Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Danny first woke up, he instantly wished that he hadn’t. Between the stress that he knew he’d face in the morning plus his cryptic dreams that kept rousing him from sleep in the middle of the night, it was easy enough to say that Danny was not a happy camper. He meant this literally and figuratively, given that he lay staring at the ceiling of the Hades cabin in the heart of Camp Half-Blood. 

“Nico,” Danny hissed, “you awake?”

A groan pierced the frigid cabin air, followed by an irritated grumble. “ I am dead to the world. ”

He snorted because, well, that’s a mood. Danny was half-dead, after all. 

“No making death jokes at seven in the morning,” Nico groused, turning over in his coffin-like bunk and covering his ears with a plush pillow. “It’s too early for this schist.”

Danny pushed himself up from his bunk to peer down at Nico’s. “‘Schist?’”

“Ask Hazel. Now, shush. We have at least thirty more minutes before we need to get ready for cabin inspection.”

Before Danny could ask who Hazel was, Nico’s soft snores filled the air once more before tapering off into deep breaths spaced so far apart, that a regular person would assume that he was dead. While that was all well and good for Nico, Danny himself couldn’t relax as easily. 

Danny flopped back onto his comforter and from his pajama pants pocket, pulled out his black fidget spinner from Nico. Idly flicking it, he wondered how exactly they were going to give Jason and Percy the runaround after breakfast. After all, it wasn’t every day that someone tried to trick two powerful and excitable demigods who just wanted to make sure you felt welcome by building your godly parent’s cabin next. 

But no one could know that Danny’s father was none other than the embodiment of death himself, Thanatos. At least, not until Thanatos could convince the Olympian Council that Danny’s very existence wasn’t a threat to the integrity of the Underworld. And from what Danny understood, the process was not going as smoothly as Danny would have hoped. 

And how did Danny know this? Well, upon meeting his godly parent, he quickly came to realize that Thanatos loved to keep in contact via very, very confusing dreams that granted tired demigods like Danny very little respite. 

Closing his eyes, Danny could still remember the tangled visions from the night before, as if they’d been half-burned into his retinas. 

First, there was a black marble throne room in the depths of the Underworld itself. Danny floated between two figures, thankfully invisible, but somehow unable to break the spell as he usually could, should he want to. That thought sent a thrill of panic down Danny’s spine. 

He at least figured he knew where he was due to some intrinsic sense given his parentage and ghostliness, up until he noted the gilded Ancient Greek carvings along the edges of the larger of the two thrones. The carvings proclaimed the gigantic dark-clothed figure leaning forward on it as Aïdes, The Unseen, Of The Underworld;  dozens of other epithets that made Danny’s head spin. 

This was Hades, lord of the dead. 

Below the massive throne kneeled ( kneeled , Danny shuddered, subservience, supplication ), Danny’s own biological father, Thanatos. He bared the back of his neck to his king, shadowy wings tensed as if the god before him would cut them off at the slightest challenge. Thanatos’ robes were notably less ornate than Hades’ chiton whose embroidery swirled with images of screaming souls twisted around gold. 

If there was one thing Danny knew for sure, it was that at the slightest hint of dissent, godly fury would reign supreme, the product of great offense from powerful beings beyond Danny’s mortal comprehension. 

“So, you claim the boy is not a threat, Thánatos? ” the king of the Underworld rumbled. 

The way his father’s name was pronounced sent a shiver down Danny’s spine. It was ancient, unforgiving. 

“No more than yours is, my king,” Thanatos replied, not unkindly. It was a mere statement of fact. 

The throne room shook. “You asked me for sanctuary for your child. You begged for my favor to protect him, and now you appear before me, boasting your insolence?!”

Danny jolted with freezing fear, watching the scene unfold, unable to jump in, much less verbally defend himself or his father. 

Thanatos unclenched his jaw and finally met his king’s eyes. “And I appreciate that, my lord, after my unwavering loyalty to you for millennia. To clarify, I mean that our sons are not all that different—both the subject of great tragedy, power, responsibility…my son is as loyal to his allies as I am to you.”

Hades hummed dangerously, contemplating. “And you came to supplicate me without my wife in attendance?”

“Not a slight on my part, I assure you. She is known to be kinder concerning the fates of mortals so I merely wished for you to approach my case with your sole judgment before Queen Persephone offered hers.”  

A damning beat of silence followed. 

Then Hades stood up from his massive throne. With each earth-shaking step taken, he shrunk until he stood just a few inches shy of an acceptable human height. 

“Rise, Thánatos.” Danny’s father did just that, slow, intentional. Hades put a firm hand on Death’s shoulder, furrowed brows softening. “I know what it is like to fear for a child’s safety, old friend. I know…I know what it’s like to lose them, to the threat of the great prophecy or otherwise.”

Thanatos nodded once. “And I treat them with respect and compassion as I lead them here, to your realm.”

“I know you do. I remember Bianca telling me as such before she chose Rebirth. Children truly are precious—I would know, as I am the god of all the riches below the earth. I will support you, Thánatos.”

He inclined his head in place of a bow. “Many thanks, Aïdes. ”

Danny suddenly felt like he was intruding on a private conversation, even more so than before. However, Danny had a bit of an issue: he didn’t know how to leave. That’s why he didn’t before, not to mention the additional fear-fueled paralysis…

“…true, your son does seem to have stumbled upon our conversation,” Hades noted, amused. “I can sense him more clearly now. Burning ears when it comes to one’s name is apparently genetic, Thánatos. I wish to meet the young soul I’m to defend against my family above.”

Thanatos sighed, shaking out his wings with a faint rustle. Then he turned to stare directly at Danny, his forced invisibility no hindrance. The sudden horrifying mortal idea of being known gripped Danny by the heart, wrenching through his innards like a flung ragdoll. 

“Come into the light, son,” Thanatos said. Danny thought that phrasing was hilariously ironic considering the overwhelming darkness of the Underworld’s throne room, solely illuminated by flickering braziers. 

Despite Danny’s silent panicked protests, he was beckoned to alight on the ground, no longer an observer of his fate, but now a direct influence. Somehow, he finally flickered into the visible spectrum, yet he still felt floaty and untethered—this was still a dream, after all. It was his most realistic and daunting dream since his first encounter with Nocturne, sure, but still a dream nonetheless. 

Thanatos’ wing stretched across Danny’s back, yet the comforting sensation felt wispy and incomplete like when Danny went intangible as Phantom. Danny could hear the tentative smile in Thanatos’ voice as he hummed, “My lord, I present to you my son, Daniel.”

Danny’s shoulders hiked up to his ears at the drop of his full name, but he still managed to give Hades a short and awkward bow. Yeah, sure, Danny was impertinent, but come on! He didn’t have a full-death wish! He had enough common sense dealing with royalty since meeting people like Princess Dora back in the Ghost Zone. 

“Ah, I See now,” Hades mused, studying Danny not unlike a child deciding how best to place their magnifying glass over a bug on a sunny day. “A fierce protector only wishing to protect those who cannot protect themselves. A knight of the people, you could say.”

Danny squirmed. It felt like his entire soul was being torn raw to be examined. 

“ Hades, ” Thanatos huffed, “leave the boy be.”

From there, Danny experienced what could best be described as what happens to a kid at a parent-teacher conference, not that he’d actually attended many with his actual parents. (Or with the Drs. Fenton, anyway. Jazz picked up the slack as they got older, after all.) Simply put, Danny remembered what it was like to be talked at and about while he was still present. Half-understood swirls of what could only be Ancient Greek flitted through Danny’s skull as he found himself physically unable to respond aside from stilted nods.

At one point, heralded by sickly sweet asphodel and pomegranate flowers, Persephone strode into the throne room, the epitome of deadly grace. She offered a somewhat pleasant smile to Danny which he thought edged more towards a grimace. The queen of the dead then crossed to her husband’s side, whispering something in his ear as she gestured towards Danny. Hades laughed as if it was a joke, but based on the way their eyes glittered like chips of unforgiving obsidian, Danny wasn’t too sure. 

“He’s sweet, dear husband,” Persephone said in purposeful, clear English. She let on a hint of a smile. “Are you certain we may not keep him? The little phantom already has one foot in the Underworld, as it were.”

Thanatos hissed like he was wounded, drawing Danny closer to his side and shrouding him completely with his wing. 

Persephone and Hades only laughed before the queen settled enough to note, “When the mortals say that Death is greedy, taking souls without scrutiny nor recompense, I see now that they were not being facetious, old friend. My, how broody you are…”

At that last comment, Thanatos huffed and straightened his posture, quickly unfurling his wing from around Danny, who strangely found himself missing the comfort. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Lying is not a good look on you,” Hades teased. Was that a tease? Danny worried his lip at the idea, thoughts turning hazy. Could gods actually tease each other? Without starting an all-out war?

As Danny’s essence began to float away, hopefully back to his bed, the last thing he heard his father say was, “...and now all we need to do is convince the Olympian Council that my son will not distract me from my duties…”

And then Danny jolted to awareness, an unfamiliar haunting feminine cackle echoing through his bones.  

Danny sighed as he opened his eyes once more. Just remembering his dreams was exhausting—it was honestly like the whole universe was Mrs. O’ Leary and Danny was her favorite chew toy. But Danny could handle it. He always did. Because he was Danny and Danny could handle anything, from bullies to bad grades and ghosts, family failings to seriously messed-up fruit loops like Vlad. World ending threats! The destruction of everyone and anything he loved. His own death, no takebacks, full send, completely kaput? Fine. 

Yeah, he was fine, because he didn’t know how to be anything else. 

A sharp series of knocks pounded at the door. “Cabin inspection! Open up, Angel!”

The sudden noise startled Danny so badly that he turned intangible, going straight through his top bunk and crashing under the bed right below it as he became solid at the exact wrong time. 

“You alright, Danny?” Nico called. 

“Just…” Danny forced himself to flicker into a stable solid state. He sneezed as soon as he got his powers under control. “Just peachy. Making friends with the dust bunnies and everything.”

“What’s going on? Is anyone hurt? Nico, open this door right now, I swear to the gods!” 

The cabin door slammed open as Danny tried in vain to wriggle himself out from under the bottom bunk. He cursed his recently uncontrollable powers—how was this fair? Hadn’t he already been through the relentless “with great power comes great responsibility” superhero origin story gauntlet? He was supposed to be better than this. 

Danny attempted to ignore the conversation at the door, face burning with embarrassment at the thought of anyone else seeing him like this. And the ignoring thing worked! Well, up until he was directly addressed, at least. 

Leaning over Danny’s upper body, none other than Will Solace asked, “Danny, are you stuck?” 

Danny groaned before shoving at the bed frame again. Frustrated, he snapped, “ Nooo, I’m just making friends with the dust bunnies. No duh, I’m stuck!”

From behind Will, Nico made a gesture to Danny that vaguely looked like something passing through a wall. Danny minutely shook his head . I can’t. He conveyed this for two reasons: even if Will saw him fall through the Big House’s infirmary wall the other day, who’s to say that no one else could peek through the open door? Then there’d be even more people trying to guess Danny’s godly parent based on his abilities! And the second reason? Well, Danny didn’t actually know if he could successfully control his intangibility the second go around. 

Will frowned and whipped his head over his shoulder to Nico. “What are you doing?”

“Uh…” Nico looked like a deer caught in headlights. “Suggesting…shadow travel? Yes, that is exactly what I was doing…”

Will just sighed. “Absolutely not. Nico, grab Danny’s forearms while I lift the bunk. Once I say, ‘go,’ drag him out. Danny, push yourself with your legs as Nico pulls.”

His commanding tone left no room for discussion. All three of them did exactly as Will ordered, and to pretty much no one’s surprise, Danny scrambled out with little resistance. Will set the two lifted posts of the bed back down with a grunt before brushing his hands together to wipe off the dust. 

Will whirled on Danny as Nico helped Danny stand. Will’s intense expression almost made Danny recoil, expecting a scolding lecture. But then he asked kindly, “I don’t see anything hurt, but are you alright? Head fuzzy at all? Vision is all good?” 

Danny stood ramrod straight and mentally recounted even the slightest ache in his body, forming an injury catalog just as he would for Sam and Tucker after patrol so they could help him better patch up. And just like he did after patrol, he only focused on the most pressing injuries. 

“Minor rug burn on lower right leg, minor pain in upper back, both unimportant. I am fine.” Danny winced at his own clinical tone but brushed it aside in favor of hurriedly plastering a mockery of a wry smile across his face. “C’mon! Let’s head to breakfast before all the good stuff is taken. I can smell pancakes with my name on ’em!”

Danny tried to push past Will and Nico, only to be blocked by a veritable barricade of friendship. At least, that’s what Danny thought Jazz might call it to lighten the mood, or maybe just a straight-up intervention. 

Will frowned. “Danny, we are not just going to brush past what that just was.”

Nico nodded, saying, “Seriously, what in Hades was that tone switch—” Will elbowed Nico. 

“Oh, c’mon! Just say ‘hell.’ And I’m fine! It’s just a holdover from teenage vigilante first aid stuff.”

Nico scoffed, “Alright, and so you unironically say ‘holy spooks!’ on the regular?”

“I’m from a literal ghost-infested town! I get a free pass!”

“So do I with ‘what in Hades.’ I’m literally the son of Hades, so—”

“ Both of you, quiet! ” 

Nico and Danny stopped in their verbal tracks. There was something magical in Will’s voice, something Danny blamed on Will’s dad being Apollo, the god of music and singing, and about a dozen other things. He was absolutely willing to bet that a commanding loudspeaker voice was one of them. 

“Thank you,” Will continued. “Now, I’ll give you two a pass on cabin inspection if you clean later today, stop bickering with each other, and if Danny promises not to strain himself after breakfast today. Doctor’s orders .”

With the fear of Will’s aggressive care instilled, Nico and Danny simply nodded, with Danny promising to try not to strain himself. 

“‘Do or do not, there is no try,’” Will quoted sagely as he ushered Nico and Danny out of the Hades cabin. “Now, breakfast. ”

With a wince, Danny slipped on his sneakers that he’d left outside the night before to dry after he’d stepped in a massive puddle on the way back from the campfire. He’d unfortunately forgotten that they were on the cusp of Long Island Sound, however, so the cold early morning fog did his shoes no favors. 

“You’re a Star Wars fan, Will?” Danny asked, forcing down his excitement. It wasn’t hard with his damp shoes to assist. He also had practice, considering how back at Casper High, the minute someone showed interest in something nerdy, within the next they’d find themselves shoved in a locker by some stereotypically pea-brained bully like Dash. 

“Yup!” Will then whispered conspiratorially, “I’ve been trying to get the Hecate and Hephaestus kids working on a mock lightsaber for forever. With just a safe ‘training mode,’ of course. I don’t want campers making an impromptu Anakin-on-Mustafar recreation.”

Danny laughed at that, some worry rolling off his shoulders. “I’m more of a Trekkie guy myself, but I’m of the mindset that all sci-fi can be good sci-fi. It’s just…wow. Exploration of the utter vastness and wonder that’s space? The Enterprise is always discovering something exciting and new and—it’s just so cool! ”

Danny faintly heard Nico mutter in confusion about all the “made-up words,” and instantly decided that it was his mission to explain anything and everything about Star Trek while Will handled most of the intense Star Wars lore-dumping. But Danny had to admit that he did most of the talking. About Star Trek. And NASA. And probably a bunch of other general space-related things. By the time they made it to the dining pavilion, Nico looked so confused about Danny’s recounting of the Excaliban-created lookalike of President Abraham Lincoln made to fight in a battle between the forces of good and evil, Danny almost felt a little bad. The key word there was “almost.”

“Hey, Danny, Nico!” Percy called over the din of the dining pavilion. “I saved you guys some of the good muffins!”

Okay, now Danny felt really bad for all the lying he was about to do to him and Jason in the near future. 

A few people turned to look at the wildly waving son of Poseidon who bounded up to greet them, muffins in hand. Some Apollo camper took that as an opportunity to pull Will away, probably to handle some Apollo cabin head counselor duties. Danny cursed the sudden lack of a “Let’s figure out your godly parent!” conversational buffer as Will helplessly shrugged and whirled around to mediate a disagreement between his siblings. 

Off to the side, Danny noticed Nico feigning general disinterest but based on the way Nico’s shoulders tensed, he was willing to guess that he was just as stressed as Danny was. 

“Hi, Percy,” Danny forced a grin, shoving as much enthusiasm as he could into his tone. It wasn’t much. 

Percy’s cheeriness wavered, softening in something akin to concern. That made something twist in Danny’s gut. Danny wasn’t…he wasn’t the type of person people got concerned over. Wondered about, sure, like “Hey, he can still get up to fight, right? Phantom can still save the day?” Sam and Tucker and Jazz got concerned for Danny—they had known and loved Danny for ages. New people wondered. “Concerned” implied a deeper sense of care from people who knew you. 

As for Percy? Well, Danny had only known him for a few weeks and actively interacted with Danny for a mere fraction of that. Generally speaking, Danny didn’t get worried about. That just wasn’t a thing that happened to Danny! 

But here Percy was, worrying about Danny. 

“Hey, Danny” —Percy’s tone was soft—“let’s get some food in you, yeah? You look like death, man.”

Danny stiffened at the hopefully casual turn-of-phrase. He did look like Death, technically speaking. His father was Thanatos, so of course they’d look at least a little similar. 

“That’s certainly an observation!” Danny made panicked eye contact with Nico who just buried his face in his hands, groaning. “I mean, I, um, slept really weird last night? Strange dreams?”

“Would you like to talk—”

“ No! ” Danny said, much too quickly. “No,” he sobered, “I’m good.”

Nico’s hands slid down his face and he flopped an arm on the table, blindly grabbing for his drink cup. He downed half of it in one fell swoop, apparently trying to drown his exasperation in orange juice. 

Percy nodded as if Nico’s reaction wasn’t a cause for suspicion, lips pressed together. “If you’re sure, Danny. Just…just know it happens to the best of us demigods, some unfortunately more than most. You should take a muffin, dude. Take my word for it—nothing chases away weird dreams better than a solid breakfast.”

And that’s how Danny found himself in a whirlwind conversation with Percy and Nico about how best to acquire the double-chocolate muffins he handed off to them and why you should always be wary about the assorted muffins at breakfast. He chatted their ears off as they settled at the Hades table, standing just next to it to avoid the “no kids from other cabins can sit at other tables” rule. 

Percy also explained how everyone scraped a part of their meal into one of the braisers in the dining pavilion. “Offerings to the gods,” he’d said with a shrug. He demonstrated with a fat, juicy strawberry he plucked from the Poseidon table earlier—why he just had that on him, Danny couldn’t even begin to understand—and tossed it into a nearby braiser. 

“Here ya go, Dad.” And then the fire flared up, sparking with blue flame before dying down once more. 

Danny frowned. “But why do we burn food for them? Do the gods like the smell of burning fruit in the morning, or something?” 

Percy snorted before trying to explain, “It’s like a tribute and prayer all in one? A two-for-one special sorta deal. Us ‘puny mortals’”—Danny laughed at that—“offer the best of what we have each meal as a way to pray to the gods for advice, or just as a way to be like ‘hey, god I’m praying to in particular, you don’t suck!’ The idea is that you sacrifice the thing you’d miss most from your plate to hopefully get the gods’ attention.”

Danny watched as Nico stood up to chuck an unpeeled perfectly ripe bright yellow banana into the braiser like a demented boomerang. The fire flickered purple for a moment before settling back to its regular orange-red. Under his breath, Nico whispered a sharp prayer, but Danny only caught one word: father.

Hades. 

Danny’s stomach sunk as he thought back to his dream, but tried to stay present enough that Nico and Percy wouldn’t ask if he was alright. Danny was getting tired of that—he still didn’t really know how to deal with that kind of casual care from people he’d only met recently.

“Why a banana?” Danny asked. “Its vibes are a little strange for the lord of the dead.”

Nico turned around and plopped back in his seat to continue nursing his orange juice. “Very few fruits grow in the Underworld,” he shrugged, “much less tropical ones. My father can have a banana, as a treat.”

Soon enough, Danny himself stood before the same braiser, half a double-chocolate muffin in hand. It was the side with the most chocolate chunks, something Danny knew he’d miss, worthy enough of an offering according to Percy’s description. Setting it carefully in the braiser, he just hoped Thanatos thought the same.

Please let the people at camp accept me for who I am: ghostliness, your son, and all. Uh, I don’t know how to end this. Thanks…Thanatos? Dad? Amen?

Instead of the odor of horribly charred chocolate, the scent of freshly turned dirt and pressed flowers wafted up to Danny’s nose. His hand drifted to the woven bracelet on his wrist, a gift from Thanatos. It was once the basket he arrived to the Fentons’ doorstep in that carried the same scent the braiser currently had, now a magical item that switched between bracelet and shield with a flick of the wrist.  

In a daze, Danny retreated to his seat and let Percy continue his ramble about muffins again.

“Good thing you made sure it was chocolate before your offering! Giving a god bran on accident wouldn’t be good. Unless they like bran and weren’t expecting chocolate.” Percy wrinkled his nose as he laughed, “I once confused the bran with the chocolate ones. Bran doesn’t even taste that bad, but it was the fact that I was expecting chocolate—”

“Percy, why are you ranting about the muffins?” Jason cut in.

Danny whipped his head around at Jason’s sudden appearance. “Wait, this isn't a common occurrence? Because I was totally ready to accept that Percy just did that on the regular. The rambling about something random, I mean.”

Jason raised a questioning eyebrow at Percy whose light expression faltered for a split millisecond. “ Demigod dreams, ” he mumbled in place of a proper response.

In a gesture that might have been innocuous to someone less paranoid than Danny, Jason readjusted his glasses with a nod to draw attention away from his mouth as he mouthed in agreement, “ A distraction. ”

Danny’s core twisted at the sentiment but chose not to say anything to preserve his dignity. He did, however, start to internally spiral, head spinning with the implications. Just how often did demigods get nightmares? When Danny was still in the infirmary with Nico, he got the Sparknotes of some of Percy’s epic quests, passing out from exhaustion somewhere around the time Nico started rambling about how Percy showed up to his boarding school in the middle of winter. 

Sure, Percy had been a bit younger than Danny was when he first started out as Phantom, but Danny had already been helping out in the Fenton lab and handling semi-toxic chemicals by age ten. Not to mention Dani! She was biologically twelve like Percy had been when he’d gone on the quest to return Zeus’ Master Bolt, and since Danny last saw her, she seemed to be having fun traveling around the world and Ghost Zone, beating up baddies left and right. (Now that he thought about it, maybe he should try getting in contact with her soon for their every-once-in-awhile “Hey, are you alive?” check-in…)

From how Nico painted it, Greek and Roman demigods still went on epic quests like their ancient counterparts did, completing favors for their parents, and slaying monsters. Sure, they might have nightmares like Danny did about the general “Oh wow, I almost completely beefed it against that monster/ghost awhile back, I should’ve but didn’t do XYZ,” but it’s not like the demigods fought in wars or anything! Nico just said that Percy was a two-time savior of Olympus, referencing the Master Bolt quest, and helping out with the Golden Fleece stuff, most likely. 

Based on what Danny remembered from Sam’s ramblings about various darker myths, the most well-known heroes were the ones who had a hand in a little bit of everything, constantly mentioned or referenced—that’s how Heracles ascended to godhood. Or something like that. Danny wasn’t completely sure. So someone like Percy who got mentioned a lot in Nico’s stories in the infirmary? Makes sense that he was offered godhood, as young as he was.

“—ny? Danny?” He snapped to attention as Jason put a hand on his shoulder. “We were just about to head out—the dining pavilion’s clearing out since everyone’s about to head off to camp activities, including us.”

Danny extracted himself from Jason’s palm, shuffling awkwardly to get out of his seat on the Hades’ table bench. “Sorry, must’ve spaced out,” he mumbled. Then louder, “We don’t have to go through all these hoops to figure out who my godly parent is, do we? I mean, it’d probably just be easier to start planning out some other god’s cabin instead of my parent’s one, right? We can just wait until my claiming happens naturally!” It was a last-ditch attempt to dissuade Jason and Percy’s enthusiasm, but call Danny a pessimist—he didn’t have the highest of hopes.

Nico appeared like a semi-friendly shadow at Danny’s side. “He’s right, guys. Testing the gods’ ire is a lame-brained idea…”

Percy crossed his arms. “Okay, fine, yes, but regardless—”

“But why is the new kid not claimed yet, Miss Head Counselor Annabeth? There must be a reason!” A cute little girl with her blonde hair done up in pigtails gripped Annabeth’s hand as Annabeth led her off to start daily camp activities. Danny vaguely recognized the kid from one of the frankly more concerning drama acts at the campfire the night before. She and her little buddies reenacted a gruesome scene from the Iliad with a frightening degree of accuracy, utilizing surprise bottles of ketchup to splash the audience closest to them with “blood.” She readjusted the chunky glasses that made her grey eyes look about ten times bigger than they were and gasped and pointed once she caught sight of Danny. “Miss Head Counselor Annabeth, did you know that kids are supposed to be claimed before they’re thirteen years old? He’s older than that. Fun fact! Did you know that I’m seven and three-quarters and I already got claimed by Athena?”

“Yes, Marie, most kids do get claimed before they’re thirteen! And I know that you’re seven and three-quarters and that Athena claimed you because you are very, very bright. But do you remember what we say about being aware of our surroundings and the people in them? You might hurt—”

“Nope, Miss Head Counselor Annabeth!” and Marie swiped her free hand across Annabeth’s arm—Marie’s hand was covered with ketchup because of course, it was—as an expertly timed distraction to wriggle away from Annabeth. Before she could grab her, Marie was already barreling out of the dining pavilion, presumably off to cause a staggering amount of chaos, likely involving ketchup.

“—other peoples’ feelings…” Annabeth finished weakly. She examined the ketchup smear across her forearm and Camp shirt. “Gods, she has a lot of energy, but kudos to her for thinking outside the box. At least I know that she was just lagging behind to grab some ketchup.” Annabeth then turned towards their little group, all in various degrees of confusion. “Marie is quite the wild card, isn’t she?”

Danny grimaced at the reminder. If the claiming age was thirteen or younger, then Danny was going to stick out like a sore thumb, being fourteen going on fifteen. And with the ache in his back from his fall earlier, he felt practically geriatric. 

“—and you have my list?” Annabeth was saying to Percy. 

“Yup!” Percy grinned, retrieving a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. “Thanks for the leaping-off point with all the Underworld-adjacent deities. I wouldn’t have even thought of adding Hermes because he’s a…um. What’s that word again?”

“Psychopomp. He sometimes takes messages to the Underworld.”

“You’re the best, Wise Girl. Truly.”

Annabeth just laughed. “I know I am. Just…please don’t do anything stupid as you’re helping Danny, okay Seaweed Brain? I know I’m about 85% of your impulse control, but I need to find Marie and then teach the advanced classical lit class.”

“C’mon! On a good day, it’s at least 70%...”

Jason tried covering a laugh with a poorly timed cough as Danny snorted. Nico didn’t even bother hiding his amusement, fully laughing at Percy’s phrasing. 

Annabeth’s mirthful expression sobered. “But seriously, guys. Be wary. There’s likely a good reason that Danny’s not been properly claimed yet, furthermore put up in the Hades cabin. I’m guessing that either his parent is some deity that’s so obscure and unsettling that they don’t have kids that often, or, you know, someone that the gods themselves fear and need to discuss what to do with their progeny.”

Danny very pointedly did not meet Annabeth’s eyes, afraid that the slightest difference in his blinking would reveal a loose thread in the tapestry that was his life that she could lightly pull and unravel his very being as the son of Thanatos. After all, he once heard Sam retell the tragedy of Arachne, how twisted it was that she became a dark reflection of her mortal weaver self, becoming the immortal mother of one of Sam’s favorite creepy crawlies. Danny knew that Athena knew how to weave and he was sure that as her daughter, Annabeth could do the same. 

“Then why is Percy so dead-set on figuring out who my godly parent is?” Danny asked Annabeth. “This seems a lot bigger than just picking what cabin to build next.”

Annabeth opened her mouth to respond, but Percy raised his hand like an overexcited elementary schooler. “Yes, Percy?”

“Can I say it?” 

Annabeth nodded her assent. “It was your reward, after all. It’s only fitting.”

Danny’s brows knit together, completely and utterly confused. He got the feeling that he missing out on a much, much bigger story. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Well,” Percy started, throwing an arm around Danny’s shoulder, “when I turned down the gods’ offer of immortality, I asked them to make a promise to me, instead. By the time their demigod children turned thirteen, they needed to be claimed. So, Danny, how old are you?”

Danny looked nervously around at Jason, Nico, and Annabeth whose faces betrayed no hints of confusion like Danny’s.

“F-fourteen?”

“Great! So, we’re going to figure out who your godly parent is so they can pay their effin’ child support.”

Chapter Text

Danny blinked. “I’m…sorry? What do you mean by—”

“Child support?” Percy laughed, “Exactly what you think it means. When the gods want to reward extreme heroism, they tend to throw out offers of godhood, blah-blah, something-something keep all the people who kinda terrify them in one place—”

Annabeth facepalmed. 

“Oh, come on, Wise Girl! You know that I’m right.”

Danny’s thoughts ricocheted at a million miles a minute, trying to connect scattered dots of memory. Nico had briefly told Danny back in the infirmary that Percy had been offered godhood, but to hear it directly from the guy himself? Danny shivered. Despite all the powerful ghosts he fought, such a casual mention of power chilled Danny to the core, pun somewhat intended. 

“Hey, Percy?” Danny forced his shaky voice to come across as casual as possible. 

Percy paused his playful banter with his girlfriend at the mention of his name, tilting his head like a curious golden retriever. “Yeah?”

“What…” Danny trailed off. He could still back out of his question. Everything could still be chill and he wouldn’t look dumb. Or dumber than usual, at least. But Danny needed to know. “What exactly did you do on your lightning thief and Sea of Monsters quests that scared the gods into offering godhood?”

Danny swore he could hear a pin drop, up until Nico swore lowly under his breath in response to Jason’s whispered question. “You didn’t tell him?”

“I thought I did! But he—”

“I passed out,” Danny recalled distantly. “I am so missing some major backstory, aren’t I?”

Percy was the first to break the tension, keeping his posture casual and nonthreatening, hands notable away from the pocket Danny thought housed Riptide. “How about we fill you in on the way to the first activity on the itinerary? I admit that joke might have been a little…”

“In ill taste?” Annabeth raised an eyebrow. “Especially with a distinct lack of context?”

“It’s…fine,” Danny said aloud. Then more sourly to himself, I’m just still processing a whole new magic system and the fact that there’s heroes like me on a similar power scale. At least I know there’s someone who can help hold me down if I ever turn into Dark Dan. 

Danny didn’t know when it happened—he was so lost in thought—but Jason wrapped what was likely meant to be a grounding arm around his shoulder. Danny shrugged it away on instinct, the familiar feeling of panic creeping through his lungs and up his throat like a ten-ton slug. Jason nodded once in apparent understanding, subtly taking a step back to give Danny some space. 

Every time Danny thought about his evil alternate future self, it sent him spiraling down a series of “what ifs” that his friends could only do so much to dissuade. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt someone, much less them. And while he normally soaked up any positive touch, the reminder of someone’s hands on him only served as a reminder of how easy it would be to snuff out a person’s warmth like Dan did. Just one unsuspecting flick of the wrist, and he could freeze the very blood coursing through someone’s veins. 

Danny forced himself to get a grip (and ignored the little voice in the back of his head that suspiciously sounded like Jazz lecturing about the unhealthiness of bottling up emotions), rigidly gesturing at the world outside the dining pavilion. “I think we should head out. We’re burning daylight, after all.”

Steeling his nerves, Danny marched out of the dining pavilion, trying to calm himself enough to regain a sliver of some Phantom-esque charisma. “I’ll meet you guys outside the Hades cabin in about ten minutes,” he called over his shoulder, more than aware that his grin didn’t quite reach his eyes. He then made a grand flourish towards his clothes. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to change out of these pink strawberry pajamas, as oh-so classy as they are.”

Before anyone could get a word in, Danny bolted out of the dining pavilion in a dead sprint (ha, dead ). Somewhere between a wall that hid him from view of the four demigods he left behind and the relative safety of the Hades’ cabin shut door, Danny went invisible and intangible, each frantic step close to flight. 

Danny’s body tumbled through the cabin door and shakily back into the visible and physical spectrum. 

Once he was sure all the cabin’s curtains were drawn, Danny shucked off and threw his sleep clothes to the side as if they’d personally offended him. He harshly tugged his head and arms through a Camp shirt two sizes too big, thankfully not so rough against his tender back from earlier. His breathing came ragged, trying to slow the beat of his jackrabbit heart that should’ve been pumping at a more subhuman level. His hands kept drifting into intangibility as he tried pulling on jeans that required a belt, probably using too many of the adjusting spots to be considered healthy. 

Danny flexed his hands once, then twice before taking a deep breath and shaking out his entire body, not unlike Cujo when he finished rolling around ectoplasmic puddles in the Ghost Zone. 

rap-tap-tap! 

“Danny?” Nico called, making him jump, “You good?”

Danny watched in detached horror as his hands kept flitting in and out of existence. He willed himself to stop it. C’mon, you’re better than this…

“Nothing’s wrong, Nico!”

“Wow, that totally doesn’t sound suspicious. Right, so as head counselor and your friend”—Danny balked at the blatant admission—“I’m sort of obligated to check in on you. If you don’t open the door, I’ll have to—”

Danny tripped over his own feet to reach the front door, not waiting to hear whatever else Nico had to say. But when Danny tried to grab the door handle, his hand slipped right through in his panic, making him yelp in surprise. 

“Danny—” 

“ Just a second! ” If Nico heard the wisp of a ghostly echo in Danny’s words, he didn’t comment. Or if he did, Danny didn’t notice. 

Danny’s ears rang as he failed to open the door again and again and again, the sheer embarrassment making him feel like he was sinking through the floor. And that’s when Danny noticed that his sneakers were sunk up to his shoelaces as if the floor itself were quicksand. 

Nico might’ve said something else, but Danny didn’t process it. 

In a sudden surge of fear-fueled brilliance, Danny used his head. Literally. As he sank lower and lower, Danny hooked his chin over the door handle and pulled down and towards him. He dove to the side so the door would hide him as Nico burst in, nearly tripping over Danny who was now sunk up to his knees and unable to pull himself up with the intangibility that had crawled up past his elbows. 

Nico slammed the door shut behind him as he took in the scene within milliseconds. With little more warning than wide eyes, Nico somehow ignored Danny’s intangibility and sharply pulled him out of the floor like a stubborn weed. From one moment to the next, Danny found himself sprawled at a shocked Nico’s feet, arm still trapped in Nico’s death grip. 

He could only attribute Nico’s quick reflexes to the demigod threat instincts they apparently had tied in with ADHD that Will once mentioned to Danny. But no matter the case, Danny thanked Nico between gasping watery breaths. 

“Thanks, man. But how the hell did you do that?”

Nico released Danny’s arm and just kind of… stared. 

Danny pushed himself up so he’d at least be sitting. “Hello, Earth to Nico—?”

“My father. Hades. ”

“Huh? Dude, it’s really…it’s really not the time to be correcting my perfectly acceptable ‘How the hell?’ for the colloquial ‘How the Hades?’ used around here given the circumstances. Like, I get if it’s a religious thing with the polytheistic pantheon stuff and if it’s rude if I say ‘hell’ I can stop—”

Nico blinked and shook his head. “What? No, Danny. Because of my father, Hades, I can physically interact with…ghosts. Even when they’d slip through regular mortal touch…”

Danny studied Nico’s expression for a moment. “You…didn’t think that I was part ghost, did you?”

Nico didn’t meet Danny’s eyes but extended a hand to help Danny to his feet nonetheless. Once Danny was upright and they broke apart, Nico stared at his hand and then at Danny who tried leaning casually against the wall, only to slowly start phasing through. Nico pulled Danny by his wrist back to relative safety. 

“ Are you part ghost?” Nico asked tentatively. 

Danny shrugged. “That was the explanation I went with for the past few months, but it’s a little unclear with the godly stuff mixed in. I’m at least half-dead, or rather”—Danny grinned— “half- Death. ”

Nico just face-palmed. “Gods almighty, Danny! You’re killing me with your jokes. Wait, that was unintentional—”

“Ooh, what’s that I hear? Looks like Prince Doom-and-Gloom made his first death pun!”

“Stop it.”

“Aw, but these puns are to die for!”

“Why are you like this?” Nico groaned. “We need to figure out what tell Per—”

“Can someone say ‘questionable coping mechanism?!’” Danny crowed, throwing out his arms, “ BOW-WOW-BWAAA! ”

“ Pardon? ”

“It’s a verbal air horn sound effect for emphasis! Once I have better control of my Ghostly Wail, I bet I could alter it to focus on a particular haunting sound, like an actual air horn. Wouldn’t that just be so cool to just be able to bring out in the middle of a conversation? I would be a walking soundboard—Soundboard Danny, they would call me—and—” 

Nico grabbed Danny’s shoulders, forcing him to focus on Nico’s baffled? concerned? angry? (Danny couldn’t tell) expression. “What is going on? Not even two minutes ago you were panicking and crying—”

“ Psh, I wasn’t crying—”

“ You were. And now you’re laughing and joking like nothing happened! I need to tell Percy and Jason that you’re sick or something because you’re clearly not well enough to do camp activities like…like this. ”

Cool anger surged in Danny’s veins, sure that his eyes flashed a toxic green. “I’m fine, Nico.”

Nico didn’t back down, eyes flashing just as dangerously in turn. Instead of saying anything more, he released his hold on Danny’s shoulders and took a step back. 

Danny crossed his arms as he slowly began sinking through the floor again, not of his own accord. “This means nothing.”

“You’re as dense as Jackson,” Nico groaned. 

“Really? I thought the son of the sea god would be more buoyant. And I’m literally sinking down to the realm where Thanatos resides, so…”

Nico finally took pity on Danny and pulled him out of the floor again. “You’re insufferable.” 

“Thanks! Now, I bet if I keep ‘unsticking’ my feet and keep moving out of the sinking, then I’ll be fine like those quicksand survivors!”

“How…how is that something you know?”

“Quicksand ghost back in Amity!” Danny chirped, “Real rough fight, tee-bee-aych. Couldn’t get the sand out of my ears for weeks. And besides, worst comes to worst, you pull me out or I take the long way ’round and sink all the way through the earth to the other side—don’t worry, I don’t really need air when I’m intangible. Or maybe my powers will fix themselves before we get to that point! Also, try not to think about the semantics too hard.”

