (who they immediately start calling Scooby-Doo, Scoob, or Scooby for short) home, and find that not only can the dog talk, he displays human-level intelligence and is easily frightened. when they ask where he came from, he doesn't seem to know, but when they walk past an old, abandoned shopping complex on the edge of town, he completely freaks out...and there are weird noises coming from that complex at night....and some suspicious sightings....
the first mystery they investigate together is the mystery of what in God's name is going on here
Jazz rested her chin on her folded hands that hung on Danny's shoulder. Dani sat in front of them going over the contract their summoners had provided.
Summonings were rare for Jazz. Rarer still, were that her siblings had been summoned with her. Most only bother with calling for one of them.
Jazz mostly ignored the call. Summoning was a two way street. If one side didn't consent then the ritual would fail.
More often than not the callers were kids or drunk college students playing with things they really shouldn't. Or it was someone that wanted her to conquer or destroy everything between a kingdom to their realm.
Jazz's liminalness allowed her to sense the emotions of her caller. From that she could more than guess why they were summoning her. Gleeful emotions were to be fully ignored.
This summoning wasn't like that. Desolation hung in the air. Almost palpable.
That and mild curiosity of her siblings being called too was what brought her over. There weren't many left that could give one of them a run for their money. Let alone the three of them.
Jazz hadn't spoken much after she arrived. Content to let her brother ask the important questions as she switched between looking for red flags with the emotions of the strangers that lingered outside the summoning circle and skimming the twenty page contract over her sister's shoulder.
Jazz snorted as she watched Dani write ‘NO’ in big letters next to a crossed out paragraph. Dani flipped the page over to its blank side and continued writing.
A door swished open. A figure with a red hood pulled over his head stood there. His head bowed over a tablet.
Jazz watched the newcomer as he made his way to another guy in red with a quiver and bow strapped to his back.
He must have felt her stare by how he turned his head.
Jazz stiffened when he made eye contact.
A ringing filled Jazz's ears. She slipped away from Danny's side.
She knew those eyes. Younger and paler. They haunted her memories.
She didn't register the sparks shooting off her shoes as she crossed the summoning circle's outer ring. Its runes glowed brighter as the barrier woven within put up a futile fight. With a flash the spell broke.
Jazz didn't even notice the pulse of fear that ran in the room. Too focused on someone she thought she'd never see again. He had to recognize her. She hadn’t changed that much since the last time she saw him a decade ago.
Weapons were drawn. Red Arrow notched an arrow. Drawing it back as he aimed warningly at Jazz. Nightwing and Batman rushed to intercept her.
Danny snarled for everyone to stand down.
Jazz continued treading forward. She stopped only when he took a step back from her. To many emotions flashed through him, wrapping tight around a ball of confusion.
“Jason?”
↱ re-watching supernatural
season 1, episode 1: pilot
OP made the post unrebloggable but said it's fine to screenshot and I'm in love with this
Danny possesses one of the many Bats in the Batcave and the Batfam, completely unaware that this bat is actually a whole ass person, just treat Danny as a strangely human acclimated bat that they see as a pet.
Who would have thought following Casper High’s lab safety protocols would leave him in the same place as if he followed his parents’, just infinitely more spooky looking?
Hell, Danny had even pulled out the worn piece of paper from their first class, the one that listed all the PPE needed to deal with a high school level of science and beyond! Sure, the tidbits about the different levels of HAZMAT suits were probably just fun facts, but his parents never fought him or Jazz on wearing their HAZMAT suits in the lab, nevermind the gas masks and goggles. If his parents’ research had any chance of radiation or burning them, he was wearing the PPE.
Sam and Tucker complained about the stiff suits, brightly coloured and stiff, all too large as they were back ups for Danny’s mom and dad. When Danny had pulled out his own, he was on some level happy that his white one was nearly the proper size, if still too large. It was always better safe than sorry in his parents’ lab, one too many chemical burns from unknown substances proved that.
“Y’know Danny, we could totally take these and trick or treat in them, they’re just creepy enough that we can pass as Pestilence, a horsemen of the apocalypse,” Sam said, voice muffled as she adjusted her mask.
“Oh, for sure, just after we explain why Pestilence is wearing a bright orange HAZMAT suit,” Danny pulled on his gas mask, breathing slowly as he got used to the odd, wheezing sound. He looked around the lab, huffing, “man, dad must’ve updated my suit without telling me. I think he added a welding shield on it, I can’t see anything.”
