Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hiya Phans!  (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*.✧

This Ectoberhaunt we're doing something different: One Fic For All! (No, it's not a reference to BnHA/MHA, I swear!🤣)

Last year I made a Series with multiple one-shots on AO3 since they existed independently of one another, but this time all the days are part of a unique plot! 

The Prompts/Days won't be in chronological order (since I'll follow the Ectoberhaunt schedule), but fear not!
I'll warn you in the Notes at the beginning of each chapter about when it's located.
Edit: Now that I finally finished it, I've rearranged everything, so it's more linear! (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

The updates will be every Saturday/Sunday with the five chapters on the week's prompts, since they are short on they own and I wanted to ship out something consistent for y'all. (^～^;)ゞ
(Edit: and here I am, clad in a clown costume, two years later and a new Ectoberhaunt... ( ⁎>ᆺ<) )
(Edit #2: *the Clownery intensifies* Maybe this year (2025) I'll be able to mark this fic as complete... (￣ヘ￣;) )

In addition, in the following section, I'm typing down every prompt I'm gonna use and the warnings for each of them as we go.
(Edit: I'll keep this section the same as before, even if I've rearranged the order of the chapters as a memento of the chaos I fostered back in 2022...)

• Day 03: Minutes to Midnight [Chaos]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, (brief) Friendship, Angst (seriously, prepare the tissues), Surprise Adoption, (out of screen) Minor Character Death.
Trigger Warning: Asteroid, Genocide/Extinction, Anxiety, Impending Apocalypse.

• Day 04: A Place for My Head [Box]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Hurt/semi-Comfort, Surprise Adoption, Exhaustion, Mentioned Clockwork.
Trigger Warning: Post-Asteroid, Genocide/Extinction, Impending Fallout/Ice Age.

• Day 05: Leave Out All the Rest [Wraith]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, a bit of Horror as a treat, It's not Paranoia if They're Out to Get You.
Trigger Warning: Wraiths, Battle for your (After)life, Vivid description of a foul Smell, Mention of Radioactive Disposing Methods.

• Day 06: From the Inside/Burning in the Skies [Freeze & Burn]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Family Feels, Heavy Angst, (out of screen) Minor Character Death.
Trigger Warnings: Apocalypse, Asteroid Impact, Loss of Family, Orphaning.

• Day 07: Krwlng/Cure for the Itch [Purify & Infect]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Sickness, Heavy Angst, Delirium.
Trigger Warnings: Infection, Splinter, Fever, Terror of Dying Alone.

• Day 10: One Step Closer/Forgotten [Harvest & Hunger]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Uneasiness.
Trigger Warning: Asteroid, Extinction, Aftermath of an Apocalypse, Hunger, Mention of Illness.

(Set after Day 13)

• Day 11: Nobody's Listening [Drown]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Angst, Attempt at Humor.
Trigger Warning: Aftermath of an Apocalypse, Drown Scare.

(Set after Day 12)

• Day 12: No More Sorrow [Way of Life]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff.
Trigger Warning: Asteroid, Extinction, Aftermath of an Apocalypse, Mention of Dying.

(Set immediately after Day 17)

• Day 13: Somewhere I Belong/Castle of Glass [Abandoned & Restored]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Worldbuilding (as in carpentering), Humor, a touch of Angst.
Trigger Warning: Asteroid, Extinction, Impending Apocalypse, Risk of Falling Vulcanic Rocks (it doesn't happen but it's mentioned).

(Set after Day 4)

• Day 14: Final Masquerade [Costume Party]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Humor, a touch of Angst, Dinosaurs Shenanigans, Costumes.
Trigger Warning: Asteroid, Extinction, Aftermath of an Apocalypse, Acid Rain, Earthquakes.

(Set after Day 11)

• Day 17: Numb/Wake [Despair (& Hope)]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Angst, Identity Crisis, Hopeful Ending.
Trigger Warning: Asteroid, Extinction, Aftermath of an Apocalypse, Panic Attack, Nasty Burger Explosion Mention.

(Set immediately before Day 12)

• Day 18: When They Come for Me/Iridescent [Eyes & Teeth]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Found Family, so much Fluff.
Trigger Warning: Aftermath of an Apocalypse.

• Day 19: The Hunting Party/Wastelands [1 & 100]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Non-Graphic Hunting.
Trigger Warning: Aftermath of an Apocalypse, Hunting.

• Day 20: Battle Symphony/Easier to Run [Fight & Flight]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Reverse Adoption, Fluff.
Trigger Warning: Impending Apocalypse, Crocodile Attack.

(Set before Day 3)

• Day 21: Wretches and Kings/Breaking the Habit [Coronation & Coup]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Found Family, Fluff.
Trigger Warning: Aftermath of an Apocalypse.

• Day 24 & 1 (EH24): In the End/We Made It [Past & Future]

Themes: Time Travel, Prehistoric Survival, Stranded in the Wilderness, Surprise Adoption, Found Family, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort.
Trigger Warning: Aftermath of an Apocalypse.

• NEW! Day 7 (EH24) [Unearth] + Day 7 (EH25) [Hide & Seek]: 
• NEW! Day 11 (EH24) [Dark and Stormy Night] + Day 12 (EH25) [Isekai: Another Time]: 

Chapter Text

Finding yourself abruptly in the past shouldn’t be something you’re accustomed to.
Danny knew that and while he thought that he had left that kind of things in his own past after starting college, half of him (ha!) unconsciously acknowledged that time and dimensional shenanigans were integral parts of his identity and (mis)fortune.
Child of Two World, Balance Keeper and all of that jazz.