Nico narrowed his eyes as he watched Danny jump from one foot to another, almost floating for a split second before touching down. “This idea is completely asinine, just so you know.”

“It wouldn’t be one of my ideas if it wasn’t,” Danny shrugged. 

Nico muttered something under his breath that vaguely sounded like “Hades, give me strength.” Or given how bad Danny’s auditory processing could be, it might’ve been “Hades, give me wavelength.” Danny decided to go with the latter of the two. 

“So…are you in, Nico?”

Nico offered a resigned nod. “This is not going to end well.”

“This is not going to end well,” Nico reiterated under his breath once Percy finished explaining his and Jason’s plan for testing if Danny was psychopomp-adjacent like Hermes. 

Danny sighed, but tried to remain looking chipper in the face of the challenge: locating and reverse-pickpocketing a letter for Grover Underwood, Percy’s best friend and the mother-freaking Leader of the Council of Cloven Elders. 

This was… fine. 

Danny totally had no problem interacting with people in positions of authority! (He pointedly didn’t think about his problems with Vlad as Amity’s mayor, the soul-sucking experiences with Spectra the “school counselor,” the altercations in Walker’s ghostly prison, and many more.) 

Upon meeting up with a concerned Percy and Jason at the edge of the woods—Nico had told them he and Danny would catch up with them there—Danny had been given the Sparknotes of Percy’s adventures. Now when he looked at the happy-go-lucky guy waving them over, he felt a newfound sense of something between wonder, fear, and sympathy. 

But now, Danny was mostly just feeling fear. It wasn’t necessarily because he was afraid of Percy’s ridiculous accomplishments and the power it took to achieve them, but because he’d learned that Percy’s fatal flaw was loyalty. As Danny understood it, if someone crossed Percy, there’d be trouble. But if you hurt his loved ones? Well, it was pretty safe to say that you wouldn’t be walking out of that altercation with all your bones intact. 

And this little test Percy proposed involved one of Percy’s greatest platonic loves. Danny could only be glad that Annabeth was off teaching a class in some other part of Camp. Danny already had a baseline fear-respect thing going on with Annabeth like he had with Princess Dora in the Ghost Zone, but the difference there was that he had interacted with Dora for more than ten minutes. Annabeth could easily bite Danny’s head off, no ghostly dragon-transformation powers required. 

“So!” Danny started, clapping his hands together to get everyone’s attention. “What exactly does this letter I have to deliver to prove that my weird vibes are actually psychopomp vibes say?” He shifted from foot to foot to prevent his intangibility from getting the better of him. Danny could only hope that it looked like he was fidgeting from anxiety or because of ADHD.

“It’s illegal to open mail that isn’t addressed to you without permission,” Jason cut in, pushing his glasses further up his nose. They’d apparently slid down thanks to the sweat formed under the already blazing sun. 

Danny spluttered. “I may have been labeled a troubled kid back at Casper High, but even I know that! Can’t a guy be curious?” 

“Big same on the whole ‘troubled kid’ thing, man.” Percy dug around in his pocket for a moment before brandishing a letter that he deposited in Danny’s hand. “But yeah. It's an inside joke that I think only Grover will remember. Maybe Annabeth too, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she purged the memory from her brain. It was, um, certainly A Time. Though I’m sure Grover will get a kick out of it.”

Danny frowned as he turned over the wrinkled letter covered in Greek chicken scratch, nervously bouncing on his feet. “How will delivering this prove I’m a psychopomp, though? Doesn’t Hermes need to travel through the dangers of the Underworld to deliver messages?”

“You’re right!” Percy smiled wolfishly. “That’s why you’ll be running through the monster-filled woods to the Council of Cloven Elders.”

Jason, Nico, and Danny exploded in alarm. 

Jason was the first to recollect himself, saying as levelly as possible, “Percy, I know you said you’d take the reins on the first task, but isn’t that a bit extreme for a newbie? I know that a more seasoned demigod like us would be able to handle it, but Danny literally just got to camp and has no experience dealing with that many monsters.”

Danny bristled at the assumption. If only he could tell them about all the ghosts he fought on the daily back in Amity, then they wouldn’t so easily brush him off as a newbie. Didn’t they remember how he held all three of them off during their first encounter all together during the late-night McDonald’s run? (Although they didn’t act like the powered-up and flying white-haired Phantom was also Danny.) Or how he acted during the Nemean hide hellhound in downtown Amity? 

“Are you sure you thought this all the way through?” Jason finished.

Percy waved his hand dismissively. “Do I look like the kind of guy who wouldn’t think his plans through?”

Jason and Nico leveled unimpressed looks. “Do you want us to answer that honestly, or…” Nico trailed off. 

Percy groaned. “Oh, c’mon, man! You’re seriously not giving me enough credit, here. I do actually have a plan. Sort of.” And then he brought his fingers to his mouth and let out an ear-splitting taxi cab whistle worthy of a true New Yorker.

In the distance, cries of startled campers filled the air as Mrs. O’Leary bounded over the hill and slammed into Danny, greeting him with great big slobbery dog kisses. Over Danny’s delighted cooing, Percy explained that Mrs. O’Leary would be on standby to rush in to drag Danny to safety if need be.

Jason put his head in his hands, bemoaning how stupid this idea was, but Danny was fueled by pure unadulterated spite. He wanted—no, he needed —to prove to everyone that he could handle himself. Danny didn’t survive this long by backing down when things got tough. 

Once Nico pulled Danny upright and away from Mrs. O’Leary (and back into the realm of physicality), Jason handed Danny a basic sword from the Camp’s armory, which Danny denied. He instead brandished his bracelet that could turn into a shield with the flick of a wrist. 

“Are you sure?” Jason asked.

Judging by his tone, Jason wasn’t just asking about taking the sword. Danny puffed out his chest and bounced on his feet, promising, “I’ve got this, dude. I’ve dealt with worse and if I didn’t think I could handle it, I’d say so! All the baddies that came through Amity had to go through me and both me and my hometown are still standing. I’m not weak. ”

“No one ever said you were, Danny.”

“Is your hair gonna go all white, now?” Percy jumped in. “I remember when we first met you, your hair was all white and that’s the only time I’ve seen you fly. Flying would probably get you in and out faster, plus Hermes flies in and out of the Underworld, so…yeah. Just wondering.”

Okay, so they do remember Phantom… Danny pursed his lips, frantically looking to Nico for support, but he just shrugged helplessly. It wasn’t like he could tell the truth: “Oh, hey I’m like this thanks to a combo of portal pseudoscience and magic and probably my godly parent that I can’t tell you about because of current Olympian litigations about whether I’m allowed to exist or not! Yippee-skippy!”

So, Danny blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “It’s, uh, my magical girl transformation!” He immediately mentally facepalmed while Nico did exactly that behind Jason and Percy.

“ What? ” Jason and Percy chorused.

Danny wished he could stop fidgeting in place and let the earth swallow him whole, but he instead doubled down. “Yeah,” he bluffed, putting all of his vigilante-spawned improv skills to use, “when I’m all powered up and the stars align in my favor, I transform into my magical girl alter ego, Phantom.”

“But you’re not—”

“A girl, Percy?” Danny finished. “What an astute observation! The beings unknown to me that gave me this great power—with which comes great responsibility—don’t care about that. Magical girl-ness is a completely gender-neutral term for them.”

“Percy, what on earth is a ‘magical girl?’” Jason whispered. “I feel like I should know this.”

Nico huffed from off to the side. “Even I know—thanks to Will—and I’m literally from another time period. What’s your excuse, Grace?”

“I was raised by wolves and a lower-tech Roman Legion,” Jason deadpanned.

“I’ve gotta hear more about that later, but I think this is my cue to leave!” Danny announced, quickly running off into the depths of the woods before anyone could stop him.

The last thing Danny heard was Percy’s joyful cry of “Let’s go, Sailor Moon!” followed immediately by Jason’s anguished cry of confusion. Now, Danny was certain that his bluffing was sniffed out as an obvious lie, but hopefully it’d keep them off the scent for now.

In the grim darkness of the overshaded woods, the letter for Grover felt leaden in Danny’s pocket (he’d thankfully managed to slip it in there despite his intangibility fighting him). Even with his human form’s somewhat night vision, seeing further than ten feet ahead of him was a struggle and certainly not helped by the unfamiliar flickering shadows dashing in and out of Danny’s vision. The entire experience horribly reminded him of his time in the woods around Vlad’s cabin filled with mutated wildlife ghosts. He shuddered at the memory, the errant shouts of his mom’s, no, Maddie’s? grating against his ears.

Danny paused for a moment, placing a palm on a nearby tree to regain his bearings and breath.

“Grover?” Danny called, feeling remarkably stupid, “I have a letter for you! Special delivery from your buddy, Percy!”

A sharp human-ish gasp hissed off to Danny’s right. He whirled around, but saw nobody there.

“Hello?” Danny asked, mouth suddenly turning very dry. “Is someone there? If you’re a lost camper, we can work together and I can help get you out of here. If you’re a monster who wants to eat me, please, uh, don’t?”

A nervous giggle erupted behind him. Danny made no sudden movements, instead choosing to continue yapping. The disembodied voice seemed to like that, at least. And hopefully giggling meant that whoever or whatever was behind him would be at least amused enough to not eat him, theoretically buying Danny enough time to get out of dodge.

“I’d say that the weather was nice today, but given the tree canopy blocking out most of the sky, it’s a bit counterintuitive, huh?” More giggles. “Okay, um, cool. And since I’m surrounded by trees—there’s not many around where I’m from—I wouldn’t say that I’m pleased to see them”—the forest seemed to close in—“but that I’m trees-ed to see them!”

The pressure on Danny’s chest alleviated and the giggles came back full force. And then a startlingly human adjacent hand tapped the back of his shoulder before settling there. Danny froze and forced a light laugh. “If there’s a monster behind me who wants to eat me for lunch, can you give me a five-minute running head start? I’m kinda new to this monster-fighting demigod gig. I’m much more used to ghosts—”

And then hand slowly guided Danny to turn around until he was faced with someone who looked a lot like “Sam?!”

The person in front of him took a surprised step back at the sudden exclamation. “Sorry? I’m Taxus Canadensis or Canada Yew. But my friends call me ‘Yew.’ That is, if I had friends. I’m a recent transplant from Buffalo.” 

As Danny took in the being before him, he realized that they looked very similar to Sam when she got possessed by Undergrowth, what with the choppy leaf-filled hair, chlorophyll-tinted skin, and dress that looked like something Tinkerbell might wear.

“For someone who was talking so much earlier, you’ve gone surprisingly quiet. Did I break you? Oh, no, I broke them! Oh, you’ve really done it this time, Yew! This is exactly why Council Underwood had to move you away from regular mortals…”

Danny blinked back to awareness, mindset flipping to comfort-civilian-after-ghost-attack mode. “Hey, no! You’re good! You’re fine. You just startled me a little. You, uh, just reminded me of one of my friends back home.”

”You’re friends with other tree nymphs?”

Tree nymph, got it, Danny mentally filed away. Then aloud, “Oh, no. She’s just really passionate about environmentalism. She likes plants.” He wanted to smack himself for such a lame description of one of his best friends.

Yew narrowed their eyes. “What’s your name, stranger?”

He shifted his feet to regain tangibility. “Uh, Danny? He/him. You?”

“Yes?”

Danny actually facepalmed this time. “Sorry, forgot your name was ‘Yew’ for a sec. ‘Yew’ and ‘you,’ y-o-u, sound the same.”

Yew blinked, then let out a belly laugh. “You’re funny, Danny. I like you. As a more proper introduction”—they gave a mock half curtsy—“you may call me Yew, she/they.”

“Of course,” Danny offered awkwardly, realizing she said “Yew” was for friends to use. “Um, I’d hate to bother you, but do you happen to know a Grover? I have a letter I’m supposed to deliver to him.”

Yew inhaled through her teeth. “You sure? He’s a pretty busy satyr—protector of nature and Leader of the Council of Cloven Elders—and being a bother is the last thing I want to do after he helped me…”

“It’s from Percy Jackson. ”

At the name drop, Yew’s eyes widened and their jaw gaped. “Well, that certainly changes things!” 

Before Danny could properly register it, Yew somehow grabbed his wrist—his intangible wrist—and took off running. The trees around them seemed to curl inwards, bending and warping as Yew wove through the forest. The ground below them turned a blurry, indistinct green, not too different from the vertigo-inducing view of the road from just outside a car window. 

Just when Danny thought the grassy nightmare would never end, Yew skidded to a halt in the middle of a clearing, released Danny’s wrist and made a bird call with both hands. 

“How—how did you do that?” Danny asked. 

“What, the bird call? It’s quite simple, really! If you just put your hands like this—”

“No, the—”

“Oh, my running? That’s just basic dryad magic! Wait until you see me in the winter—that’s when I’m at my most poisonous. Now that’s really something to be in awe of!” Yew beamed, taking in the forest sounds that must have been comforting to her, but unnatural to Danny. Like, seriously, who enjoyed weird snorting noises?

“No,” Danny shifted uncomfortably as the wet snuffling drew closer, “you were able to grab my wrist. How? ”

“It’s not that hard. Reach out and grab, ya know?” They reached out to demonstrate but Danny was quicker, jerking away sharply. 

“No, I don’t—”

And then Danny got bowled over by a pig. 

Now, that sounds unimpressive, but this was a big pig. Like, the size of the Fenton Family Ghost Assault Vehicle kind of big. Big enough to bowl people into the tree canopy kind of big, given that it was, in fact, a massive bloodstained boar who did just that to Danny. 

Clearly, the white-eyed boar didn’t get the memo that Danny was supposed to be pretty much intangible. Or maybe the universe didn’t get the hint that Danny deserved a sliver of good luck and made Danny solid at the exact wrong moment. Whatever the case was, Danny slammed back-first into an old-growth tree, sending an electrifying jolt of pain down his spine. 

Danny screamed. 

In a moment of pure and literal brilliance, a blue-white ring of crackling energy flickered at Danny’s waist before splitting in two. In a wash of cold, Danny became Phantom.

Reality pitched for a moment, the trees’ colors inverting from green and brown to mind-numbing ectoplasmic pink and blue. Then the world slid back into place and a thin sheen of frost exploded over the surrounding foliage. 

A mess of protective instinct clouded Danny’s vision, barely taking in Yew throwing presumably poisonous yew berries at the boar’s frothing mouth as it stalked closer and closer. It reared its bristly maned head, tusks glinting in the ghostly light and Phantom descended like a bird of prey. 

Spitting with unfiltered vitriol, Phantom clawed at the boar with talons of ice formed by his own protective fury. Yew was innocent. They weren’t meant to die. Not here, not yet. He could sense it. 

The boar bucked and roared, but Phantom refused to let go of its spiny back filled splintered blades from previous heroes. 

Without warning, his transformation fizzled out and the sudden lack of icy claws made Danny slip from the boar’s back, tumbling into the dirt with a tactical roll. It skidded to a halt, eyeing a crumpled white lump between it and Danny. 

Danny blinked the fuzz from his vision before realizing with a start that something was off. Standing up, he patted down his pockets and his eyes widened in horrified realization. 

“The letter—!”

And as if the boar had been possessed with all the mischievous vindictiveness of a cat—or maybe the momentarily glint of intelligence in its eyes was an elaborate trick of the light meant to deal Danny the greatest psychic damage—it unhinged its tusk-filled jaw and swallowed Percy’s letter alongside a mouthful of dirt. 

Without a moment to spare—and blocking out Yew’s shouting in the background—Danny flicked his wrist to summon his god-given gift: a Stygian iron rimmed shield from Death himself. 

“Spit that out!” Danny yelled as he detached the shield from its wrist mount and sharply flung it at the boar’s head, Captain America-style. The side of it glanced across the boar’s snout, sending hissing acrid smoke curling away. 

The shield lazily rolled back to Danny, who stopped it with a shaky foot, pressing down on the edge to angle it up just enough to grab without too much bending. The boar limped from its ice talon induced wounds, the lashes across its face dripping with bloodied golden sand. 

The Stygian iron shield’s strike oozed into the open wounds, in the form of blackened tendrils, slowly withering the monster from the inside out. The shield was a weapon best used in tandem with a sword—a proper godly weapon that would feel too real in Danny’s hands. He could only hope that some other demigod would be willing to handle that burden. 

The boar wouldn’t die, not without help. 

But Danny knew something deep, deep in his bones, heralded by a haunting reedy tune. 

Death was a-coming. 

Death was a-coming. 

Death was a-coming. 

A goat-legged guy around Percy’s age stepped into the clearing, the moss spores kicked up from the previous fight dancing around curled horns, adding to the ethereal atmosphere. 

“ Cloven Elder Grover Underwood, ” Yew hissed reverently under her breath. She was close enough to Danny that he could just barely hear their voice. “He’s put the boar in a trance with his panpipes. Hurry, Danny!”

The hidden message was as clear as a shout across an abandoned park, disruptive and jarring. 

Finish it. 

Grover nodded as Danny stumbled over to the dazed boar, raising his shield high. In a swift movement that would have resulted in the dashed brains of a regular animal, instead only golden dust sprayed from a withered wound on the boar’s head. In an instant, the rest of its body followed suit, dissolving into dust until there was nothing left, not even Percy’s letter. 

Danny frowned. 

What Danny now recognized as a slowed-down rendition of “Never Gonna Give You Up” petered off from Grover’s panpipes. Grover offered what Danny guessed was meant to be consoling advice, misinterpreting his frown. “The first solo monster fight can be difficult for a lot of demigods. But don’t worry! All monsters regenerate and come back from Tartarus, eventually! Or I guess that’s bad news since you or someone else needs to fight it again…”

“Why did it attack?” Danny asked.

Grover startled at Danny’s bluntness, but Danny didn’t take offense. He was used to this sort of thing after several years of others’ discomfort. “Yew—”

“I know!” they panicked, jumping in, “I’m so, so sorry! My bird call out to you was so bad it summoned a monster-boar!”

A concerned expression flickered across Grover’s face. “Yew, it wasn’t your fault. I was already in the area trying to track it down since it was being weirdly belligerent to the other residents of the forest. I was hoping to avoid conflict, maybe reason with it, yet I had a feeling that there might not be any other method than, um, this. ” He gestured at the golden pile of dust surrounding Danny’s feet.

“I thought you were a ‘protector of nature?’” Danny recalled Yew’s rambling. “Isn’t killing one of its creatures kinda going against that?”

“It’s…more complicated than that,” Grover sighed, looking at a far-off spot past Danny’s head. “The boar, well…I have a duty to creatures of the wild. All of them. For some reason, when I tried talking with them, all I got was static, like there was no one home. And, um, you know The Lion King? ”

“Yeah, who doesn’t? Disney has their hands in a bunch of things these days. Bet they could work their magic and buy Camp Half-Blood itself if they knew where it was.”

Grover brushed aside Danny’s snarky comment. “What’s important is that whole ‘Circle of Life’ thing. It’s never an easy task to make the decision that could impact the lives of so many people—if the boar had continued to rampage…”

A pang of understanding ripped through Danny’s core and he nodded solemnly.

“Didn’t you say you had a letter for Mr. Underwood?” Yew piped up nervously, breaking the tension, which Danny was thankful for. He wasn’t so thankful for the explanation he needed to give, however.

“A letter?” Grover echoed. “And there’s no need to call me that, Yew.”

“There’s an emphasis on ‘had,’ Yew,” Danny grumbled. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the boar ate your letter, Grover. Wow, saying that out loud was just…so bad. ‘The dog ate my homework’ vibes, huh?”

“Right…but I think the bigger question is why are you out here by yourself? You look like you’ve just barely had your Claiming.”

Danny blinked. “What?”

“Danny’s not alone! I found him,” Yew put their hands on their hips. “And he means that you look thirteen,” she giggled.

“I do not!” Danny’s voice cracked. “I’m fourteen!”

“You don’t sound like you are.”

Before Danny could snap back, Grover cut in with a long-suffering sigh, “Great, so you’re a newbie. This is going to be so fun to explain to Chiron. Were you out here on a dare? Some hazing? Or—?”

“It was a letter from your friend, Percy Jackson, ” Danny snapped. “He and Jason and kinda-sorta-maybe Nico are trying to figure out who my godly parent is so Jason and Annabeth can start drafting the newest cabin. I don’t wanna get into the personal details, but they’re doing it to make me feel more included because I got dealt a terrible hand back home.”

Grover prodded about the specifics of the letter thing and Danny started rambling about Hermes, psychopomps, and his own weird “death vibes.”

Grover sniffed the air around Danny, only to recoil. “Hoo boy, yeah. You definitely reek like Nico does. You two smell like how a wilted flower looks—all sad and stuff!” 

“Gee, thanks.”

Yew clapped her hands together excitedly. “Oh, so maybe that’s why I can be around Danny! Yew trees often symbolize death!” 

Oh, joy. It’s good to know that a very specific kind of tree likes me. 

“Maybe,” Grover scratched at his wispy goatee, “But let’s get you out of here, okay? I need to apparently have a word with Percy about sending underprepared demigods into the forest alone.”

Danny huffed. “I have more fighting experience than you think I do. Besides, Mrs. O’Leary was on standby!”

“Mrs. O’Leary was on standby!” Percy protested.

Jason and Nico facepalmed at the same time. 

“What was so important in that letter that you couldn’t tell me about it in person?” Grover asked patiently. Danny found his restraint impressive. “This kid—Danny—fought the magical boar I’ve been tracking for the past few days, just with a shield. A shield! ”

Danny was at least glad that Yew made it back to her tree alright earlier. Even if she was chill with Danny’s passive weird death vibes, there was no telling how she’d react to the curling tendrils of shadow threatening to escape a frustrated Nico’s silhouette. Danny almost wished that he could go back into the woods to avoid his ire—it reminded him a little too much of Hades before Thanatos supplicated him.

“I checked the woods myself before breakfast!” Percy added, “Most of the monsters were either all spacey or sleeping off their dinner from the night before, I guess.”

“ Spacey? ” Grover wondered to himself. “The boar was kind of spacey, too—not completely ‘all there.’ I’m not sure how else to describe it. I’ve been trying to figure out what was up before the boar attacked Danny.”

“That is weird,” Jason added, stepping forward. “Maybe their food recently got changed to a different supplier?”

“That’s not it. I keep an eye on that sort of thing, even though it upsets my stomach. As a Cloven Elder, it’s unfortunately one of my duties to oversee the”—Grover paused to gag—“ butcher offcuts that Argus wheels into the woods.”

“This smells of foul play,” Nico snarled, “I don’t like it.”

Everyone fell quiet at his words.

Grover broke the silence. “And I don’t like that you pulled me out of the woods, Percy! I was busy—”

Before Grover could continue ranting, Percy put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and asked how much sleep he’d had in the past few days. Grover’s eye bags and the way he guiltily looked away were more than telling.

“Dude, I can literally feel your exhaustion through the empathy link. That letter was meant to make you come talk to me, or at least take a break to read about some of our goofier moments. Go take a nap. Seriously, G-man. If you don’t, I’ll sic the Hypnos cabin on you.” 

“You really think that scares me? What’ll Clovis do, whack me with a pillow?”

“Fine,” Percy’s eyes narrowed, “then I’ll get Annabeth.”

Grover let out a nervous bleat. “ You wouldn’t dare. ”

“ I. Would. ” 

And Percy gave Grover a quick hug before sending his best friend scrambling through the strawberry fields, hopefully, to find a warm patch of sun to settle in, Percy noted.

The last thing Grover noted before he was out of earshot made Danny want to pull his hair out, though. “If Danny’s godly parent was Hermes, wouldn’t he have been put there in the first place?”

Danny whirled on Percy. “Hey, um, so… I DID ALL THAT FOR NOTHING?! ”

Percy nervously laughed. “I didn’t think that part through?”

“Certified Seaweed Brain moment,” Nico nodded sagely, taking immense joy in getting a rise out of Percy.

“Ey. Quit it, Death Breath. You and Jason went along with it, too!”

Nico only shrugged. “Oops. I guess that’s one thing off the list. But it could take absolutely forever to get through every god on it.” He made direct eye contact with Danny at that last comment, whose jaw dropped in realization. Nico was buying back some of the time Clockwork loved oh-so dearly messed with from Danny.

“What a shame,” Danny said, trying to hide a troublemaking grin, “Guess we’ll just need to try again tomorrow…”

Jason winced. “I’m sorry, but everything’s on a really tight schedule for the cabin planning. I think we need to try to do at least two godly parent tests a day, Danny.”

“I hate tests,” Danny groaned, fidgeting with his woven bracelet instead of constantly moving his feet. He was at least somewhat pleased that he could now stand without automatically sinking through the floor, maybe in part due to his brief transformation into Phantom. “What do I have to study?”

“You’ll have a little time to rest up after lunch,” Jason promised. “It doesn’t look like you got too beat up, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Our next idea is a bit of a wildcard, but it’s worth a shot. It’s pretty much impossible, but then again, Percy and I are standing here before you. Nico’s at least somewhat legitimate.”

“Oh, no…” Nico groaned, putting his head in his hands.

“‘Oh, no?’” Danny asked in a panic, “What do you mean, ‘oh, no?’ There shouldn’t be any ‘oh, no-s!’

Percy stage-whispered to Danny, “Yeah…it’s better to get it out of the way sooner rather than later, dude. Just because there’s a chance that if we’re right, there could be another all-out war.”

“What?!” Danny screeched.

Jason nervously pushed his glasses further up on his nose and pulled out a little slip of paper from his pocket, unfolding it carefully. “Well, Danny. There’s a chance that Nico here could get a brand new little brother.” Jason turned the list around so Danny could see the name below a furiously scribbled-out “Hermes—psychopomp???” 

Danny’s heart dropped into his stomach as Jason offered the list to Danny. It was all in Ancient Greek, but Danny understood it, clear as day.

Jason cleared his throat and condemned, “Next on the list is Hades, Lord of the Dead.”

Chapter Text

Approximately twenty minutes later, Danny most certainly did not have a mental breakdown despite what Nico may have you believe. 

“Danny, breathe. ”

“Breathing’s for losers,” Danny heaved, weakly grinning at Nico. “And I’m going to win. ”

“That is—that makes no sense! Wait, hold on”—Nico grabbed Danny from under the armpits and pulled him back up from sinking through the Hades cabin floor—“Seriously, Danny? What are you glaring at me for?”

“I totally had it that time, I swear!” Danny said, lying through his teeth. Then, more to himself, “ I don’t know what’s wrong with me… ”

Nico swore under his breath, pinching the bridge of his nose in irritation. He muttered something about wondering what Jason would do before properly facing Danny and ordering him to put his hands over his head. 

“It’ll open your lungs or something,” Nico said, fixing Danny with a studying look. “I made some dumb excuse for why we needed to head back to the Hades cabin before lunch after you ran off here again, but I don’t understand why you’re so jittery. We both know that Hades isn’t your father, so there shouldn’t be any problems—”

“He’s the problem!” Danny exploded. 

The entire Hades cabin rumbled in response as if the building itself took offense to such a great accusation, or maybe more accurately, Hades himself did. No matter the case, Danny got the sense he’d royally screwed up. But then again, he didn’t always know when to quit so he stood his ground despite the tremors.

Before Nico could jump to criticize him, Danny finally, finally, took a deep breath and recounted his dream from the night previous. He included just enough detail, distinctly dancing around how comforting Thanatos was to Danny. That, frankly, was way too embarrassing to share and required a certain degree of vulnerability that Danny simply didn’t possess.

At the end of his rapid-fire explanation, Nico cursed lowly. “Both my father and stepmother wanted you…as their kid?”

“I guess?” Danny shrugged helplessly, “I mean, it—it could’ve been a joke to ruffle Thanatos’ feathers, but I’ve dealt with one too many powerful deity-adjacent figures to not take their word for granted. Until proven otherwise, I’m pretty sure that’s what they want. Me. ”

Given that the Hades cabin didn’t shake violently (if anything, it seemed to have a pleased thrum if you could call it that), Danny figured he was right.

“Why?”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Gee, way to make a guy feel welcome in his own half-dead skin.”

“You…you are more irritating than Percy! You know what I meant.”

“You sure? I’m pretty bad at tonal cues.” Nico shot Danny a withering glare. “Geez, okay! Okay! Can’t a guy make a joke around here every once in a while?”

Nico ignored him. “ Why, ” he reiterated, “do the Lord and Lady of the Underworld have an interest in a demigod who hasn’t heard of the godly world until now?”

Danny paled, wringing his hands. Nico grabbed Danny’s shoulders, pulling him out of the floor once more. Danny offered a short and distant “thanks” before properly responding, “Whatever the reason is, I hope it doesn’t result in my full death. My father probably wouldn’t be too happy about that!”

Nico could only groan in response, complaining about Danny’s incessant punning all the way to the dining pavilion. But Danny didn’t rise to the bait. Obnoxious jokes—even at his own expense—were his coping mechanism. While the long-term effect on his psyche could be questionable, at least Danny didn’t brood all the time like a discount Batman. He eyed Nico’s mop of dark hair flopping over one eye, the skeletal pegasus on his black Cabin Thirteen Camp shirt on full display as he offered a half-hearted wave to Jason and Percy at the dining pavilion’s entrance. 

No…Danny definitely didn’t know any Batman-like brooding teenagers.

Lunch—various cold sandwiches with bug juice, prepackaged chips, and Delphi brand strawberries that looked too weird to sell—passed by quicker than Danny hoped, but he still remembered to burn an offering to the gods before digging into his meal. 

Back when the only camp he’d visited was Camp Skull and Crossbones, Danny remembered how the A-listers (mainly Dash and Kwan) chucked stuff into the campfire to see how much of a hazard they could be to society, under the cover of “starting up the fire again while the nerds (Danny, Tucker, and Sam) found more kindling.” From the aftermath of those questionable experiments (and subsequently subtly extinguishing the flames with his fledgling ice powers), Danny remembered that Fritos Original™ (not sponsored) were the hottest things on the market. Literally. Those things burned for nearly a minute and a half! 

Only people who didn’t have the mental fortitude to realize that repeating that dumb experiment would, in fact, be dumb, would throw a bag of Fritos Original™ (not sponsored) into the burning brazier at the end of the Hades table. 

Danny blamed his fluctuating mental and emotional state for his slip-up. 

Percy thankfully reacted quickly off to the side, summoning a wave of bug juice to quench the flames that had somehow started crawling up a nearby banner before they spread. After Percy made sure Danny was alright (he only suffered a few singed eyebrow hairs c’mon Percy, I’ve had worse, shut up I’m fine ), it was only then that Danny stopped to consider that a small bag of Fritos Original™ (not sponsored) wouldn’t have made the flame jump that high. Or flicker a disconcerting purple. Or smell like pomegranates and aged gold.

On instinct, Danny joked to the suddenly silent dining pavilion, “Guess I’m just fired up for…camp stuff?”

The resounding response was various groans and snorts of laughter, likely more at Danny’s expense than at his joke. But soon enough, the laughter petered out and Danny couldn’t be more glad to be ignored. Being ignored meant being safe, from people his age or otherwise. 

It was only then that Danny realized that in his tiredness, he didn’t pray to a specific god. At the Hades table. So the offering probably went directly to Hades…

Oh, gods.

Danny collapsed back in his seat, thunking his head on the table. He mumbled the problem to Nico who awkwardly patted his back, making Danny tense as he helped pull Danny back into tangibility. 

At least washing dishes after lunch as part of Chiron’s punishment for Jason, Nico, and Percy sneaking out of Camp without warning to get Danny out of Amity wasn’t too bad. (Never mind the fact that Danny felt like his ice core was melting every time he stepped foot in the lava-filled washroom.) Since Danny had arrived, the daily lunch wash-up (or lava up, maybe?) gave him time to think. 

However, the universe seemed determined to make Hades not ignore Danny. And unfortunately, the universe looked and sounded remarkably like Jason and Percy after they finished doing the dishes. 

“C’mon,” Jason prompted as he carefully peeled away his lava-resistant dish gloves and instructed everyone to do the same, “the lunch clean up is satisfactory and I have an excellent place lined up for Nico’s test for Danny: the Arena!” 

Danny whipped his head around to Nico, betrayed. Nico just resolutely stared ahead, avoiding eye contact as Jason led him, Danny, and Percy out of the washroom and out to the Arena. 

So, Danny did what he did best: he yapped. 

“Are we really sure that this is the best idea, guys? Percy literally said that an all-out war would happen if my godly parent ended up being Hades, so we should really just—”

“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it,” Percy promised, glancing back at Danny. 

The fine dusty dirt of Camp kicked up around Danny’s feet as he tried to recover from his shock-induced stumble. “Sorry, what? ”

“Don’t worry,” Percy mumbled to himself more than anyone else, “It’s fine. I’ll settle that war if need be. Child support will be paid…”

“That doesn’t inspire the most confidence!” Danny complained. “Why are you like this?”

Jason laughed half-heartedly as Percy continued muttering. “Welcome to the demigod family, Danny. This is, unfortunately, the least of your worries. Percy can be…an acquired taste.”

Danny let out a sound that was part groan and part wail, thankfully not of the Ghostly variety. This experience lasted until the luckily empty Arena. 

“You guys have no idea how many strings I pulled to get this sorted,” Jason said, not an ounce of regret in his tone. In fact, he sounded almost proud of his organizational skills, getting all his little ducks in a row. 

Only once Jason and Percy were seated at a safe distance on the Arena's sidelines and Nico and Danny stood a few paces apart did Nico meet Danny’s eyes again.

“You’ll be fine,” Nico whispered the promise, low enough for just Danny to hear, “I think.”

“You think?!” Danny hissed.

“You can’t summon the dead, right?”

“No??” Danny paled. “What do you—?”

“Alright, Danny,” Nico announced, voice echoing like a true prince of the Underworld, “follow my lead. Or, more rather, don’t. ”

And then Nico summoned a gods-damned zombie. A zombie! Like, a real-life rotting corpse and not the hilariously fake ones in Dead Teacher IV. Danny didn’t know exactly how Nico summoned said zombie, too stuck on the concept of just summoning one of the dead out of the blue and—

“—meet Jules-Albert, my chauffeur,” Nico said. “My father said I needed a better connection to the 21st century a few years back so here he is. Say hello, Jules-Albert.”

Now, Danny was pretty used to dealing with the dead—he himself was halfway there (or at least something like that?), but zombies that fixed him with a literal dead-eyed stare and groaned like a haunted house’s unoiled door? Ghosts were one thing, but while an actual zombie that dripped some sort of unspecified substance on the sandy arena wasn’t necessarily concerning, Danny didn’t know how to proceed when said zombie didn’t immediately try to eat brains like in cheesy horror chick-flicks. 

“Hello to you too?” Danny hesitantly responded.

Jules-Albert didn’t so much as twitch.

“Let’s see if you can summon him a friend!” Percy crowed from the stands. Danny looked over just in time to see Jason pull Percy back—not unkindly—before he toppled out from excitement. 

When Danny turned back around, he found both Nico and Jules-Albert staring at him expectantly. Well, Danny at least assumed that was the case for Jules-Albert considering that the longer he stood still, the more his face seemed to sag askew making him appear half smug and half sludge. “Smlugde,” if you will.

“Uh…” Danny started, not entirely sure what to do with his hands. A few faint screams sounded off in the distance, likely from the lava rock climbing wall. He ignored it, eventually settling on halfheartedly wiggling his fingers at the disturbed ground Jules-Albert had (maybe?) come from. “Bibbidi bobbidi boo goes the ghost? Abraca- DEAD -bra? Ala- KILL -zam?” When nothing happened, Danny shrugged and backed away as Nico dismissed Jules-Albert back into the ground (okay, so he did come from there…). He laughed awkwardly, “Welp, that didn’t work. I guess I’m not a son of Hades—”

A far-off explosion interrupted Danny, followed by an unfortunately familiar cry of, “COME OUT AND FACE ME, WHELP!”

Danny groaned as a wisp of blue mist curled out of his mouth. He didn’t get paid enough for this, which is to say, not at all.

So anyway, he started running. This was much to the chagrin of Jason, Percy, and Nico, who shouted in surprise as Danny tore out of the Arena, soon hot on his trail. Danny figured they might start investing in a backpack leash for him at this point, but that was a problem for future Danny; they’d also have to catch him first. He tried tugging at his core to spark his ghostly transformation, but only ended up with a fizzle of dying energy across his midsection, followed by a discordant thrum that sounded like a disconnected electric guitar from its amp. Danny cursed but charged ahead anyway. Skulker was his rogue, his problem. He needed to fix this before anyone got hurt.

Danny expected mass destruction in the wake of the younger campers scurrying away, but as he skidded to a stop near Camp’s entrance next to the more senior campers pointing their weapons at the Ghost Zone’s supposed “greatest hunter,” he noticed something strange. 

For all of Skulker’s posturing, he was safely outside Camp’s border near Thalia’s tree, flying around and shouting, but rarely firing off any projectiles or ghost blasts. If anything, it seemed like he was stalling for time, commanding their attention as the Apollo kids shot arrow after arrow that fell through his intangible form, thunking solidly into the dirt behind him. Peleus the dragon’s fire did little but annoy Skulker, who just flew higher at every puff of flame, which was also… weird. Peleus was a notably alive dragon—unlike Princess Dora—which Danny thought Skulker would have had a field day capturing and displaying in some cage back in the Ghost Zone. 

It was the little things, but Danny sensed something was very, very off. 

“Someone go grab Nico,” one camper hissed to another. “That thing’s clearly a ghost! And Nico’s the Ghost King, so—”

Another cut them off. “Are you stupid? It’s some kind of automaton, duh. Automatons can’t be ghosts!”

“Maybe it’s a Mistform?” some other kid piped up. “Or a prank that’ll fade away…”

Hisses and nervous whispers flickered through the crowd as they tried to figure out what to do about Skulker, but some just jumped to cuss him out. 

“You look like you have the personality of a 1927 InSinkErator!” one burly kid shouted as Danny forced his way through a sea of campers, attempting to lose Jason, Percy, and Nico in the chaos. 

“Was that an insult?” Skulker paused. “It felt like that was an insult.” His expression waffled between confusion and hurt as an older camper pulled the kid away. (“I’m fine, Nyssa!” “Be quiet, Harley.”)

“It’s the first patented garbage disposal, you dingus!” Harley crowed and flipped some rude gestures, all while being pulled away by Nyssa. 