“Oh, don’t worry Danny, it makes you look spookier, especially with the white suit!” Sam smiled, though Danny couldn’t see it. “How about you keep your mask off till we get to the portal, then put it on when we get the picture?”
“Wait, we’re getting a picture?”
It was pointless to argue, so after getting to the portal and showing the waste of space off, and after a lot of directing, both Sam and Tucker annoyed at the small steps Danny took inside the portal, he was ready. He didn’t go too far into the tunnel, he kept mostly in the middle, he even smiled for Sam’s picture, decked out in his full suit, completely safe.
It wasn’t enough.
There was an unexpected jolt of electricity, sparks falling from the top of the tunnel that was the portal, and well, Danny couldn’t really see anything, so the sudden light was a surprise. It started him, and no one really ever talked about how hard it was to move gracefully in a full HAZMAT suit, especially one that was a size or two too big. He stumbled back, and wires that littered the floor tripped him. Danny’s hand fell against the wall as he tried to catch himself, tried to not fall onto the floor and embarrass himself, he couldn’t see the bright buttons that said ON and OFF, inside of the portal.
It was just pain after that.
Pain that flooded him so completely, overwhelming every sense until all he knew as pain. Bright, shocking, both burning and freezing, it was overwhelming all his senses, but it wouldn’t stop.
Sam and Tucker said it was a haunting sight when he stepped out of the portal.
Neither told him of how long they stood frozen, just listening to their friend’s death throes.
Being Phantom was easy. It was easier than it should have been.
He struggled yes, he phased through silverware when he was, alive, breathing, human, he wasn’t allowed anywhere near the beakers in chemistry anymore, his parents’ machines all homed in on him when he stepped through the front door. That was all part of his new, life, unlife, death? Not death. Scrodinger’s cat, a box unopened, was he dead or alive?
Fighting ghosts was easy, fun even.
Danny, Phantom, got pummeled often. He threw shitty punches and was hit with thousands of pounds worth of force back, he struggled with his powers, new ones appearing everyday. The Lunch Lady was hard, at first. Skulker, Technus, Plasmius, Box Ghost, Spectra, Ghostwriter, all of them. They were all hard to beat, at first. They all treated Danny, Phantom, like he was an adult, that he should be able to withstand them, should be able to survive their attacks, and he proved that he could. It was the first time in years that it felt like he could try his best, and that he could, and would, succeed. The ghosts pouring through his parents’ portal saw Danny, saw Phantom, and sometimes, it seemed like they were expecting his best too. They saw something more than a Fenton Freak, a boy who dreamed of the starts that were always going to stay out of reach.
People feared him, but they saw him.
They saw his ghostly form, the pitch black HAZMAT suit that he wore to death, the gas mask covering his face completely, the hood that covered his hair. Phantom looked like a harbinger of doom, a horseman of the apocalypse, something solely and completely otherworldly.
The threats got bigger and bigger, the stakes climbing as Danny, as Phantom, was the only person, the only thing, standing between the ghosts of the realm his parents opened, and the small town of Amity Park. As the GIW showed up, as mom and dad became more and more obsessed with Phantom, everything pouring and spilling on top of one another.
Something was bound to break.
Of course they captured him.
Of course they let him go.
Of course, they left the mask on until they had already cut him open, until after they had removed his organs, taken samples of his skin, broken bones and stole them.
Maybe they wanted to save his brain for last.
Maybe they thought if they touched his brain, he would dissolve like the others before him.
The Fentons never did understand cores.
Maybe, the fear in their eyes was more for what they had done than what they had seen under Danny’s mask.
He wouldn’t know, he never looked.
He didn’t want to see what death left under his mask.
Sam, Tucker, Jazz, they all knew. They respected his death enough to not describe it to him.
Maybe what laid underneath would be what sent him over the edge.
Mom and Dad, Maddie and Jack, the Fentons, they let him go, somehow. They helped him hide his trail from the GIW, somehow, and with help from Sam and Tuck, he made it to Gotham. From there it was up to him, with the equipment his parents, the Fentons, shoved into a duffle bag, and cash that Sam had been saving for him. It had to be enough to make a new life.
Now, Danny just had to deal with the ghosts and nightmares.
It was mostly wishful thinking that he could put Phantom in the past.
It was mostly wishful thinking that Gotham was going to be fine with its knights of the night.
It was mostly wishful thinking that he wouldn’t have to deal with the Bats.