That being said, given that this time (pun intended) he had next to no hints on how to go back home as soon as he could, Danny bunkered up in some large trees, out of range of the tallest predators (he had even spotted a couple of freaking t-rexes!) and put traps and nets of ice for the smaller ones that could climb up .
Not that they would, because the halfa had noticed that, much like the animals that lived in his present, the dinosaurs had different reactions to his presence.

The reptiles that were around Danny’s size were usually wary of him, not actively hostile or elusive, but kept watch of his movements.
The smaller ones stayed as far from him as they could, fleeing on sight (sometimes even at the “vibes” when Danny roamed around while invisible), probably registering him as a predator/threat.
The larger ones were a mix of fight flight and freeze (or ignore), depending on their size and if they were part of a herd. 

Larger the herd, less wary the species was of the halfa, likely due to the strength in numbers mentality, which was probably how Danny was able to come near the Edmontosaurus’ group while they were taking their fill at the water pond without them fleeing.
(Probably to them it was like the “truce” zebras and lions had while drinking from the communal water source.)

…However, much like that example and given that they were older than dinosaurs, a threat had been waiting in those waters.
The trap snapped in a flash and the ancient crocodile would have bitten an Edmontosaurus neck off if Danny's reflexes (and still ingrained instincts to defend people from whichever harm) hadn't intercepted the huge maw and slapped it shut.
The halfa then proceeded to hug the muzzle and deadlift the wholeass reptile just to fly further in the middle of the pond and drop his cargo rather gently, before backing away in the air to avoid retaliation. 

However, he shouldn't have worried: while the crocodile had wiggled a bit while in his hold, it probably still was in shock from being lifted up and carried, because it didn't resurface and after a bit the ripples showed that it had swum away from Danny and the shore.

Danny huffed, somewhat satisfied by this completely unnecessary action.
It was the circle of life, he probably shouldn't have interfered!

…Yet part of him couldn't regret his action in the face of the imminent tragedy that was literally peeking at the horizon.
He needed… some self-soothing, okay? His Obsession was getting stir-crazy from imminent Doom and if this small protective act mollified it a bit, it was only natural to indulge in it.

Nodding to himself, Danny turned to the herd and found they had backtracked from the shore and were looking trepidatiously at him, as if trying to assess if he was a threat too.
Curious, the halfa tried to compress his presence into something less foreboding and slowly floated forward, crouching a bit to appear unassuming (sure, the Edmontosaurus were two times his height and five times his size, but who knew if their species was a flee-if-approached kind).

Apparently, the tactic worked, because the herd didn't spook when he reached them, on the contrary, the dinosaur he had saved started even to examine him, sniffing nudging him and even nuzzling his white mop of hair in what Danny imagined was gratitude.

The teen huffed a laugh and tentatively scratched the reptile’s top of the muzzle, just at the junction with its duck-like bill, earning a very pleased vocalization.
Soon after the whole herd seemed eager to get some of those nice scritches for themselves and huddled around Danny, who let out the first genuine laugh since his arrival in the past.
Yes, he had done the right thing.

(And if after the cuddle fest the herd led him to their nesting grounds and the dinosaur he had saved showed him proudly its nest and mate, it was just another sparkle of light in this dark situation.
And that had nothing to do with Danny coming back to them frequently while scampering around for provisions.
Even giving it the nickname “Ed” was just to distinguish it in his head from the rest of the herd.
He wasn't getting attached. He couldn't .

Yet, few days later, Danny's Core cried in agony and anguish at the loss, as he fled for his life and the hatchlings’.)

(Deep inside, though, Danny would never regret befriending the Edmontosaurus herd. They had been the only solace in the first step of this venture.)

Chapter Text

Danny was sure that he would never forget that day until the time he would fully die (and maybe even afterwards).

In the week that he had been here in this unknown land (against his will, mind you), he had extensively mapped the night sky in search of familiar stars and constellations and had managed to calculate the approximate date… as if the mix of feathered and scaled reptiles prowling around hadn't been a clue enough.

Or, as if the shining growing dot at the horizon of every twilight (which didn't belong to any planet) hadn't been a clue enough.

Danny had been hoping that Clockwork would at least give him a hint of where he could find a portal home, but not even a whisper of him had been heard.

Thus, the halfa had agonized over accumulating provisions, finding shelter against predators and collecting all the supplies that had ended time-traveling with him.

By the time disaster literally struck, the teen had been ragged and almost anxiety-sleep deprived.

The only saving grace (that was a curse at the same time) was that the dinosaurs were cute…

🦕🦖/ᐠ｡ꞈ｡ᐟ\☄️☄️

Danny was startled awake from his "crash nap" by the sound of silence. His body had blacked out on him the previous day, so it had been more a semi-coma than a nap, due to lasting almost a whole day. At that realization, the boy sprang up from where he had been curled and looked at the South horizon.

Brighter and bigger than the Moon, the Chicxulub Asteroid was showing its flank instead of face (which was hidden beyond the horizon) and coupled with the palpable anticipation in the air, Danny knew what that meant.

With barely a thought, Fenton collected with his (recently developed) telekinesis his luggage and deposited it in his arms, then he went ghost, stuffing his cargo in his transformation's "bag of holding" (or how Sam called it: "hammerspace"), then flew over the palms and conifer tops.

There was a mirage-shine at the South border that made Phantom shudder and instinctively keen in distress, slicing the silence.

That was the signal for hell to break loose.