Danny finally broke through the front of the crowd with a massive leap, jumping a bit too high to be considered natural, summoning his Stygian-rimmed shield with a flick of the wrist midair. A few people yelped in surprise, but he paid them little mind. Pounding the dark wood of its interior, Danny caught Skulker’s eye. What are you doing here? Danny tried to convey. Given that Skulker’s eyes were blazing voids of neon energy, he didn’t receive a very clear response.

“ Whelp! ” Skulker finally thundered, “Where have you been?”

His metal exoskeleton creaked as he batted Peleus away with a sharper kick than was strictly necessary. Peleus whimpered and growled once he retreated to curl back around Thalia’s tree and the Golden Fleece.

Danny frowned. Was that… concern in Skulker’s voice? “Here, duh. And don’t kick Peleus. It isn’t nice.”

A few anxious mutters kicked up again but quickly settled as a set of solid horse hooves skidded to a halt a few paces from Danny. Great, and now Chiron’s here… 

“Danny, my boy—”

“Skulker is one of the”—Danny fumbled for a word that wasn’t “ghost” or as insulting to Skulker as the colloquial “monster” used around Camp—“ threats, ” he decided, briefly glancing back at Chiron before focusing ahead once more, “that I faced back home. I can handle him, but he never knows how or when to stay away .”

Danny’s pointed remark fell on deaf ears. Well, he wasn’t entirely sure if Skulker had actual ears on his exoskeleton and based on how often Skulker ignored Danny’s complaints about being captured for a halfa pelt, Danny was leaning towards the “no actual ears” idea, which really wasn’t all that great for subtle communication. That, and Danny often had the subtlety of the Kool-Aid Man, as recounted by Jazz when he once crashed through one of her room’s walls mid-ghost fight.

Danny stalked closer to the Camp’s border as Skulker hovered down to just a few inches above the dirt. “Come to face me when you’re not even at your full power?” Skulker laughed, but it wasn’t as full of his usual malice. He even flinched when Danny hefted his shield. 

Danny discretely shook his head once he and Skulker stood mere paces away. I can’t. I literally can’t.

Skulker’s internal machinery whirred dangerously and his flaming green hair danced lowly, betraying his unease. 

“Leave this Camp alone,” Danny bit out, loud enough for his audience to hear. “It is not your place.” He then whispered, “10 pm . Near road. I will explain, ” accompanied by a hasty raising of his left palm and an “L” shape with his right anchored by the thumb, turning to point at the disturbed earth. His shield mostly obscured the action. 

Danny and his rogues had, over time and much argument, come up with a way to signal a temporary truce with ASL—whether Danny had a big test the next day or if another ghost had a sudden unplanned arrangement back in the Ghost Zone or whatever else, they could count on the other to continue the fight later as a last resort. It may have taken a few tries to uphold this new temporary truce model and for some more mischievous ghosts like Youngblood to learn the hard way that it wasn’t a way to sneak in some cheap shots on Danny, but it was worth it in instances such as these.

Skulker shifted his face in a way that conveyed wrinkling his nose (which was impressive since he had a skull-like nasal cavity instead), a sign of begrudging agreement.

“I suppose it wouldn’t be a good enough challenge if you weren’t at full strength,” Skulker growled for the whole of Camp to hear, “for I am the mightiest hunter in all the Ghost Zone and deserve only the best prey and subsequent pelt for my wall! I’ll be waiting for you, whelp. ” 

Skulker rocketed away, leaving a trail of acrid ectoplasmic fumes in his wake.

Once he’d disappeared—either from distance or actual invisibility—Danny took a shuddering breath, forcing his buckling knees to stopshaking-stopshaking, with little success. Why do I feel like this? I’ve faced Skulker before. I shouldn’t be acting like this. C’mon Danny, be better. Be better, be brave— 

“Danny—”

Danny whipped around so fast, he would’ve slammed the edge of his deadly Stygian shield across Chiron’s chest if Danny had worse reflexes or if Chiron didn’t have the sense to quickly canter back. 

“I’m—I…sorry,” Danny managed to choke out amidst the gasps of the other campers. He recalled his shield with an unconscious flick of the wrist, fidgeting with his woven bracelet. 

“I wouldn’t be a very good activities director for demigods if I didn’t know how to dodge their weapons, now would I?” Chiron said, tone lighter than Danny would have expected given the circumstances. 

Danny shrugged, not sure how best to respond. 

“Come along, Danny. I believe we have some things to discuss in the Big House.”

Resounding “oohs” from the surrounding demigods picked up as Chiron guided Danny along and away from the crowd. He pulled aside a frowning Annabeth to whom he relayed several extra security protocols that completely went over Danny’s head. Annabeth fixed Danny with her piercing grey eyes, her message so clear he wouldn’t be surprised if a genius like her suddenly developed telepathy just to psych him out. Who are you, Danny Fenton? What are you?

Danny wished that he could tell her if only for her to stop looking at him like that. Besides, any of her guesses would probably be better than his. 

“Alright, campers!” Chiron announced, “Your head counselors will receive the updated guard schedule from Annabeth and relay it to you before dinnertime; this security detail will continue for as long as we see fit, as an extra precaution. Head counselors, please relay to your fellows who are not present that there will be a counselor meeting in the Big House in forty-five minutes. As you were.” Chiron inclined his head for Danny to follow him as the surrounding campers dispersed with a few errant grumbles. 

But before Danny could trudge after the old centaur, Percy exclaimed, “Chiron, wait!” He finally burst through the dwindling crowd, Nico and Jason close behind. 

Danny was taken aback. They only just now caught up to him? He really didn’t think he’d run that fast or that far, but his friends were not exactly winded, but they certainly weren’t breathing steadily.

“Yes, Percy?” Chiron sighed, tone clipped but still somehow incredibly patient.

Percy took a deeper breath and put a hand over his heart. “Sorry, lemme catch my breath. I could’ve sworn we were in shape, but it seriously felt like the run from the Arena to the border was twice as long as usual. Don’t really get how that works, but yeah. Long run.”

“Your point, my boy?” Chiron prompted, tail flicking. 

“Right, yeah. Got distracted.” Percy then squared his shoulders and looked his mentor in the eye. “Whatever Danny did, it’s not his fault. I’ll come with you to the Big House to explain even though we didn’t see much and—”

Chiron put up a hand as a placating gesture. “Danny is not in trouble. But there will be much to discuss at the counselor meeting, so I suggest you prepare for that in forty-five minutes.” He eyed Nico, Jason, and Percy. “And I expect you all to be there.”

Percy’s eyes flickered to Danny who shot him an awkward double thumbs-up. I’ll be fine, I promise. Percy pursed his lips but nodded assent. Danny’s heart melted (thankfully not his ice core) at Percy’s sentiment, making sure Danny was okay.

“Anything we need to know before the meeting?” Jason asked.

Annabeth reappeared out of seemingly nowhere (which totally didn’t give Danny a heart attack) to cut in, “Cabin 6 has been updated, Chiron. Or at least the knowledge will be fully shared soon. And boys, I’ll share what unfortunately little I know.”

As Danny and Chiron headed off, Chiron’s guiding hand on his shoulder wasn’t the only thing that made Danny prickle uncomfortably. When Danny glanced back, he noticed Nico’s gaze boring into his back all the way to the Big House. 

Danny’s perspective of Chiron pitched once he noticed the guy rolling back into the sitting room with a wheelchair, right where he’d left Danny, balancing a tray of tea on his lap. He then placed it on a nearby coffee table and gestured for Danny to sit on the plush couch. Danny pointedly didn’t mention Chiron’s lack of horse-ish-ness, the idea of mentioning it too awkward to naturally bring up in conversation.

“Seymour isn’t going to eat you Danny, but I would warn against standing too close to his maw.” Danny quickly backed away from the mounted leopard’s head he’d been studying, watching in abject terror and fascination as the leopard head—apparently named Seymour—yawned. Chiron huffed a laugh. “There’s no need to be frightened of that trickster faking sleep. He just likes giving campers unprompted hairdos when he licks them—terrible cowlicks, or ‘leopard-licks’ as they were.”

“O-okay?” Danny’s shoulders sagged.

“But he is still carnivorous in addition to being Mr. D’s proxy for this discussion while he’s otherwise engaged on Olympus. Leopards are his sacred animal, after all.” He fished out a stick of jerky from his wheelchair’s side pocket, tossing it to Seymour who snapped it up in an instant before burping up the wrapper. “Very lovely manners, Seymour,” Chiron joked.

Danny tensed at the display, not so subtly shifting farther from Seymour.

“I know that children your age are more inclined to more sugary drinks, but you seemed like you could use something more relaxing like tea. Would you like some, Danny?” Chiron gestured at the well-loved teapot, handmade tea sachets, and mismatched cups and saucers on the table. “I apologize for the lack of options—the Demeter cabin is getting in a new shipment of both aromatic and magical blooms tomorrow so perhaps you can meet with me again at a later date to try them once they’ve been processed into new teas.”

“How much trouble am I in?” Danny asked bluntly. Chiron paused pouring his own cup of hot water for tea. “It’s gotta be a lot considering you pulled me away from the rest of Camp. I mean, I faced Skul—I mean, that, um, monster, at the edge of Camp by myself or whatever.”

Chiron sighed, gently setting the kettle down and dropping a sachet of tea into his cup. He shushed Seymour’s growls before responding, “I don’t mean to deceive you, my boy. What I said earlier was the truth: you are not in trouble. I am merely… concerned. ”

“Yeah?” Danny huffed. “’Bout what?”

Chiron picked up his mismatched teacup and saucer, studying the chips and floral patterns drastically faded over much time and use. He then fixed his gaze on Danny. “You…you carry too much weight for someone so young, demigod though you are.”

Even though it felt like Chiron had thrown a spear through Danny’s heart, he kept silent.

“May I ask how you know this, er, ‘Skullerer’ fellow so intimately, my boy? He seemed rather fixated on capturing you for your, uh, pelt. ”   

Danny fidgeted with his woven bracelet, weighing his options. He eventually decided on half-truths that wouldn’t reveal that he was a halfa. “His name is Skulker. He sometimes chased me around my hometown because he thought I was unique or whatever. Good for his trophy wall, I guess.” Chiron didn’t do the best job of hiding his grimace. “I managed to stop him a few times, but he always found a way to come back and then the cycle would repeat. And repeat. And repeat.”

Chiron’s questions about Skulker felt like they went on for forever, mostly about how Danny dealt with him all those times before (a mixture of luck and Fenton tech, which technically wasn’t a lie since their portal literally sparked his powers) and what type of monster Skulker was based on what abilities he had ( I-dee-kay, man, I was focusing on not dying! [or at least not dying fully, not that he mentioned that little tidbit to Chiron]). He also tried sneaking in some subtle questions about how Danny was doing, but Danny had enough experience handling Jazz’s concern to swiftly evade any heartfelt responses which wasn’t exactly healthy, but then again, Danny never claimed he himself was healthy to begin with.

Soon enough, Chiron looked up at a clock on the wall, nodding to himself. “Ah, fifty-five minutes have passed. Time really does fly, doesn’t it, Danny?”

Danny stiffened, Chiron’s phrasing unsettlingly familiar to the kind of quips Clockwork might make. Admittedly completely paranoid after Skulker’s sudden appearance, Danny stood up and extended a hand not just to shake Chiron’s as an awkward goodbye, but also to check for any ghostly possession. Pleasantly surprised, Chiron took it. When there was no resisting ghostly chill, Danny let out a brief exhale of relief, but he still had a question. 

“Chiron, shouldn’t you be rushing to that meeting? I thought you said it’d be in forty-five minutes.”

Chiron laughed, whispering conspiratorily as he walked (or would it be rolled?) Danny to the door, “When you’ve taught students with ADHD for as long as I have, you pick up a trick or two. I always intended for the meeting to be in an hour, but saying ‘meeting in forty-five minutes’ affords a fifteen-minute buffer if someone mismanages their time, which happens to many demigods.”

“That…that seems a little convoluted, Chiron. Besides, I feel like someone would have figured it out already.”

Chiron shrugged. “Annabeth has, as have a few others in the past, but I’ve had enough practice over the past few millenia. Now, run along, my boy. You should take the time to rest while can before dinner tonight. It seems like you’ve had quite a long day, no?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Danny grumbled.

At dinner, Nico refused to tell Danny anything that had been discussed at the counselor meeting, brushing it away as “It’s boring. And also confidential. Now, hush up and make your offering.”

Danny rolled his eyes and stepped up to the Hades table braiser with two golden-brown herb rolls dripping with softened garlic butter that fizzled into the flames below. For good measure, a handful of the juiciest, ripest strawberries sat in his other hand, staining it red like thinned blood. He’d been planning and pacing in the Hades cabin for the past few hours, so he had had some time to plan for dinner offerings. Danny remembered how Nico had said that very few fruits grew in the Underworld when he sacrificed a banana to Hades during breakfast. Thanatos would hopefully appreciate the fresh strawberries and the buttery rolls, based on how much he liked the double-chocolate muffin, another baked good.

“Sacrificing half your plate?” Nico asked, his sarcastic tone lightly laced with concern, “I find it difficult to eat when I’m stressed as well, but this is hardly the best way to solve the problem.”

“I’ll eat,” Danny promised in a whisper, “I only want to make sure I’m heard, is all. Just don’t go siccing Mister Dr. Solace on me—I’m sure your boyfriend has more than enough patients to care for.” Danny teased, wiggling his eyebrows at Nico, sufficiently distracting him. Nico erupted in a lovely shade of mortified pomegranate red.

“Good gods, why are you like this?” Nico complained, shoving his face into his hands.

Danny grinned for a split second before sobering, gently tossing his sacrifice into the flames. He’d gone over what he was going to say before he arrived at dinner, monologuing in the mirror, but all his practiced words slipped out from under his tongue. For a moment, Danny gaped like a startled fish, more nervous and genuine words than he could’ve ever written himself falling like dominoes in his brain, one after the other.

Hi, Thanatos? Father? Dad? I know we’re not super close so I don’t really know what you want me to call you, but “hi.” Yeah. My powers have kinda been screwy for the past little while and I was wondering if you could help out? Maybe like a ghostly BOO-st? ‘Boost,’ get it? Just for tonight. And thanks for defending me on Olympus. You’re really poggers for that. Oh, gods, why did I say that? That’s so cringe, end me now! Actually, please don’t since I kinda like existing on this side of the mortal coil with my friends and…and stuff. Please accept my offering, um, Dad? Thana-dad-tos? Okay, hanging up now…and I am realizing that this is not a phone call. Bye!

By the end of Danny’s overly confusing prayer, Nico’s mortification had ended and Danny’s had just begun, heralded by the scent of freshly turned dirt and pressed flowers wafting up to Danny’s nose. 

Danny lay wide awake in bed, waiting for the Hades cabin to be filled with Nico’s tell-tale snores. As the minutes crawled on, he couldn’t help but replay in his mind what Nico had asked him after dinner.

“Did you summon that ghost?”

Danny of course said no, since 1) Danny had never done something like that before, 2) he’d learned that Skulker appeared before Danny’s nonsense summoning, and 3) Skulker only listened to people who had something worthwhile in exchange.

Nico’s deep snores finally kicked up, knocking Danny out of his musings. He didn’t have the time to focus on how Jason and Percy thought Danny might be a son of Hades before Nico dismissed the idea. No claiming symbol appeared, after all. That didn’t stop the accidental spread of the “Danny-is-Hades’-kid” rumor to nosy gossips, however.  

Danny tucked himself under his thick covers and hid his head, ensuring that Nico wouldn’t be awoken by his transformation’s flashbang of light. Taking a deep breath and screwing his eyes shut, he prayed that Thanatos had heard his plea at dinner before taking the plunge. When he opened his eyes again, he noticed the last dregs of ghostly energy fizzling away at his silvery white boots. Stifling a joyous shout, he phased through his covers, invisible and intangible. For all the hardship he’d endured thanks to his powers, Danny had missed them—missed this big part of himself, even as he felt his energy steadily slipping away the longer he used them. 

Before Danny could waste another second of his fleeting power, he slipped out of the Hades cabin and out into the cool night, silent as a ghost. 

As he zipped to Camp’s border under the cover of invisibility and intangibility, his legs morphed into the usual misty black amorphous tail that curled and flicked across wind currents. Danny recalled when he first discovered this ghostly detail, it’d freaked him out with its so wholly unnatural nature. He’d eventually gotten used to it, but even after the past five days or so without completely stable powers, his flight felt wrong. Everything did, to be honest. Danny was just glad that he managed to sneak past the recently instated patrol.

“What was that?” a camper asked their fellow guard, words echoing into the dark.

Danny pressed the palm that threw the rock to his mouth, attempting to stifle his laughter as he floated past.

“I dunno, man. Go check it out.”

“No, you go check it out!”

“Seriously? You mentioned it first!”

“Dude, I—”

The guards’ voices faded into the background by the time Danny reached the road at the base of Half-Blood Hill, far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to see him return to the visible spectrum nor hear him. The road was so weirdly run-of-the-mill compared to the camp he’d just left, the image of normalcy existing so close to the fantastical that it was hard to believe that they were just a short hike away. The reflective bumps running along the road bounced back Danny’s unearthly glow once he released his invisibility, looking like little pockets of unearthed crystals. 

“Whelp,” Skulker greeted, sliding out of the shadows on the other side of the road, “Don’t you know it’s rude to make your opponent wait?”

Danny alighted on the gravel hugging the road’s shoulder. “Hello to you too, Skulker. Why are you in New York?”

“I could ask you the same. And why is it now that you can ‘go ghost’ as you often say?” 

Danny raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “It’s…complicated. On both accounts.”

“Would it have anything to do with your parents’ sudden extra violent ghost-hunting strategies, their more brutal weaponry? I can respect their methodology as a fellow hunter, but not so much when I am one of their… targets. I thought you said you would be the one to keep them at bay.”

Danny paled but tried to keep his expression in a firm neutral. “I did say that, but while I’m here, my friends are keeping everything in check. If they needed any help with a world-ending threat, my friends said they would contact me. How did you manage to find me out here?”

“A ghost rarely leaves their haunt, Phantom, on that we can agree. But you forget that I am a renowned hunter, first and foremost, and you don’t leave as much of a hidden trail as you thought you think you did.” Skulker stalked closer, crossing the line in the road. “Amity is boring without you attempting to outwit me. I bet you finally couldn’t handle my hunting expertise, too tired and weak to continue fighting like the helpless whelp you are, licking your wounds after a little fight with a bigger ghost dog—don’t think that news didn’t reach the Zone. I can’t believe you finally gave up after something so small—”

Danny lunged at Skulker, knocking his exoskeleton to the ground with such a loud clatter that it would be impossible to hide it from the border guards. They’d be down any moment now, but Danny could care less as his hands blazed a radioactive green, slamming Skulker’s metallic skull into the asphalt with a sickening crunch. Dark shadows rolled in around them, blotting out the shining moon and twinkling stars, leaving Skulker with the ghastly green of Danny’s eyes highlighting his manic expression and bared teeth. 

“I am mourning a life I feel cheated of! All that work to keep everyone safe from what they did or didn’t know was for nothing. I do my duty to guide the dead like you back where they belong, so they don’t hurt the living. Go back to your Lair and tell the other ghosts to do the same—Amity Park isn’t safe for you anymore.” 

Danny released a trembling Skulker from his grip, stumbling back in horror at his ruthlessness in the swath of fading shadow. Skulker himself coughed, forcing himself to take a knee and then to shakily rise, heaving as the border guards’ shouts drew ever closer.

“Your parents,” Skulker guessed in a rasp, “the Fentons…they know Danny is Phantom?”

Danny summoned a ball of green energy in his hand, halfheartedly raising it level with Skulker’s newly concave head. “Leave! Please, before you get hurt.”

Skulker nodded once, fixing Danny with a look, half pitying, half some other emotion that he couldn’t place or at least didn’t recognize on Skulker’s face. Without another word, Skulker turned intangible, sinking through the dirt. 

“Stand down, monster-ghost, uh, thing? I think this is a different one, Clarisse.”

The weak insult stung Danny all the same. Monster, monster, monster. He didn’t dare face the campers at his back.

“Shut up, Connor! You and your buddy are gonna get pulverized, ghost!”

Even with his temporary power boost fading, Danny forced a haunting echo into his tone. No one would be able to tell that Danny was Phantom, not this time around.  He made no sudden moves despite the ringing of unsheathed Celestial Bronze ringing in his eardrums. “ I sent Skulker on his way. He shouldn’t bother Camp Half-Blood anymore. ”

Electricity crackled behind Danny, sending cold fear down his spine, his phantom Lichtenburg scars screaming in pain, a half memory of his death in full blinding color.

“Eat electric spear, idi—”

Before the thought could be finished, Danny sunk through the earth just as the guard attacked, the spear tip a breath away from Danny’s face underground. He let out a totally heroic screech, before gathering himself for a brief moment. Now invisible, he rose out of the dirt to find two armored campers bickering about where he could’ve gone. Danny decided to settle the argument swiftly.

“ I do not mean to harm you nor Camp Half-Blood, ” Danny echoed, trying to evoke some of that Clockwork-style mysticism, still invisible. “ I will be on my way. Uh, goodnight? ”

And with that awkward goodbye, Danny flew back up Half-Blood Hill, his flight accompanied by Clarisse’s guttural annoyed screams. When Danny alighted at Camp’s entrance to catch his breath, a sleepy Peleus raised his head and opened a shining reptilian eye. 

Danny froze in his tracks as Peleus met his gaze. 

Eventually, Peleus just snuffled and nodded before curling back around Thalia’s Tree to sleep once more. Danny quickly looked down to see if he was still invisible—which he was—and took a deep breath to settle his nerves. Rising into shaky flight, he darted through the magical border with no resistance, zipping back to his bunk in the Hades cabin before the inevitable adrenaline crash.

With a sigh and under his covers once more, Danny detransformed, leaving him battling against a wave of exhaustion that nearly knocked him out cold. Weakly, Danny peeked over the side of his top bunk to make sure Nico was still asleep. Based on Nico’s snoring and weak gnawing of the pillow he was cuddling (and that Nico wouldn’t be caught dead doing that while awake), Danny felt pretty confident that Nico was none the wiser to Danny’s nighttime escapade.

Sprawling back across his bunk, Danny’s breath hitched as he looked at the ceiling above. He’d been half-expecting the glow-in-the-dark star stickers of his childhood bedroom, ready to be counted and traced in new constellations like he always did after a rough night patrolling Amity Park. 

Maybe he could figure out that Iris Messaging thing he’d heard someone mention in passing, check up on Jazz, Sam, and Tucker. That might make him feel better. He’d love to hear Jazz ramble about a new psychology book or Sam and Tuck jokingly tease each other in a game of Doom. Danny craved the familiar in a world of uncertainty. 

He reached up towards the ceiling, too high to brush with his straining fingers. Too far, too out of reach. 

There were no more stars, no trace of normalcy, no sliver of the place he once thought of as home.  

Chapter Text

“My lady’s garden is beautiful, no?”

Danny whipped around to see the Lord of the Dead entering a garden full of bejeweled fruit and flowering trees. Danny took a shuddering breath—or at least the dream equivalent—to settle his nerves.

“It…is…” Danny said carefully, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, his stomach plummeting the closer Hades stepped. “Do you mind telling me why I’m here, or do I need to figure that out myself?”

Danny watched as Hades strode past him, the silvery hints of skeletal embroidery in his flowing suit jacket glinting like fallen coins from a dead man’s hand in the dim light of the Underworld. He shivered as he caught sight of Hades’ outstretched palm reaching out to pluck a glistering gem-like pomegranate from the nearest bough. Hades turned it about in his palm, casually studying it with a critical eye before shifting that piercing gaze onto Danny himself.

Danny half-expected the god to launch into a “To Be Or Not To Be”-esque monologue, only for Hades to ask, “Would you like some fruit, dear child? I can’t imagine what they feed you at Camp is all that appetizing, what with the bug juice and all.”

Images of electric green sentient meatloaf and half-rotted experiments in the kitchen fridge sprung to mind. Danny was about to protest that he had never been so well-fed until his arrival at Camp, only for a tart, saccharine scent to pierce through the misty Underworld haze, through his dream. Was he dreaming? Everything didn’t feel exactly real, yet too much, but— 

The pomegranate smelled like home, like ectoplasm, like death, only more sweet. 

Like a reverse Blood Blossom, Danny felt himself drawn to the fruit, if only to study it, he promised himself. It was weird, but Danny couldn’t quite tell if it was a good weird or not. Between one blink and the next, half a pomegranate sat in his palms, staining them red like blood. 

The smell grew stronger, more cloying, the juicy flesh close to his lips and—

“ HUSBAND! ” a voice thundered, startling Danny into dropping the fruit, the sparkling seeds scattering across the earth. “ What are you doing? ”

Queen Persephone marched across the turf, her billowing skirts kicking up in a wind that Danny was sure hadn’t been there seconds before, fury ripe in her tone. Ripe like the—

“Pomegranates!” she spat in Hades’ face, jabbing a pointed finger in her husband’s chest, “Of all the things…that’s what you thought would work to keep the boy here? Everyone knows my story. He must want to stay of his own volition—he will not trust you otherwise.” 

Hades huffed. “Would it not be a good idea for him to have refuge here if the negotiations on Olympus continue to be divisive? A ‘plan B,’ as the mortals say?” 

The mention of Olympus snapped Danny back to his senses. “What’s going on with Olympus?” he asked, “Is Thanatos okay—? Wait. Did you guys try to poison me with a pomegranate?!”

“It’s not poisonous,” Hades sniffed, “not to Underworld spawn like you, anyway.”

“You would have either been comatose or bound to the Underworld for a significant portion of the year,” Persephone cut in, fidgeting with a shimmering metal band on her left ring finger, nearly out of sight, “For better, or for worse.” She then turned to Hades, “I wish to Claim this one as much as you, Husband, but we would be foolhardy to do so when his Father is actively campaigning for the boy’s freedom as a Child of Death.”

The word “Claim,” rang in Danny’s ears, the emphasis put on it shaking him to his core. There was something off about it. “‘Claim…’” Danny tested, “like what the gods”—he suddenly remembered his audience—“what you guys are supposed to do before your kids turn 13? I’m not your guys’ kid. You do know that, right? Thanatos kinda already made his parental status violently known last time I had one of these wacked-up Underworld dreams.” 

Hades shifted uncomfortably. How often is it that you get to say that you made a deity nervous? 

…and that’s why the gods were arguing about Danny’s existence in the first place, wasn’t it? 

Danny thought about how often he ticked off high-ranking ghosts in the Ghost Zone just for meddling with their arbitrary status quos. Yeah…it was. It definitely was. 

Then Danny noticed the faint trace of disappointment mixed in with the king and queen’s nervousness and…anger? “Wait. Were you…trying to magically adopt me? Why—”

Before Danny could get a clear response, his consciousness was pulled away from Hades’ castle. His senses swirled in frigid darkness, cutting through to his very soul—normally he basked in the cold, but this was different. Sinister. 

Claws of cold caressed his face and black void-like eyes pierced through his mind like an ice pick. Fractures splintered through his skull as a face flickered through dozens of conflicting features before settling on one visage he knew all too well. 

“ Spectra? ” Danny choked out a whisper. 

Devil-spiked red hair morphed into black flames, but her eyes remained haunting pools of darkness. 

“ I’ll get what I want soon enough, little hero. ”

Even by the time he got to the dining pavilion, Danny was still on edge. And so was over half of Camp, if the nervous whispers and unnerving side eyes his direction meant anything. 

“Did you see how the new kid just talked with that ghost yesterday?” 

“Ghost? I thought we agreed it was an automaton.”

“So spooky…”

“Serious heebie-jeebies vibes!”

“New kid creeps me out.”

“None of this was happening until the new kid showed up.”

“Somebody call the Ghostbusters!”

That last comment almost made Danny laugh, if not for everything else preceding it. Even in the chaos of breakfast, he could only focus on the waves of negativity rolling off his fellow campers. 

Across from him, Nico was idly rambling about Jason and Percy’s godly-parent-finding plan for Danny after breakfast, but Danny didn’t pay it much mind in favor of pushing a rather pathetic amount of now cold scrambled eggs around his plate. 

Nico then paused. “Oh, my bad. I got off-topic. You were about to say something about the weird dream you had last night?”

At just the wrong moment, Danny looked up to respond and caught the half-awake eye of Clovis a few tables over, head of the Hypnos cabin. Clovis’ dad was the god of dreams and sleep, and Danny had recently picked up that Hypnos was apparently Thanatos’ brother. Clovis had met Danny before Danny knew Thanatos was his godly parent. From Danny’s hazy half-remembered feelings of their interactions, he did not want to rekindle that feeling of weakness around his apparent half-cousin. What if Clovis could read his mind and figure out—   

“Fun fact!” a young voice trilled from Danny’s side, making him startle back to reality. Before he or Nico could respond, Marie (or at least he was pretty sure that was the daughter of Athena’s name) continued, “Did you know that those scrambled eggs come from a de-hy-dra-ted egg slurry? It makes a funky powder!”

Danny pushed his plate away, a sudden queasiness overtaking his stomach. “Uh, that’s…so…cool. You’re Marie, right? Daughter of Athena?” She nodded. “Shouldn’t Annabeth be watching over you?” 

Marie giggled and with a grin that shouldn’t be so sharp for her age, whispered, “ I escaped. ” She then jumped up on Danny’s bench, swiped a few ketchup packets lying on the table, and stared Danny down as she shoved them in the front pocket of her overalls. 

“Leave us alone,” Nico snapped. “We were having a private conversation.”

Her giggles harshly cut off. “How you said that was rude! ” Marie admonished. “Fun fact! If you don’t apologize and answer my questions, I’ll start crying and make a scene. Then other campers will get mad at you.” Tears started welling up in her eyes and she let out a particularly loud sniffle.

Nico’s eyes widened and he let out a soft curse before stumbling into stilted apologies.

“And promise to answer my questions?” Marie sniffled.

Danny hastily agreed, looking around at some of the campers who were beginning to take notice. He didn’t need people to hate him for making a kid cry on top of everything else.

“Fantabulous!” She removed her chunky glasses and wiped her tears away with her sleeve before readjusting them on her face a little lopsided. They caught the light and flashed menacingly in tandem with her grin as she settled in a little frog squat right next to Danny. A small stone of dread dropped in his stomach. “You really should be more careful with who you promise things to. Fun fact! That’s probably the fastest I’ve ever seen anyone fold!”

Danny groaned and made a mental note to never introduce Dani to Marie. The kind of socially manipulative chaos they would bring together would not be pretty. “What do you want, Marie?”

She studied the big plastic ketchup bottle still on the Hades table, squinting with one eye before tracing her front overall pocket, likely trying to figure out if it would fit. She reached out with a grubby little hand but Nico moved it closer to him, leveling her with a glare. “You do know the rules about sitting at tables that aren’t your godly parent’s, right? You could be—”

“ Duh, ” Marie cut him off, still eyeing the ketchup bottle in Nico’s hand. “That’s why I’m not sitting. I’m squatting like a frog, ribbit-ribbit! Technically not breaking the rules. Now that that’s out of the way…did you summon that ghost yesterday, Danny?”

He knit his eyebrows at the sudden question and began to stumble over his words. “What? No! He must’ve followed me from back home. I’ve been trying to get him to stop bothering me for ages—what…what are you doing?”

Marie paused her pretend scribbling in a pretend notebook to tuck a pretend pen behind her not-pretend ear and explained all that pretty much verbatim to Danny. “It helps me remember!”

Nico grumbled. “You asked your question. Now, leave. Please, for the love of—”

“Fun fact! I said ‘questions!’” Marie chirped, clicking her pretend pen with a click of her tongue for emphasis. “So…Danny showed up to Camp with a weird death vibe like Nico, a Stygian iron-rimmed shield, Mrs. O’Leary—a hellhound from the Underworld —loving you pretty much instantly, and made a… ghost go away just by talking.”

“I resent ‘weird death vibe,’” Nico frowned. “But yes. Now we’ve answered your question s. Plural. Now, go. ”

“Nope! That was just a reiteration of my observations and facts! Fun fact: I love facts!” 

Danny rolled his eyes, taking note of how the campers in the dining pavilion were beginning to meander out. “Oh, really? I couldn’t tell.”

Marie nodded very seriously. “They are my favorite-est thing,” she stressed, as if it were of the utmost importance that Danny and Nico knew that. 

“I bet!” Danny then made an exaggerated show of looking back and forth before leaning close to Marie to say in a stage whisper, “Did you know that I have a favorite fun fact?”

Marie gasped. “Really?! Rarely anyone outside of my cabin ever has one ready to go! Ohmygosh, I gotta know! Tell me-tell me-tell me! What’s your favorite fun fact?”

“Well…my favorite one is probably that our current theory as to how the moon was created is that a baby planet named Theia smashed into the earth, and bam! All the debris that got kicked up coalesced into the moon!” Danny said with a self-satisfied smile, looking over Marie’s head at a familiar blonde-haired grey-eyed camp counselor marching over to the Hades table. “And fun fact! That makes questions. Plural.”

Marie’s awed and excited expression took a steep nosedive, not too different than when Danny gave Youngblood a similar runaround in the past. “But—”

“ Marie! ” Annabeth shouted over the dining pavilion clean-up, making Marie bolt upright to stand on the bench.

“For the record, me and a buncha others are betting on Melinoë for your parent!” Marie said before leaping onto the table, stealing the big plastic bottle of ketchup from Nico’s hand as he instinctively shielded his head with the other. She then stumbled into a dive roll off the table and darted away, leaving Annabeth to vault over the table much more gracefully, chasing after the giggling girl to the outside.

“Go, Wise Girl!” Percy cheered as most of the remaining campers in the dining pavilion ignored the chaos. (The Hermes kids notably encouraged Marie’s mischievous thievery.) 

“Is breakfast usually like this?” Danny joked, “Annabeth better catch -up to Marie! You know, since she has all the—”

“ Ketchup, I know.” Nico rolled his eyes at Danny’s terrible joke. “C’mon. We’ll meet Percy and Jason at the Big House for what they claimed should be a not-deadly activity.”

Danny bit his tongue at the instinctive “half-dead” joking response. “Oh, yeah?”

“Hopefully. You’ll just be helping the Demeter cabin unpack and sort a new shipment of flowers and seeds and stuff. Mostly nonmagical stuff, but this mostly to see if you have any kind of green thumb like Persephone.”

A small wave of relief washed over Danny and a cocky half-grin stretched across his face. “Oh, yeah! Chiron told me yesterday that the Demeter Cabin was making tea and whatever.” Then he said more lowly, “I once dealt with a massive plant ghost back in Amity. Dealing with these smaller non-ghost plants should be a piece of cake!”

Upon walking into the spare room in the Big House the Demeter cabin was borrowing for the day, Danny realized that, no, this would not be a piece of cake. 

Firstly, he remembered his dream about Persephone and Hades wanting to Claim him. And how he…denied them. He was on the Big House’s baby blue wraparound deck—which was covered in new plants, part of Perspehone’s domain—surrounded by Persephone’s half-siblings (the other children of Demeter) and a handful of tree nymphs. So, he was basically walking on eggshells. Secondly, overwhelming pungent scents of at least three dozen different plants assaulted Danny’s nose, everything from harsh lavender to cloying rose, and was that acrid spice some sort of weird chili pepper? 

Yeah, so Danny was a little screwed. And not to mention that Nico and Jason were leaving him and Percy to fend for themselves??

“My summoned storms could in theory water the seedlings, but I’m still working on the whole, uh, ‘precision’ thing,” Jason admitted. “It wouldn’t do to have a mini hurricane knock over everything, now would it? And Nico—”

“Plants hate me,” Nico said bluntly. “Though stalks of corn are okay with me since I was turned into one for a bit. But now I hate corn, so…” 

Before Danny could question what on Earth that meant, a daughter of Demeter who had introduced herself as Miranda Gardiner shooed Jason and Nico away with a summoned vine. She then dismissed it with a grumble and wiped her hands on her jeans before shooting Danny and Percy a tense smile. “You guys are helping us out today? Cool-cool-cool. Awesome. This won’t end horribly…just don’t handle anything breakable, okay? And we’re still missing one nymph…”

“I’m here!” cried a familiar voice, “I’m here—Danny?” Yew skidded to a halt, nearly tripping over the last of the Big House steps in her attempt to stop. “I haven’t seen you since that whole letter thing in the woods and— you. ”

Yew leveled a glare at Percy who gulped. “Um, hi? Do I…know you?”

“No, but you’re about to!” They marched up to Percy and jabbed a finger at his chest. “You sent Danny into the woods without a sword—”

“I didn’t want one—” Danny tried to amend, but no one heard.

“—and without enough foresight just to deliver a letter! I just found him wandering alone next to my tree! How could you—”

“Hey! You don’t have all the details, um, what’s your name?”

“Yew.”

“Me?”

“No, Yew. ”

“‘You,’ like, your name is also ‘Percy?’ Or…”

“ Break it up! ” Miranda exploded, separating the two with a vine. She furiously gestured as she continued, “Yew, work with Danny and show him the ropes. Percy, direct the rainwater stored in those barrels to the seedling irrigation system. Senior campers, start repotting what needs repotting. Tree nymphs—who are not Yew—start transporting the seedlings after they’ve been repotted. Newer campers, you organize the dried plants for herbal tea blends and medicinal ones for infirmary purposes. Now go, or so help me, Demeter, I will slap you upside the head with the garden hose!”

“Why would you slap me specifically upside the head with a garden hose?” Yew asked in a hurt tone. “Am I really that awful?”

Miranda gripped the sides of her head and let out a long-suffering groan. “Y-O-U, Yew. Not ‘Yew,’ your name, but Y-O-U. Why can’t you go by ‘Taxus Canadensis’ or ‘Canada Yew,’ again?”

“Those names don't really feel like me,” Yew shrugged. “Besides, they’re both a bit of a mouthful and if you said them in full all the time, I think you’d get a bit of a headache!” She giggled at Miranda’s suggestion as if it were the silliest thing in the world. 

“I’m getting a headache right now!” Miranda complained with a sigh before collecting herself. “Everyone, please, just…just get to work. I need to go get some ibuprofen from the infirmary for totally unrelated reasons.”

Once the Big House door slammed shut behind her, an older tree nymph clapped her hands together and began herding everyone to their jobs with short, clipped orders. Yew then began showing Danny around each little workstation, jumping between explanations quickly enough for Danny to not get bored. And as Yew finished describing how Camp had barrels spread along the Camp’s perimeter to collect rainwater because the magical weather shield around Camp usually prevented such things, she gave Danny a friendly shoulder bump and fixed him with a slightly anxious expression.

“Has Percy been being mean to you?” Yew leaned in to whisper.  