A mysterious new meta who seemed to only target ghosts? That same mysterious new meta suddenly, without provocation, killing a new rogue?
What can Danny, what can Phantom, say. He really, really, hated Freakshow. That tended to happen when you mind control someone, especially when you made that person kidnap a Robin and threaten to have him walk a tightrope, one that was bound to break if it was anything like last time.
Danny was struggling. He knew, logically, that he should just go with the Bats, to explain why he did what he did, they were probably used to people blaming mind control for their actions, they had to know when someone wasn’t lying.
Right?
Danny couldn’t take the risk. Couldn’t chance them leading the GIW right to him while his guard was down. They were already sniffing around Gotham, he just.
He couldn’t.
Danny watched in horror as Batman’s gas mask was cracked, as the Dark Knight threw the person off, only in appearances trying to walk off the powerful punch.
Danny knew better.
He could tell Batman was holding his breath as he felt along his utility belt for something, anything, to filter the fear gas that was being pumped onto the street.
He knew he would find nothing.
If you asked Danny afterwards, he didn’t know why he went ghost, why he walked up to Batman, the very person Danny had been dodging for months now, and removed the ghostly gas mask from his face. He tried not to look at Batman’s face when he shoved it over his cowl, unsure how the fear gas will work on him.
Was it best used as an aerosol, breathed in and absorbed through the lungs? It had to work through mucous channels, maybe just less effectively through the eyes and mouth? It didn’t matter, Danny was dead, alive, Scrodinger’s cat, he could stop his breathing for minutes on end but eventually he had to take a breath, and that mattered less if the gas worked through mucus channels.
“Take it, don’t argue,” Danny said, surprised at how, normal, his voice sounded. He hadn’t thought about how he never really spoke when his mask was off, how it betrayed how young he was. Only just under fifteen, so close to his anniversary.
He couldn’t see any part of Batman’s face, the upper half covered further by the cowl and the visor on his gas mask, the lower now covered by the gas mask’s main components.
“Do you know if the gas works through mucous channels?” He asked, trying to maintain eye contact with the older man, unsure if he is even succeeding. Batman has never been known to be chatty, but this is concerning, not even a grunt in response.
“How old are you?” His voice was muffled by the gas mask, maybe it was a good thing, Danny was pretty positive that Batman wasn’t putting on the deeper voice he usually did.
“Doesn’t matter, I’m dead, not dead. Ughhh, think of Scrodinger’s cat, both dead and alive till you open up the box,” he never wanted to open the box, if he is completely honest, “Keep the gas mask on, don’t know how long it took me to get it to stop being in welding mode and don’t want to know,” keep talking, distract, “does fear gas work through mucous membranes? Do I have to keep my mouth shut, eyes closed?”
It was pointless, somehow, he broke Batman. Danny could hear the Scarecrow laughing somewhere in the distance, people screaming in fear, people fighting against things only they could see and understand.
Danny froze as he caught sight of white suits, teal and orange HAZMATs, through the crowd.
He took a deep breath.
Phantom had already lived his worst nightmare.
'ao3 needs a like and dislike button'
what you need, my algorithm-rotten minded friend, is a grip
A story within a story where a mother sits her rowdy children down and tells them a story about a the world's sweetest, kindest mother who never lost her temper, never cursed and never yelled at her children, no matter how rowdy they could get. She would only gently, kindly told them to not do the dangerous things. One day she sweetly, kindly told her children to not go play at the riverbank, because it's dangerous and they might slip on the rocks, fall into the water, and die. Her children do not listen. They go play at the riverbank, where they slip on the rocks, fall into the water, and die.
And the sweet perfect mother of the story comes to the riverbank, sees that all her children drowned, and starts crying so bitterly that angels overhear her, and the angels say to each other, "she does not deserve this, this woman has never done anything wrong in her life, this should not have happened to her", and feeling great pity for her, bring her children back to life, and after that they always listened to their mother and lived happily ever after.
And the storyteller's children, who at this point are familiar with the concept that these stories are supposed to have some sort of a moral or lesson in them, interject to point out that their mother hasn't always done everything perfectly, she isn't always sweet, curses a lot, and as a matter of fact loses her shit at her kids all the time. She isn't like the mother of the story at all.
And their mother agrees: Her children are correct. She is not a perfect mother who has never done anything wrong. Angels will not have pity on her, and they will not bring her little shits back to life if they go to the river and die. So they better fucking not go get themselves killed in the first place.