Everyone began running, taking off or swimming upriver North, Danny included, even if he hesitated enough to see the boiling light of the impact shining brighter.

"This would be the perfect time for a portal, Clockwork!" He called, panicked, as he left a gray streak behind him in the sky.
He had to go faster and faster, he couldn't know where the shockwave would reach and he didn't want to try his luck, given where he was.

Or, that had been his thoughts until his Core spiked with pain at the distressed and calling keen of the Edmontosaurus that he had befriended during the past week.

Phantom halted immediately, unnaturally, as if momentum wasn't a thing, and looked down where the nicknamed "Ed" was curled around his nest, fidgeting as if torn between trying to escape and protecting his last eggs. And considering the footprints around and the broken shells, the reptile's instinct had been strong enough to shield his surviving unborn children from the previous stampede.

Ed was looking at him, pleading, and Danny's secondary Obsession throbbed, making him surrender and dive to the ground where the Dino was. The reptile nudged his eggs towards him, like a mama-cat would do with her kittens to a person she trusted, and that comparison made Phantom's heart ache. 

He swallowed and nodded, swiftly but gently grabbing the eggs and cradling them to his chest.

Before either of them could begin their escape, a feathered Acheroraptor came running by, probably as a coda of the stampede, and as soon as she saw them, she deviated her route and reached them. She emitted no sound as she stuffed her semi-closed muzzle among the cargo and let slip her own egg that she had been carrying in her mouth, like the crocodiles did with their hatchling. 

That seemed yet another signal for everyone left behind to either crawl out their hiding spots or retro march to converge and push/release their eggs into the hero's care.

And Danny? He could do nothing else than collect, independently from the species.
He stuffed every shelled offspring he was handled or he was called to from nearby nests into his suit pockets, sending them into the hammerspace, until twilight started to unnaturally turn into a boiling day and the sheer terror pushed everyone to scatter and run as fast as they could.

And for Phantom that was fast.

In the chaos and cacophony of the first fringes of the shockwave and cries of the animals, Danny focused only on going without looking back, because that would make him lose time, focus and he didn't need another nightmare fuel.

He couldn't have saved his friend Ed, but his children would survive the extinction.

He had been assigned a duty and by the Ancients, he would fulfill it.

Chapter Text

Number 7 routine wasn't complicated, but it was boring: their home was warm and even if its confines were hard, there was a soft cushion around them that absorbed most of the bumps. 

They would wake at the bass rumble they had been familiar with all their life and the light filtering in, then they would stretch as much as they could in the small space, then listen to the muffled sounds from the outside.

They loved the songs and chirps of whoever was nearby them; the sounds were comforting and soothed Number 7's need to be out, to see and hear things without a filter.

Then slowly the light would fade and the following darkness would help Number 7 falling asleep to recommence the routine the next light-rise all over again.

Only, the stillest deadliest silence ever woke them up, even if it was still dark.

The most terrified and frightened alarm-keen they had ever heard (and it wasn't even muffled, how had that been even possible?) heralded the most shacking they had ever felt, along with the roar of one of voices that had sung to them. 

They felt their home jump again and again, until the tremor stopped and whines from the singer could be heard. Why were they scared?
Number 7 wanted out to help them, the singer had always been there for them, so it was their turn…

The last thought was stopped by an excited yelp, then a pleading call/roar.
The next thing Number 7 knew was feeling weightless and then something cold touched their home.

It was shining brighter and in a different color than the light-rise and while the first contact felt uncomfortable for its low temperature, slowly that changed into something soothing. It quickly became something to cling to because the brilliance of a too early light-rise shone brighter and brighter and brighter and scalding and it was starting to get too hot…!

The cold light immediately encased their home and motion assaulted Number 7.
The last thing they heard, over the new sound of something whirling past them, was the grateful but agonizing roar of the singer.

Number 7 had the feeling that they wouldn't hear the songs and chirps anymore, as the cold light completely engulfed them and they fell into a dreamless slumber.

Chapter Text

Danny had absolutely no idea about what he was doing. 

Well no, he knew the theory and with his Aunt Alicia they had done something similar during a summer vacation spent at her farm with the chickens, but here he didn't have the same supplies and a real safe place.

Or, well, as safe as one could be in the wilderness of what was shaping to be a post-apocalyptic scenario.
There were still plants and animals where he had established his camp, but the nuclear winter wouldn't wait long to settle in.
His Astronomy 1 professor had loved to describe the fallout of the Chicxulub impact on Earth during the section on Paleo-astronomy, so Danny knew what he could expect.

(Knowing Clockwork, this had been likely an "all as it should be" thing, meaning that during Professor Mitchell's childhood, the Time Master had implanted that passion into her brain to favor Danny's endeavor.
This didn't spell as a good thing for the length of his stay.)

It was going to get cold soon and he had to make provisions… but first, he had to settle the eggs in a safe place.

First thing first: he had to check how many he had collected and where they had ended in his frantic gathering. 

He emptied a cardboard box of his college books and put on its bottom a couple of lab coats to soften the surface. Then he went on a search. 

Six boxes (not counting the currently empty one) had followed him in his impromptu trip to the past and they were stuffed to the gills with the luggage from home AND all the eggs that had been in his proximity. 

It took Danny a good half an hour to carefully extract all the variously shaped and patterned eggs, taking care of rearranging them in groups by their type.
Once he was sure that every one of them had been found among his stuff, Danny took stock: they were between 20 to 30 and at least two per species, which he had no idea what they were. The chaos of the previous night had been too much for him to remember whose children were those, so he would have to wing it.