Danny blinked, glancing over at Percy who had his tongue sticking out in concentration as he manipulated thin streams of water to go directly down to some plants’ roots as per the instruction of some senior campers. “What? No! He’s chill. Um, why do you ask?”

Yew pursed their chlorophyll-stained lips. “Just…just making sure. Sending you in the woods alone seemed a bit like hazing, sort of like some of the Ares campers sometimes do to the newbies. Not to say I don’t appreciate the work of a two-time savior of Olympus, but…powerful demigods like him scare me a little. He may be laughing and smiling now”—the stream of water he was manipulating spurted in his face and he and the surrounding people laughed at his silly mistake—“but who’s to say in the future? Who’s to say that he couldn’t make the river in the woods do something similar to that little stream in his hands? He could wipe away the whole forest if he tried! Maybe if he didn’t really try, too…”

“You told him off because you were worried he was being mean to me, though,” Danny pointed out, confused. He noticed Percy trying and failing to help clean up the soaked paper lunch bags that’d been blasted to mush in the errant water explosion. So much for keeping the dried plants organized.

“I was doing what’s right,” she agreed, “But that doesn’t stop me from feeling scared.”

Danny didn’t know what to say to that besides an inappropriate “Big Mood,” so he said nothing.

“The nymphs in ancient myth were often the subject of…terrible abuse from the most powerful beings and their children,” Yew said carefully. She fearfully looked up at the sky like she was afraid the bright blue openness would darken with clouds and thunder would strike her down for her insolence. When nothing happened, she let out a shaky sigh. “I’m just worried about what your friends like Percy may have planned for you.”

“But I’m not a nymph,” Danny said, his mouth too quick for his brain to catch the words before they spilled out. “Sorry, Yew. I—”

They frowned. “I saw what you did in the woods with the whole feral ice claws thing…you’re undoubtedly strong, but you’re…you’re still friends with people in high places. People with power. Power can go to people’s heads sometimes.”

Danny’s mind flashed back to interactions he’d had with Vlad, Undergrowth, more ghosts than he could count, and even more recently to the likes of gods like Hades or Persephone. Regular humans too could be corrupted by power. 

“...I’ll keep that in mind, Yew,” Danny promised. “But today Percy is just trying to help me figure out if Persephone is my godly parent or not. Who knows, Yew? Maybe you and I can be death-and-plants-related buddies!”

Yew forced a halfhearted laugh. “Maybe. We should go help the newbie campers with the dried plants for teas and medicine. The other tree nymphs are a bit less inclined to handling, ahem, dead plants than I am. Yew trees symbolize death and all that. Can you grab some more paper lunch bags from inside, by the way? They should be in the kitchen. The ones your friend sprayed with water are soiled. That’s not in the good way, just so you know. Potting soil, I mean.” 

Danny shot Yew some finger guns and went off on the oh-so-dangerous quest of looking for paper bags inside the Big House. And wasn’t that just a wild thing to do? They weren’t ghostly paper bags that the entire fate of a town rested on, nor were they guarded by some fearing-for-being-skinned-for-your-pelt-worthy monster or ghost. 

His mind flashed back to Amity Park at that thought, which would be considered weird in any other context. Skulker had said that Danny’s par—um, the Fentons? That the Fentons—the Dr. Fentons, that is—had become more ruthless in their attempts to combat any ghosts that crossed their path. 

Danny shivered at the thought. 

After he dealt with all this plant stuff on the Big House deck, he’d find some secluded spot to try out this whole amazing “Iris Messaging” thing he’d heard so much about. Maybe—

“—are you sure that would be wise?” Danny heard Chiron ask.

Danny froze, an apology and explanation all in one on his lips before realizing that Chiron wasn’t speaking to him. The old floorboards beneath his feet creaked in protest at the sudden stop. Behind the closed door off to his right, he recognized the tell-tale sides of an apparently one-sided conversation punctuated by an occasional muffled response. A phone call. (Or maybe an Iris Message?) Now, Danny had been told that Camp Half-Blood had some basic technology that was guarded well enough away from monsters tracking it, but he hadn’t realized how much he missed the familiarity of technology, no matter how basic.

(Danny resolutely promised himself that he wouldn’t let Tucker nor Technus catch wind of such a confession.)

“That’s very generous of you,” Chiron continued, surprised. “But I should warn—no, I don’t mean to insinuate that you don’t know how to defend your—”

Danny should really stop half-listening in. He should just keep moving forward like nothing happened.

But a little ghostly listen-in wouldn’t hurt, right? a part of Danny wondered, If I don’t get more of the full story, then I would be misinformed. And that’s almost as bad as not having all the information! 

Willing himself to float a centimeter or two off the ground, Danny successfully avoided any more squeaking floorboards and pressed his ear to the surprisingly open crack between the door and its frame.

“...you’ve handled ghosts more often than monsters? What do you—oh, I do suppose that makes sense. Perhaps we can exchange tips and strategies when you visit.” Chiron hesitated before continuing, “We’ve actually had a tad ghost problem at Camp recently. Our resident Underworld expert was a bit…uncertain about how to proceed concerning it at our most recent counselor meeting, not to mention two of the campers on border patrol hearing what they claimed was the disembodied voice of a spirit.”

A muffled response including the word “help” replied. 

Okay, that’s it! Danny thought. He pressed closer to the door before quickly looking around the hall, taking a deep breath, and turning his whole body invisible and intangible with no small amount of effort. He forced his body to stretch thin through the gap like elastic ectoplasmic putty. Danny silently cursed his recently unruly powers as he forced his body to obey his command. He couldn’t be weak, not now. This was important. Somehow.

Danny found himself in a room that seemed like it was part office with the desk covered in assorted knick nacks and empty chairs but also part apartment with the various records and vinyls that lined bronze-lined walls, among a few other notably more “homey” things. Danny was fairly certain that “regular” offices—whatever that meant—didn’t have strings of polaroids of dozens of kids and teens in bright orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirts or some of those same kids in photos haphazardly organized in multi-segmented picture frames holding up various diplomas, awards, and particularly concerning science fair projects. Danny even caught a glimpse of what looked like a young Annabeth with a missing-tooth grin holding up some kind of pipe cleaner model building that now sat proudly on top of one of Chiron’s filing cabinets.

“Would you be interested in seeing if you can assist us?” Chiron asked levelly, eyes lingering on the walls of the room covered in decades of memory made physical, snapshots of love and life in its best moments.

“Can I bring along…” mumble-mumble.

Mumble-mumble. “I suppose,” Chiron sighed.

Danny now found himself hovering a little more than an arm’s length away from the ancient trainer of heroes, holding his breath. This protector would do anything in his power to make sure his pupils, these kids whose images lined these walls, would live .

Through the static in his mind and across the phone, Danny could only glean the disconcerting tone from the person on the line’s other side. “We would be delighted. ”

An unbidden overwhelming fear surged through Danny and he flew from Chiron’s office faster than Casper High students seeing the mystery meat menu at the cafeteria. In seconds, Danny turned solid and visible outside the empty Big House kitchen just as he caught the end of Chiron’s displeased hum at his ajar door down the hall. Danny let out a deep breath, and quickly found and grabbed the paper lunch bags on the counter before fiddling with the window latch above the sink and awkwardly shimmying out.

Danny followed the wraparound porch back to the plant extravaganza at the Big House’s front steps with little issue, tracing the white-painted lacelike woodwork along the handrails, trying to calm himself in the face of some supposed “ghost expert” arriving at camp…at some point. Likely soon. Whenever it was, Danny hoped he was long gone by then. At least for a few days.

“Danny? Did you take the scenic route or something?” Percy joked as Danny rounded the corner. “That was way longer than a few minutes, dude!”  

“Or something…have you seen Yew? They wanted me to grab these bags for them.” Danny shifted the bags in his arms for emphasis and bounced nervously on his feet, anything to avoid eye contact with Percy.

Danny caught what he assumed was a displeased hum from Percy. Or maybe it wasn’t. Danny just wanted to complete this social activity and be done. “Last I saw, they were helping a newer camper with nose plugs and a face mask and stuff. The kid’s sensitive to extreme smells, which has gotta suck for a child of Demeter who deals with those kinds of plants on a semi-regular basis.”

Danny made a mental note to ask for some nose plugs of his own since some of the plants’ scents were straight-up terrible and super-turbo-mega cough-inducing. 

Percy then pointed over Danny’s shoulder to Yew, whose chlorophyll-green hands were now stained in every color of the rainbow and covered in dirt, waving Danny over-enthusiastically. He nodded a goodbye to Percy and followed Yew’s instruction to dump his armful of paper bags on a nearby folding table. Danny wrinkled his nose and let out a loud sneeze-cough that left his throat sore. What on Earth was in the air? Some kind of magical kiwi, maybe? The buzzing choking tingle was similar to the one he got when he drank half-off strawberry kiwi smoothies with Sam and Tucker that one time. 

A few younger campers promptly descended on the pile of paper bags like dirt-covered seagull goblins. With teasing shrieks and stupid childish sibling insults, they began sorting through the homemade teabag sachets they’d made earlier when Danny wasn’t there. Some of them stole bits of plant parts from the too-full tea sachets such as licorice or dandelion root. 

“Hey, Yew?” Danny coughed, “Do ya have any extra noseplugs ’r masks lying around? I think there’s some sort of kiwi-something ’round here thas makin’ my allergies ack up.”

They shot him a sympathetic look. “Not on me right now, sorry. Maybe you could check in the infirmary? That’s what we did for Aspen over there.” Yew gestured over at a young kid wearing a black N95 face mask speckled with mud and smiley face stickers, flicking more mud at their siblings. She then paused. “Wait, did you say kiwi?”

Danny nodded, feeling his throat tighten.

“...we don’t have anything kiwi-related on the list for today.”

“Not even magic somethin’-somethin’ kiwi whatevers?”

Some of the younger Demeter kids started chanting the scientific names of the dried plants in the tea blends they packed into each brown paper lunch bag, like some sort of sing-songy game only they were privy to. 

“Glycyrrhiza glabra, matricaria recutita! Lavandula, calendula! ”

Yew frowned. “No, but just take it easy, okay? Maybe you can sit this one out, or I can find you a new task, or—”

“It’s fine. I can handle it!” Danny sniffled, puffing his chest out with a forced smile that he’d practiced so much to not look forced. He had to put on a brave face as Phantom for civilians, even when he was hurting and really didn’t feel like it. Another wave of itchiness worked its way down his throat. Okay, especially when he didn’t feel like it. “If you say there’s no kiwi, then there’s no kiwi. If there’s no kiwi, then ’m fine. ’S probably jus’ all the dust thas b’n kicked up.” Danny wiped his nose with his shirt sleeve.

“Taraxacum officinale, rosa canina! Aurum malum, nelumbo nucifera! ”   

“If you say so,” Yew said, wrinkling their nose at Danny’s snot-covered sleeve, “You know your limits and body better than I do. But if you need a break, then take one. ” 

Danny flinched at her rose thorn-sharp tone, followed by an awkward and hasty mock salute that the younger kids laughed at. Satisfied, Yew began directing him in how their sorting system worked. Medicinal teas there, magical herbs for sleepytime tea here, don’t put that one there since the sachet is broken! 

Danny tried to lose himself in the monotony of sorting and Yew excused themself with a sigh to track down a mask for Danny since he couldn’t seem to stop freaking coughing. They returned with an N95 and a handful of tissues which helped somewhat, but not nearly enough. Snot kept dribbling under the mask and his eyes watered while his throat ached as he tried not to cough from the overwhelming almost spicy scent of something nearby , but he was determined to push through despite Yew’s insistence for him to take a break. Hm. They sounded kinda like Sam ’n Tuck… 

“ Mentha piperita, sanguis flos! ”

Danny grabbed the next sachet a kid passed him to sort and his whole hand erupted in burning pain. A red vaporous haze filled his senses, cloyingly sweet with acrid spice. 

Danny couldn’t breathe, soiled mask. Mask off. Flecks of deep bruise-like purple and blood red.

Worse-worse-worse.  

Burns trailing to the face, nose, everywhere. He heard a scream, but it sounded far away. Voices clamored. His mouth filled with the harsh metallic tang of blood. Blue filled Danny’s vision. Oh. His face was now pressed into the Big House deck. That made sense.

Blink…

Blink...

Blink…

Hands underneath and up-up-up! Strange cot, Will Solace above. Too-bright infirmary. That also made sense. And Clovis, too? That made less sense.

Sleep, Danny. Go to sleep. Please, we’ll heal you, and you rest. 

Latin, Latin, Latin. 

.

.

. 

Sanguis flos. 

I remember-I don’t-I remember-I don’t.

You do. 

Sanguis flos. 

. 

.

.

Blood Blossoms.

Chapter Text

Pain followed Danny to sleep like how misery finds company, creeping yet ruthless and unfortunately expected. With the stinging aftermath of so many skirmishes well into the wee hours of the night fading to misty Amity Park mornings before school, Danny was more than used to the hurt before rest. This time just seemed to be more abrupt than usual. 

“ I’ll get what I want soon enough, little hero. ”

Danny forced away the too-real impressions of frigid darkness and swirling void-dark eyes, trying to remember his recently forgotten post Nocturn mantras. 

Am I dreaming? 

In the unforgiving void, Danny pinched himself but felt no pain. 

Is this real?

Icy talons trailed up his spine, stopping to dance around his neck. 

This feels real, but isn’t. It isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t. I am in a—

“Dream?” the sinister cold laughed. It was an echoey, haunted thing without humor. “Try…a nightmare.”

Flashes of color flitted just in the corner of Danny’s vision. A spike of red, a hint of inky shadow. 

“…Spectra?” Danny hazarded a guess. 

Like a wasp buzzing too close to one’s ear—that sense of awareness of danger but not fully comprehending the visual threat—the spikes of red morphed to a wisp of blue, black, and green heralded by a dozen jingling coins. Blocky red and green followed a choked metallic roar. A wave of neon blue heat, a devil’s chord. 

Voices both familiar and not crashed together in tsunamis of sound, grating and difficult to overcome. Some cried for reprieve, others revenge. How could you leave me-where are you-die a full death, Phantom!  

I’m sorry! Danny tried to say, I’m sorry! But the words caught in his throat, a frigid lump unmoved by a burning want reminiscent of Blood Blossoms. 

“I know you, little hero, a split down to the bone. Remember this: I will get what I deserve in the end.”

Clawing promises tore into Danny’s very being, plunging deep into the darkest parts of his psyche. 

“No one else understands you. I do.”

“Let go and I will keep you from harm. I will protect you from others.”

Danny tensed. 

“Ah…I see, now. Let go and I will protect others from you. ”

A desperate part of Danny he never knew still plagued him almost reached out, the part forever haunted by The Ultimate Enemy. Almost. So frighteningly close to “almost definitely, ” it scared him. 

“That’s it,” the sinister cold purred. “Let go, let go…”

Danny was drowning. There was no other explanation. Promises so saccharine sweet they could give cavities flooded his dream, too overwhelming. Danny pulled uselessly at the clawed promises choking him out, only for his efforts to be marred by failure. He couldn’t do this. He had no way to fight back against the unseen threat, no voice. 

And so, for the first time, Danny did exactly as told. His body went slack and the oppressive darkness around him let out crackles of cackling laughter, crying victory. 

Only, Danny was never one to give up. Even if he lost, he would make sure the bad guys wouldn’t win. 

Danny summoned all his waning power and prayed to anyone who would listen. 

And then, Danny wailed. 

The sinister cold recoiled yet still tried to force its way back to Danny, even as he tore his throat raw and let loose his unabashed fear in one continuous shockwave of sound. The power didn’t quite translate in a dream, but it was enough, and so was Danny’s intent. 

Danny often had to work with percentages of success and survival below failing, if Tucker’s PDA calculations were to be trusted (which Danny did). He beat the odds time and time again, even if he got knocked down the first time. Danny knew how to come back stronger with a few tricks up his sleeve—he had to if he wanted to continue his existence on the mortal plane, halfway or otherwise. 

And since acknowledging that he did indeed live in a world where gods walked the earth, including his own biological father, Danny had come to learn of the power of prayer. He’d also figured that if the intent was potent enough, a single wailing word would suffice. 

H̷̥͔̟̰̀E̸͎̼̝̥͆̒̐L̶̠̃̄̌̕͜P̶͈̐̑!̴̬̎̚̚̕

To Danny’s relief, the sucker punch from one nightmare reality to the next was swift, and he at least he knew how to handle gods. Enough. 

‘Enough’ would have to suffice. 

Danny struggled to gain his bearings, crossing his fingers that the deity who saved him wouldn’t be too ticked. While stiflingly overprotective as Thanatos could be, Danny wished for someone like him, if not him. As if someone had heard his prayers (and someone definitely had answered his prayer to be saved, Danny joked to himself), the figure before him looked like…

“Da—Thanatos?”

The familiar-looking figure laughed lightly, a soft thing, but soft in the way a tangled blanket smothering your mouth and nose in the morning after a deep sleep was soft. Instead of massive shadowy wings curling around his back that made Danny want to hide behind for a sense of safety and protection, two little inky wings fluttered near the person’s temples, a stark contrast to the world of swirling white and golden dust clouds that surrounded them and Danny. 

“Not quite, nephew. But I can see how you may mistake me for my twin.”

Danny’s brain sputtered to a halt. Nephew? Twin?

“Your look of confusion is endearing,” the god noted, “I can see why Thanatos has talked about you so much.”

Danny flushed. “Thanks? Uh…” he tried to remember his manners in the presence of a being who rescued him yet could still smite Danny with a pinky, “Lord…”

“Hypnos,” he supplied lazily, and Danny’s brain ran around in circles as he tried to place the name. It was familiar, but his brain felt so fuzzy and sleepy and every other thought drifted away so they couldn’t connect in a cohesive picture. The air smelled like warm milk and gusts of sand rolled in the air, pockets of others’ dreams morphing and twisting in and out of existence. “I am Hypnos, the god of sleep, but to you, I am Uncle.”

“You…saved me,” Danny said lamely. “Thanks. But can I ask how? ’Cause it was really weird…worse nightmares than usual and…yeah.”

Hypnos’ lazy expression turned grim, something that suddenly reminded Danny that this was Death’s brother. “The allure of nightmares may have swayed you, but my influence over the realm of sleep, my dominion, makes such nuisances cow. Nightmares, dreams, sleep paralysis…they are all mine to command. Very few have that sort of power and fewer still can surpass me in such matters.” 

Danny nodded, tense. He’d hate to meet someone more powerful than what Hypnos had displayed, but knowing his luck and track record, some rando would no doubt pop up at Camp’s borders ready to drive him crazy with nightmares. Maybe they’d at least make it interesting and pop Danny in an “IRL Five Nights at Freddy’s” experience thingy like Sam had raved about a while back. Whatever that was. 

“Come now, nephew,” Hypnos said, summoning a steaming mug of something to his hand, which he then passed to Danny. Marshmallows in the shape of cartoony stars and crescent moons bobbed at the top—likely  hot cocoa. “Watch with me for a while. You are a source of entertainment and interest on Olympus as of late. You at least deserve to know why that’s the case.”

Danny studied the chibi ghost-decorated mug in his hands. Hypnos’ gesture felt familiar to a camper he’d met… 

“My son protects those who cannot protect themselves.” That voice! Danny knew that voice. 

“Da—Thanatos?” Danny asked softly to himself. Hypnos ushered a wisp of sand closer and Danny peered in a fragment of a dream. He would’ve tripped face-first into it if not for Hypnos pulling him back. 

“Careful, now,” Hypnos warned. “It wouldn’t do well to burst into someone’s dream so suddenly, would it? Especially someone half-asleep. We are only here to watch.”

Danny paused. “Half-asleep?”

“It’s just a random wine-bearing satyr on the outskirts of the meeting. Awake enough to tend to duties, yet asleep enough to serve our purposes. Now hush, you’re missing the proceedings…”

Danny turned on Hypnos, casting his mug aside. Annoyingly, it didn’t shatter or spill to emphasize his point. “That’s not cool, man! It’s like…like long-distance possession! You’re using an innocent person to get what you want.”

“Once again, Lord Zeus, my son’s compassion is astounding, loyal to those he cares about,” Thanatos’ muffled words echoed from swirling golden sand. 

“What does that matter?” Hypnos shrugged. “It’s easy to learn what you wouldn’t otherwise this way.”

“How can you prove that he will be loyal to Olympus, then?” a rumbling voice boomed in response to Thanatos. “We all remember what happened the last time a half-blood turned his back on the gods.” Off to the side, a god with a winged helm and a snake-entwined staff flinched. “Parts of Olympus are still being rebuilt by my daughter’s child! Who would endorse the son of Death who must prove himself—”

“Let that person go,” Danny gritted out. 

“If you're so sure, then it’s your loss,” Hypnos shrugged and ran a hand through the dream dust, dismissing any trace of Olympian discourse. His eyes then traced the lonely cup of cocoa tipped over by his feet. “Hm. No one ever seems to want the hot chocolate. That’s unfortunate.” 

The wires of memory Danny had been trying to connect for the past forever (ever since his first trip to the Camp infirmary) finally sparked to life, completing a circuit with a brilliant shining bulb. “You’re…you’re Clovis’ dad. He’s nicer than you. But still weird. He…he knew that we were cousins before I even knew about Thanatos! Why?”

Hypnos hummed, dragging golden dust with his fingertips, swirling new dreams into shape. “Normally I wouldn’t be too keen on answering the questions of a mortal who yelled at me…”

“You were being unfair to someone who’s…who’s innocent! ”

Hypnos fixed Danny with a glare harsher than any expression displayed on his face thus far. “Then I suppose you recognize the familial resemblance between my brother and I. Death isn’t fair, either.” He paused before continuing, “But you are no doubt interesting, young one, so I shall bestow what I know to stir the pot. In regards to Clovis, like recognizes like, nephew. Your cousin, my son, is unusually powerful in my realm. More than most.” 

“…what?”

Hypnos’ laugh rippled power across his golden realm. “Think of it like this: everyone’s dreams are in a hotel and Clovis often acts as an accidental bellhop with sensitive hearing. Your room in this metaphorical hotel sometimes has thin walls. In other words, your dreams can be loud, nephew. Loud and interesting to watch.” He then pulled a wisp of gold close to Danny’s face. “Look, and you will see for yourself.”

Instinctively, and against his usual self-preservation, Danny stood on his toes to get a better look at the sand that flattened into something more akin to a large looking glass. 

“I don’t see—” Before Danny could finish the thought, Hypnos lightly pushed him through the swirling sand that swiftly turned into a golden vortex. 

Hypnos only laughed. “Have fun, nephew!”

And Danny was gone, tumbling through golden sand like a pebble in a rockslide. He screamed, struggling to right himself, only to drop face first in the middle of—

“—a classroom?”

Danny surveyed his misty surroundings, somewhat faded on the edges like someone had painted a generic public school classroom—complete with flickering lights and graffitied creaky desks—in dull watercolor that hadn’t quite seeped to the edge of the paper. The “inspirational” posters around the room warped around the upbeat quotes, the text unreadable nonsense. Similarly, the clock seemed to twist and melt like that one old painting Danny was half paying attention to in an old art class. 

“Okay…funky words and weird clock. Check and check. Arm pinch?” Danny tested it and felt nothing. “No pain, so that's a triple check. I’m dreaming, still. Cool-cool-cool…”

Without warning, the world went dark. 

“How did you do on the exam? Well, that’s a hilarious question, Miss Fenton.”

Before Danny could question who on earth called him that, a spotlight appeared at the front of the room, highlighting two figures sitting on opposite sides of the teacher’s desk. On one end, a teacher Danny vaguely recognized as one of the AP Calc teachers at Casper High. And on the other…

“Jazz?” Danny tried to whisper, but the name stuck in his throat as he stood frozen in the darkness. 

“Please, Mr. Falluca, I can explain! You know I’m a good student. I was up late every night trying to stop my parents from hurting the ghosts before they stopped coming through the Fenton Works portal altogether and my baby brother got hurt and I’m worried sick and I haven’t been studying and—”

“That’s enough, Miss Fenton. I don’t want your excuses. You had a cheat sheet in your backpack, fell asleep during the exam, and failed to complete the 10,000 logarithmic functions in fifteen minutes. By failing this exam, you failed my class and failed all your others by extension. You failed your friends and family.”

Danny forced his legs to unfreeze and stomped toward the spotlight, each step growing more difficult than the last. Jazz was now actively sobbing out apologies as Mr. Falluca continued tearing into her. 

Danny slammed his hands on the desk, pleased by how loud the jarring bang! was, enough to catch Mr. Falluca’s attention. No stinging palms accompanied the strike either, so Danny had no small pain to ground himself and cull his righteous anger.

“What is the meaning—”

“Shut. The hell. Up! ” he seethed, eyes glowing green, the energy pulsing down to his palms. Danny rarely got the chance to help his loved ones as Danny the civilian, not Phantom the hero. But in his dreams? Well, he could act as a mix of both with no consequences. “You are a pathetic excuse of an educator with totally unrealistic expectations for your students. And shouting at my sister to the point of tears?”

“Little brother?” Jazz sniffed, but Danny wasn’t done yet. 

“And get a load of you, you big fat idiot! It’s actually kinda impressive how someone can be so stupid, nearly on Vlad Masters’ level, actively losing brain cells every time you open your mouth. Can you imagine that? Probably not because your brain is so small. Oh, and last I checked, school ended about a week ago, dumba— ”

“Danny!” Jazz said sternly. 

Danny groaned and inclined his head to face his sister. “What?” 

“Mr. Falluca…he…he poofed. A while ago, actually. He’s…gone.”

Sure enough, where the nightmarish Mr. Falluca once sat, nothing remained, not even the chair itself. Just completely…gone, like he’d never existed. 

“Oh,” Danny said dumbly. He then laughed awkwardly. “Ya know, I’ve heard of ‘going red with anger,’ but I guess I never thought about how I ‘go green’ instead.”

“And ‘go ghost,’ too!” Jazz weakly joked, still rubbing at her eyes. “I can’t believe it…normally I just have to sit there and wait until the teacher stops or remember that I’m dreaming so I can grow wings and fly out the window or something. Guess I missed Danny enough that you showed up instead.”

Danny froze, a horrified realization dawning on him. “Oh, Ancients. This isn’t my dream.” The world exploded in color, the spotlight dropping entirely. “It’s yours, Jazz.”

The reality pitched on its side and the last thing Danny heard before everything shifted was Jazz’s startled scream. 

“High-low-high!” a stern feminine voice chanted, then once more. “That’s it, Manson, keep it up!”

Manson? Hold on…

Wood on wood clashed, the clatter sharp yet sturdy.

Danny’s vision settled as he found himself on a balcony peering down on a dusty training pitch awash in smudged grey charcoal with messy dark hatching and violet highlights. Two figures swirled in harsh violet lines, one of which was definitely Sam—Danny would recognize that determination anywhere, even under swaths of leather armor mixed with civvie workout attire—furiously clashing with wood staffs. Dozens of other similarly dressed pairs, more hazy and shadowed than Sam and her sparring partner, did the same, effectively bringing life to the otherwise empty space. A heavily armored trainer weaved between the pairs, chanting “high-low-high!” and adjusting the posture of some warriors.

A bell rang out and the hazy sparring pairs and trainer dispelled into the aether, the focus now solely on Sam and her sparring partner who wore some kind of headscarf, a hijab, maybe? Headscarf gradually whirled to a halt, grinning and wiping away sweat with a sleeve. “You know, I’m glad that of the several thousand Valkyries, the captain at least has the sense to use our last names when we’re sparring together, Manson. You’re improving rather well, as well…you’ll make a fine official Valkyrie, yet!”

Suddenly, Sam whipped around her staff once more, which Headscarf blocked instinctively, followed by an expert disarming maneuver that sent Sam’s weapon flying away. She grunted and Headscarf lightly pinned Sam with the staff still in hand. “Why are you so belligerent? You accepted the role of Valkyrie to improve your combat and save souls, didn’t you? You need to learn when to fight and when to—”

“Shut up, al-Abbas!” Sam heaved, glaring at her sparring partner. “I know how to handle spirits and souls and stuff! I’ve been doing that for almost a year with my friends back in Amity and I don’t need someone telling me the ‘right way’ to do things. My methods work fine.” She scoffed, “And here I thought the daughter of Loki would be receptive to shaking up tradition up a little.” 

al-Abbas sighed, removed the staff from Sam’s solar plexus, and extended a hand. “You have a lot to learn, Sam. Not just about being a Valkyrie, but about—”

“Ugh, Freyja, I know.” Sam begrudgingly accepted the hand and stood. “Good ol’ ‘Mommy Dearest.’ But I won’t stop until I make a difference…you have a lot to learn about me, Samirah. ”  

Danny couldn’t even begin to process all of that, jaw gaping, eyes wide. He swayed on his feet, trying to steady himself on the balcony’s side.

“Just Sam, please,” she shot back, “unless you want me to call you Samantha. Or some equally terrible nickname. I think the guys on Floor Nineteen have a good track record with that, like ‘Beantown…’”

Then Danny tripped over the edge of oblivion and found himself falling, falling, falling…

Something caught Danny, jerking him to a halt amid a neon glow in the darkness, full of vast plains of trippy grids and flickering symbols. “Yo, what the actual—Danny?”

“Tucker?!” Danny craned his head to look up at one of his best friends, only to find Tuck’s face grafted on the body of— “Why are you a chicken?!”

Tucker groaned, readjusting his taloned grip on Danny’s shoulders. “My ba is an ibis, actually. Don’t freak out! Um…it’s temporary. Dream stuff? Yeah, temporary dream stuff. I’m still the ultra-amazing Too-Fine Tucker, just a bit…birdy. Let’s…let’s just find a solid place in the Duat where I can set you down, man.”

And Tucker did just that, alighting on a small floating island with a patch of neon green grass next to a boundless electric blue river that vaguely reminded Danny of an over-textured level of Doomed . Danny tried peering over the river’s edge to get a closer look but Tucker sharply extended a light brown and black-tipped wing, effectively blocking him. 

“I was just looking!” Danny complained. What he didn’t say was that he was trying to figure out if that was a good place to throw up should his sudden nausea and sense of wrong-wrong-wrong get the better of him.

Tucker pushed him fully away from the river and onto the grass with his wing. “Looking might’ve gotten you killed, man. Or lost forever? One of the two, but still equally bad. The Duat is ten kinds of freaky and I’ve already had a million lectures about not touching too many things in here.”

“The what-what?”

“The Du— ”

Danny’s brain caught up. “Oh, the Duat. Kinda looks a bit like the Ghost Zone, dontcha think?”

Tucker squinted. “Hm, sorta? Thoth told me that the Duat just sort of ‘is’ and bubbles under the mortal world like lava beneath the earth's crust. Mega weird, I know.”

Danny looked his friend’s form up and down before fixing him with an unimpressed look. “Dude, you are literally a chicken man right now. You have no room to talk.”

That seemed to ruffle Tucker’s feathers, literally and figuratively. “C’mon, man! I only just learned I could do this ”—he gestured vaguely everywhere—“and you’re dissing the bird? If I had hands right now, I’d be flipping the bird. ” They sat in silence for a moment before Tucker broke the tension with an awkward laugh. “And you’re not freaking out about me being a bird! How?”

“I’m a ghostly vigilante,” Danny deadpanned. “I stopped freaking out a long time ago. Can I ask… why the chicken?” 

“The ibis,” Tucker emphasized, “is apparently Thoth’s sacred animal, aside from baboons, of course.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “Of course.”

“...and Thoth is the Egyptian god of writing, wisdom, and, uh, magic. ” Tucker winced as if the fact was hard to admit. “He wants me to train to be a magician, of all things! Top hats and rabbits and—”

“This doesn’t look like top hats and rabbits to me,” Danny interrupted, noting a swarm of long neon pink worms floating past. Tucker’s bird talons twitched like he wanted to grab and slurp them down like noodles. “Do you want to be a magician, Tuck?”

Tucker shifted uncomfortably, feathers rustling. “There’s…there’s so much new information that hasn’t been cataloged, Danny!” he rushed out all in one breath, “Thoth told me the Twenty-First Nome—where I’d be learning magic—has salvaged spell scrolls from the Library of Alexandria! With my tech, I could uncover what the burned bits say, something no known spell can do with the warding enchantments! And you, of course, can’t take something magic like that to someone nonmagical to get that sort of thing done, and—”

“Do you want to be a magician, Tucker?” 

Tucker hid himself behind an awkward wing, one part guilty and ashamed, another part nervously excited. Danny knew how to read his friend after knowing him for so long, and he also knew when he was keeping a secret, even when said friend was part bird. He looked at him expectantly, waiting for Tucker to fold.

“The…the Twenty-First Nome is in Brooklyn,” Tucker admitted. “I’d have to leave Amity Park.”

Danny hissed a breath. He knew it wasn’t fair to make his loved ones do his job of dealing with the daily hauntings, but—

“—and it’s really weird, though?” Danny was brought back to the moment in the middle of Tucker’s rambling. “The ghosts have been settling down more and more by the day like they’re afraid of leaving the Zone. Like, two stupid ectopusses last night, and that was it! And before the Drs. Fenton nearly blasted Skulker out of the sky, he told me that something big was happening. A big enough thing that not even he would risk hunting it down by himself for his pelt wall. Hey, Danny, you good? You’re looking a little birdy yourself, man. Is my, uh, magic wearing off on you—?”

Danny glanced down at his hands, bitten down to the nub fingernails growing to sharp talons before his eyes. Black feathers— Thanatos? he wondered—swirled in his vision and something tug-tug-tugged at his spine like a fishing hook fighting to reel in a monstrous catch. Then the line pulled.

“Danny!” Tucker cried, jumping to catch him only to forget that he had no human hands with which to do so. He face-planted in the same neon grass Danny struggled to find purchase in, clawing desperately at the turf. 

Nausea crept back up in Danny’s throat, the sense of wrong-wrong-wrong worming through him, punctuated by a need to get out . Tucker finally scrambled upright and sunk one taloned foot in the grass, using the other to grip Danny’s wrist, trying to keep him from getting pulled away. He was covered in neon grass stains and mud, shouting something Danny couldn’t process. 

“ You need to wake up, little one, ” Thanatos’ urgent voice rang in Danny’s ears. “ Come home. ” 

Realization hit Danny like a brick. “I don’t belong here. Tuck, I don’t belong! The Duat doesn’t like me! You need to let me go!”

“I can’t lose my best friend, again!” Tucker cried.

“The Duat is Egyptian!” Danny argued, letting go of the terrain with his free hand. Tucker squawked in horror, gripping Danny’s other wrist even tighter. In any other instance, Danny would’ve cracked another bird joke (much like an egg). “I’m…I’m Greek, Tuck. I’ll be fine. I have friends on the other side!”

“Now’s really not the time to be making Disney references, man!” Tucker grunted, straining to pull Danny free from his invisible tether. 

“Look at me, Tuck,” Danny said. Tucker did as told, slowly, ever so slowly, expression twisted with worry. “Trust me. I will be fine, I swear. I will call you after all of this, I promise. Now, let me go. ”

Tucker sobbed out a laugh. “If you die for real this time, I’m going to learn all the magic I can to find whatever afterlife you ended up in, resurrect you, and then kill you again.”

“I know you will, bud. Now, let —” Before he could finish the thought, Tucker released his wrist and Danny shot off like a bullet, light and darkness flickering in a strobing nightmare vortex, right into jolting bolt upright in Camp Half-Blood’s infirmary.

The cot below him threatened to tip at his sudden shaking, but Danny wanted out. Unfortunately, the sheets somehow twisted around his entire body had other plans and he ended up rolling off the cot entirely like a half-finished mummy. The sudden thunk! followed by Danny’s muffled cursing then summoned none other than a bedraggled Will Solace to the door with clothes wrinkled, mismatched socks, and rainbow tie-dye Crocs with only one in sports mode.

“Danny!” he exclaimed, rushing to untangle Danny and help him back to the cot. “You’re finally awake! How are you feeling? Any burning sensations? Itchiness? Shortness of breath?” Will seemed pretty short of breath himself.

“Aside from falling off the bed, I’m chilling,” Danny rasped, an actual shiver ripping through his body. Weird. He furrowed his brows. “Wow, I sound terrible. ”

“Are you sure? Those red n’ black flowers… sanguis flos ? They burned your hands. Badly.” Danny studied his apparently bandaged hands. He flexed his fingers, but they obviously felt a little stiff thanks to all the gauze. “I was told that you had red smoke coming off of you until you released your death grip on the last one.”

Danny frowned. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Blood Blossoms freaking suck, man.” He yawned and wiped the crust from his eyes. He winced. There was a lot more than usual. “How long was I out, by the way? I’ve got a nasty crick in my neck…” 

“No one else got hurt when they were dealing with these…‘Blood Blossoms’ before you did, Danny,” Will said carefully, deflecting the first question, “and you sound… familiar with them. Why?”

Danny paused in the middle of his second yawn. “I ran into them a few times before I came to Camp,” he said cautiously, trying to feign disinterest about one of his greatest weaknesses, his ghostly Kryptonite as it were. “Guess I’m just that unlucky to touch something I’m allergic to!”

Will didn’t seem impressed with that answer. “Danny, I’ve been reading up on magical plants and their properties,” he said bluntly. “You were out for a while—and now we know you’re not a son of Hypnos like some people guessed—and I needed to figure out how best to treat you, but what I read was… weird. ” 

“Oh?” Danny said lightly, scanning the exits nervously—just the closed door, but with enough forced intangibility, that meant nothing. Anything could be a door if one tried hard enough. He crossed his fingers, hoping that he wasn’t about to get blasted by some sort of Apollo kid power or shanked with a scalpel. Danny hated scalpels. 

“Blood Blossoms are relatively rare, but have gone on record as a repellent for the supernatural, yet edible for humans as translated by some texts, but more notably, as a ward against ‘those touched by death.’” 

Will paused, staring Danny dead in the eyes, mulling over his next words surely rattling in his mind like bones in a graveyard. Danny took a deep breath and gripped the sheets on the cot he sat on. This is it, Danny thought glumly, new people not hating me instantly was nice while it lasted. Adios, peace of mind…

“I know what you are, Danny.”

Here it comes…

“You died, didn’t you?” Will guessed somberly. Danny was about to agree and get the “Agh Danny’s a ghost, let’s fight him!” thing over and done with, but Will just kept going. “And then you came back because the Doors of Death opened a couple of months ago. Being a son of Melinoë also probably doesn’t help things either.”