Danny looked at the ash clouded sky, mourning the sight of the stars. He had no idea what time of the day was, since in his frantic flight he had lost the notion of time, but he felt already exhausted. 

Not wanting to defrost the roasted fish he had made before the disaster, Danny decided to snack on one of the protein bars he had in his boxed luggage. He had to ration them in case of emergency, but since he was too tired to do anything, this counted as one.
After finishing his meager meal, Danny blearily looked around and, just to be on the safe side, he conjured a ghostly ice cage around him and his temporary camp. 

Satisfied with the result, he turned back to Fenton, plucked a random clothing piece and bundled it to work as a pillow. It wasn't still cold enough to need a blanket, but soon it would be.

However, that was a problem for tomorrow's Danny, so the young man absent-mindedly curled around the egg box. Wherever it was to keep them warm or to have something alive to cling to after the trauma, no one apart from Clockwork would know.

Chapter Text

A new day and responsibilities were waiting for Danny when he woke up at dawn after sleeping like the (half-)dead curled around the box of eggs.

With the pale light of the sun finally filtering through the haze of dust and ash still suspended in the atmosphere, the young man looked around and surveyed the place he had felt pulled to, after dismissing the ghostly-ice-cage he had made to defend the base camp.

It looked like an abandoned nesting site of some sort of pack of reptiles, with shallow but large holes perfect for guarding the eggs while sleeping. (Not too dissimilar from Ed's nest, now that he thought about it.)
There was a lake nearby where he could hear with his enhanced hearing some aquatic animals swim and bugs buzz around, so water and food would be assured, for now.
The vegetation was a mix of palms, conifers and ginkgoes, so the herbivores would be able to eat as well.

The only thing that was missing now was to create a safe structure to be defended and comfortable, both for him and for the incoming hatchlings.

Danny sighed, scratching his nape as he explored his options.

"Okay, so there's two things I can really do: make an ice palac- building, building! Jazz, why did you condition me to think about it like Elsa, darn it…! Anyway." The young man exhaled forcefully to stop his rambling. 
"There's the Ghost Ice option. It would be quicker, near indestructible and I could shape it without issue in any form I need, but the cons would be that it's still ice. While part of the dinosaurs that gave me the eggs had feathers, the others had scales, so those hatchlings won't be able to thermoregulate. So, here’s the other option: I have to build a fort old style with timber and nails." He looked around to assess the plants.
"The pros are that the hatchlings and my human form won’t suffer from the cold, but the cons are that it will take ages to make anything remotely inhabitable and by then it would be too late… Not to mention that the wood will be too fresh to be properly insulating and it’ll crack when it dries, thanks Aunt Alicia." He muttered, then sighed.
"Both? Both. Both is good." He muttered that iconic exchange, to cheer himself up a bit. 

He would make the main structure with ice and then cover it with plant matter and dirt to insulate the inner spaces from its inherent cold.

Plan somewhat decided, he stretched and went Phantom.
If he moved a little towards the cliff, the halfa could create a mini-cave-like safe for storing the eggs in case of emergency. 

Carefully, he turned the whole cliff intangible, then re-materialized a small prismatic section of it that Danny slowly slid away with telekinesis… and then he reapplied the tangibility.
There were no tremors and the structure seemed still sound, so the halfa kept going, but in reverse: like Minecraft, he mined cubes of rock with intangibility and then created pillars of ice to support the tunnel.
At the end, he also made a big chamber as high as Casper High School Gym, where he immediately stored all his belongings, eggs included.

Turning back into Fenton, Danny stuffed the nest box with some of his ugly Christmas sweaters that his parents had apparently snuck in his luggage for moving to campus (he would have come back home for the holidays, so there wouldn't have been the need! Though, he had renounced trying to understand some of his dad's reasoning about this. But hey, they would be of use now!). He also added a couple of warm bottles (which he had heated with supercharged ectoplasm), so they wouldn't suffer any accidental cold.

Satisfied with the results, he changed into Phantom again and got out of the cave, surveying the ground with an assessing eye and then he drew the perimeter of the future building with a weak continuous ectoblast. 

He floated up to look at the plans, feeling a surge of satisfaction at the project.
Yep, this felt right.

Next, he built up walls of ice by following the lines, putting pillars of rock from the tunnel and chamber as cornerstones and added a second floor and a staircase to get more room.
If the eggs hatched while he was still in the past, he needed more rooms for them to be separate carnivores from herbivores.

Then, he made his bedroom, going back and forth from the storeroom cave to retrieve the air mattress, the sheets, the pillow and some of his books. He was sure he wouldn't get bored with everything that was going on, but one could never know.

At last, he got out to check if the thick roof would resist any stray falling rock (which it would) and paused to appreciate his new official temporary Lair.

(The Jazz's voice in his mind teased him about admitting that he had just recreated the perfect reproduction of the FentonWorks sans the OPs Center, but Danny squished it away, pretending not to hear it.
He was still stranded after a week, he deserved a bit of familiarity, damnit!)

(Another more hidden and ignored part of him seemed to resonate deeper with this place than just a temporary Lair, but Danny was afraid to discover why, so he just procrastinated that self-reflection until a later date.)

Looking around, Phantom took in the rest of the landscape and made a mental to-do list: gather firewood, provisions, plants to cultivate and materials to isolate the interiors from the ice walls.
He had also to brainstorm something more permanent to keep everyone warm and give the plants light to grow, because the thick clouds barely allowed sunlight to filter through.