Danny stared at Will in shock and confusion, just trying to process his words. He mentally apologized to Mr. Lancer for all the times he stumbled into correctly answering the first part of a question, only to steamroll right past the correct conclusion resulting in unresolved anticipation. The difference between that situation and now is that Danny couldn’t just take pity and correct Will’s explanation like Mr. Lancer could provide in class since the truth was much, much more complicated than anything Will could ever cook up. 

Then, with no warning, a light puff of blue mist curled out of Danny’s mouth. He managed to subtly disguise it as an unsuspicious cough thanks to many, many months of practice. But his Ghost Sense’s presence was still cause for concern. What the—?

“Danny, your secret is safe with me—doctor-patient confidentiality and all that. Many demigods have gone through the same situation with the Doors of Death, Danny.” Danny seriously doubted any other demigod got blasted by an artificial portal to the Ghost Zone. “You’re not alone. All I want to do is help.”

An even bigger curl of his Ghost Sense escaped Danny’s mouth, leaving behind a freezing sensation not unlike what happens when you crunch an entire pack of breath mints in one go like Danny did when he thought he was going to be partnered with his crush, Paulina, for a science project back in eighth grade. He was instead partnered with Dash, who threatened to beat him to a pulp which sent a rising panic up from his stomach and into his throat not unlike the sensation he felt now, every sense dialed up to eleven.

Who the hell snuck into Camp?! 

Chiron’s hoof steps echoed outside the Big House, thumping across the dirt, then clopping on the wooden patio. “Thank you again for coming to help…” His voice was muffled through the walls. 

“Danny! Do not get off that cot! And what was the misty stuff?” Will admonished, pressing a surprisingly firm palm on Danny’s shoulder. “Never mind. You’ve been out for five days and you shouldn’t be straining yourself!”

Five days?! Danny blinked. Okay, dealing with that one, later… 

“Sorry, Will,” Danny said, truly meaning it. “I think we have bigger fish to fry.” He then twisted out of Will’s grip, phasing through his hand at the last second to knock Will entirely off balance. 

Hopefully, Nico won’t whoop my butt for tripping his boyfriend, Danny thought. He then leaped through the door, entirely intangible, but went solid at the wrong moment, accidentally slamming into the wall opposite and releasing an exploding geyser of blue mist from his mouth.

Danny paid no mind to Will’s scuffling on the other side of the door, instead absolutely booking it down the hallway, feet almost light enough for flight, intangibly clipping corners. Danny’s breath released in swarms of blue like the entire Big House had dropped to sub-zero. The only cold he felt, however, was the unsettled fear creeping up his spine.

He then turned the corner to find the Big House’s front door, following his Ghost Sense in a panic, only for it to suddenly catch in his throat. Skidding to a halt, he hissed and braced himself on the left wall, cursing. “ What is going on? ”

The front door creaked behind him, but Danny didn’t notice, too focused on his rising panic. He squeezed his eyes shut. How could he protect everyone if he didn’t know where the threat was? He felt sick, trapped in his own skin. His bandaged hands wound their way into his messy hair and his irritated scream turned muffled. 

“It’s so… lovely to see Camp Half-Blood for the first time after hearing so much about it, Chiron! I hope I can provide at least some of my expert insight on your… ghostly problem—oh, what’s this?”

A trail of cold mist worked up Danny’s throat and released from his mouth with a soft curse. He knew he couldn’t prolong the utter nightmare any longer, so he forced himself to stand upright and open his eyes to properly confront the last person he wanted to see right now.

“Why, hello, Little Badger .”

Chapter Text

“ Vlad ,” Danny hissed the greeting like a curse. 

The king of all crazed-up fruit loops had the nerve to laugh. “Come now, Daniel, that’s no way to greet me, now is it?” 

Before Danny could launch himself at Vlad, Chiron interceded, planting a hoof in the doorframe. “Settle down.”

Vlad grinned devilishly, taking joy in Danny’s soured expression. “Yes, Daniel, settle—”

“ Both of you, ” Chiron corrected. He then turned to Danny. “Danny, you know Vladimir Masters?” 

He wanted to scoff at that; wanted to laugh. Know Vlad? Ha! “Know” is too weak a word. That man’s made my life a living hell one too many times to count!

Instead, Danny stood frozen, paralyzed by social convention and Vlad’s piercing red-eyed gaze that quickly flickered back to blue. Vlad smirked, realizing that Danny wouldn’t turn into Phantom, not here in front of Head Activities Director Chiron. You can do nothing to me, Vlad’s huff of laughter seemed to convey, I am untouchable. And that wasn’t just because halfas could go intangible. 

And how did Danny figure out all this from just Vlad’s creepy glowing eyes and a vindictive smile? Well, people don’t give him enough credit. Danny is smart—people just tend not to see past the dumb puns and general teenage angst most of the time. But beyond the usual measures of intelligence, Danny had learned how a fruit loop like Vlad thought—utterly selfish, manipulative, and dangerous. Vlad was also cartoonishly evil (like, to a frankly insane degree), but hardly anyone saw past the man’s charisma. That’s how he got so rich after his ghost portal accident in college, after all. 

So, Danny knew that Vlad knew Danny wouldn’t transform into Phantom at Camp. The opposite was almost definitely true because Danny would just spill the tea on the whole Masters-Plasmius thing. It was their usual song and dance, two loaded guns on the table, but unwilling to pull the trigger in the presence of regular company, even if the “regular company” in this instance was an entire camp full of people who could’ve stepped right out of a modern-day retelling of the Iliad complete with bronze swords . 

“Daniel’s my…godson.”

“Is this true, Danny?” Chiron asked, raising an eyebrow. 

From behind Chiron, Vlad smiled like the cat who caught the canary, daring Danny to disagree or air out any past grievances. 

Danny sighed and crossed his arms, glaring at his arch-nemesis. “ Unfortunately, yes.”

Vlad’s smile wavered as Danny’s grew. Two could play at this game, only Danny didn’t know exactly what prize Vlad was hoping to win at Camp Half-Blood. 

And that’s exactly why Danny insisted on joining them for tea in Chiron’s office when the centaur himself posed the idea. When Chiron lightly pressed, Danny owlishly blinked and settled into a mask he rarely used: pure, unadulterated midwestern charm. 

“Oh, it’s just that I have practical experience with handling manipulative and creepy ghosts”—Danny totally didn’t give Vlad a pointed look—“and Vlad really…doesn’t. He does have some tech that the Fentons don’t, but yeah. That’s all!”

Vlad narrowed his eyes at Danny’s remark, only to smooth over his expression when Chiron nodded his assent at Danny and looked over to Vlad. 

Soon enough, two halfas and a wheelchair-bound centaur sat in the latter’s cozy office. Now that sounded like the beginning of a joke and Danny fully intended to make it so, hopefully sneakily dissing Vlad at every opportunity so Chiron would not trust Vlad. 

At least Chiron seemed more ahead of that curve than most adults given his furrowed brow every time Vlad prattled on about himself or his company or whatever else. And wow, wasn’t that surprising? An adult figure in Danny’s life finally had the common sense to not immediately trust such an obviously creepy fruit loop! 

Chiron, ever the gracious host, soon pulled out an ornate bronze teapot, different from the one he’d used when he last met with Danny. He poured hot water into his and Danny’s cups, set the teapot down, and flexed his hand, saying aloud with a polite smile, “After millennia, my hands are not what they used to be.” He then picked up the teapot once more, readjusting his grip to pour hot water into Vlad’s teacup over a handmade tea sachet from the Demeter cabin. Danny wished the blend included Blood Blossoms, but not even Danny would be that lucky. 

“No worries at all, Chiron,” Vlad drawled, taking a polite sip of his tea as Chiron locked his wheelchair brakes in place behind his desk. Vlad sat across from Chiron and Danny had pulled over an ottoman to sit awkwardly between the two at the shorter end of the desk. “Oh, this blend is quite…interesting—wherever did you acquire it?”

Chiron smiled, but there was something off about it in a way Danny couldn’t place. “The children of Demeter are experts in crafting unique teas. I believe this one is dandelion root and just about every variety of mint the children could get their hands on.” 

Danny loaded his cup with enough sugar that would make Will lecture him about tooth decay, purposely ignoring Vlad’s little huff of disdain. In fact, he took that as a sign to add one more heaping helping of sugar with the fancy little teaspoon Chiron had provided. If Danny had fire powers instead of ice ones, he wondered if he could’ve gotten away with heating up the tea and adding even more sugar than what would dissolve at room temperature to make a supersaturated solution. As it stood, making Vlad cringe at his existence would have to suffice. Maybe if Danny did that enough, Vlad would finally realize that forcefully adopting Danny was more trouble than it was worth (as if their dozens of previous fights hadn’t made that fact painfully obvious).

Danny took a sip of his tea and loudly smacked his lips—overly minty and sweet, sort of like the inside of a York peppermint patty, only warm and liquid. Danny thought it was perfect, especially because the action made Vlad visibly recoil. 

“ Why are you like this? ” the man hissed. 

“Stupid fruit loop say what?” Danny coughed into his fist. 

“What?”

Chiron loudly cleared his throat. Both Vlad and Danny’s attention focused on him, scarily in sync. Danny shivered, hating the idea of being anything like that fruit loop. His brows furrowed, connecting dots he wasn’t very fond of. 

Chiron started, “I sense there is some… animosity between you—”

“Wait. How is Vlad inside Camp?” Danny blurted, his mouth finally catching up to his rapid-fire thoughts. “Like, is there a, uh, human-demigod exchange program? Or did he just get invited in? Or—”

“I’m the son of Melinoë,” Vlad interrupted swiftly, yet still with all the usual Vlad pompousness. Melinoë’s name only vaguely rang a bell to Danny. “It was certainly quite the shock a few weeks ago. The sudden surprise nearly scared me half to death over breakfast—the poached quail eggs took forever to get out of the dining room tablecloth.” He then paused. “Come to think of it, dear Daniel, how is it that you came to Camp Half-Blood? I haven’t seen you around Amity Park with your little friends as of late…”

“I’m a demigod,” Danny said bluntly, trying to cut the conversation short. 

“Hm…Madeline or Jack?”

“…what?”

“You know Maddie and Jack Fenton?” Chiron cut in. Danny was too busy mentally thanking him for nipping Vlad’s prying in the bud to realize that a very, very uncomfortable conversation was about to begin. 

Vlad’s disposition brightened as if he suddenly remembered that he and Danny weren’t the only two people in the room. A fake smile oozed across his face as he recounted his ever-so-close friendship with the Drs. Fenton in college and their pioneering in the field of ectobiology. Vlad further asserted how close he and Maddie were—Danny wanted to gag (even if they weren’t on good terms, Vlad was still creepy)—and how the three of them were determined to punch a hole through reality to study the supernatural…among other things. 

As Vlad’s pontificating continued, Chiron glanced at Danny with a look akin to sympathy, something maybe like “I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with this sad sack of a man who clearly dwells too much on the past.” Well, maybe Chiron would use fancier insults, but still. 

“But the strangest thing happened recently,” Vlad mused, a genuine hint of confusion curling into his seedy voice. “As the mayor of Amity Park, it is my duty to address any problems that may arise even while across the state dealing with some…business opportunities. Er, Vladco is my company, have you heard of it? Anyway, imagine my surprise when I received several phone calls regarding impressive property destruction followed by the most dreadful news. My dear old friends, the Fentons, had gone around the bend cursing and screeching for someone who wasn’t there, trying to find and eliminate a phantom threat!” 

Vlad subtly directed that jab at Danny, who visibly recoiled. 

“But at least Daniel is here at… Camp, safe and sound from the upset in Amity.” He imperceptibly wrinkled his nose at the word “camp” like he couldn’t even begin to imagine how dirty and unsanitary Camp Half-Blood could be, messing up his stupid rich pompadour in the thicker humidity of New York. He then turned to Danny with false niceties dripping from his tone like venom from a snake’s maw. “Daniel, just know that you’ll always have a place in my heart and my home no matter what your parents may say or do.” Danny assumed that something like that was supposed to be comforting, but it had the exact opposite effect coming from Vlad. All he could think of was an alternate future reality where another Danny had done just that and ended up losing all his humanity in the process. 

“Jack and Maddie were some of my brightest pupils, once upon a time,” Chiron said, pained. 

Vlad’s eyes flashed through several micro-expressions, realization settling into his features. “I would guess Madeline was a daughter of Aphrodite, given her charm ”—Danny gagged at that—“but I would be remiss to disregard her intelligence. Athena, then?”

Chiron nodded, his voice a rasp. “And Jack is a son of Hephaestus.”

“All this time and I never knew…” Vlad muttered. “That explains why they got on so well in…in  university…they knew each other prior.” He then paused, face slowly turning green, expression pinched. Vlad clutched his stomach, yet tried to puff out his chest and let a smile crawl across his face to appear more in control. To Danny, he just ended up looking like a constipated duck. “Excuse me, but where might the nearest restroom be? I feel a tad— hurk! —ill all of a sudden.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Maybe it was Danny’s imagination, but Chiron didn’t sound very sorry at all. “Down the hall and to the right, third door on the left, can’t miss it!” Vlad was out the door faster than Danny could say “Fruit Loop!”

While the tap-tap-tap! of Vlad’s dress shoes echoed away, Chiron whispered a count of three to himself before turning to Danny. His ancient eyes swirled with an unidentifiable emotion that seemed it’d be more at home on a face like Clockwork’s. As it stood, Chiron kept his tone as level as possible. “The laxative effect of the tea will only keep Vladimir occupied for so long. Tell me, Danny, who is Vlad to you, truly?” 

“Wait, what? Laxative? ” Danny stared at his own empty teacup in horror before quickly shoving it away. It skittered across the table. “What the hell—”

“Only in Vlad’s cup,” Chiron swiftly reassured. “This Hephaestian assassin’s teapot works wonders for such sly deeds as serving a tampered drink while preserving your own.” Chiron gestured at the bronze teapot he had used to pour the hot water earlier. Upon closer inspection, Danny noticed the ornate details of swirling H’s that morphed into loose curls up the handle that obscured a pair of punched holes. “Now, what has Vladimir done to make you so frightened of him?”

“You drugged the Fruit Loop!” Danny laughed in disbelief, still processing that someone so unassuming and collected like Chiron had done such a thing. “I’ve never seen him shut up so fast. You have got to tell me your secret—”

“ Daniel, please. ”

His entire body froze. “Don’t…don’t call—” Danny ducked his head and shuddered, trying to just get a grip. He ultimately failed, spiraling thoughts spilling from his mouth, unbidden. “Vlad calls me that. I hate it. I—I hate him. ”

Chiron’s expression turned stony. “You hate your godfather?”

Danny’s eyes flicked around the room and waited for his Ghost Sense to strike, fidgeting with his woven bracelet from Thanatos, paranoid that Vlad or any of his goons were spying nearby. (Would a Stygian Iron laced shield help? He wasn’t certain.) He could never be too sure, even if Vlad seemed surprised at Danny’s presence at Camp. “We…we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things,” Danny said carefully, which was a gross understatement. 

First, Vlad had no right to cause as much chaos in the Ghost Zone and on Earth as he did. Second, even if he and the Drs. Fenton were on rough terms, they still raised him. No one, not even the woman he once called “Mom,” deserved to be hit on by someone as creepy as Vlad. The man he once called “Dad” didn’t deserve to be offed in a horrific way to serve Vlad’s Obsession of keeping Maddie and Danny to himself. And third, well, Danny was doubling down on that last point. 

Chiron frowned at Danny’s response. He then sighed and relaxed his features. “I will lead Vladimir around Camp’s borders to discuss defense against ghostly attacks this afternoon, Danny.” Danny pursed his lips, but said nothing of his worries about maybe being considered one of said threats. “I can be a scapegoat, should you wish.”

Danny raised an eyebrow. 

“I can say that I’ve assigned you some errands around Camp,” Chiron explained patiently, but with a degree of urgency as he glanced at the door to his office. “You need not interact with Vladimir if you don’t wish. Until I see legal documentation that you are to go with him since the Fentons disowned you, I will do what I can to separate him from you. And even then,” Chiron whispered conspiratorially, “I know a handful of adult children of Athena and Dike—the goddess of justice—who have since left Camp and are doing well for themselves as excellent attorneys and lawyers. Emancipation is on the table.”

“I—thanks?” Danny said, bewildered. He really, really was not used to adults pushing past Vlad’s charisma and seeing how truly scummy the man was. Maybe one of Vlad’s powers—demigod or ghost—was hiding under a nearly flawless mask. Or maybe that was the human egocentric billionaire attitude. That was, of course, assuming that billionaires weren’t self-serving monsters with human faces. 

“There are plenty of campers who stay here year-round, Danny, whether that be because they wish to hone their skills longer, have complicated relationships with their mortal family, or simply only found ‘home’ here at Camp Half-Blood and not in the mortal world…what I am trying to say is that life can be difficult for the children of the gods. I’ve heard of many heartaches and tragic pasts over the years—nothing is too strange nor impossible.”

Even confused half-ghost kids disowned by the people they thought would love them no matter what? Danny wanted to ask. Instead, he stood and let out a sour huff of a laugh. “If you say so, Chiron. Now, what do ya think? Bet I can book it out of here before Vlad—”

“Before I what, Daniel?” the Dracula knockoff himself crooned as he opened the door, blocking the exit. 

Danny whipped around and glared at Vlad, a fraction of ghostly energy fizzling out before it could properly surge.  

“My, my, not the angry eyes!” Vlad mocked. 

Danny seethed, fury clouding his vision. Oh, how he wished he could just tear Vlad a new one—

“…so you’ll come with us on our tour around Camp, right, Daniel? I feel like I never get to see you these days—it would be a lovely time to catch up! Father— ahem—god father-godson bonding, yes? And I feel so poorly—it must be that horrid airline food—so some familiar company would do nicely.” Vlad grinned and stepped close to Danny until only a breath separated them, daring Danny to refuse in polite company. Danny understood Vlad’s implied “ or else” as the man extended a hand to him . “Come along, then.” 

Chiron cleared his throat, ready to protest on Danny’s behalf, but someone else beat him to the punch. 

“ Danny! ” Will Solace scolded from the door, barreling past Vlad who stumbled off balance. His blond hair looked wild and he heaved as he pulled Danny by the wrist away from Vlad, making a big show of looking him over. “Oh, my gods! I have been looking everywhere for you. You locked me in the infirmary and you are so lucky a Hermes kid was just passing by to pick the lock. I owe them all my dessert for the next week, and—sorry, who’s the vampire?”

“ My name— ” An instinctive sneer wormed across Vlad’s face before he schooled it into a practiced polite expression. He stood up straight and brushed imaginary dust off his pressed suit. “My name…is Vladimir Masters, Chiron’s guest. ” 

“Apologies, sir,” Will said, laying on the thickest southern accent Danny had ever heard from him. “But gee, can ya blame a fella? You look as pale as an empousa. Are you alright? I can go grab an IV or something?”

Vlad wrinkled his nose but attempted to keep his tone polite. “I’m Chiron’s guest,” he reiterated, “who was invited to handle your…ghostly problems. I’m the son of Melinoë. ”

“Explains the deathly pale complexion,” Will mused to himself, just loud enough for Danny to hear. He then blinked, as if finally noticing his surroundings. “And…I just realized that I just burst into something. Sorry, folks! And, uh, hi, Chiron?”

“Hello, Will,” Chiron replied, fighting a grin off his face and trying to look every part of the stern Ultimate Mentor of Heroes he was supposed to be, “Would you be so kind as to look over Danny? He looks rather well for someone who’s been in a coma for nearly a week, but one can’t be too cautious.”

Will nodded with faux seriousness and began leading Danny away, who put on a show of reluctance and complaining to really sell it. 

“A coma, you say?” Vlad repeated, weirdly not a hint of surprise in his tone. “Daniel—”

“Oof-ouch, my back!” Danny bemoaned, his fake half-swoon nearly tripping Will who let out an irritated huff. He wasn’t really lying about his back—it really did hurt, more than it had recently, even. “My spleen!” Fine, so maybe that was pushing it. Quick, Danny, think! What would someone on one of Jazz’s dramatic hospital TV shows say? “I think my muscles have partially atrophied due to a stagnant prolonged horizontal position!”

Will facepalmed with his free hand, groaning. He recovered quickly and called cheerfully over his shoulders, “My patient is delirious and should have received ambrosia and nectar ages ago. ’Scuse us!”

“But I’m his godfather—” Vlad tried to protest. 

“ Doctor’s orders, ” Will bit sharply. In surprise, Vlad stepped back. Will’s voice returned to false cheer. “Thank ya, kindly, Mr. Masters.” As an afterthought, “The infirmary will not be acceptin’ visitors at this time. Take care, now!”

Will then nearly pulled Danny’s arm out of its socket as he marched him back to the infirmary to the tune of Vlad’s confused spluttering. “ Go-go-go, ” Will hissed, “Danny, get your butt into gear. Oh, I hate that man, I hate that man.”

“You can say that, again…”

A stream of violent muttering in that same vein continued to flow from Will’s mouth up until he checked over his shoulder before pushing Danny into the infirmary. Will shut the door behind him and began shoving medical supplies around the room in a cartoony sun tote bag hanging on a nearby peg. 

Danny scratched the back of his neck—a nervous tic, he knew, but the motion was familiar and helped to ease the growing pain in his upper back. “Uh, thanks for the save, Will. Despite, uh, earlier . What are you…what are you doing?”

“I’m getting the medical supplies to help my patient, my friend who somehow ran through a wall. For the second time, I might add. Don’t you dare think I forgot you did that the first time you were here!” Will shoved a handful of painkillers from one drawer and began rummaging in the next one above. Danny was torn between the happiness of having a new friend and the guilt-ridden fear of tripping Will earlier. 

“About that—”

“We all have our demigod quirks,” Will grunted, slamming a drawer shut. “Does going through walls hurt you?”

“No…?”

“Then there’s no issue. For now. ” Will turned to Danny, brandishing a roll of medical gauze and squinting at him with one eye. “I think that’ll be enough for your back.”

“What?”

Will ignored him. “Open that window, will you? Quietly.”

“What are—?”

“We don’t need to draw any more attention on the way to the Apollo Cabin, duh. You think your back is up to it?” Will began muttering to himself. “Hot or cold instant compresses? Hot or cold…”

“Will, stop! Why? Just”—Danny wildly gestured at everything—“why?”

Will’s eyes snapped up to meet Danny’s. “I don’t trust Vlad as far as I can throw him. When we were discussing that we needed help with ghostly stuff at the second to last Camp counselor meeting, Lou Ellen’s Hecate magic and Nico’s connections in the Underworld didn’t have definite answers. And then we have another meeting when you were asleep where Chiron says he happened to get a call from the exact type of person who could help? It’s fishier than Percy after a day at the aquarium! Everyone else besides Nico was saying that it was worth a shot, but I have this sense—”

“A sense?” Danny asked, thoughts spiraling a million miles a minute. 

Will blushed. “Um, promise not to make fun?” 

Danny nodded, thinking about the inherent weirdness of his own Ghost Sense. 

“Right, uh, so my dad’s Apollo—all light and sun stuff? Gods, I feel silly describin’ it, but it’s like how in Star Wars, there’s the Light Side of the Force, yeah? Camp usually feels all happy and Light, but some of the truly terrible monsters feel like a bit a the Dark Side, but I’m used to that. Vlad is just, like, proper Dark Sithiness—it’s like a shadow hangin’ over him. He just seems… wrong .”

Danny blinked, a little stunned. 

“Danny?” Will asked cautiously. “Why are your eyes glowing?”

Danny shook his head, hopefully dispelling the electric green from his eyes. “Happens sometimes. Sorry, I guess I was just surprised that someone vibe-checked Vlad so hard that they could straight-up sense the rancidness of his vibes.”

“You are a medical anomaly,” Will decided, shouldering his tote bag. “Fitting for a child of Melinoë, I suppose. Wait. Would that make your godfather your half-brother, then? Ugh, that sucks for you. I will never get used to godly family trees…”

Danny wrinkled his nose. “Ew, no. I’d rather die than be related to that stupid fruit loop.” He poorly repressed a laugh at his own gallows humor.

“Okay…” Will trailed off, giving Danny a weird look, seemingly unconvinced of Danny’s lack of Melinoë-ness. “That’s all the more reason to hide you in the Apollo cabin away from that guy, then. The infirmary is the first place he’d look for you. Now, open up the window. Or would you rather phase us through it, ghost boy?”

Danny flinched at the nickname. “Opening it is good. And please don’t call me that, man.” He went to open the window, back twinging with pain as he swung it open and dropped down. 

“Careful!” Will scolded, miraculously following after without losing either of his rainbow Crocs in the process. “But you’re literally the son of Melinoë, the goddess of ghosts . It fits! Dunno why she hasn’t claimed you yet, though…”

Danny clasped his hands together and whirled around to face Will, eyes wild and teeth clenched in the mockery of a smile. “I’m sorry, she’s the goddess of what?”

“Uh…ghosts?”

Danny swore under his breath. “Okay, so this is about to be bad, or really, really bad.” When Will tried asking a follow-up question, a spark of pain flared up Danny’s back, sending him crumpling to one knee. 

“Danny!” Will sounded like he was underwater.

He struggled back to standing, brushing away Will’s helping hand. “Ancients, that bites.”

“...you dehydrated? Lasting dizziness?” Danny caught the tail end of Will’s rapid questioning.

“I’m…I’m fine. ’M back is just sore—curse you hero complex!” Danny joked with a wince, “Guess I just feel like I got the weight of the world on my shoulders.” 

“Yeah, okay, Atlas,” Will rolled his eyes. “We’re gettin’ you to rest in an actual bed, even if I have to strap you down for you to do that.”

Danny’s eyes widened with the sudden realization that if he was trapped in the Apollo cabin, he couldn’t keep tabs on Vlad and whatever evil scheme he was almost certainly planning. Someone who didn’t know Vlad like Danny did might go, “Oh, Danny! But what if Vlad really isn’t planning anything this time around? What if he’s changed his ways and actually wants to help a cause that doesn’t directly benefit him?” Well, Danny would call that person crazy and point to an itemized list of several instances of disagreement in the past few months alone. At the very least, he needed to spy on Vlad, if not just fully trap him in the Fenton Thermos back in the Hades cabin the first chance they got alone.

“Sorry, Will, no can do,” Danny said, stepping back. “What I’m about to do really isn’t going to help the ‘child of Melinoë’ allegations you’ve got against me, but I know that’s not who I am. Now, it’s time to make like a ghost and vanish—is that someone injured over there?!” He pointed dramatically at a spot over Will’s shoulder who instinctively whipped around. 

By the time Will turned back to him, Danny was gone, a wisp of troublemaking laughter on the wind followed by Will’s shout of cursing frustration. With a grin no one else could see, Danny turned to invisibly dart into Camp proper to hide in plain sight.

“Has Daniel been acting…strangely?” Vlad prodded as he exited the Big House with Chiron. “I, as the resident expert on ghosts—”

Now, there’s an important thing to keep in mind about Danny: for as smart as he could be sometimes, he was admittedly impulsive and a bit stupid when it came to fully thinking things through. Invisibly, Danny rushed towards them, trying to get the drop on Vlad, his Ghost Sense went off. He cursed as Vlad whipped his head to catch the puff of blue at the edge of his vision,  snarling, eyes flashing pink. 

At the last second, Danny aborted with a squeak, kicking up the dirt in a dusty plume to cover both his telltale Ghost Sense and his frantic steps away. Vlad cursed and spit as he bemoaned his absolutely devasted —Danny barely had the breath to laugh at Vlad’s phrasing but if he could he definitely would—silk suit with an insane threadcount.     

Legs shaking as he dropped his invisibility in the Hades cabin after intangibly walking through the front door to grab his Fenton Thermos, he expected the time for a bit of a breather, not someone else to be there.

“Holy schist, Danny?”

Danny jumped, clutching his heart. “Sweet Ancients, Nico! You nearly scared me all the way to death!”

“I nearly scared you to your father?” Nico puzzled. He then refocused. “You! You’re supposed to be in the infirmary! You were in a coma!”

“I…got better?” Danny offered with a shrug. He then immediately began rummaging in the storage chest near his bunk like absolutely nothing was wrong. Because what else could he do? Address an awkward situation head-on? No, thanks!

Just as his fingers curled around the familiar metallic curve of the Fenton Thermos, Nico grabbed Danny’s shoulder, forcing Danny to face him. Danny tried phasing out of Nico’s grip, but the son of Hades and his stupid Underworld powers forced Danny in place. A small wave of dizziness washed over Danny as he glared at Nico and physically pried his fingers off, taking a step back.

Danny didn’t let a fraction of guilt show on his face as Nico huffed, flexing his hand in minor pain. “How did you manage to slip past Will? If you hurt him—”

“He’s the one who helped me get out,” Danny bit back, a little surprised that Nico didn’t flinch at his harshness. “Now if you’ll excuse me, my arch-nemesis is currently on a tour with Chiron around Camp. Vlad’s definitely plotting something and I kinda don’t want to be kicked outta Camp when everything inevitably goes south and he figures a way to blame it on me.”

“Wait, Vlad? The guy Chiron told the counselors about in the meeting? How do you know—? And ‘arch-nemesis?’ I thought you were joking about being a vigilante when you were in the infirmary the first time!”

“I prefer the term ‘superhero,’” Danny corrected. “It’s got better PR. And you literally met me when I was on night patrol hunting ghosts to stop them from destroying my hometown,” Danny deadpanned. “As Phantom with my whole black-and-white palette swap schtick, I had an obnoxious Superman-style logo on my hazmat suit and I was punning left and right like Spider-Man!”

“In my defense, Superman came out a year before most of my memories were wiped. I’m still catching up on pop culture from the past few decades.”

Danny squinted. “The first Superman comic was, like, in the 1950s—”

“Late 30s, actually. I saw the first issue in some stores, I think.”

“You know what? I’m done. I am ab-so-flippin’-lutely done,” Danny groaned, throwing his hands in the air. “Of course you’re another level of weird on top of weird and I’m not even gonna ask what your whole deal is. I just need to know if you’re gonna help me or not with Vlad.” 

“Only if you tell me everything. And I mean everything. ”

“Vlad could be out there setting traps and being all evil outside right now!” 

“I don’t want to pull this card, but Thanatos answers to my father,” Nico said carefully, crossing his arms. “You would need to answer to me by proxy if I forced you to.” 

“I’d like to think we’re friends with at least some level of trust between us,” Danny frowned. 

“I’d like to think so, too,” Nico narrowed his eyes, glinting dangerously in the refracted light from the various gemstones around the Hades cabin. “That’s why I’m asking you as…as a friend to tell me everything you know about Vlad.” 

Just minutes later, Danny stood triumphantly with a troublemaking grin, not that Nico could see it.

“Oh, gods, I wish I never asked,” Nico gagged, Danny snickering invisibly off to his side as they spied on Vlad inspecting the weapons forge with Chiron. “He wanted to get with your mom and steal you and your sister to make a new family?”

“Close,” Danny said, pulling his weak threads of invisibility closer to himself. “She disowned me for being a ghost-monster-thing who supposedly stole the face and life of her ‘actual son,’ Vlad wants to marry her after offing his ex-best friend—who’s her husband bee-tee-dubs—and molding me into the sole inheritor of his sketchy fortune slash perfect half-ghost son slash evil prodigy because he thinks we’re the only two beings in the universe who can understand each other. He also wants nothing to do with my big sister, Jazz.”

“He also cloned you?!” Nico exclaimed. A few nearby campers looked at him strangely before he drawled lazily, “Beware, beware. Hades kid stuff in progress. Mind your own business. I’m talking to ghosts.” Everyone rolled their eyes and continued whatever they were doing—mostly picking strawberries in the nearby fields—while Danny stifled a snort. Nico was talking to a ghost. Singular. Or half of one, anyway. Or however the universe deigned to classify Danny, not that the universe had been very keen on being clear with Danny himself.

“Ah, yes,” Danny replied sagely, “my sister-cousin-clone, Danielle. Dani-with-an-i…”

“And here I thought my life was strange.”

“Mm-hm. My clone-cousinster…I really need to check up on her. It’s been a hot minute—”

Vlad’s irritating pompous voice drifted on the wind up to Nico and Danny’s vantage point on a slight hill looking down on the forge. “Why, I was somewhat of a fencer myself in college! Slashing with a, er, what is this, again? Right, xiphos! Slashing with a xiphos can’t be all that different from slashing with a foil!”

“What are we looking out for, again?” Nico interrupted. 

“Anything sus, really. Bonus points if we can get Vlad to reveal his plans himself since people are probably not gonna take it well if I just soup ’em. Maybe he already has plans in motion that we won’t know how to stop until he monologues about it…why do you ask, Nico?”

“I think his eyes are glowing pink,” Nico said bluntly. 

“No shot, really? I thought I was just seeing things earlier.” Danny squinted but Vlad had already turned away to study a sword a Hephaestus kid was proudly showing off. “Dang it. I need you to get closer.”

“What? Why me?”

“Vlad would get suspicious if I suddenly wanted to spend time with him. Happy because that’s what he wants, but still suspicious,” Danny said.  “And my Ghost Sense would go off, duh.” He thought back to what happened just before he kicked up the dust in front of Vlad to cover it.

“Your… Ghost Sense, ” Nico repeated dully. “And what is that, exactly?”

“It’s like how Spider-Man—” Danny stopped when Nico pursed his lips. “Right. Catching up on pop culture. Though you knowing about him would be so helpful for explaining stuff. I’m kinda like him but sorta dead.” Nico just face-palmed so Danny took that as his cue to continue. “So, Ghost Sense. Ghost go near. Blue mist out mouth. Ghost go ‘boo!’ We fight.”

“Right…so the Ghost Sense would reveal your location.”

“Bingo!”

“You are way too chipper for this.”

“What can I say?” Danny joked, “I’m a bit of a… mischievous spirit. ”

“I will gut you,” Nico threatened with little malice. 

Danny snorted. “I don’t think you have the guts! ”

Nico unsheathed his Stygian Iron sword just enough to reveal the base of the dark blade. A powerful ripple of unease passed through the air. “And soon you won’t either,” he hissed. 

“I think we ought to head off to the next destination on our tour.” Vlad’s lightly panicked voice drifted off and Chiron beckoned him along. 

Nico furrowed his brow. “Did my sword just—?”

“What?” Danny asked. “Did your sword just what?”

“Hold on. I need to test something.” Nico then darted off to Vlad and Chiron, taking on the role of being the impulsive one for once. Danny let out a totally not childish squeak of panic before running after the slippery son of Hades. He was slowly beginning to realize just how common ADHD was in demigods…as was being a danger magnet. 

The pressure of maintaining his invisibility aside, the all-encompassing fear of Nico running off to face Vlad alone weighed heavily on Danny. He cursed, but all he could really do without alerting Vlad was to just…hang back. Feeling horribly useless, he watched from a distance as Nico ducked behind a pillar of the Arena as Chiron and Vlad came around the opposite end. A small puff of black and blue mist exited Nico’s mouth, which he quickly brushed away and apparently took as his cue to fully draw his sword. 

And Vlad? Well, Vlad tripped over his own feet, swearing “Butter biscuits!” at the top of his lungs. He would’ve brought Chiron down with him had the centaur not instinctively cantered back. Nico sheathed his Stygian iron blade and strolled over to the adults, attempting to look as casual as possible. Danny took that as his cue to advance, stealth and element of surprise forgotten—he couldn’t let his friend do this alone. 

Danny covered his nose and his mouth with the hem of his shirt to prevent a visible trace of his Ghost Sense, stepping as close as he dared to the commotion, still invisible. As it stood, he probably didn’t need to be so cautious given how much Nico caught Vlad off guard. The first thing Danny caught in the ongoing conversation nearly made him lose it right then and there.

“—do you mean by ‘Ghost King?’” Vlad balked, eyes briefly flashing pink before settling back to blue.

“I would recommend refraining from startling new people, Nico,” Chiron lightly scolded, fighting off a smile despite himself. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re headed off to the Canoe Lake, ” Chiron emphasized those last two words with a wink towards Nico before slowly ushering a still-stunned Vlad away.

“Holy spooks, Nico!” Danny snickered quietly in his friend’s ear, “How’d you know your sword would freak him out so much?”

Nico studied his scabbard thoughtfully. “Stygian Iron scares a lot of beings, but especially ones native to the Underworld.”

“Then why doesn’t your sword really bother us?”

“Maybe it senses those ‘rancid vibes’ you said Vlad had and pushes them right back. Or maybe Vlad is just really unlucky.”

Danny shrugged. “Maybe. But I think that Canoe Lake bit from Chiron was a hint. You think Vlad’ll melt like the Wicked Witch of the…East?” 

“Wicked Witch of the West, actually. I actually kinda remember seeing that talkie in the theater.”

“I’m sorry, did you just call The Wizard of Oz a ‘talkie?’”

Nico ignored Danny. “I bet we can get Jackson on board with the Canoe Lake—”

.

.

.

Danny couldn’t help himself, rushing ahead to invisibly kick up more dust near Vlad before and after the Canoe Lake Incident. His griping was glorious—and he couldn’t even phase the dust-sludge-stuff off! Danny wished he could better recount it, but frankly, even as a “crass teen” as Vlad so often called him, the kinds of things Vlad muttered would make the ears of even the most hardened of Danny’s rogues bleed.

All before dinnertime, Nico had not only managed to convince Percy to “accidentally” dunk Vlad in the Canoe Lake by him offering to introduce the water nymphs who lived there, but somehow get goody-two-shoes Jason Grace to “show off the Climbing Wall” by scooping Vlad up and above the lava. Still invisible, Danny had to bite his tongue when Percy laughed and gave a confused look to a stewing Vlad while Jason said in his oh-so-honest All-American Boy Scout voice that he was genuinely giving Vlad a better view of Camp that others would kill for. 

Apparently, Vlad’s rancid vibes were evident so long as Nico pointed them out. 

While Danny was bone-dead exhausted from staying invisible all day to avoid Vlad’s watchful eye, Will’s medic-ness, and alarm from the other campers about why Danny—who was still supposed to be comatose—was up and about, he did take pleasure in seeing Vlad so miserable. And the best part? Vlad couldn’t do anything about it, not unless he wanted to break his cover of being an agreeable and charming businessman and risk exposing whatever plan he had up his sleeve this time.

“And now for the last stop on our tour before dinner,” Chiron announced, “The Woods!”