Yeah, he had so much to do that he couldn't even get bored.

Chapter Text

Danny looked worriedly at the new icy high walls around his temporary Lair, as the wails of what had once been mighty beasts echoed in the air. 

Maybe he hadn't fled far enough from the border of the destruction, if these… wraiths (there was no other term for them, after all) were roaming around the still green areas.

The college student shuddered at the memory of the previous night: after spending the day filling the "fridge" (a hollow ice prism with doors, really) with fruits and fishes and adding some insulation to the building, he had been about to do a last run to restock timber and freshwater, when the front door had suddenly been taken down by what at first sight looked like a black-shrouded T-Rex.

Luckily, its size had been too large to fit inside the opening of the otherworldly ice, giving Danny time to blast it back and transform into Phantom.
The hero had then flown out and sealed the opening behind him to assess the situation.

A pack of spectral, covered by a black shroud, dinosaurs were coming out of the forest and into the clearing around the ice building, all eyeing Phantom like a snack from under their hoods, including the silhouette of a Torosaurus, which was an herbivore!

They didn't look like they could be scared off, so Phantom had to go the hard way: beating the shit out of them.

The fight had been brutal and disgusting given the corrupted ectoplasmic aura of his foes, but that hadn't been much different than the wild Hunt that once Vlad had recycled from the attack on Jazz and their father.

There had been a couple of close calls, but being in college and away from Amity hadn't dulled his fighting skills (since he was part of the college club of karate), so he recovered in less than a blink of an eye and left the attackers in literal pieces.

When he had finally managed to repel the monsters just outside of the borders of the nesting clearing, Phantom had frozen the ground at the edges, allowing the ice to climb higher than the treetops and making it as slippery as it could be.

The "surviving" abominations outside had recklessly kept attacking the barrier with little success, but that didn't stop them.
Feeling secure enough to turn his back to them (after actually reinforcing the cliffs as well, if they ever realized they could phase through the rock), the hero had proceeded to examine the shrouds left behind by the fallen enemies… and recoiled in disgust at the stench of the black ectoplasm puddles. 

Danny hadn't thought much about it during the battle, but they smelled like an infested cesspool that hadn't been washed in years! How could ectoplasm even get to that point?! 

This… this had to be the concentration of resentment of hundreds of souls at being annihilated without warning or mercy.
These… these had been wraiths.

With telekinesis and thick ice-made containers (since it had seemed the only material that could hold back the monsters), he had collected all the black goo and sealed it away, deciding to get rid of them later on.
He wanted those things as far away as he could form his temporary Lair and future hatchlings, thank you very much, but he had to wait until their active companions had gone away.

The night had been filled with wails and worry, so much that Danny had made a "crystal' roof and gone three meters underground to make the foundations under the whole nesting clearing to quell his growing anxiety.

(That still hadn't been enough to let him sleep, so the halfa was exhausted.)

Danny sighed, dismissing the memories and letting the rings of his transformation wash over him, then grabbed the Thermos: it was time to test if it worked on wraiths as well as it did with normal ghosts and then dump all the goop in nuclear waste-like tanks to dispose of.

Still, the walls had to stay even after the Ghostbuster-ing, if others would ever be coming from the ground zero…

Chapter Text

During the whole venture, what almost ended Danny wasn't an attack from a wild Dino (or other unsavory characters), but a splinter .

While he had discovered that food wasn't much of an issue after the first week (he had eaten worse at the FentonWorks kitchen, so his stomach was nine-inches casted iron), Danny hadn't thought about the bacteria and other pathogen he had inadvertently carried with him during the impromptu jump.

Bacteria and pathogens that inhabited Amity had to learn how to coexist with ectoplasm if they wanted to survive on Danny's ever-changing-state-of-living skin.
(They would still die if the "living/active" ectoplasm registered them as a threat, but at least cohabitation was fine.)

Thus, when a splinter from a piece of timber, which the halfa had been chipping for his campfire, embedded itself in one of his fingers, the previously peaceful and symbiotic guests immediately turned into fearsome attackers and crawled into the halfa's bloodstream. 

Danny didn't think it was a big deal first.
With his accelerated healing factor and the fact that he had immediately removed the piece of wood, he had just washed the pinprick with some purified water and went on with his day with barely an itch. 

And that wouldn't actually have been a big deal if he had gone ghost even once afterwards: his active Core would have sensed the incipient infection and purged it away without him even noticing (like it had always happened when he was a teenager), but the college student wanted to stay Fenton in order to avoid alerting the attention of nearby wraiths.

Thus, the infection spread, making his human side's immune system fight back with all its might with poor results.

At first Danny felt the fatigue settle in, but he guessed it was due to his work schedule, so he tried to lighten it up a bit.
However, with the passing of the days his condition worsened, until one day he barely had the strength to rise from his bed.

The thought of completely dying in an ancient forgotten past alone and dooming the future hatchlings to the same fate terrified Danny beyond belief.
If he hadn't been so drained, he would have had a breakdown, but alas, he had barely energy left.

…Just enough to go ghost.

His delirious foggy mind finally convinced him that the cold of Phantom's form would be refreshing against the boiling heat that raged his human body, so, after a few splutters, the white rings washed over him, activating his Core from its slumbering state.

And it started the vicious counterattack. 

Agony ravaged Danny's whole being, but his Core forcefully stopped him from turning back into a human, in order to keep healing him. 

In his delirium, the halfa thought he was dying, turning into a full ghost and that was why Fenton was unreachable.

Blissfully, he fainted two hours in, ceasing the resistance he had weakly put on in his denial, allowing a smoother detoxing process.

It still took a whole day to get rid of the infection and when Phantom woke up, he just grabbed the nearest source of safe water and food in a zombie-like state, consumed them and fell back asleep.

There would be time later to process what had happened, but for now Danny was finally healthy.

Chapter Text

Danny was getting worried. 

His first year of college had been hard, because being away from Amity and its high ambient ectoplasm concentration had left him famished, cranky and the only way for him to replenish his Core had been either eating trice the volume of normal mortal food (to give the human side of his organism energy to auto-produce ectoplasm) or snack on ecto-infused food (mostly in the form of energy drinks since they didn't look out of place in a dormitory of sleep deprived college students).

With the pain that had been the first year, Danny had come well prepared for the second! As a matter of fact, at least three of the seven boxes that had time-travelled with him had been filled with ecto-snacks, so that they would last until Thanksgiving, when he would go back to the FentonWorks to visit his parents and restock.

The past was, like the college campus, lacking the ambient ectoplasm he needed, so he had to integrate it like he would have done at school. And Danny… while he was counting the passing of days to keep track of his provisions and ration them (plus for another reason), there were things that didn't match his calculations.

He ate enough fruits and fishes to quell his "normal" out-of-Amity hunger, but his Core seemed to be famished for more… and that had started only after the disaster.

Was it something akin to stress-eating? Sometimes he seemed to crave particular types of meat and for a while Danny managed to keep at bay this new fixation…
However, since his cultivation was still taking a while to grow under the light of his new power (a globe of white ectoplasm, because the green variant wouldn't be able to provide the right lightwaves necessary to photosynthesis), he had to go hunting sometimes.

(He tried to stick to mammals or crocodiles, since, given that he didn't remember every species he had the egg of, he felt guilty eating their relatives.)

Then the whole debate of the infection happened and once Danny recovered, the hunger almost tripled. 
The halfa rationalized that it was to recuperate the lost energy, but something kept nagging him.

There was something missing, something he had forgotten.

And he was sure that that something held all the answers he needed.

🦕🦖/ᐠ｡ꞈ｡ᐟ\☄️☄️

Number 7 twitched in their cold dreamless sleep, still curled snugly in their home, but unconsciously nuzzling its confines.
It was nice here.

Chapter Text

The trigger had been the stupidest thing ever, but that was why it had been so effective and able to catch Danny unaware.

He saw his reflection after weeks of not shaving.

The college student had been so invested in his cultivation, hunting food and wraths and tending to the eggs that he had barely had time for self-care, just quick baths because the tub had been more practical to build with ghost ice than a shower.
He didn’t even have a mirror, because he hadn’t thought about needing one (until he got home, no one would have seen him anyway).
That’s why he was taken aback at the sight of his face on the reflective surface of the ice walls around his temporary Lair.

The face that looked back at him was his nemesis’s.

Dan Phantom was gaping at him from the shadows with his thick facial hairs and long mane (the fact that both were black instead of white didn’t register in his panicked mind).

Danny Fenton grabbed his goatee and hair and pulled, as if he hadn’t realized they had been there before (which was likely) and his thoughts started to spiral.

He had lost literally everything with the time travel (his home, family and the world as he knew it) and he had witnessed the apocalypse , so why wouldn't this be enough for him to finally snap ?

The rumble of yet another earthquake made Danny shudder and fall further into the depths of his mind and panic attack as unbidden images of the Nasty Burger and the asteroid impact superimposed on one another and the boiling light of the shockwave became what vaporized his parents, Jazz, Sam, Tucker and Ed. 

Dying cries and keens kept echoing in his skull as Danny tugged his goatee and hair, as if, by eliminating them, he could also get rid of the possibility of becoming him (if he hadn't already done that).

A shudder ran through the halfa unprompted, making him slam his forehead on the ground to try to dispel the foreign feelings and intrusive memories images, but it did little, sans probably bruising the area.

Nononononono!! I can't! I can't!! Danny kept chanting to himself, shudders and tremors quaking his frame as he was hyperventilating and leaking uncontrollably tears and snot.
(If a rational thought had been able to make through his panic attack, his brain would have realized that Dan would have been unable to emote like that from what he knew of him.)

I'm stronger than this! I beat him once, I can do it again from within myself, dammit! Danny tried to pep talk himself out of the spiral, but it was too wound on him to allow him to breathe , nevermind to break from it.

Pain, akin to a crack , cut through him, actually stealing his breath, but successfully halting his train of refusal.

(Was this how his Core cracked and his ghost half splitted from his human half? Was he going to murder himself like Dan had done and wander in this wasteland eating, or worse fusing with , one of the wraiths? Making him even more dangerous and mad than when his other self had done it with Plasmius?)

Before any of those lines could form in his mind, another crack dispelled them, prompting Danny to cough and catch fresh oxygen through the dust…

…Then, at long last, the Ghost Sense went off.

(The world around Number 7 had gotten suddenly dark , but not in the light-wise sense, but in the feeling one. The coolness around their home was shuddering in upset and that wasn't alright on so many levels . 

It was time to go and give it a piece of their mind. They felt finally ready for it. They just had to poke through the hard confines of their home and look around.

Ramming their muzzle against the wall seemed to upset further the coolness, but that only meant that they had to hurry.

With one last headbutt, their home cracked and their muzzle peeked into the outside they craved to explore. Pushing through created other cracks and made their world tremble, but finally they were free . 