Danny sighed from where he was sitting and keeping watch next to Nico on the dining pavilion’s front steps, thankful that the day was almost over, but still dreading the upcoming nightwatch for spying on Vlad. He’d unfortunately settled into a somewhat respectable non-vigilante sleep schedule since coming to Camp (excluding the comatose infirmary visits, of course) and his body had stupidly gotten used to getting solid chunks of sleep as opposed to overly antsy micro naps. He yawned and pressed his forehead to the nearest soft surface—which was usually Sam or Tucker, so cut him some slack—but startled away when he realized that it was Nico when he let out a huff.

“Sorry, Nico.”

“’S whatever. Just keep an eye on the crowd, will you? I think a Hermes kid might try to pickpocket Vlad.”

Danny raised his head. “Again?”

Throughout the day, Vlad’s tour catastrophe had amassed a small crowd of curious onlookers who periodically checked in to see just exactly Vlad when threw in the towel, exchanging gold drachma for bets when they thought the adults weren’t looking. In a bout of stubborn defiance and an attempt to save face as the charming ghost expert sent to help the Camp, Vlad had resolutely not blown up on anyone. Danny would be almost impressed, had Vlad not been a bottom-of-the-barrel source of scum who kept doing his weird pink glowy-eye thing throughout the day. Something was up, but Danny still couldn’t seem to put his finger on it.

Danny grinned at the thought of the lava wall—not only was there dust to kick in Vlad’s eyes once Jason set him down but also little pebbles of volcanic rock to chuck at his ankles. He was close to tripping him, but couldn’t quite get the angle right. Maybe if he tried again tomorrow with better high ground—

“Yeah, again,” Nico confirmed, pointing out a kid creeping closer to Vlad with a trouble-making grin. Danny’s anonymous troublemaking had more than inspired some other kids. 

They watched as Vlad turned at just the right moment to glare at the kid and hiss, sending the kid scampering away with a yelp. He disguised it poorly with a cough and Chiron continued his spiel. 

“Vlad’s getting sloppy,” Danny pointed out with a tired snicker. “Aside from how messed up his clothes and stuff are from the dust, the lake, even more dust, and lava, that is. That hiss was, like, fully ghosty. We’ve almost worn him down, he’ll reveal his plan in an evil monologue, and then I can soup him in the Fenton Thermos without anyone at Camp complaining.” He patted the Fenton Thermos he’d clipped to his belt loop, or at least he tried to, his vision momentarily blurring with exhaustion. “Ugh, my head…”

“I think you can drop the invisibility, now,” Nico noted. “Everyone’s just paying attention to the dumpster-fire that is your nemesis at this point, not the infirmary runaway.”

“ Arch -nemesis,” Danny corrected jokingly, “as if that makes a difference.” He then rolled back his shoulders, hissing at the wave of pain the action brought. 

Nico made a noncommittal hum. 

With no fanfare, Danny let his invisibility drop in the growing shadows of the dining pavilion under the setting sun. He flexed his hands, getting used to fully seeing his body in the visible spectrum once again. “Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like a ghost than today.”

“Oh?”

“Invisible, hiding in the shadows, literally only talking to the guy who communes with the dead…” Danny trailed off. “And I beat my invisibility record about three-ish hours ago, which is kinda neat. And in my human form, too. Usually, I get noticed long before that—”

“DANIEL JAMES FENTON!” Vlad roared, “Come here this instant!” 

He was so loud that birds flew from the trees on the edge of the woods and Danny was half convinced that Vlad had somehow figured out how to do his own Ghostly Wail. But given that Danny didn’t feel like his skin was being peeled off at the sound of Vlad’s concentrated pain and agony, he was willing to bet that wasn’t the case.

“...and I jinxed myself. Time to get this thing over with.” And Danny rose slowly, his joints protesting. Is this what it’s like to be old? Danny thought to himself. Dang, it must suck to be Vlad. 

The spare crowd of other campers must’ve shared a similar sentiment, their whispers worming into Danny’s ears as he strode past. 

“I think the suit guy is older than Quintus!” 

“But Quintus was ancient, like, over fifty!” 

“Whatever. Mr. Masters survived a long time without even knowing he was a demigod. Alone. That’s impressive by itself.” 

“Isn’t Danny supposed to be in a coma?”

“Shut up—five drachma he’s gonna beat up Danny!”

Danny rolled his eyes at that last one—it was almost a given whenever Vlad and Danny saw each other that they’d fight. He’d take that bet and double, triple it even. It was honestly impressive that they’d lasted this long without shooting the other with an ectoblast.

“How’s your day been?” Danny asked cheekily. He then did an exaggerated once-over of Vlad. “Didn’t know dust was in fashion this season.”

Vlad bit back a ghostly hiss, realizing his audience of several dozen casually armed demigods. “My dear, dear godson, I didn’t realize hip thermoses were en vogue either,” Vlad greeted through his teeth, eyes flicking to the Fenton Thermos at Danny’s side. He moved a hand protectively over it as Vlad continued, “You weren’t in the infirmary when I checked earlier. Should you not be resting?”

“Got bored,” Danny shrugged, going for casual but still on edge.

Vlad huffed before turning to Chiron. “Excuse me, but I think my godson and I need to have a chat about…medical courtesy. I’m sure you know how reckless children can be, given your profession. My godson would do well to receive a stern reminder from his family .” 

Chiron glanced at Danny, then back at Vlad. “Perhaps later. Right now is—”

Vlad’s eyes briefly flashed pink and a hazy near-invisible double split off behind him and fly off into the woods. Danny only just barely caught it, and he was used to shifty ghost stuff like this—most demigods weren’t. He wanted to chase after it, but he couldn’t do anything with everyone watching. As it stood, Chiron blinked and put a hand to his head, pained.

“Right now is fine?” Vlad filled in innocently, reaching for Danny. “Come along, Daniel. ”

“Uh, no—”

Before Danny could finish that thought, Vlad grabbed Danny’s wrist and immediately recoiled as if burnt. He stumbled a few steps, an expression akin to fear coloring his face but not quite reaching his eyes, which he let flood with pink energy, something Danny was so sure Vlad was trying to hide. Vlad dramatically gasped and barked, “Back, everyone back!”

Confused murmurs rippled through the crowd, a few kids drawing weapons. 

“Why would we do that?” a burly camper wearing a red headband spoke up, hefting a spear crackling with electricity. Danny vaguely remembered them guarding Half-Blood Hill when he went to confront Skulker. Chloe, was it? Clary? Clarisse? 

“I’m the son of Melinoë,” Vlad explained in a hurry, admittedly doing a decent job of pretending to be a scared civilian, “the goddess of ghosts. I’d had my suspicions all day, but the abilities from my mother confirmed them just now from but a meager touch!”

Danny rolled his eyes, crossing his arms. “What on Earth are you talking about, Vlad?”

The trees rustled in the background, but Danny paid it little mind.

“And treating his own godfather with such derision! It’s worse than I thought…that is not my godson!” He pointed dramatically at Danny.

A small part of Danny felt sourly relieved, something along the lines of, The adult I actually wanted to disown me finally did it! But the other part of Danny swirled with confusion. What is Vlad planning?  

“Stay back, everyone!” Vlad warned once again, a few kids actually doing so this time. “Daniel, no, Danny, is gone!” He locked eyes with Danny, the beginning of a triumphant smirk crawling onto his face like a slimy bug. “That is an eidolon, a possessing spirit, fully fused with my godson, who is sadly no…no more.” Vlad made his voice crack and holy hell this was a performance of a lifetime, wasn’t it? Danny would be almost impressed if this weren’t his arch-nemesis performing utter lying garbage.

“Now, hold on—” Danny tried to interject, but his next words fell flat at Vlad’s next damning accusation.

Vlad grinned. “All that is left is a monster. ”

Monster, monster, monster! rang in Danny’s ears, fusing his jaw shut, all air rushing out at once. Not again, not again. Any joke he might’ve had caught in his throat like they were in the claws of a terrifying beast Vlad claimed Danny was. Someone called Danny’s name, maybe a few someones, actually. It didn’t matter.

A roar rumbled over the tree line.

Cries of fear and confusion filled the air, chaos, and madness whipping together in an unholy frenzy as Vlad called, “Look how the monster’s eyes blaze green! It’s summoning a greater beast for aid. Give me that—”  

Something whistled through the air and before Danny knew it, a Celestial Bronze-tipped spear had sailed right through his intangible torso, leaving an acrid burning sting in his abdomen and a twanging wooden pole a few feet behind. It reminded him of when he tried making the Celestial Bronze bear trap in the woods intangible for Mrs. O’Leary to escape, to no avail. In a mix of fear and shock, Danny’s shaking hands hovered over where there should normally be a blooming wound and looked up to trace the spear’s origin from Vlad’s still-extended arm. 

“See, no human would be able to survive that!” Vlad explained. Danny was suddenly reminded of the Salem Witch Trials Sam had ranted about and the Fentonightingale witch hunt he’d seen with Sam and Tuck in the past. People accused of being witches were thrown in lakes and confirmed as witches if they floated and survived only to be killed later, yet absolved if they sunk and drowned. 

Damned if they did, damned if they didn’t. 

The screaming of demigods then filled the air and Danny slowly turned to watch a massive serpentine figure crawl up into the sky, blotting out the setting sun with pink phantasmic wings. 

“ DRAKON! ” someone cried.

And thus began the start of way too many things at once. 

Arrows nocked, bows pulled taut. 

The drakon descended, the war cries of children ringing out. 

Magical vines sprung up, holding Danny flush to the earth.

Wind and water whipped into the beginning of a maelstrom, two disastrous forces working as one.

One gangly Nico di Angelo full-on tackled a confused Vlad Masters out of nowhere.

Danny watched in abstract horror as the vines squeezed tighter and the battle raged around him, what few spears and arrows the campers already had on them harmlessly sailing through the drakon’s intangible body which was easily the size of two school buses. Its scales were a mix of both sickly and neon green, definitely harsh but perfect camouflage in the Ghost Zone, yet horrible in the overworld, actively glowing in the setting sun. The drakon’s wings were fully translucent, the same shade of pink as its piercing eyes, a color that was so distinctly… Vlad.

Vlad cursed as Nico di Angelo wrestled him, unable to go intangible just like Danny had been when faced with the self-proclaimed Ghost King. Unfortunately, even though Nico could stand up to Vlad’s intangibility, he was still physically weaker than a fully grown man. 

Danny needed to help.  

He forced his waning energy to slip him into intangibility once more, the vines summoned by a now-stunned Demeter kid jutting out thorns from all sides like a Venus flytrap trying one last time to catch its prey as Danny rolled out the side. Danny stared at the kid who offered a meek apology.

“I don’t care! Use the vines on the drakon or something! Actually, find some Blood Blossoms. Use them! Sanguis flos! ” 

The confused Demeter kid nodded shakily and presumably attempted to do just that, but Danny didn’t care what the result was, whipping around just in time to see Vlad kicking Nico inhumanly far away, scrambling back and heaving. His suit jacket had been pulled away in the scuffle, leaving him in a stained white dress shirt that might as well just be called brown. His stupid ponytail had mostly fallen out and he now sported a bloody nose dripping red with minuscule flecks of green. Nico didn’t look much better, boasting a black eye, various bruises, and ripped black jeans (not the kind done on purpose for fashion’s sake).

“You insolent twerp—”

“ Vlad! ” Danny shouted, voice echoing unnaturally. He stepped forward, but the drakon above had other plans. A plume of ectoplasmic flame drew a line between him and Vlad, Nico groaning thankfully far enough away not to get singed.

“ GREEK FIRE! ” a camper shouted. “ PERCY, HELP— ”

“Why are you doing this?” Danny screamed over the chaos. 

“INCOMING!” The drakon dove and panicked shrieking filled the air. “ HOLY HERA, IT GOT— ”

“You weren’t supposed to interfere!” Vlad roared back. “You were meant to stay in that coma, you imbecile child!”

Danny’s stomach dropped like a stone and Vlad’s face paled as Danny felt his glare turn cold. In an instant— seriously, how did Danny move that fast? —he was on Vlad’s side of the wall of flame, poising a flickering ecto blast at Vlad’s throat. It kept fizzling out, sparking pathetically like an old lighter. 

“Out of energy, Little Badger?” Vlad managed to croon. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have been following me all day.” He then grabbed Danny’s wrist and slammed him to the ground, back first. 

Danny’s back alighted in stars of pain as he tried to stand, only for Vlad to press a scuffed dress shoe on his rib cage, pressing down hard . He cried out, clawing frantically at Vlad’s leg to free himself as warm, warm blood bloomed between his shoulder blades like molten lava trying to melt his ghostly ice Core. 

“Oh, do stop fighting, Daniel. It’s unbecoming. Hm, does your back hurt?” Vlad pressed his heel deeper in Danny’s sternum, and Danny went limp with pain. His blood turned slick, sticking his shirt to clammy skin. “Are all the ‘old man’ jokes you make about me now finally coming back to haunt you?”    

Vlad then stepped aside and picked Danny up by his front collar, inches off the ground. Danny clawed at his throat. In the back of his aching head, he knew that kind of move was pretty much impossible from a physics perspective—Vlad should not have been strong enough and Danny’s weight would’ve tipped him forward. However, in a world where science and magic cohabitated in an unsteady balance, supernatural beings like Vlad laughed in the face of the “impossible.”

“It’s impossible to fight back against me, weak as you are. Be a dear and give up—Melinoë promised you as my reward for assisting her in this stage of her plans with my latest pet project, my drakon. Oh, and you still have your Fenton Thermos. I’ll be taking that—”

And Danny flicked his outstretched wrist, a Stygian Iron-rimmed shield sliding into existence and beaning Vlad in the skull. The joke’s on Vlad—Danny could also laugh at the “impossible.” The head wound hissing, Danny ignored the smell of death permeating his nostrils as Vlad dropped him, gripping the side of his head in agony. He struggled to remain upright and just as he was about to soup Vlad while he was down, a horrifying cry was heard.  

“ THE DRAKON HAS MARIE! ”

The warm blood dripping down Danny’s spine went cold. A child. Vlad’s drakon had a little kid—

Danny whirled on Vlad. “Call it off!”

“It’s hardly sentient at this stage— I can’t . Trap me or the ghost I fused with the drakon,” Vlad replied, still somehow managing to sound collected even as he coughed up blood. “We both know that little thermos of yours will only hold one powerful being at a time.”

“Or I could just kill you. Then I wouldn’t have to make a choice!” Danny pushed his shield closer to Vlad’s exposed throat. The Stygian Iron seemed to exude tendrils of shadow that longed to lick up the blood dripping down Vlad’s face like an overeager dog. Vlad’s momentary flicker of fear turned to deadly calm. 

“You wouldn’t.”

It was such a simple statement, oozing with horrible truth. Danny only fought ghosts and sent them back to the Ghost Zone—he wasn’t a killer. Vlad’s time to die wasn’t yet, as much as Danny loathed to admit. He could sense it. He wondered if Vlad could sense it too.

“Go and be your little Phantom.” Danny wished he could smack that smarmy expression off Vlad’s face. “Camp Half-Blood can’t hate you more than it already does—just know that I will always welcome you with open arms. We’re like two sides of a coin, you and I. I will always understand you, even when no one else does.”

Danny hefted his shield, sneering at Vlad. He forced his transformation into Phantom, white rings of energy appearing, stuttering once then twice like a pull-cord lawnmower before roughly bisecting his middle and marginally dulling his injuries. 

He lifted a few inches off the ground, glaring at Vlad. “I hate you so much. Go die in a hole.”

Vlad had the nerve to smirk. “Great idea, Little Badger.” He then flickered into Plasmius before sinking into the dirt. 

As much as Danny would like to spit on Vlad’s metaphorical grave, he had a camp to help and a kid to save. Marie. 

Good Gods, Danny couldn’t emphasize how much he hated Vlad. 

He shook his head and quickly surveyed the battlefield, dismissing his shield for now. 

The drakon didn’t seem to be doing much besides generally sowing chaos, occasionally spitting up ectoplasmic flame on the border of the woods. Percy was trying his best to quell it with his water powers, but as soon as he put one fire out, three more seemed to take its place. The Demeter kids launched tea sachets at the drakon, but it seemed to have enough sense to avoid them; Danny coughed, noting the familiar acrid fumes of Blood Blossoms. 

And there, crying and trapped in the drakon’s claws, was Marie.

Angry thunder boomed overhead. 

Jason bounced between wind currents around the drakon, occasionally summoning bolts of lightning that just ended up phasing right through it. The drakon spit up another glob of fiery ectoplasm which Jason narrowly avoided, spiraling midair. 

Jason barely managed to right himself. “ Holy— ” 

The drakon’s tail whipped around, coming down to swat Jason out of the sky in a finishing blow, but Danny tackled him at the last minute, turning them both intangible to avoid the strike. 

“Danny?!” Jason exclaimed.

“I’ll distract the drakon! You grab Marie!”

Jason nodded and Danny screamed, “HEY, UGLY!”

The drakon’s head whipped to Danny who almost laughed—it was funny how many baddies fell for that, but now wasn’t the time for joking around. So instead he stuck out his tongue and did some jazz hands which was definitely the more mature option. 

The drakon snapped, but Danny was faster, twisting over its snout and all the way onto its neck as it writhed. 

“Can’t catch me here~”

The drakon’s neck dislocated, partially turning to ectoplasmic sludge as it opened its maw primed with another fiery attack. Danny’s icy Core protested at the proximity, but he persisted, furrowing his brow and waiting until the last second to vault away. The drakon’s roar rattled Danny’s skull as molten ectoplasm rushed across its back, yet Danny still flew flush to the drakon’s belly before popping up on the other side. 

Danny dove behind one of the drakon’s pink wings for better cover, its green scales weirdly stopping at their base. They looked like they were never meant to be there, grafted unnaturally to the overgrown lizard’s back, anchored by a massive pink gemstone. Experimentally, Danny kicked it, and the drakon screeched.  

Danny’s eyes widened and he shouted through the whipping wind, hoping Jason would hear him. “ GET READY! ” Gritting his teeth, Danny aimed a fizzling ectoblast from his fingertip at the gemstone, and the drakon fully bucked when the shot connected, crying out in pain.

A child’s sudden shriek cut off as quickly as it began and Jason called, “ I got her! ” 

Nearly thrown off the drakon, Danny couldn’t really cheer Jason on, his shout of support turning to a full-on scream as the drakon nashed and snarled, trying to snap up Danny with its dislocated neck. Danny fumbled for the Fenton Thermos at his hip and unscrewed the cap, hitting the button to suck in the ghost, but the only thing attracted were wisps of pink energy from—

“The gem!” Danny realized. The drakon’s tail whipped Danny away no sooner than he said that, gripping onto both parts of the Fenton Thermos for dear life. 

The drakon snapped once again, this time knicking Danny’s leg as he spiraled out of control, crashing into the bushy top of a tall tree. He caught glimpses of destruction mostly concentrated around the woods’ border but some buildings like the dining pavilion weren’t so lucky. Cursing, Danny needed to draw the drakon away from the center of Camp—he couldn’t get to the gemstone easily without risking the lives of the campers nearby. 

The waves of the open ocean crashed in the distance. Perfect. 

Shaking his head and quickly slapping his face to steel himself against every ache, every burning pain, Danny zoomed into the sky once more and letting loose a sharp whistle that’d make a New York cabbie proud.

The drakon caught sight of Danny, producing an ear-splitting shriek. “Come and get me, Dragon Tales!” he cried.

Whether it was because the drakon hated being called a dragon or because it simply hated Danny, the drakon followed after Danny’s acrobatic dodging, spitting ectoplasmic burst after burst that thankfully shot off into the distance, falling short into the ocean like the world’s worst rock skipper. 

The next few seconds over the open water became a blur, shouting from the far-off Campers melding with Danny’s desperate battle cries and the drakon’s bloodcurdling roars. Danny’s body became a an unholy machine hellbent on destroying the drakon’s gem and protecting the innocent Campers, a horrible parody of what he did with Princess Dora’s amulet ages ago in Amity Park. 

But Danny was fading, ectoblasts becoming weaker and weaker still until they fizzled out entirely. His black hazmat suit was ripped; tinged with bloody red and green. He couldn’t keep this up forever—it was only through sheer willpower did he managed to stay in his Phantom form. 

In short, Danny really didn’t think this through.

Then a wave of water swirled into a massive fist seized the drakon’s tail, slowly but surely pulling it into the drink. Not stopping to question what on earth was happening, Danny dove for the drakon’s back, summoning his Stygian Iron-rimmed shield midair and drove it right into the drakon’s gemstone. 

The pink gem cracked and hissed, dissolving completely into mist as the drakon’s wings and neon coloring bled out pink energy, suspending the drakon for a moment before it crashed into the sea in an almighty splash. With a deafening firework crackle, a haunting cry choked on the wind. 

On instinct, Danny whipped out the Fenton Thermos, vacuuming the gem turned pink mist in one fell swoop like it was an annoying dust bunny and not the essence of a terrifying creature. 

Danny’s shoulders sagged and his flight dipped as he held the thermos close, relieved that everything was over. He smiled weakly, screwing the cap extra tight, just to be sure, and turned around to slowly begin the arduous flight back to solid ground. He caught a glimpse of someone wearing a bright orange Camp shirt, suspending themselves over the ocean in a mini hurricane, poising a watery fist over the waves.

“Percy!” Danny called weakly once he realized who it was through blurry vision. “We did—”

Something rumbled in the water.

“ WATCH— ”

The rest of Percy’s warning fell on deaf ears, scalding water and impossible flame licking up Danny’s spine in a horrifying cocktail of rippling agony and pain. White rings bisected Danny’s stomach, Phantom no more as wind whipped through his ears before ending in an almighty crash of seafoam and stinging salt.

Helplessly, Danny sank surrounded by plumes of his own dark blood interspersed with shimmers of golden monster dust drifting between the bubbles escaping his lips. The Fenton Thermos hadn’t left his grip, perfectly undamaged, unlike Danny. 

Danny had no strength left, all energy completely spent doing what was right, protecting the innocent. 

He only regretted that he wouldn’t see his old friends and sister again. Sisters? It had been so long since he’d seen Dani. Did she think of them as siblings, too?

“ Danny! ” 

Was that someone calling for him?

Darkness seeped into the edge of his vision, water flooding his lungs.

“ Danny? Danny! C’mon— ”

He hadn’t felt this close to death since his accident. Maybe he should be concerned that he was this calm about it. Danny hugged the thermos tighter. Thousands and thousands of volts of electricity, changing him from the inside out, burning, burning—

Water forcefully expelled from Danny’s burning lungs, but there was still pain-painpainpain—

His head broke the surface, and then suddenly there was sand, so much wonderful sand-ground-earth against his limp body, dragged from the dark sea and into nighttime on land. 

“ Help! ” Percy cried, cradling Danny close. “ Medic! Anybody, help! ” He sounded like he was still underwater.

Danny’s head lolled against Percy’s shoulder and just so happened to look up.

Even as his vision shadowed and the space between each blink turned to much of nothing at all, Danny couldn’t help but notice the—

“ Stars. ” 

“W…what?”

Danny much preferred a sea of stars to the watery one he’d just escaped from. The light pollution in Amity made it difficult to see much of anything at night, but out here in Camp Half-Blood’s wilderness was a different story. Up above, little sparkles of light danced in the purple-black darkness and seemed to reach down for Danny—he tried to return the gesture, but he was too weak. That wasn’t for lack of him trying, warm tears trailing down a frigid face, his weak body shivering.

“ Stars, ” Danny repeated, awed. “ I can see the stars. ” 

“No, no, no! Not again. Not again! Please. Godsdamnit , no!” 

A myriad of voices crested the sandy beach dunes. Panicked, scared, confused, but most importantly, alive. 

Danny relaxed, satisfied that he at least did something right. 

His name was called, but he didn’t respond. 

The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was a strange glowing symbol floating above his head: an inverted torch surrounded by ghostly purple butterflies. 

And the last thought he had? Tucker’s so gonna kill me for not calling him back. 

Chapter Text

Percy cradled the limp body close, voice cracking as he cried out for help. His mind completely divorced the idea that the small lifeless figure in his arms was Danny, this weird, goofy, but overall kind kid who crash-landed into the mythological world and had already suffered so much, but immediately wanted to help, to do the right thing. 

“ Help! Medic! Anybody, help! ”

Percy tried heaving Danny and standing, but the kid sunk like a stone, sliding through his fingers like a ghost. He screamed at the ocean’s edge where he’d plunged Riptide into the drakon, the rush of water behind him whipping into a wave of emotion he tried to quell. It killed Percy, but he couldn’t move or run to get help. Danny could barely hold his head up by himself and Percy had already siphoned the water from Danny’s lungs and body. Helplessness weighed heavily on his shoulders. What could he do—

Danny’s head lolled against Percy’s shoulder, bleary eyes slowly blinking, reflecting the cosmos above. 

“ Stars. ” 

“W…what?”

Danny said something. He said something. Danny was weak but alive, please be alive—

“ Stars, ” Danny repeated in a rasp, hand twitching like he was trying to reach above. “ I can see the stars. ” 

Danny’s words registered, sliding into place next to a three, almost four-year-old memory that still haunted Percy. On nights when the guilt of his failures left him staring at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes, the names of each demigod lost tolled through his mind like an ancient bell.

Lee Fletcher. Michael Yew. Beckendorf. Silena. Castor. Bianca. Zoë—

The ghosts of their bloodied faces impressed on the backs of his eyelids, the youngest still round with baby fat. Some were gaunt from a lack of nutrition or heartbroken vengence in the case of Luke’s demigod army, but even some of the kids at Camp Half-Blood or Camp Jupiter looked battle-weary and war-worn, having seen too much destruction from such a young age. 

Zoë had been a Hunter of Artemis for millenia with a scrutinizing glare sharper than her silver arrows and couldn’t have looked older than fourteen even though she acted twice that age sometimes. Even still, each demigod death Percy took as a failure, a “What could I have done to prevent this?”

Certain things reminded Percy of each demigod who died, be it a broken arrow shaft or a discarded Hades figurine.

The mention of stars after a difficult battle like this, maybe not with a dragon like Ladon, but with a drakon which was honestly close enough? It damn near broke Percy.

“No, no, no! Not again. Not again! Please. Godsdamnit , no!” 

Percy’s voice cracked, cycling between pleas for Danny to wake up; for someone to help. He tried again to lift Danny, but he once again slipped through his arms like falling grains of sand, content to stay on the beach, gazing at the starry sky with glassy eyes. It was like even Danny’s body itself had just… given up. 

With flashlights and impromptu torches, what looked like most of Camp scrambled over the sand, their voices booming in Percy’s ears. A few children of Apollo seemed to glow in the cool night wind, barking over the crowd to stay back! as they rushed in to help. A small drop of worry rolled off Percy’s back, hope blooming in his chest. Maybe everything would be okay? Please let everything be okay.

“C’mon, buddy,” Percy said, lightly jostling Danny, forcing the hysteria out of his voice. He tried going for the tone he used when a new camper fell off a pegasus or tripped during sword sparring practice. “We’re…we’re gonna heal you up, good as—good as new! You’re gonna be—”

And then Danny shuddered, falling still in Percy’s shaking arms. 

“Danny?” Percy’s voice turned hoarse. “ Danny! ”

Campers shrieked and pointed at something above Danny as two golden-haired Apollo kids half wrested him from Percy’s hold, and from one of their hip flasks, forced nectar into his mouth and massaged it down his throat. Illuminated by hazy purple light, the other Apollo kid applied unicorn horn salve from Camp Jupiter as their sibling upended the rest of the nectar flask. 

“ —got Claimed! ” someone exclaimed, voice cutting through the chaos. Percy paid the random camper no mind as the taller of the two Apollo kids with the flask sat back on their knees, gently pulling their crying sibling away, shaking their head. 

Danny was rolled back into Percy’s arms. As shock slowly settled in, Percy vaguely recognized the two from previous sword fighting lessons he taught in the Arena. The taller one, just about Danny’s age, was named Ana. And in her arms was her little brother, Joey, crying and protesting that maybe just a little more nectar would help. “We…we can’t give up!” 

Ana just hugged Joey tight, eyes misty. She made eye contact with Percy over her brother’s head. “ I’m sorry, ” she whispered. 

Her voice seemed to magically carry across the beach, any clamor from the Campers muted in comparison.

“ I’m sorry, ” rung out again, grief now palpable in the air. 

Percy nodded solemnly. The frothing crashing waves behind betrayed his true feelings, not that anyone paid them much mind. He took a deep shuddery breath as Ana comforted a wailing Joey. He had just turned nine. 

Percy gently shut Danny’s eyes so he, Ana, and Joey could almost pretend the kid was only asleep.

Sometimes, the worst lessons a demigod learned were firsthand. Percy repeated this to himself through the chaos of blinking memories. 

There was the moment of scooping Danny up with help from a bruised Nico di Angelo who had the power to stop Danny from slipping through his touch to the scent of antiseptic in a secluded infirmary room where he was told to set Danny on a cot. 

“He’s in a Death Trance,” Nico winced as his palm left Danny’s forehead. He twisted his skull ring anxiously. “Like when…when I was trapped in the jar by the giant twins in Rome. I think it’s an aftereffect of his official Claiming.” He cursed, “Gods, if I hadn’t taken the Nemean Lion pelt we got off that hellhound we fought in Amity Park, and Danny got it instead, then he’d—” 

“It’s not your fault,” Percy had asserted. “You couldn’t have known this would happen.” His words felt distant, looking back. Even in the moment, he felt like he was piloting his body in third person.

Nico let out a muffled scream of frustration and shouted at him to leave. Percy regretted following that instruction. But at least he now knew Danny was in a Death Trance. Nico had survived one. Percy had to hope Danny would too. That’s really all Percy could do for now. Hope.

He saw Chiron, whose strained words of wisdom and comfort flew one ear and out the other, and Percy pushed past in a daze. Percy caught a glimpse in the overcrowded main infirmary of little Marie with her right leg in a cast, talking her hero’s ear off as Jason himself smiled along, pressing an ice pack to the head wound he’d sustained rescuing her from the drakon.

Like a magnet, he found himself wandering to Annabeth, drawn to her mumbling voice through the crack in Chiron’s office door. Listening to her ramble about whatever was on her mind was familiar, a comforting constant since they met, whether it be about a recent architecture design, her latest building project in the Sims or Minecraft, or even possibly battle strategies. At least Chiron wasn’t in his office, too busy handling the fallout of such a big disaster within Camp’s borders. No casualties— aside from Danny, a voice in the recesses of his mind bit back—but plenty of injuries, hungry Campers, and rebuilding needed to be addressed. 

Not trusting himself to speak, Percy creaked open the office door and exaggerated his footsteps so Annabeth would know he was approaching. He was used to this kind of song and dance with her and he wasn’t fond of the potential added step of her judo-flipping him on accident. Barely two steps into Chiron’s office, Annabeth’s mumbling petered off—she’d recognized the pattern of his footsteps a long time ago. “I’m good at doing that,” had been her casual reply, but there was a flash of painful memory in her eyes.

Percy could relate. His mom’s footsteps were grounded but light, her ankles clicking in a funky little pattern. Smelly Gabe’s were heavy and unbalanced, the whiff of beer as he passed the signal Percy had once dubbed shut up and get your head the hell down, Perce. 

If Percy were anyone other than Percy, Annabeth would probably have already drawn her drakon bone sword or the recently forged Celestial Bronze knives she’d commissioned disguised as little detachable dangling charms from her usual owl stud earrings. “The design is inconspicuous,” she told him a few weeks ago, “that way I don’t always need to figure out where to stow my sword when we’re out in the mortal world. They’ll grow to their full size when detached! Not all of us can have a perfectly camouflaged pen-sword, Seaweed Brain .” As it stood, Annabeth just glanced at Percy, shoulders relaxing when she saw him. She beckoned him over to a big enough bookshelf that just looking at it gave Percy a headache.

“I figured that Chiron would have more books in his personal collection than the Athena or Hecate cabin libraries,” she explained, showing Percy the book she was holding. Covered in high-quality dark leather with a bold green font, he found himself not needing to squint as much as usual at the cover. English words and his dyslexic brain hardwired for ancient languages so did not mesh well. But this… 

“‘ Paralipomenon Bellator de Terror, ’” he read the Latin aloud, resting his arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him in turn. “ Chronicles of the Warrior of Terror? ”

“Yes,” Annabeth confirmed but her nose wrinkled in that cute way that happened when she thought about a problem that she didn’t quite have all the pieces yet.

“But…”

“ But I think that translation is too literal. Warrior, yes, but the specifics are weird. This ‘warrior’ character swears loyalty to a ghost king of sorts? The titles of everyone in the book are strange. ‘They are or they are not’ according to this line”—Annabeth flipped open to a page she bookmarked with her pinky—“whatever that means and this ‘ghost king’ just suddenly stops getting mentioned, like, halfway through the book which also just seems to be blacked out all over. I can’t even read most of it!”  

Percy frowned. “‘Ghost King?’ Like what Nico calls himself?”

“I don’t think so. This is all just so weird. That drakon acted like nothing I’ve ever fought. Its wings were like some kind of magical construct! And our attacks kept flying through it like it was—”

“ A ghost, ” they said together. Percy would’ve smiled at being so in sync, but now really wasn’t the time for that, especially when Annabeth was spiraling.

“But the shades I’ve seen and the lares at Camp Jupiter don’t work like that, ” she complained, snapping the book shut. “And monsters like drakons go to Tartarus—they don’t form ghosts! Maybe I could IM Magnus, maybe Sadie to see if anything from their pantheons match closer?”

“Wise Girl?”

She pulled away from him, pacing and gesturing wildly with her hands. “And oh my gods, how is Vlad involved with all of this? I hated him from the start even though the idea of his tech sounded somewhat promising…and he’s the son of Melinoë, so maybe he can make ghosts more tangible? That’s my current guess and this book has some ghost theming but it’s just off —it’s infuriating!”

“Annabeth, breathe. ” 

She glared.

“Have you had a chance to sit down since the drakon attack?”

“I’m trying to figure out why it attacked, Percy! And what it was, because it obviously wasn’t a normal drakon. I already figured that Vlad invited it in, but—” Annabeth steeled herself before begrudgingly admitting, “Not knowing something is killing me. I need to know so I can help Camp.”

Percy nodded. “But these books aren’t going anywhere, Wise Girl. And you can’t help Camp Half-Blood if you’re dead on your feet.” Annabeth crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “You hate it when I’m right,” Percy guessed, joking lightly.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I’d like to think I can read you at least a little bit after so many years. Like how your nose scrunches up all cute when you’re thinking about a big problem, or that killer grin when you pull off an awesome move in battle, or when you fondly roll your eyes like you’re doing right now when you think I’m being a dork—” Annabeth sighed and crossed over the piles of discarded books around her to thump her forehead against Percy’s shoulder. 

He noted how her princess curls had gone all frizzy and tangled, her ponytail pulled tight to her scalp—one of her usual fidgets was absentmindedly tugging and retying it. Percy himself had never had enough hair for a ponytail like Annabeth’s, but he had to imagine it didn’t feel good to have it that tight. When she pulled it again, he gently stopped her before she could over-tighten it again.

“Stupid Paralipomenon Bellator de Terror, ” she complained, voice muffled as he pulled her in for a hug. “And C. Work, the author? They’re stupid too.”

“Everything is stupid,” Percy agreed, “except for you.”

“Thanks, Seaweed Brain.” Annabeth huffed a laugh and pulled away so it was just Percy’s arm around her shoulders once again. Her hand lightly brushed the small of his back where the Curse of Achilles once sat and a phantom shiver ran up his spine as her hand settled on his hip. But he had thought of Annabeth as his tether to the mortal world when he took a dip in the River Styx—he loved her so much that she was enough to ground him. And he grounded her when her ranting got too out of hand.  

While his brain spaced out a bit, he took note of all the pictures that covered Chiron’s walls; what some might call visual clutter actually helped his ADHD brain focus with all the little details, from the rainbow paperclips attached to the strung-up polaroids of past and current campers to how a little kid Annabeth grinned out from more than a few pictures. Two or three photos of young families in candid shots visiting around Camp made Percy smile—knowing that some demigods made it that far in life gave him hope for a future with Annabeth after they graduated from New Rome University. Tucked away in a corner, a dusty picture of a young woman with dirty blonde, maybe auburn hair in the lighting of Chiron’s office showed off matching university scholarships with an absolute wall of a man that made guys like Frank Zhang look tiny. The woman’s eyes glinted mischievously—kinda like Annabeth’s did—as she reached up to ruffle the man’s truly horrendous mullet, all frozen in time. They both wore what must’ve been faded orange Camp shirts, just with an older design that Percy wasn’t familiar with.

But even though older campers, older Greek demigods did exist with photo evidence, there were plenty more who stopped appearing in the background of dated group shots when others continued on. And even those kids didn’t show up again the year after, some barely older than when Percy first arrived at Camp. 

“You’re spacing out again,” Annabeth noted. “You’ve been thinking a lot recently. More than usual.”

“Har-har,” Percy deadpanned before joining his girlfriend in light laughter. 

She sobered. “But seriously. What’s on your mind?” 

He took a deep breath, pulling Annabeth closer to his side for a quick reassuring squeeze before releasing her and his breath. “It’s…a lot.”

“I’m listening.”

“I…I make all these jokes about godly parents paying their demigod child support, yeah? I made the gods promise that they would claim their kids before they turned thirteen, something that I traded for instead of immortality—which I don’t regret for a second.” He made sure to assure Annabeth. “But the gods agreed to something they thought was less than or equal to immortality, something that’s super important to them! And a lot of the gods are following the promise. But some… aren’t. ” Thunder rumbled in the distance, but Percy could care less. If Zeus or some other god wanted to smite him, they’d had seventeen years to do that already. Like, c’mon, chop-chop! Don’t make threats you won’t follow up on or else you won’t be taken seriously! “Some, like Danny’s godly parent.”

The earth seemed to shake but was quickly silenced.

“Thanatos?” Annabeth asked. When Percy shot her a confused look, she clarified, “An inverted torch and purple butterflies are symbols of Thanatos, the god of Death. Danny’s father, apparently, who claimed him at the last second on the beach.”

Percy furrowed his brow. “I met the guy in Alaska. Big black scary wings. All chained up on a glacier. But I thought the myths said he was celibate so I don’t know how Danny…” Percy trailed off as he looked at his girlfriend’s unamused but patient expression. His girlfriend, the daughter of Athena, who sprung from her mother’s mind like Athena famously did from Zeus’s. Athena, a famously immortal maiden goddess in the myths, was his girlfriend’s mother. “ Oh. Myths aren’t always exact, right...”

“Right. But please continue.”