A sense of belonging and safety wrapped around them, even though the source of those feelings was still shaken up. 

It was time to meet muzzle to muzzle their caretaker.)

Chapter Text

Danny shuddered, gasping in a way he hadn't done for a while, as breath condensed before his mouth, shaking him out of his emotional breakdown.
The urge to go ghost became too overwhelming and he just did so, making him realize that wearing Phantom's jumpsuit was somehow grounding him. 

Uh, maybe this was further proof that his health (both mental and physical) was tied to accepting and using both aspects of him…
Seemed like he still hadn't learned his lesson about Fenton being one and the same as Phantom and stopping denying one half of him in favor of the other, after all.

Phantom would have chuckled in self-deprecation but was stopped by a weird sensation on his right hip.
Frowning, the young man turned to look at his side, where the opening of one of his "infinity pockets" was and was met with something… sprouting? wiggling? out of it.
Frozen by the unexpected event, Danny just watched, still reeling from his earlier outburst, mesmerized.

With a pop, a reptilian head as big as an apricot finally came out of the pocket, murring and looking around curiously and with a bit of… urgency?

It had a triangle-like side profile with a long muzzle and big narices that were twitching as if the creature was sniffing the air.
There seemed to be something whitish glued on the top of its head, while the skin had scales of a breathtaking azure hue with purple and blue iridescences, which was visible through a wet sheen that covered the reptile. 

It must have heard or felt Danny's amazed exhale, because it immediately snapped its head up and then chirped in delight when it noticed him.

Toxic green eyes met their slanted-pupils match and the halfa's Core seemed to immediately latch onto the other being with all its might.
This felt like when he had officially claimed Dani as his sister, but at the same time different.
This wasn't a sibling bond: this little dinosaur was now his daughter and no one could dare to harm her without consequences!

The little dinosaur tried to squirm out of his pocket with great difficulty, so Danny carefully disentangled her out and held her in the palm of his hand.
She was no bigger than a football ball with short little arms and muscled legs and a long tail. The mushy white thing on her head ran also down the back of her neck and further, following and covering her spine until it thinned onto the last segment of her tail.
Danny shifted the hatchling on his left hand and phased off his white glove from the right to feel what it could be without the rubbery barrier in between.
It looked like fur, but it couldn't be possible…!

The dinosaur murred at the ministration, closing her eyes and enjoying the contact and the scratches. It didn't take long for her to dry and the mysterious fur turned out to be something like chick-fuzz.
"Ah, proto-feathers. Makes sense, theropods are birds' closest ancestors…" Danny murmured, still marveling at the dinosaur's "mane".

At the sound of his voice, the hatchling snapped to attention with an inquisitive and curious "mmmrh?" that made the halfa chuckle.
"You're gonna be quite a troublemaker, don't you? I can already feel it in my Core.* Having no idea what Danny was saying, the reptile just nuzzled his nose, tickling him. "Yeah, definitely a Problem Child. Let's get you washed properly and check if your siblings are about to get out as well. If not, we'll get lunch and get to know each other better."

He heaved himself up, wobbling a bit for the post-breakdown exhaustion and floated to the hatchery with what Danny assumed was a freaking baby Tyrannosaurus rex given her body shape. 

When and where had he gotten her?
The ghost of a notion began haunting his brain and it was way stronger than his rogue gallery to fight it off.

(Was this why she had still been inside his pocket of holding and why she felt like a halfa?
Because he had forgotten about her and she had died in a remote corner of his suit?
Because his subconscious had fed her with his own ectoplasm so that she could be revived into a halfa?
Danny wasn't sure he would like to know the truthful answers to these questions…)

Luckily, the little menace was also way stronger than his misplaced guilt, because with just a cute nibble on his gloved thumb, the human halfa was snapped out of his spiral by the dino halfa, who rightfully demanded attention. 

She needed a name and Danny had to teach her how to detransform, if her reverse coloring of a Tyrannosaurus rex were anything to go by. 

…How would he even be able to communicate with her with the language barrier between them? 

That would definitely keep him occupied for a while, so no more sorrow.

If he had unintentionally killed her, he would make up to her as much as he could by giving her the best half-life.

Chapter Text

Danny sighed as he watched his little gremlin hatchlings prowl around the courtyard of his temporary Lair. They had already eaten, so the carnivores wouldn't try to attack the others.
It was like when cheetahs were accompanied by dogs to soothe their anxiety or lions adopting a baby zebra: if they weren't hungry, there was no need to hunt unnecessarily.
And the halfa kept them fed very well, keeping them (just in case) in separate rooms when they slept or while he was away to make provisions and eliminate the occasional wraiths that strayed away from the crater.

Today was a special day, though: while he had been able to teach the feathered hatchlings to preen themselves, there was still a limit to cleanliness they could achieve, even if Danny tidied their rooms every day.

The hatchlings, simply put, stank worse than skunks. 

So, today it was bath day! 

After waking up, nudging Astra away from being curled on his chest and doing his morning routine, Danny had settled a(n ice) kiddie pool with one of his Spectral Suns set above it to warm the purified water. Then he had proceeded to go into each room to feed the hatchlings while he himself ate breakfast (and yes, yielded to the Puppy Eyes of Doom in the carnivore's room, Astra was a menace). 

Once everyone had been fed, Danny had corralled each group to the ice roof covered garden and crouched beside the pool, to show the hatchlings that the new object wasn't a threat.