“Yeah…” Percy coughed. “So, about Danny. He said he was fourteen! Maybe there’s some benefit of the doubt with him being a little shrimpy and maybe a few months past the godly deadline, but it was a promise on the River Styx. And as much as I hate Vlad, that dude is, like, ancient for a demigod. Maybe older than Quintus. When Chiron brought him up at the camp counselor meeting, he had no idea about him—never even trained the guy. I’ve met Melinoë before and she may totally suck, but ignoring your kid for decades? That’s not cool.”

“And you’re worried that Danny’s late claiming might set a new precedent and make other gods think they can do the same?” Annabeth surmised. She was always so good at that.

“I guess, yeah,” Percy sighed. Then more gently, “And just think of all those kids, Annabeth. You and I already know that the life of a demigod is rough as it is. I made the gods swear on the River Styx because I don’t want any of their kids to think they’ve been abandoned, or forgotten, or influenced by something evil, or whatever else.” His voice was almost a whisper, now. “I…I just don’t want there to be another Luke.”

Annabeth’s breath turned shaky, but she composed herself quickly. She always did, and it hurt Percy’s heart every time. As a demigod, you had to know things like that otherwise you might find yourself as the next monster’s lunch (seasoned with salty demigod tears!). 

“I don’t ever want someone to even think about doing half the things he did,” Annabeth said solemnly. “So, what are you going to do? March up to Thanatos, or Hades forbid, Melinoë and beat them up for being bad parents?”

Percy paused, a guilty smile working its way across his face.

“ Percy! ” Annabeth laughed incredulously.

“It’s a valid plan!” he protested, laughing as she tried to slap his head. Or, more accurately, she pretended to try slapping his head. If she truly wanted to succeed, Percy had no doubt that she could. “And if I get them to meet me by a large body of water, even better!”

Annabeth rolled her eyes and pecked his cheek. “You are such a Seaweed Brain .”

“I know,” he grinned, the weight off his chest marginally lighter. “And you’re such a…a Wise Girl! ”

She just laughed. “That’s really not the insult you think it is—”

“—I realized that as soon as I said it.” Percy faceplamed, which only made his girlfriend laugh even harder. He smiled despite himself, glad that he could at least help someone get out of a funk if not his own. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. Have you seen Marie’s cast, yet? I heard that she’s trying to get everyone at Camp to sign it.”

“Oh, really?”

“…and endear them enough to grab ketchup packets for her.”

“Okay. That…that sounds about right. As her Head Counsellor, I should probably stop her from inadvertently destroying the infirmary while it’s so busy.”

“Eh, probably.”

And off they went to check on Marie, with Percy splitting off right after to check on Danny’s individual secluded infirmary room—the poor kid always seemed to be in there, going in and out like it had a revolving door. Hopefully, Danny would be able to use the “out” part of that analogy at the end of everything. Percy raised his hand to knock, but Will stopped him at the door, apologizing and saying that no visitors were allowed, not unless he’d suddenly become an Underworld expert like Nico. 

“ Please, Will. I just want to know if there’s been any changes. I—”  I feel like I let him down, Percy wanted to say, I pushed him too hard with the tests around Camp to help figure out his godly parent and build that cabin next. I need to say I’m sorry because Danny didn’t deserve all that extra stress. Danny didn’t deserve to die. Instead, Percy saved his rambling. “I’m worried about him.”

Maybe those four little words held the weight of his conscience, like how a kilogram of steel is the same as a kilogram of feathers—one just looked bigger than the other. And maybe Will saw just how much Percy was beating himself up about Danny’s condition. Wait. Did something just rustle behind the door—?

Percy tried peering through the crack in the door behind Will, only to be blocked and sternly reminded, “No visitors allowed.” He then softened as Percy looked away, embarrassed. “But you and Jason will be among the first to know when Danny gets better and ready for visitors.” Percy brightened at that. “He’s seemed pretty attached to y’all since he arrived at Camp. And remember, it’s when he gets better, not if —we’re not gonna jinx it with any of that ‘if’ nonsense around here.” 

“Danny’s strong,” Percy reaffirmed, not sure if it was more for Will or himself. He said his goodbyes to Will and repeated that mantra throughout the night as he helped out around Camp where he could until Chiron forced him to head back to his cabin to sleep, way past curfew. Too many Campers were awake thanks to the surprise drakon attack. He gave that stern mentor glare that Percy was willing to bet was a class all teachers had to take to become teachers—Disappointed Looks & Stern Glares 101. Maybe he could ask Paul when he next visited the Jackson-Blofis apartment.

Just before he was out of earshot, Percy heard Chiron mutter to himself about contacting a “Jasmine Fenton.” Danny’s big sister, Percy vaguely remembered with a wince. That was one of the more devastating parts about war, about fighting as a demigod; because the heartbreak trailing behind any casualty (even teetering on the edge like Danny) was figuring out how to break the news to their family. 

Chapter Text

Danny Fenton was dead. 

At least, that’s all Danny could reason. Last he remembered, he got blown out of the sky by an overgrown lizard, belly-flopped into the water, and then everything went sorta blurry from there. Pulled from the water and into darkness, and there was…crying?

But Danny never cried. He’d never let himself do that (or at least he’d try not to, anyway). He’d never cry, not even lost in pure dark nothingness like he was right now. (Okay, fine, that was a straight-up lie.) It really was weird—Danny really thought he’d go to a more neon-y part of the Ghost Zone when he full-on died. But maybe not because he was the son of a Greek god or whatever. (Come to think of it, was the Ghost Zone part of the Greek Underworld? Or vice versa? What about other Pantheons—?)

When Nico and Danny were in the infirmary together when he first arrived at Camp, Nico had given him a quick rundown of the Greek Underworld. “It doesn’t make sense for you to not know, given your parentage,” he’d said. In turn, Danny had made some wisecrack about knowing that people die, oof-ouch, time to go ghost! Nico hadn’t been very amused. But the important facts Danny had eventually gotten from that conversation were where souls went after they crossed the River Styx and were assessed by a panel of judges of the dead, whatever that meant.

Being a Greek demigod, Danny had a few options.

The worst of the worst went to the Fields of Punishment, where people faced personalized torment. Infamous souls like Sisyphus who slighted the gods (i.e. Thanatos) had personalized punishments. Sisyphus was doomed to roll a boulder up an impossible hill for eternity, only for it to crush him once the end was in sight, crashing back to the bottom for Sisyphus to start from square one to represent the “futility of avoiding Death” or however Sam had phrased it when she rambled about that story. Danny couldn’t help but wonder if someone could be punished for something they did in an alternate future that didn’t really exist anymore though it still haunted him.

Elysium was an unending paradise where the bravest, coolest, most awesome, and kindest people went to party and hang out and stuff with each other indefinitely. You could even choose to forget your old life and be reborn back into the mortal world if you wanted! Elysium was the ultimate goal for a demigod, if not end up in the Isle of the Blest if they’d been reincarnated three times prior and been truly a good person in every life they’d lived. It was definitely the lottery of all lotteries to say the least. Danny didn’t think he was that good, for all he tried to be to earn Elysium.

And then there were the Fields of Asphodel, where the dead who didn’t do enough good nor enough bad in their mortal lives wandered aimlessly in foggy fields forever, forgetting themselves in the process. Most souls went there, and Danny believed he’d be among them. It was fitting—he felt half good, half bad, half a person, a halfa. Wherever he ended up when he died, he was sure to be stuck in an in-between place. 

“Is that what you truly believe, little one?”

Everything suddenly doubled in clarity. The darkness filled in with twinkling stars, coming to light and life in the midst of—

“Da—Thanatos?” Danny tried to say. His voice didn’t quite work, caught on the first syllable.

“Even if you were truly dead—which you are not —I would make the grandest of accommodations for my child, much like Hades does for his heroic deceased children. If you so wished it, I would take you under my wing to traverse between the Underworld and the mortal realm as a lieutenant. A lieutenant to the Lieutenant of Hades, if you will. Whatever you desired after you expired.”

Danny remained silent, curling in on himself.

“I refuse to let you waste away in darkness and fear, my little star. It is not your time and we have much to discuss. Focus on me and take my hand.” A warm presence brushed past Danny and after a moment of terrified quiet, the god of death begged, “ Please. I don’t want to lose you too.”

Danny drifted to a realization. Even if he thought so lowly of himself, some people in the world didn’t. Some people, like Jazz, Tucker, and Sam. Dani. They all cared for him even if Danny found it difficult to extend the same kindness to himself. 

Nico and Will and Percy and Jason. Yew. His new friends appreciated Danny for Danny, not because of what he could or couldn’t do or did or didn’t know as the weird new kid. Even the mother-flippin’ god of death wanted to see Danny succeed and live.

The idea of love would have to be enough.

And so Danny took Thanatos’ hand and refused to let go. Thanatos pulled him into a greedy phantom embrace lacking true solidity but managed to be comforting, more or less. “I’m sorry that we have yet to meet properly in person without animosity, my son. One day, perhaps, my duties and Olympus permitting.”

“Yeah, ‘perhaps,’” Danny echoed Thanatos’ sentiment, the world of mist and stars pulsing around him. “Thanks for sticking up for me.” 

“Of course. It was difficult at first to garner defense from other gods but you are oddly endearing to many—” The world around them shook and Thanatos broke away from Danny, flaring his shadowy wings and curling his fists, speaking lowly. “ Someone has insulted my honor and aptitude as a father. Perseus Jackson, you will pay—”

Danny buffered before cutting in, agitated. “Seriously, man? Percy is my friend.” He stumbled over his words, trying to grasp onto a fleeting memory, “He…he saved me from drowning, remember? Cut it out.”

Thanatos and the world settled, if only marginally, as he muttered to himself, “I did claim my son at birth.” He then turned to Danny. “I blessed you with a gift of protection—I simply did not make it a spectacle as Camp Half-Blood prefers within their borders until recently.”

Danny wasn’t sure how to respond to that other than reiterating, “Percy Jackson is my friend.” After a moment to think he continued boldly, “And even though you gave me a gift as a baby, that doesn’t make up for over a decade of absence. The Fentons adopted me and cared for me at the bare minimum—you didn’t.”

“The Fentons were not suitable guardians in the end,” Thanatos stated with fiercely tempered indifference. Danny hated how he couldn’t disagree with the deity, but he kept his glare firm. “Other gods would do and have done less.”

“ Then be better. ” 

Thanatos set his jaw. “What do you mean? You’ve been given a blessing at birth, at your Camp Claiming, and at near death. What more could a mortal want?” 

Danny didn’t know all of what Thanatos was referring to, but pushed on anyway, staring down Death himself, shadowed as he was. “If you were so worried by your ‘aptitude as a father’ being insulted, then fix it. Be present when you can. Get to know me as a person and not just an extension of you, or whatever. Show me you care by doing that and not counting on buying my affection with gifts—others tried that and failed.” He thought back to Vlad’s honeyed promises and presents with a cost. “Show demigods and gods alike what it means to be a parent if you’re so concerned about it. Lead by example, not by force.”

“Gods are forces of nature. We don’t act on the same level as mortals if that’s what you’re implying, my little star.”

“You fell in love with my birth mom,” Danny shot back, crossing his arms. “That should count for something.”

Thanatos’ presence dimmed and his tone turned somber. “The way a mortal loves is different than how a god does. Mortals are like blazing brilliant flames that snuff out much too soon. You wouldn’t understand that unless you lived as long as I.”

Danny wanted to point out that Thanatos clearly missed his birth mom, whoever she was, enough for his deep, steady voice to falter. But then from the recesses of his memory, he remembered what Sam had once rambled to him about gods in myths and their modern-day depictions. 

Gods in myths are really disturbing when you think about it, Danny. Their characterizations are ugly because they’re reflections of the selfishness of the people who told the stories in the first place or the unforgiving nature of natural events. Hades and Persephone don’t have a well-fleshed-out love story because that myth was meant to explain how the seasons change and why the coldest seasons are so desolate—Demeter is mourning the loss of her kid and even young people aren’t exempt from dying early on. Poseidon gets ticked off easily, explaining the violence and danger of the sea when you don’t heed the warnings to stay away. Zeus is the king of the gods and thunderstorms are careless of where they strike, so Zeus can get whatever he wants as a king and reap few consequences from getting with so many people who aren’t his wife.

But nowadays, people think of the word “god” and associate a benevolent being with the term. Like, it’s so stupid, Danny. The number of children’s mythology books and cartoons I’ve seen sanitize these gods to being like immortal superheroes who are always nice and flawless and whatever is ridiculous! There’s supposed to be some darkness. Don’t get me started on the inaccuracies of Disney’s Hercules …

“You’re right, Thanatos,” Danny agreed. He made sure not to slip and almost call him “Dad” like he’d been doing so much recently. The sudden loss of love from his adoptive parents, the Fentons, had left a gaping hole in his heart he hadn’t realized until now he’d been so desperate to fill with parental affection. And with Thanatos presenting himself as his bio-father and a potential candidate so soon after that initial betrayal…Danny now acknowledged how quick he was to accept love from any vaguely parental figure willing to provide. He cursed himself for not being so cautious before. Thanatos would need to prove he was worthy of being called “Dad” because Danny refused to be burned again by ecto-weaponry or otherwise. “You’re right about mortals not understanding how gods love,” Danny continued, “but that also means gods don’t know how mortals love, either. And you’ll never know unless you live like us.”  

Thanatos momentarily looked like he wanted to protest, to shout, to raze whatever shadowy dimension they were in and Danny along with it. Danny braced for the worst, sensing something weird flare and shift at his back, but Thanatos ultimately deflated. “You are bold, of that I am sure—something you didn’t inherit from me, I’m certain. You will go far in life, assuming another deity doesn’t try to smite you first, my little star.”

Danny’s heart panged at the soft endearment, now recognizing the hint of otherworldly possessiveness with that additional “my.” “ ‘Danny,’ ” he corrected, “My name is ‘Danny.’ I’ve been told I’m very smite-able, but I want the beings capable of doing that to know what I want to be called, at least.”

“All of Olympus now knows you’re my son, as do your fellow demigods, ” Thanatos sighed. “And you’re but a mere fledgling to your birthright…”

Danny frowned at the weird phrasing but managed to shake off the confusion. “So tell me more about that later. My ‘fellow demigods’ probably think I’m full-on dead—wait. I’m not, right? Right?” Apprehension leaked into his voice, but Thanatos dismissed his worries with a simple confirmation. “Okay, good-good-good …but I still need to wake up and make sure they’re alright.”

“But your blessing may not have entirely manifested yet—”

As Danny often did, he found himself speaking before thinking. “I don’t care! I need to see that everyone’s okay. I’m not going to hurt anyone if I wake up now, right?”

The thought of letting loose some sort of crippling death-y power on his friends by accident made Danny internally shudder.

“No, however, some changes may be disagreeable as this has never happened before—”

“You say that you care about me, as my parent, so prove it. ” If Danny had learned anything since becoming a teenage vigilante who often needed to escape opponents by any means necessary, it was that even the dirtiest of tricks were on the table, even stooping down to some emotional manipulation. “Prove that you love me enough to know when to let me go.”

A sense of uncomfortable satisfaction weighed heavily on Thanatos as the god reluctantly conceded. “I want to speak with you again, my little—er, Danny. With you. Danny.”  

“I’ll tell you when I’m ready,” Danny nodded. “I just need some space for a while. Oh! And can you tell Hypnos to lay off with the constant cryptic dreams? Not a fan, tee-bee-aych.”  

“You make many requests. I’ll see what I can do,” Thanatos replied, the world around him and Danny already becoming fuzzy. “Don’t say I haven’t well warned you, son. I’m only prayer away…”

Danny’s eyes drifted shut, a sarcastic thanks on his lips as the false stars blinked and swirled him into groggy awareness in a seemingly vacant private infirmary room. 

Propped on his side sprawled on an angled-up cot, Danny blinked back his exhaustion and tried stretching, only to double over with a strangled cry of pain. Feeling raw and horrifically tender, he twisted around in an attempt to see what was wrong, but his vision simply blanked, his eyes refusing to process the writhing bandaged mess behind him, attached to him. 

Bile rose in his throat and he promptly emptied the meager contents of his stomach in a nearby trashcan half-filled with blood-crusted gauze. He stared dully at the mess, throat aching from the dry heaves.

“ Oh, little brother… ” That familiar soft nickname tipped Danny over the edge in his moment of weakness, sending tears rolling down his face. But no. It couldn’t be—

“ J-Jazzy? ” Danny’s voice sounded small, even to him. He awkwardly rolled off the bed and steadied himself on its metal frame with a raspy wheeze.

He heard a hitched sob. “Y-yeah. I’m here—”

“Prove it,” he said, uncharacteristically rough as his blurred vision tried to focus on the blob of orange, teal, and black before him. The figure stepped back. “Prove that you’re Jazz and…and not a dream or nightmare, or something pretending to be my sister!” Danny had had enough of tricks and deceit and false promises. He wanted so desperately for something real and familiar with no strings attached. “I’m tired of always waiting for someone to stab me in the back or kick me while I’m down. I can’t keep this up anymore. If you’re gonna kill me, just get it over with!”

Danny was half expecting false pity or some kind of dramatic reveal from a final boss crawling out of the woodwork, a dozen domino tiles falling in place to create a horrible monster ready to swallow him whole. Instead, the Maybe-Jazz took a steadying breath and pointedly looked at a spot above his left eyebrow—the real Jazz knew that he hated direct eye contact. 

“Danny, you are in a safe place right now. You…you are in a private infirmary room inside the Big House at Camp Half-Blood. Do you remember how you got here?”

His knees wobbled and his speech wavered. “An…an overgrown lizard knocked me out of the sky. I…belly flopped in the ocean hard enough to kill a guy and then…I dunno. Ugh. It doesn’t matter! Tell me something only the real Jazz would know! And not any surface-level stuff any evil ghost worth their salt could figure out because that’s total bull— ”

“Language!” Maybe-Jazz cut in instinctively. She blinked as she gathered her thoughts, desperation leaking through her strong and mature facade as she rambled, “And, um, let’s see…a few months ago when you faced Youngblood, you tore apart Bearbert Einstein so I could act like a kid and see and help you defeat him. And then before I went to sleep that night, I heard you looking up beginner sewing tutorials on YouTube to fix Bearbert. I…I fell asleep and you woke me up Shining-Twins style— because you’re my little turd of a teenage brother with no idea what a sleep schedule is —with Bearbert’s head sewed lopsided on his neck with bright green thread and I hugged you because I thought you looked upset and um, um…oh, I don’t know why I’m crying— ”

Danny’s vision had fully cleared somewhere in the middle of Jazz’s impromptu little speech but quickly found it misting over with tears like his big sister’s. She was trying in vain to wipe them away before they could fall with the short orange sleeve of a new Camp Half-Blood tee, gestures small but expressive as she tried to convince Danny that she was his big sister, which she was and always would be.

“Uh,” Danny paused and then swore as he struggled to remember Jazz’s usual phrasing pulled right out of her favorite recent psychology textbooks. “I am here for you, Jazz. You are panicking and…uh, shoot. What part comes next…? You may not be receptive? Responsive? To physical touch but…ugh, whatever. Screw the ‘proper phrasing!’ Jazz, you usually like hugs. D’ ya want one?”

She raised her head and her eyes softened an impossible fraction more. The two of them soon found themselves embracing in a mess of tangled limbs, with Jazz cupping the back of Danny’s head as he pressed his snotty face into her shoulder. Danny held on embarrassingly tight, afraid that if he let go, Jazz would fade away. He forcefully pushed away any passing thought of what the bullies at Casper High would say at seeing him being so vulnerable with his sister. Jazz had inherited a stupid amount of height too, so when his weak body couldn’t stand, she was able to catch him and gently guide them to the cool tile. And even then, he resolutely didn’t let go until Jazz did, purposely ignoring the flash of black fluff retreating around her that folded to rest heavily at Danny’s back.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner, baby brother,” Jazz said lightly, voice still wet from crying. She held his hands in hers and squeezed them gently. “I only just got here this morning—I was already on my way to Camp with the undercover satyr who found me and we got attacked by a bunch of weird metal birds from Indiana all the way to Pennsylvania before Chiron sent me a rainbow message thing saying that you were hurt! And then the emo kid we met in Amity appeared out of the shadows on his massive dog to help and next thing I know—”

“You’re calming your stupid kid brother out of a panic attack,” Danny joked, “ Again. ” 

Clearly, his joke didn’t land if Jazz’s unimpressed expression was anything to go by. “Danny, I will keep repeating this as many times as I need to for it to stick, but you are—”

“ —not a burden, ” they said together, Danny notably less enthusiastic than his sister. They sat in silence for a moment before Danny continued sheepishly, “I missed you, Jazz.”

“I missed you, too.” She offered him a weak smile, eyes briefly trailing to the fluffy mass behind his back. Realizing her mistake, she awkwardly looked away, stood, and offered Danny a supporting hand which he gladly accepted. “Um, so…”

“I mean, you can ask about them, ” Danny started uncomfortably, pulling away, “but I don't think I have any good answers—”

“We might, though,” a familiar person said at the opening door, “but before anything, as your doctor, I strongly recommend continuing your mandated bed rest.”

“...I’m sensing an ‘or else’ in there, Will. Hurry, Danny! Run while you still have the chance—” Nico’s sarcastic drawl was cut off by Will’s palm pressed flat to his mouth.

“As I was saying—ugh, Nico!” Will recoiled. “Did you just lick me? That is so unsanitary!”

“And unarguably effective,” Nico hummed. He then turned to face Danny, “How’s the blessing from your father? At least that’s what we think the wings are from. You just need a dark robe and you’d look just like his Mythomagic card.”

Danny’s knees buckled and he nearly pulled Jazz to the ground when she reached out to steady him. Between one blink and the next, he found himself back on his cot with Will checking on his bandages, his light touch skating on the edge of disorienting and grounding around the curled hems of his shirt. The new oversized Camp shirt Danny wore had clearly been hastily altered, the collar split and tied with a short knot, similar to the base albeit with more leeway, resulting in an accessible window for the—gods, he didn’t want to admit it because then the idea that he now had wings would be real.

In the background, Danny caught the tail end of Jazz thanking Nico for helping her with the last leg of the journey to Camp as Will tried to ask him a question.

“Sorry,” Danny’s tongue felt like lead in his mouth, “can you repeat that?”

Will’s eyebrows knit together as he gingerly removed a pair of blue rubber medical gloves from his hands and disposed of them in the trash can Danny had thrown up in. When had he put those on? “I can guess that the news is kinda… tender right now, but your wings, Danny. Are they hurting at all?”

Danny considered pushing the hard denial button repeatedly, but when he caught a glimpse of Jazz’s worried expression off to the side, he steeled his nerves instead. He took a deep breath, stared up at the ceiling, and released it as he looked back down, focusing on fidgeting with the hem of the soft black cotton shorts he had on.  

“I…have wings,” Danny said, then repeated sourly when no one corrected him, “I grew wings out of my flippin’ back.” Will nodded once and Danny let out a shaky sigh, disbelieving that this is really what his life had come to—the Danny from a few months ago would’ve called him absolutely nuts. “They…they just feel heavy, like they’re not a part of me. Too sensitive, too much nothing, too weak…I hate it. I hate them. ” His next words rushed out unbidden, but Danny couldn’t find it in himself to care. “ I hate Thanatos. ”

The earth rumbled, but Danny just lowly cussed the god out, and it eventually stopped.

“Your feelings are entirely valid, Danny,” Jazz started. Danny worried that if she wasn’t careful enough, Thanatos would swallow her whole in the earth. But if Thanatos tried doing that to Danny’s sister, he would rip Thanatos’ head off and force it to watch brain-rotting Skibidi Toilet compilations for the rest of eternity in the depths of the Ghost Zone. “It’s like you have Phantom Limb Syndrome, just in…reverse.”

Danny snorted at her phrasing. “‘Phantom.’ How fitting.”

Jazz’s brows furrowed as Will looked at Danny, confused. “Instead of losing something and feeling sensations in a limb that no longer exists, it’s like your body is compensating in the extreme for something that was never meant to be there. I’m guessing that you feel…”

“Numb?” Will supplied. Danny ducked his head away, which was answer enough. 

“A Death Trance will do that to you,” Nico said, voice hollow. When Danny looked at him in confusion, he explained, “It’s a thing only Hades kids can do, but apparently so can children of Thanatos. I triggered mine with pomegranate seeds from the Underworld, but I’m guessing that was a boon from your father—it basically puts you in a death-like coma…it’s not the greatest thing in the world, I admit.”

“Then why’d you do it?” Danny puzzled.

The already pale son of Hades turned a shade lighter. “I was kidnapped by giants and imprisoned in a jar…I try not to think about it too often.” Will set a comforting hand on his boyfriend’s shoulder and Nico leaned into it. “Thanks, Will.”

“Anytime, Angel. Now, Danny, we’ll work on basic mobility and stimulation of your, uh, new appendages over the next few days, but I gotta ask, why was that ‘Phantom’ comment fitting? I feel like I’m missing something.”

Danny and Jazz exchanged a look. “Danny—”

“It’s fine, Jazz. Besides, my doctor should probably know about my more… unusual characteristics . Weirder than the average demigod, I bet. Hey, Will, think you’ve ever seen a resting internal temperature lower than mine?”

“Oh, gods, I had to figure out that was normal by myself, you turd—”

“And that’s another thing!” Jazz exclaimed, “Why is a child the head doctor at a summer camp?” 

“ Pardon me, I’ll have you know that I’m the best doc—”

“Where are all the adults? I’ve only seen Chiron and a few of the satyrs and nymphs, and don’t get me started on the blatant disregard for safety regulations—”

“There are no other adults,” Will snapped. His usually bright disposition had dimmed significantly, which was terrifying enough to make Danny’s jaw snap shut. “Most demigods don’t make it that long—if you do, you’re ancient. If you do, you’re damn lucky and ya try your best to survive in a world full of monsters out to get you, from the myth side or otherwise. Though maybe that means you’re unlucky, then. Camp Jupiter and the Romans got somethin’ sorta figured out for older godly legacies, but that’s an exception, not a rule.”

Jazz stammered. “I didn’t know—” 

Will grimaced and offered a tense apology, “Sorry, yeah. You wouldn’t—I heard you were a legacy of Athena and Hephaestus, but you still got a lot to learn. You’re real old, like what, seventeen, eighteen? But you know little about this side of the family. Uh, no offense.”

Jazz pressed her lips in the way she always did when someone guessed how old she was, or commented how mature she acted. It was a more recent development, but Danny would bet money on increased stress from ghost hunting, Danny, and a million and one other things she’d never tell him. “I’m sixteen, actually.”

“Huh,” Will said, putting a hand on his hip. “Color me surprised.”

“It seems that we all have much to learn,” Jazz noted politely, a hint of sharpness edging into her tone. Danny knew that she could defend herself just fine, but couldn’t help the swell of protectiveness that’d been churning in his gut since the beginning of the argument. Even still, he held his tongue. “And I’d absolutely love to learn everything you guys know about Camp Half-Blood. Just some average campers’ perspectives and all that.”

Danny recognized that sweet yet relentless bite in Jazz’s voice—it was the same one she had when she advocated for Casper High’s lack of initiative regarding trustworthy mental health resources on campus and consequences for obvious bullying and the ignoring thereof by campus personnel. Jazz was a woman on a mission for change hellbent on making a difference. It’s not that she hadn’t been before back in Amity Park, but something in Jazz had shifted, for lack of a better term. Danny shuddered to think what had happened.

But Danny was excited for his sister, however—it seemed like a small weight had been lifted from her shoulders despite the burden she still carried. Here at Camp, maybe she could even act her age for once.

“How long are you gonna trap me in here this time?” Danny asked as he picked at his mostly broth soup, sitting cross-legged on his cot.

“You’re not trapped here,” Will sighed long-sufferingly, which made Nico look up from his piles of Mythomagic cards across from Danny. Will then set down his clipboard full of pages upon pages of Ancient Greek text describing the states of everyone currently recovering from injuries in the Big House, including Danny. Will had also had to add at least ten more pages for Danny alone to account for Danny’s recently divulged half-ghostiness (whatever he was now classified as), which nearly made Will scream. “And you won’t be trapped in the Hades cabin either once I clear you.”

“Jazz seemed to think so,” Danny joked. She’d left hours ago at Will’s insistence and to her credit, had firmly stood her ground until she had interrogated Will about every single step of Danny’s treatment plan for the foreseeable future and how exactly he got hurt. Satisfied for the time being, she oh-so-sweetly said her thanks and strolled out to find Chiron, presumably to discuss Vlad. The last look she shot the room was something along the lines of, “If you hurt my baby brother, I’ll break you,” which was nice, but the embarrassed blush Danny had to force away? Not so much.

“Your current physical state is…fragile,” Will winced at his own phrasing. Danny shot him a glare. “Hey, now! I’m just telling you like it is.”

“I can walk! You’ve cleared me on all the basic physical tests the past few hours!” Danny protested and his ugh, wings weakly flared behind him in emphasis. He hated that—like a parasite had wormed its way into his back and now wriggled at the slightest inconvenience. His hands flexed absentmindedly as if they were reaching for something Danny himself couldn’t even figure out, “I’m mostly just antsy, I guess.”

Nico took that opportunity to chime in. “Will, you’ve been running yourself ragged the past three days taking care of Danny’s situation while he was in the Death Trance.” Danny grimaced—he hated the reminder that he was taking up so many resources. “Take a break. Or if you’re too keyed up, check on your siblings working in the main infirmary.”

“I guess Joey did help me come up with the specific wrapping technique for Danny’s wings since he had experience taking care of ostriches with his mom in Australia on her nature preserve…”

“I also wanted to introduce Danny to Hazel once she arrives to help.”

Danny wracked his brain for the mention of someone named Hazel but came up blank. He nodded along with Nico anyway because he wanted out of the infirmary—its sterile nature and faint scent of bleach reminded him all too much of the Fenton lab. 

Will pursed his lips before turning and walking over to Danny. “Are you sure you’ll be good to walk outside? You said your wings ping-pong between numbness and hyper-sensitivity, so people—”

Without warning, a flash of black shot out from the corner of Danny’s vision and solidly cuffed Will over the head. And then his wing just sort of hovered above Will.  

Halfway to an apology, Nico beat Danny to the first response, stifling a snort of laughter at the scene. 

“I…I guess you have some mobility in your wings, then—”

“ Ancients, Will, I—”

“You’re fine, Danny,” he said, gently brushing Danny’s wing away, the light touch registering in a sudden flare seconds after it happened. Will then plucked a downy grey, nearly black feather from his shirt, taking a moment to study it before focusing back on Danny. “It’s not the first time I’ve been smacked by a patient.”

“First time by a wing, I bet,” Danny grumbled.

Off to the side, Nico grimaced and made a so-so gesture. Before Danny could ask what that was about, Will beat him to the punch. “I mean, the pegasi out in the stables got me real good as a kid, but, uh, you weren’t really conscious the last time, so I don’t blame you.”

“What do you mean?” Danny asked carefully.

“Your wings didn’t magically appear all at once,” Will said bluntly, but not unkindly. “We were worried that you weren’t gonna make it, Death Trance or no. I mean, it was…it was a lot of blood, Danny. The whole of the Apollo cabin has been takin’ turns to intermittently check in on you with me at the head of operations.”

Danny shuddered, unwilling to fill in the blanks of something so gruesome. “Sorry, man.”

“Not your fault,” Will swiftly assured. “You didn’t choose to grow wings, did you?”

“ I didn’t, ” Danny confirmed, the guilt seeming to weigh just as heavily on his conscience as his wings, even if it was something completely out of his control.  

“We’ll be careful outside, Will,” Nico cut in, shrugging, “and if anyone tries anything, you’ll just be getting a few more patients in the infirmary.”

“ Nico. ” 

“I was joking—”

“Oh, good,” Will sighed. “We really need to work on your tone—”

“—you wouldn’t find the bodies.”

Will just groaned, burying his face in his hands. 

Danny and Nico exited the Big House with the early afternoon sun warming their faces. Danny was surprised that Nico hadn’t hissed like the emo vampire he often acted as, but noted that Nico definitely squinted more than usual. Maybe the guy just needed sunglasses? 

“I’m fine,” Nico said. 

Did I just say that aloud? Danny wondered.

“Yes. Now follow me. Hazel should be arriving on Arion at Thalia’s Pine any moment, now.”

As they walked toward the border of Camp, Danny couldn’t help but feel the prickling stares of Campers going about their day, herding younger kids around to the next fun and slightly dangerous activity, or even just transporting materials via pegasi-drawn carts to fix the damages from the ghost-drakon attack. Danny pressed his wings close to his back, hoping that no one would ask about them. He distinctly didn’t pray, worried that Thanatos would take that as a sign to swoop in before Danny was ready to deal with him again.

“Danny!” a cheerful voice cried. A small weight thumped clumsily into his leg, and his wings puffed up and away instinctively in a panic. 

“...Marie?” Danny registered, his heartbeat slowing to its regular (for him, anyway) sluggish tempo.

She bobbed her head so fast as she pulled away that her little crutches could barely keep her upright. Danny quickly steadied her with a firm hand behind her back and she beamed, leaning all her weight on her left leg to rummage in the front pocket of her overalls to brandish a rainbow collection of miniature markers. “Fun fact! I have a cast, now!” She wiggled her right leg in a light pink cast covered in various colorful doodles and scribbled text, pointing to an empty spot front and center with a purple signature surrounded by cartoon lightning bolts. “And you hafta sign it next to Jason’s name! Cuz you two saved me.” Then in a whisper that really wasn’t a whisper, Marie went on, “I saved you a spot, so don’t worry!”

“O-oh,” Danny stammered. “Marie, are you su—” Nico elbowed Danny in the ribs and “innocently” whistled when Danny glared at him—an unspoken rule was to not upset the kid. Danny turned back to Marie who stared at him expectantly with impossibly big grey eyes. He sighed and pivoted, “I mean, you sure you want me to pick a color to sign with? I bet Nico knows the best colors—I bet he’d even let you doodle on his hands to test out all of them, even the sparkly ones!”

Nico muttered a curse as Marie rolled her eyes. “ Noooo, Nico looks like a grumpy raincloud! I’ll pick for you, Danny.”

She then frowned at her marker collection before nodding and pressing one into Danny’s hands. It was an electric green highlighter that would probably rub off by dinnertime, but he couldn’t find it in himself to deny the kid her joy, so he signed a shaky “Danny” next to the elegant cursive of “Jason Grace.” At Marie’s request, he drew a cartoony blob of a ghost because according to Marie, “Jason drew somethin’ so you need to too!”

Marie giggled once Danny was done and handed back the pen. Then she looked Nico up and down and ordered him to give her his hand.

“What?”

“I wanna draw somethin’ happy on your hand because you look sad.”

Danny snorted as Nico groaned. “You heard the kid, Nico. Now, Marie, I think Nico would rock some neon pink…”

Soon enough, Nico sported a veritable sleeve of pink doodles halfway up his left forearm, full of cartoon stars, hearts, smiley faces, and surprisingly detailed skulls for an almost eight-year-old. When asked, she only smiled and said she liked to study skeletons, which totally wasn’t a concerning answer for a little kid. Nico seemed to nod in approval at that statement at least, even if he wasn’t thrilled with much else.

“ Marie! ” Annabeth’s voice boomed over the clearing. “Where are you, you goon?” 

She gasped and began hobbling away on her crutches at breakneck speed. “Gotta go, guys!” And the last thing she cried was, “Fun fact! Your wings are really pretty, Danny!”

Fighting down a horrible blush and ignoring the sparse Campers’ laughter at the admittedly adorable comment, Danny managed to give Marie an awkward thumbs up in thanks. In a spark of agreement, Nico and Danny shared a look and absolutely booked it to the Camp’s border to find a teen their age dismounting an impatient caramel-golden stallion near Thalia’s Pine and Peleus the dragon. 

The teen readjusted their backpack and gently brushed the horse’s black mane, saying, “I’ll call you back when I need you as always, Arion.”

The horse knickered, nosing at the teen’s hand. 

“Fine, fine, I know you want a snack—”

“Hazel!” Nico called once they were close enough, a genuine smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. Danny was surprised—he thought that only happened around Will.

“Nico!” Hazel grinned, waving to greet them as they approached. “It’s so good to—” Arion huffed and stamped his hoof, making Hazel wince. “Sorry, guys. Hold on a moment—he’s a bit peckish.” 

Without warning, Hazel extended a hand over the earth. Within seconds, a craggly lump something shiny wormed out of the ground, jumping up into her hand like a hound waiting to be praised, which she then offered to Arion. Danny’s eyes went wide in surprise at the scene.

Arion huffed and Hazel muttered an apology about not being able to find anything but quartz and pyrite nearby. The horse then ate the solid rock in her palm. She then patted his muzzle and told him to go graze and the horse shot off like a rocket, leaving nothing but an impossible plume of dust in his wake. 

Danny’s jaw dropped, wings flaring out with a snap. “ Holy sh— ”

“Schist?” Hazel supplied, clapping her hands to get rid of the dirt as she turned around properly. “There’s not much of that around Camp Half-Blood, but that’s a good idea. I think there’s some in Manhattan, though… Holy sh— ”  

“Schist?” Nico echoed with a schist-eating grin. “Schist-eating” in the sense that his expression looked as unfaltering as Arion’s teeth in the face of eating straight-up rocks, of course. There was absolutely no other reason why Nico’s grin would be described that way.

Peleus the dragon grumbled and curled closer to Thalia’s Pine at all the demigod-spurred commotion.

“Sorry!” Hazel offered sheepishly to Peleus. “And sorry, Nico and—”

“Danny,” he cut in, introducing himself in case Nico hadn’t. Even if Nico had, Jazz drilled those manners into Danny from a young age and he’d be remiss to use them with her so close by. 

“‘Danny,’” Hazel repeated to herself. “Now, Nico told me a bit about you over Iris Message, but the, uh, wings were a bit of a surprise. Just startled me, is all.”

Danny laughed without humor. “Believe me, they were a surprise to me, too.” Hazel pressed her lips in a thin line, looking Danny over once more. He took a step away, offering her an awkward smile as his wings hugged close to his back. “Can I help you?”

Hazel shook her head and coughed into her fist, embarrassed. “Sorry, Danny. It’s just, I, um, met your father once.” Danny hated how it took him a moment to realize that she likely meant Thanatos. “You have similar…auras.” 

At that mention, a plume of blue mist trailed out of Danny’s mouth at the same time a swirling wave of black and blue mist exited Hazel’s. She blinked, her expression settling into a frown, putting a hand to her lips. “Well, that’s certainly new…”

Danny, however, was immediately on guard. His woven bracelet from Thanatos sat snuggly on his wrist, ready to be summoned as a shield and his fingertips hummed with the familiar yet still weak burn of ecto energy. 

“ Who are you, really? ”

Nico took a step forward, but Hazel shook her head, making him stop in his tracks. Her gold eyes glinted with an ancient power that Danny couldn’t place, voice firm as she stated, “I am Hazel Levesque, Centurion of the Fifth Cohort, Twelfth Legion Fulminata of New Rome, Daughter of Pluto.” Then Hazel’s tone lightened. “And that scrawny white boy next to you is my brother,” Nico made a huff of protest as she continued, “On the godly parent side, that is. I’m Roman; Nico’s Greek.”

Danny’s eyes flicked between them—they looked pretty much nothing alike, what with Nico’s pale olive skin and straight black hair compared to Hazel’s dark brown complexion and light brown curls, but according to Danny’s Ghost Sense, Hazel and Nico felt very familiar. If Danny had to put a punny label on it, he’d call them “kindred spirits.” 

Danny’s shoulders untensed and he felt his wings drop as well as his expression softened. Hazel mirrored him, but still kept a steady hand on a sheathed golden sword at her belt. “Sorry about that, Hazel. That blue mist stuff just then? I call it my ‘Ghost Sense—’ yeah, go ahead and laugh, most people do—but back home, a lot of ghosts wanted me dead or skin me for my pelt or whatever else so once I realized that the blue mist meant a ghost was nearby and ready to beat me up, I learned to punch first and ask questions later when my Ghost Sense went off. It actually happened when I met Nico for the first time, come to think of it…”

“That’s horrible, ” Hazel admonished. “That many ghosts acting that violently around you? Wait, I’m sorry, one of them wanted your pelt? Like, your skin? ”

“Only one does,” Danny shrugged. “But it’s no biggie—I just send him packing whenever he shows up. Huh. I wonder that since I now have wings if Skulker wants to mount me on his wall even more… gross. ”

Hazel wrinkled her nose in disgust and made eye contact with Nico. “This boy needs some serious help.”

“Will’s and Danny’s sister who has more therapy-speak than most Apollo kids—a legacy of Athena and Hephaestus, mind you—are on the case with little luck. No offense, Danny.”

“You know, according to Jazz, when someone says that, they usually mean ‘full offense’ and tack that on the end to ‘make up’ for what they just said…” 

“Jupiter help us,” Hazel said pressing her face into her hands. “You guys bicker more than probatios. ” She sighed and finally looked up. “Nico, would you be so kind as to show me why you needed me to come all the way from California to visit you? Not that I don’t love you, but a several hours long horse ride is still a several hours long horse ride and I would very much like to sit down.”

Later, in the Hades cabin, Hazel swore worse than a sailor, which Danny found remarkably impressive given his first impression of her was something along the lines of “sweet but kinda strange horse girl.” (Seriously, how was she so normal about her supersonic horse eating rocks that she summoned from the earth???)

“You mean to tell me that there’s a ghost inside of Danny’s soup thermos?” She tapped it experimentally, but her touch didn’t do much besides make a dull clink! sound. “And it took all of Camp Half-Blood to fight the drakon it was possessing? And the ghost was infused with some kind of gemstone?”

Nico nodded, but Danny was still confused. He began to ramble, “Yeah? So we just need to chuck the ghost back in the Ghost Zone via a naturally spawning or man-made portal. A natural one is trickier to track down, but is probably our best bet considering that the only man-made ones I know of are owned by people who either hate my guts or hate my guts and want me to be their ghostly son-protege.”

Nico and Hazel looked at Danny blankly, but Hazel was the one who came to and spoke up first, shifting her weight on the empty lower bunk she sat on. “Danny, you just said so many words in an order that does not make sense. I grew up in the thirties, and I am still catching up with modern demigod and mortal lingo, so just please go slow. ”  

That last comment gave Danny some pause. “I’m sorry, did you say the thirties? ”  

Hazel laughed sheepishly, glancing down at her feet. “It’s a, uh…long story.” 

Danny studied her for a moment longer than was probably normal, noting that there was something old in her eyes. Her general death-y Underworld vibes he’d noticed earlier with his Ghost Sense weren’t exactly like Nico’s, which he’d first attributed to them being different people and the whole Pluto vs. Hades thing, but something was definitely different about Hazel. It wasn’t necessarily a bad different, but just…different. Hazel was simply Hazel, but that difference he sensed felt strangely familiar.

“I was born in the thirties, as well,” Nico volunteered awkwardly out of nowhere, focusing Danny’s curiosity away from Hazel—Danny recognized that trick because Jazz often did it to help conceal his identity as Phantom back in Amity Park. Danny blinked, but some of Nico’s weird slang and rare apprehension toward modern technology now made perfect sense. “Now, for the reason I asked you to visit, Hazel.”

“Mm-hm?”

“Like I said before, the ghost possessing the drakon was connected by some sort of gemstone, which, according to Jason and now Danny, was very sensitive and almost definitely cursed. Even though Danny managed to break it and send it to the bottom of Long Island Sound, there’s no telling if it still works. It’d also be good to know anything more about it. So, as the resident precious rocks expert—”

“You want me to be a glorified metal detector,” Hazel deadpanned.

“Yes…?”

“Fine,” Hazel waved off, “but you two are gonna help. And get Percy and Jason on board, will you? We’re gonna need both aerial and aquatic support if all those little pieces are that far out in the ocean.”

Chapter Text

About an hour later, Danny, Hazel, Percy, and Jason were all at the edge of the hastily cordoned-off surf with Nico at the top of the tallest dune directing Campers away and guarding the Fenton Thermos under one arm. Danny had looked at him reproachfully until he explained that he’d been keeping an eye on it since Danny’s Death Trance. Their little group had also gotten some caution tape from Chiron, who got it from the cleaning harpies and sanctioned Operation: Collect Cursed Rocks, but Danny doubted the caution tape’s efficacy in keeping out some of the more unruly campers. But armed with triple-lined trash bags—only the most magic-proof vessels for storing cursed gem pieces—they were truly unstoppable. 

If that wasn’t awkward enough, Percy kept staring at Danny as soon as they’d stepped foot on the beach like he was scared of something. 

“I’m not gonna die again,” Danny said bluntly as he scanned the frothy waves, purposely avoiding Percy’s gaze as Hazel and Jason tried to figure out a good carrying arrangement off to the side. It seemed like they were going for piggyback if the hard denial of Jason’s joking suggestion for a fireman’s carry was anything to go by.  

Given that Percy’s entire body flinched, Danny guessed that he hit the nail right on the head.

“ Danny, ” Percy’s voice cracked. “I’m so sorry—if I hadn’t pushed you so much with figuring out your godly parent, then maybe—”

“Stop that,” Danny cut him off, “I accept your apology and stuff. I already heard that whole kinda spiel from Jason when Nico, Hazel, and I picked him up first at the Zeus Cabin. And from Nico in the infirmary. It’s whatever, man. No hard feelings. You did whatever you could—you saved me from drowning, which should count for something!”

“‘Count for something?’” Percy echoed in disbelief. “Danny, you died in my arms! You had some haunting last words, and then you went limp and—”

Danny let out a huff of laughter. “Yeesh, that’s kinda embarrassing on my end—not very heroic looking, I bet. And besides, I didn’t really die. What was it that Nico said I had…?”

“A Death Trance?” Percy asked faintly. “Danny, I—”

“So that’s not really a death, then! It was like a fake-out sorta deal. Now, my actual death was a different story. It was still kinda cringe-fail when I died because—”

“You died, too?” Hazel asked tentatively, as Jason walked up carrying her piggyback style, hands propped on the sides of his shoulders like she was trying to ride Arion. Despite how funny the scene looked, a certain tenseness filled the air. 

Danny grinned to diffuse the tension and very pointedly did not ask how on earth a sweet and awesome person like Hazel died because that would be rude. That was a pretty common no-no conversation topic in the Ghost Zone, anyway. “Hey, twinsies! I mean, double-twinsies if you also got zapped by thousands of volts of electricity in a lab accident. Think electric chair but, like, ten times worse,” Danny mused, his tone much too casual.

Jason jolted in alarm and a squeamish expression wormed onto Hazel’s face. Danny realized his mistake once he realized that Jason was the son of Jupiter, lord of the skies and thunder bringer who notably wielded a massive lightning bolt. And Hazel herself was on Jason’s back.

“Good gods, Danny!” Hazel swore, “May I just reiterate from earlier: that’s horrible. ”  

“If it makes you feel any better, I got a pretty sick Lichtenburg scar from it—”

A chorus of “no’s” later escalated in Danny getting benched from Operation: Collect Cursed Rocks because everyone realized something along the lines of “OMG! Danny has no sense of self-preservation and he was in the infirmary for so long! He needs to rest!” which was so clearly an attack on Danny’s character because he did preserve himself (sometimes) and three days was barely anything in the grand scheme of things (it was, in fact, something)! 

That didn’t stop Danny from trying to help out as Phantom and nearly giving Hazel a heart attack at the sight of such a flashbang of a transformation, zipping off with ghostly levitation and pointedly ignoring how his once black wings now shone a blinding white pressed to his back. Jason had to promptly set Hazel down and race after Danny, eventually managing to catch him off-guard when Danny shot up into the clouds for cover. Danny forgot that while he loved flight, it was literally a part of Jason’s element, so he resigned himself to an earthbound fate once Jason tackled him in a bear hug and dragged him back to the beach next to Nico like a petulant toddler failing to escape the confines of a baby gate on the first day of preschool.

Danny scrambled out of Jason’s arms once they were about two feet above the ground, immediately cussing him out and flipping every rude gesture in the book. Jason only offered an awkward smile and apology as he flew off to help Percy and Hazel with Operation: Collect Cursed Rocks, leaving Danny to detransform and kick a small sand dune next to Nico with a huff.

“Watch it!” Nico hissed. 

Danny scowled and kicked another pile of sand, this time slightly more downwind from Nico. “Is that better, Your Highness?” he mocked. He knew that he could just as easily fly off after Jason again, maybe even use up enough juice to act as an invisible helper, but picking fights with others to keep busy was easier—it was what the other ghosts in the Ghost Zone did to stay social, after all.  

“What?” Nico asked flatly.

“You call yourself the ‘Ghost King,’ right? I’m just giving you your rightful dues as the resident ghost boy and spawn of your father’s lieutenant. My liege. ” Danny dipped into an exaggerated bow.

“Stop that,” Nico said, wrinkling his nose. “‘Spawn,’ really? I don’t want my friends to bow down to me. It’s weird. Just because our fathers have that kind of relationship doesn’t mean we need to as well, Danny.”

Danny stamped his foot with a huff and just then, a small group of laughing campers came running up to their impromptu border around the beach and Nico sharply ordered them to leave. Whether they simply didn’t care or didn’t hear him, they darted past Nico and Danny. 

In an instant, Danny slid down the dune after them and with a gravity-defying leap, jumped in front of the kids—they were early middle-schoolers at most. They paused in their tracks, staring at Danny in surprise. 

“Did you not see the caution tape?” His dark wings snapped open behind him, cracking like a bullwhip as his voice echoed, “ Leave. ”  

The kids yelped and scrambled away to Camp Half-Blood proper while Nico stormed up and roughly pushed Danny’s shoulder. “What’s gotten into you?”

“ You wouldn’t understand! ” Danny spat. In the back of his head, he hoped that his echoing voice from before hadn’t carried all the way out to sea—he really couldn’t deal with more people right now.

Nico’s expression darkened. “I’ve experienced and survived more than people give me credit for. I’ve walked through Tartarus alone, for one—a truly hellish place that defies description. Try me. ”

“Oh, so this is a trauma-measuring contest, now, huh? ‘Defies description,’ my ass! You literally just called Tartarus ‘hellish.’”

“That’s not what I meant—”

Danny threw his hands in the air, his wings mirroring the gesture. He hate-hate- hated how they already moved so naturally, like they’d always been there. Danny just wanted them gone—he wished he’d never met Thanatos or learned about “this side of the family” in the first place! 

“You know what, Nico? I’m just going to take a page out of my big sis’s psychology books and and just leave before things get worse because I’m just… I’m just done. ” Danny was about 80% sure that his phrasing was way off, but he could honestly care less, brushing past a blank-faced Nico di Angelo. Danny paused. “Don’t come looking for me.” And then he vanished from view, Nico’s strangled curse the last thing he heard as he transformed into Phantom and shakily flew away.

.

.

.

“—and that’s what’s happened since I left Amity Park,” Danny sighed, leaning his shoulder against the back of Big House next to its dripping hose. His thumb was rubbed raw and pruny from upholding the Iris Message connection by pressing down on the metal end of the hose to create a misty stream—he almost wished he’d stayed as Phantom to get the handy white hazmat glove to help. However, Danny did thank his lucky stars that Chiron had taken pity on him, teaching him how to make a call and given him enough of a golden drachma allowance that would’ve made the eyes of even the richests A-Listers at Casper High roll out of their skulls.

Sam and Tucker’s misty visages rippled violently across the rainbow connection, something Danny likened to the magical equivalent of a mic’s volume peaking during the most intense matches of Doomed.  

“I’m gonna kill Vlad,” Sam declared, brandishing her shiny new Bone Steel Valkyrie spear into frame. “For good this time, since his stupid ghost portal attempt in college only did the job halfway. Tucker, Danny, you get my inheritance split 30-70 if I die. My parents still don’t know I’m a Valkyrie or that my dad cheated on my mom with a Norse goddess—I mean, I don’t even know if he knows she was a goddess—so I think I’ll still get the money.”

“Aw, why do I only get 30?” Tucker jokingly complained, poking Sam in the ribs as she stood.

“Because you’re a carnivorous heathen, Mr. Egyptian Magician Man,” she playfully shot back, swatting his hand. “Maybe if you actually ate a vegetable once in a while, I’d have bumped you up to 40, 50 if I was feeling nice and generous—”  

“No one’s killing anyone!” Danny cut in, flaring his wings.

Tucker muttered sarcastically under his breath, “Now who’s the chicken-man?” Danny pointedly ignored that comment.

“Why not, Danny?” Sam argued, begrudgingly taking her seat once more. “You told us the horse dude who leads your deathtrap summer camp hates Vlad. You guys are actively rebuilding from the destruction he saw Vlad cause! I can march up to City Hall right now and make sure Vlad doesn’t die any sort of heroic death so he can’t go to Valhalla or Fólkvangr. Or Elysium, I guess, if he’s the son of a Greek goddess.”

Tucker’s eyes flashed. “And to cover all the bases, Ammit the Devourer would so eat Vlad’s soul if he somehow managed to make it to the Duat and get his soul weighed against the Feather of Truth. That fruit loop’s soul definitely wouldn’t make the scales even in the Hall of Judgement.” Sam and Danny looked at Tucker strangely. “ Ahem, that’s at least what I’ve learned from Thoth’s occasional snippets of wisdom while I sleep—I’ve been holding off going to Twenty-First Nome until we knew Danny was safe, so I don’t actually have a lot of context for what I just said.”

Danny groaned, putting his head in his hands. Before he could fully settle into his upset, his friends’ voices turned fuzzy, which he took as his cue to flip in yet another drachma in his quickly dwindling pile. “Is Vlad actually in Amity right now? We can’t merc him if we don’t know where he is.” 

Sam stammered. “Well… no, but he should be eventually! Even Vlad’s not dumb enough to leave his secretary in charge of the face side of things forever. Ugh, I just know he’s up to something! Like, I mean, when is he not?” 

“I don’t think he’ll be back any time soon,” Tucker mused, “not if—”

“I’m not there,” Danny finished. “But my mo—I mean, uh, Madeline Fenton is still there, right? She’s a part of his ghostly Obsession just as much as I am, I think so, at least.” Sam and Tucker winced at Danny’s sudden change of phrasing.

Sam continued, “And causing as much mayhem with your d—uh, Jack, as always. But definitely less since you and now Jazz have left. I’m glad you said she’s safe—relatively speaking—at your camp, by the way. The Fentons just seem kinda mopey lately—they even closed their ghost portal! It’s kinda sad actually, but I think they deserve it after all they’ve done to hurt you.”

“I guess,” Danny sighed, absentmindedly picking at an itchy spot in his downy feathers. “But they were still my parents for most of my life—it’s hard to reconcile how much they’ve changed.”

Sam opened her mouth to speak, but Tucker beat her to the punch. “How about we change the topic, guys! Aside from Danny’s frankly rotten luck with parental figures—”

“I’m up to four, now, if you count Vlad’s insane pipe dream, which I don’t.” Out loud, Danny didn’t want to risk mentioning Hades’ and Persephone’s attempts to adopt him before the trial for his continued existence as failed parental figures five and six for fear of incurring their wrath. Or their upset, at the very least. “Uh, sorry, Tuck. Please continue.”

Tucker huffed. “ Aside from that, anything positive anyone wants to share? I wanna end this cool rainbow call-thingy on some feel-good vibes and I don’t think Danny has many gold quarters left.”

Danny clinked the last three around in his hand. “They’re drachma, Tuck. And I think Iris has already gotten more than her usual payday from demigods.”

“Tuck’s not a demigod, though,” Sam teased. Tucker wordlessly protested off to the side. “Wait. Do we have to pay an additional fee for cross-pantheon calls?”

Everyone laughed at that and Danny piped in, “Ancients, I hope not. Um, Lady Iris? If you’re listening, you totally rock for not making this call blow up in our faces. You’re…really chill?”

“‘Really chill,’” Tucker parroted in falsetto, snickering, “That’s the best you can do, Danny? Milady Iris, you’re so— ”

Danny quickly said goodbye to his friends and swiped his hands through the Iris Message to dismiss it before Tucker “Too Fine” Foley could try his hand at flirting with the literal centuries old goddess of rainbows. 

And with his promise to call his friends sorted—even if Tucker cried and scolded him for a good five minutes for lying and taking another three days to contact them past their agreed time—Danny realized just how empty and directionless he felt. He’d unloaded every little detail of the Happy Fun Times of the Son of Thanatos on Tucker and Sam, including blowing up at Nico on the beach and almost drowning near said beach a few nights prior. They said he should probably talk to Nico (with some extra miming from Sam to stab him, which she seemed rather fond of since getting her spear), but all Danny really wanted to do was hide.  

So, hide Danny did, ignoring the flitting voices in his head of his ghostly rogues jeering that running away was weak. He told those voices to shut up as he invisibly brushed by groups of campers whispering with an undercurrent of panic who shivered when he got too close. 

“You’re his adoptive sister!” one camper exclaimed near the arc of cabins, “You should have an idea of where he is—Nico and Percy and Jason are freaking out! You don’t want a Big Three kid freaking out, much less three of them!” 

“What kind of demigod has wings?” another camper voiced, “There has to be something wrong with Danny.”

“I’m his sister, point-blank, and there is nothing ‘wrong’ about about Danny,” Jazz clarified sharply, and Danny watched as her practiced calm expression gave way to a hint of nervousness. He invisibly trailed closer to the crowd, sending people into small fits of supernatural shivers, not that they were really paying attention to that. “And I think it’s a reductionist stereotype to think that all of these so-called ‘Big Three’ kids would hurt you all on purpose. Use your brains—they’re your friends. And as well as I know Danny, I am not my brother’s keeper, guys. Oh— ” 

Danny manuevered close enough to squeeze her warm hand with his cold one three times, a subtle sign of “ I am here. I am okay. ” 

Jazz composed herself quickly at Danny’s familiar signal. “But if you’re really that bothered, pass along the message to your friends that so long as I’m alive and well at Camp, my little brother won’t leave me alone—a lot of you guys should know what I mean. Annoying little siblings, am I right?” 

Danny squeezed Jazz’s hand one last time as the small crowd dispersed, with one of the more lithe and fleet-footed kids darting off, likely to find Nico, Jason, or Percy. Maybe all three. But Danny wasn’t too bothered by that right now. He wanted to be alone and just rest his eyes for a bit.

He eventually made it up the steps to the Hades cabin and finally phased through the door. He released his invisibility with a yawn and this time, pulled a pillow and blanket from the bunk above him and purposely stuck himself under the bed with his intangibility. The first time this happened, it had been an embarrassing lack of control over his failing powers. Now, he was under the bed of his own volition, just weaker than usual, but slowly regaining his lost power. Hopefully. 

Danny’s downy black wings barely stretched past his elbows at this point, so he was able to hide away fairly easily. The main issue from before was that while there was a decently sized cavity under the bed, the wooden panels on all sides nearly extended to the floor, only propped up by the bedposts and leaving enough of a crack that Danny bet he could see the soles of peoples’ shoes if they walked by. He wished that wouldn’t be for at least awhile.

Curling up with his pillow and blanket to rest, Danny swore that he’d only been blinking lazily for less than fifteen minutes before his eyes shut and he was rudely awoken to the exact thing he was trying to avoid in the first place: the soles of peoples’ shoes disrupting the consistent level of dim light in the cabin. Eyes crusted and breathing shallow, Danny took the time to just listen.

Multiple voices layered and talked over each other as the front door creaked shut, but Danny did his best to block out the noise with his pillow, hoping that everyone would just go away. But then, with his chin tucked close to his chest, the familiar cold mist of his Ghost Sense trickled out of his mouth and down his sternum. The chattering stopped and the entire cabin momentarily dipped a few degrees as two more Ghost Senses went off.

“Danny?” Percy called nervously, “Are you in here? Just…just making sure you’re alive. And stuff.”

Danny normally would’ve joked something like, Alive? Halfway there, as always! But he just…didn’t feel like it for once. That idea alone should’ve surprised him, but he really just felt numb and tired, if he had to describe the feeling.

“Mine and Hazel’s…what’d you call them? It was something cheesy like ‘Ghose Sights?’ ‘Ghost Senses?’ They went off, Danny. No regular spirit would be dumb enough to enter Hades’ cabin uninvited, so it has to be you! Are you invisible, again?” A pause and a stomp of a combat boot hitting the ground. “ Ugh, where are— ”

“Nico, that’s enough,” Jason said gently, but still firm. He then called in the direct opposite direction of where Danny was, “We want to make sure that you’re safe, Danny. If you can give us a sign that you’re okay, we’ll leave you alone for now and we’ll check in with you here later.”

Nico spluttered a protest. “But—”

Percy muttered something to himself about Jason sounding like a verbal Ouija board, but Danny was almost certain he didn’t mean to say that out loud.

“What was that saying?” Hazel mused, “‘You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?’ You’re acting a lot like vinegar, Nico.”

Danny almost snorted at that jab, if only because his first impression of Hazel was so off—she was kind and sweet, yes, but he’d heard her swear worse than a sailor and she apparently had a hidden snarkier side when provoked. 

“Danny?” Jason asked again. “Danny, can you please…wh—Hazel? Uh, what’s your plan, there? Are you, um, taking a nap?”

Hazel’s footsteps padded past and Danny heard soft rustling from the nearby bunk. There was a small thump and Hazel’s quick brush of “I’m fine, I’m fine guys, seriously!” And then a pile of bedding puffed on the floor, inches away from Danny’s face, yet separated by the simple wooden panel. 

“I’m catchin’ flies with honey,” Hazel responded. And then as a slight afterthought, “And I’m using common sense. If I’d gone through as much as you all say he’s gone through recently, I’d be bone-dead-tired”—Danny weakly smiled at the pun, though it likely wasn’t intentional given her unwavering tone—“and want to go somewhere safe. And with even more common sense, this fun new ‘Ghost Sense’ thing lets the children of Underworld deities find ghosts—I’m assuming based on the name—but apparently also each other.” She hiccuped. “More of this misty stuff is making me hiccup the more I use it over in this direction, so…”

Hazel took a knee on the bedding she'd dropped down and tentatively slid her fingers under the bed frame. With a quiet sigh, Danny partially extended a wing, letting it brush against Hazel’s hand. 

She jumped back with a startled laugh as everyone else exclaimed in surprise. “It’s alright, folks. Wasn’t expecting feathers to tickle me, is all…so you’re in there, Danny?” Hazel slid her hand back into place more confidently this time, just a bit further out of reach, so Danny had to stretch his feathers a bit more to brush against it. Percy let out an audible sigh of relief at that, muttering something about how glad he was that Danny wasn’t dead, which made Danny a little warm inside. “And there we are, everyone. Danny is here, and apparently…under the bed? May I…uh, ask why? ”  

Danny sighed and forced himself intangible, phasing out and on top of the mattress, making Hazel shriek in surprise at his sudden appearance. Jason and Percy instinctively stumbled back as Nico rushed ahead to pull his sister to her feet and back at his side.

“I think there’s some joke I could make about me being a ‘monster under the bed,’ but I don’t think I’m feeling up to it,” Danny croaked.

Percy looked at Danny like he’d seen a ghost. “And you’re not dead?”

“I’m not dead,” Danny confirmed, voice sounding dull without a hint of a joke to lighten the mood. He was just so, so, tired. “I’m not dead… fully. ” Danny amended with a sigh. He tucked his knees up to his chin, wings curling around his sides like a protective blanket.

“What do you mean?” Percy puzzled, drumming his fingers anxiously at his side.

Hazel stepped forward and asked carefully. “Are you like me? The Doors of Death were really weak for a while, letting people in the Underworld and monsters in Tartarus come back to the living world more easily. Before that whole situation got really bad, Nico snuck me out in the chaos and brought me back to life. And as another example, my old centurion, Gwen, well she got stabbed during the War Games. She said she died and saw Charon asking for a fee to take her across the River Styx, but found an open door and just… left. ”

“I told you I got shocked in a lab accident, didn’t I?” Danny whispered, rubbing the phantom Lichentenburg scars racing up his palm and all the way up his left arm. Everyone nodded, but Jason clearly tucked his hands behind his back like he was afraid to hurt Danny in a similar way. “Well, the people who raised me—the Fentons—were scientists. They were trying to punch a hole in our reality to find a place they called the ‘Ghost Zone,’ but their portal experiment didn’t quite work, so they quit.”

“The…‘Ghost Zone,’” Hazel started, “...is that just another name for the Underworld?”

Danny shrugged. “No clue, but me being a dumb kid, my friends dared me to put on a hazmat suit and pose in the portal to that place for a picture. I did, it was dark, I tripped, and the stupid ‘on’ switch happened to be right where I caught myself when I fell. I can only guess that the thousands of volts of electricity killed me, but the magicky-sciency portal brought me back because of the whole ‘Ghost Zone’ thing. But since learning about the gods, maybe something about being the son of Death itself let me live. I don’t know. After that, I became a superhero named Phantom to stop any of the nastier ghosts who also got let through the portal, and the rest is history.”

“But did you see Charon? Tattered robe, skeletal guy?” Nico pressed, earning him a harsh glare from Hazel. 

“I don’t remember,” Danny sighed, voice shaky as he focused on the dark wood paneled floor. “It was just scary and painful . I’m not sure I even want to remember much of that day…but I do know I wouldn’t wish something like it on my worst enemies…” Danny craned his head back up to stare Nico right in the eyes. “Is that the answer you wanted back on the beach, Nico? Or would you like me to list off every malevolent ghost who wanted to kill me a second time, too?”

For a moment, the only sound in the cabin came from the miniature brazier’s crackling fire in the corner alighting a small shrine to Hades.

“What did you say on the beach, Nico?” Jason asked. His tone wasn’t harsh nor pointed…just composed, if Danny had to describe it. But it was similar to how Jazz often waited to pass judgment until she had all of the details, unnerving in quiet intensity.

Danny deflated, his cold accusation splintering. He looked away, pressing his cheek to his knees, frowning as he did so. Was he always this bony? “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he decided. “’M sorry for yelling and messing stuff up at Camp—it’s probably my fault Vlad showed up. I should never have come here. ” He uncurled himself and shakily stood. “Lemme just tell Jazz and I’ll head out—”

“Why are you apologizing?” Nico exploded, making Danny flinch, “That should be me! I am sorry—I’m the one who egged you on, Danny! You’re always making a martyr of yourself, sacrificing everything when you don’t need to, including your own life . Why don’t you understand you’re worth—”

“I’m a hero,” Danny interjected softly. “That’s just what I do.” He looked around the room, noting everyone’s scars, the tenseness in their shoulders, and the way their fingers inched toward their weapons at any sudden sound. “You guys can relate, I’m sure—I’ve heard bits and pieces about the indomitable ‘Heroes of Olympus.’”

“Leaving won’t help,” Percy said, voice raspy, painful memory flashing in his eyes. “Children of the gods—demigod heroes? We have it rough, no doubt about it, so we need to help each other. Please, Lu— ” Percy cut himself off before recomposing himself. “Please, Danny. Let us help you.”

Danny’s voice cracked. “I—”

Someone knocked on the door to the cabin, voice muffled but familiar. “Danny, are you in there?” His heart skipped a beat.

They all looked to each other awkwardly before Hazel wordlessly volunteered by rolling her eyes and answering the door herself. She cracked it open, exchanging a few soft words with the person on the other side through the small sliver between the door and its frame. And then Danny caught a name.

“Jazz?” Danny called.

At that confirmation, Hazel opened the door, revealing Jazz on the threshold to the Hades cabin. “Wow, there are, uh, a lot more people in here than I expected. Have you guys been taking care of my little brother?” Hazel properly invited Jazz in, closing the door behind them to avoid any campers’ prying eyes.

“They were calming me down,” Danny answered before anyone else could. “I had a meltdown earlier on the beach—Nico and I were just apologizing for shouting at each other.” His concise abridged explanation paired with Jazz’s relieved expression was enough to cut their conversation short. “And they all, um, know about the whole…‘Phantom’ thing.”

“You’re all very kind,” Jazz noted sincerely, expression softening at the mention of Danny’s now-revealed secret. “I’m glad that there were some good trustworthy people to help Danny when I couldn’t. And I heard from the head counselor of the Athena cabin where I’ll be staying—”

“She’s my girlfriend,” Percy said automatically. “Annabeth’s awesome.” 

“She really is,” Jazz agreed, taking the interjection in stride. “And she and Chiron told me more about Vlad Masters’ attack on Camp Half-Blood.” Stepping closer to the group, she continued with forced lightness in her tone, “Normally I don’t condone violence, but Vlad has certainly overstepped this time. From what I’ve gathered around Camp, you four seem like very accomplished and well-trained heroes, so I have a request if any of you end up seeing him before I do.”

Being the closest to Jazz, Jason answered for the whole group, “Yeah?” 

Jazz’s too-bright teal eyes flashed, boring into Jason, who nervously swallowed. 

“ Kill him. ”

“I—we’ll do our best to make sure Vlad doesn’t hurt anyone else.” 

Jazz studied Jason’s flushed face for a heartstopping moment before nodding once, satisfied with his response. “Now that that’s settled…” she said, sidestepping Jason, “Danny, I have something I’ve been meaning to give you.” From a drawstring bag Danny didn’t realize she’d been wearing, Jazz revealed a packet of glow-in-the-dark stars.

Danny’s heart went all warm and fuzzy as she explained how she’d carried the stars all the way from Amity Park with her meager belongings in her larger school backpack emptied of anything school-related. Tucked between stuff like hers and Danny’s legal documents and a spare Fenton Thermos, something so seemingly insignificant to most was deemed important enough for her to carry across several state lines and through monster attacks if only for a chance to make Danny feel happy and loved in a strange new place like Camp Half-Blood.

She pressed the packet into Danny’s hands with a soft smile and he wordlessly traced the bubbly cartoon lettering on the front. Off to the side, he heard someone sniffle at the soft scene, but Danny didn’t care if anyone saw how vulnerable he was at that moment. But if anyone tried to make fun of him, he’d have no problem telling them to take a long walk off a short pier and even shooting a few ectoblasts in the path to…ahem, gently guide them.

He finally looked up to his smiling sister. “Jazz, I—I don’t know what to say.”

“How about ‘Would you like some help putting the stars up?’” she teased.

Danny looked around the room, noting how Percy was the one sniffling (that somehow didn’t surprise him), Hazel held a hand over her heart, a smile tugged at the corner of Jason’s mouth, and a wistful expression had wormed its way across Nico’s face as he twisted his skull ring. 

“You guys wanna join in?” Danny asked, his sudden question pulling Nico out of his funk. “I mean, if my head counselor gives the okay, that is.”

Nico paused and then shook his head as if he was trying to dismiss an unpleasant thought. “You know what? Yeah. Let’s do it—this cabin could use some light.”

And so six descendants of the gods began the process of turning the ceiling of the Hades cabin into a veritable galaxy of their own making. Jason and Danny took turns flying up to the ceiling for placement as Hazel and Nico fiddled with the stick-on plaster for each star while Jazz and Percy passed them up to Danny and Jason. Jazz had bought a medley of glow-in-the-dark stars before she left home, full of everything from mostly little round specks and five-pointed stars to something that was passably Saturn, though Danny vehemently disagreed with the placement of the ring. 

“Ugh, Saturn sucks…”

“Tell me about it,” Jason muttered.

“Huh?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Danny shrugged. “If you say so…”

But Danny was the most pleased with the small speck-like stars, however, since he could make and ramble about his favorite constellations.

“Did you know that the Little Dipper and the Big Dipper are parts of Ursa Minor and Major respectively? I think there was a myth about them, actually. The woman who became Ursa Major was one of Zeus's girlfriends and their son ended up as Ursa Minor—”

Jason snorted at Danny’s descriptions and he realized a little too late that Zeus was Jason’s father, or at least the Greek version. Danny wracked his brain for another fact and settled for rambling about Argo Navis, the star supposedly put in the sky by the gods to honor Jason’s—the original Jason, that is—achievements, making everyone laugh at his quick clarification. 

When Danny mentioned a new constellation that had been slowly gaining popularity online over the past couple of years, Percy went quiet, but a peaceful expression passed over his features as Danny elaborated. “—so it’s a really strange anomaly, actually! Some astronomers were questioning why in the winter a certain cluster of stars was shining brighter than in previous years and chalked it up to more nuclear fusion than usual, or somehow just getting closer, but they ended up calling those stars ‘The Huntress.’ Pretty cool name, yeah? Just move that star a little to the left, Jason—and yup! Now you guys can kinda see the arc of her bow—” 

At one point, they took a break, all starting to make up their own constellations, telling their own little stories about why the stars should be there with no interference from the gods.

“Uh…that one’s ‘The Skateboard!’” Percy said, pointing to a wobbly line of stars under the constellation of Perseus, his apparent namesake. He nearly lost his balance from the chair he was half sprawled upside-down on.

“Why?” Nico asked.

“Because skateboarding is cool and the other Perseus looked bored, so he gets to shred on the Milky Way or something.”

They all laughed as they joked and argued about other random star clusters they’d placed. 

“‘The Paint Brush!’” 

“I think it looks more like ‘The Demented Fishbowl,’ Hazel.”

“Oh, shush, Nico. Bet you can’t come up with something—”

“Stars one, two, and three right there—‘The Triangle.’”

“Hm, I think it’s actually more like ‘The Dunce Cap,’” Hazel giggled as Nico groaned on the floor where he sat next to her.

“‘Stars-in-a-Star!’” Danny cut in from a nearby bottom bunk near Jazz, tracing a vague five-pointed shape in the air. “Because the stars make up a star, get it—”

Jazz playfully shoved his shoulder. “ We do, Danny. And if you squint, that one is ‘Shrödinger’s Cat.’”

“Why?” Percy asked. “You just traced a box.”

“Because you can’t see Shrödinger’s Cat when it’s in the box, duh! You don’t know whether it’s alive or dead inside.”

Danny could practically hear the crickets.

“That’s a mood,” he muttered, breaking the silence and earning a bunch of groans.

Hazel, Nico, Percy, and Danny then continued riffing off each other, trying to one-up the horrible joke with a worse, somehow even more horrible joke.

“Yes, yes, bad jokes all around.” Danny briefly noticed Jazz rolling her eyes at their childish actions as she turned to look at Jason and say, “…Jason, you haven’t said anything in a while. Do you have any ideas?”  

Jason blinked and quickly drew a zig-zag in the air, not connecting any star dots in particular as he stumbled out of his wall-sit. “Uh…‘The Lightning Bolt?’” He winced as the words came out of his mouth, but he still looked to Jazz for approval.

“That’s your dad’s symbol!” Danny protested, now fully invested in this little side conversation. “Pick something else, man. C’mon, be more unique!” 

Jason looked over to Danny, unsure. “I still think ‘The Lightning Bolt’ suits the purposes of this exercise.”

“What’s something that you like to do, Jason?” Jazz offered.

“Training,” Jason answered succinctly. “It’s always good to be prepared.”

She frowned, now fully facing Jason. “What about outside of Camp Half-Blood?” Jason perked up and started to animatedly explain his plans for building the minor gods more temples around Camp Jupiter. 

“ No, ” Danny interrupted with a slight laugh, “I mean, what do you do outside of being a demigod?”

That gave Jason pause, his expression turning blank.  “I…I don’t know.” His lips pressed into a thin line and he looked away, almost… lost, if Danny had to describe it. “I guess I don’t do much outside of being a demigod…”

Not one to let something like a sad response deter her, Jazz offered, her tone casual with a slight hint of concern, “Then I’ll help you figure it out—I mean, we have plenty of time before the school year starts up again. I’m free tomorrow if you want to talk more about it?” Danny was almost positive she was quoting one of her psychology books. 

Danny snorted, thinking to himself, Classic Jazz, always trying to psychoanalyze every new person she meets and trying to become their pseudo-therapist. 

“I’d like that,” Jason said, weirdly soft. 

Danny rolled his eyes, not willing to poke the rest of that conversation with a ten-foot pole. He had other things to worry about, namely the gods, ghosts, Vlad, or whatever else wanted to kick his butt while he was chilling at Camp. Danny couldn’t help but feel like Jazz had a point. Finding something relaxing to do outside of demigod-ing sounded great, but until then, hanging out with his new friends and Jazz would have to do. 

Maybe a trip or vacation outside of Camp would be nice, Danny mused.

Chapter Text

Dani hated police stations. If there was anything she’d learned after setting off to travel the world by herself, it was that police stations well and truly sucked. For one, they were usually filled to the brim with people and cameras, meaning she couldn’t easily slip away using her ghost powers without causing mass hysteria about a clickbait-worthy new cryptid on the scene and needing to lie low for a few weeks. That’d kinda bite since she was actually starting to like Boston. 

There was also the fact that one too many adults acted concerned about an “unaccompanied minor” and wanted to put her in foster care, which no thanks. Besides, Dani couldn’t imagine many prospective parents—foster or otherwise—wanting a ghostly freak of nature like her. And another thing? “Unaccompanied minor?” C’mon! Dani made excellent company.