Astra, being the reckless scatterbrained Problem Child she was, didn't think twice about exploring the new item, chirping delightedly at the warmed up water in the pool that reached her chest.
As she frolicked around, the other hatchlings timidly joined her, some more eager than the others when they figured out the purpose of the kiddie pool.

Danny tried to give attention to every one of his little Dinos, brushing the grit from the scales and the feathers of each of them, but given that he had two dozen of them, and they were a bunch of chaotic little beasts that barely listened to him, someone was bound to slip. 

As soon as he had finished toweling the last little “raptor”, making him an indignant fluffball, the human halfa deposited him on the other side of a temporary barricade (so they wouldn't jump in the dirty tub again) and looked around and did a quick headcount.
"Astra, Thuban, Vega, Sirius, Polaris, Rigel, Altair, Elnath, Castor, Arcturus, Girtab, Merope, Pollux, Aldebaran, Enif, Antares, Merak, Al Na'ir, Adhara, Rastaban, Eltanin, Bellatrix, Sirrah…" Danny paused, alarm mounting in his Core. "Where's Deneb?"

The young man frantically looked around for the Ornithomimus, their long-feathered orange-white neck with the duck bill was impossible to miss, but he couldn't see them.
Frantically, Danny stood, calling their name and getting no answer, which was another red flag, because they liked to be at the center of attention and (since they had learned to recognize the sound of their name) they practically spawned underfoot. 

With his heart thundering in his ears, Danny's eyes fell on the murky pool, where in a corner an unmoving darker shape laid still. 

By Clockwork, this can't be happening!

"Nonononononono…!" The human halfa practically dived forward and fished out the soaked to the bone little dinosaur, unconsciously phasing the water off them to check them better and turning them around.

(Usually, he tended to avoid using his powers around the hatchlings, sans Astra for obvious reasons, because some of them freaked out at the display.)

(This was an emergency, though.
He had never lost any of his charges until now and this wouldn't be the first.
He had to keep them alive and safe.)

Deneb gurgled at him, blinking owlishly in confusion at him, like they hadn't been drowning until now. They chirruped instead, as if questioning his action, then they arched their neck backwards to watch the pool with a whining sound.

Ah. Ornithomimus. They looked and fed like ducks, geese and swans. 

Deneb had just been trying to filter with their bill the dirt at the bottom of the pool to get more snacks.

Danny collapsed on his butt, keeping the feathered menace between his hands, and sighed deeply and exasperated. "What am I ever gonna do with you, uh?" He tried to scold, but the tone was too fond to be believable.

The Ornithomimus whined again, but this time he wouldn't falter to the Hatchling's Eyes of Doom. (Was he just biased with Astra? Maybe.)

With merely a glance Danny slid with telekinesis the pool towards the cultivation and used the water inside to, well, water the plants.
Dino's guano was the best to promote growth, it seemed.

As soon as the pool was dispelled, Deneb chirruped forlornly, but both them and their caretaker were rapidly distracted by the ruckus at the other side of the mini barricade: Thuban and Rastaban were roughhousing, again, and the others seemed to be squeaking encouragements.
Astra, ever the chaotic but well-meaning Problem Child, was trying to stop the fuss by chomping the air behind the other hatchlings' heels and adding green sparkles to emphasize the effect.
And that worked only to a certain degree: it did spook the contenders out of the fight, but by jumping forward to avoid the ectoplasm they reignited the scuffle, making the attempt useless.

"Guys, com'on, I just washed you, so stop…!" Danny began to scold, standing up with Deneb still in hands, pliant and content of being (gently) manhandled like the dumb "waterfowl" they resembled.
At the latest attempt, he just sighed, totally done with the situation. "Nobody ever listens to me!"

Chapter Text

When he had been a teenager, Danny had used to be woken up by either his alarm clock or his Ghost Sense (with the latter more frequently than the former).
Then he had officially declared the whole Amity Park as his Haunt, claimed the Portal as his Door and the FentonWorks as his Lair, so the attacks from his Rogue gallery had ceased, leaving him free to go to college without fretting over the town.
Therefore, only his alarm clock had remained as the cause of his wakefulness…

That is, until his second year and impromptu toss in the past.

Until the Hatching, Danny's schedule had been "monotonous" (as surviving during an apocalypse could be) and dictated only by his physiological needs and chores, since the thick fallout clouds covered almost entirely the light of the Sun (throwing off his circadian rhythm).

After that, though, the human halfa had learned to follow his hatchlings' needs… and demands.

Danny had lost count of how many times he had been woken up by his daughter's insistent nibbles, her pointy teeth perfectly sharp to jolt him up, or just opening his eyes and finding slitted ones staring back at him, unblinkingly from two millimeters of distance.

Astra, like the Problem Child she was, refused to sleep anywhere other than by Danny's side, relishing his body heat more than the Spectral Suns. He didn't know if her insistence was because his aura passively emitted low ectoplasmic radiations (which were what technically triggered his Ghost Sense) that fed her ghost side or just because she felt lonely with the other carnivores, but he didn't really mind indulging her.

At least he had managed to make her wear socks and mittens made with rags when they cuddled, so that her talons wouldn't scratch him by accident.
She particularly liked to snug her snout and head under his chin, since usually the place around the throat was the warmest.
(If Danny secretly enjoyed it because her proto-feathered mane was so fluffy he could die all the way, no human was here to witness it and tease him about it.)

When Danny had accidentally nodded off a couple of times in the carnivores room (since they behaved more like attention-seeking kitties or puppies than the herbivores, who were more chill and so less needy), he had noticed upon waking up that contrary to when he had fallen asleep, he wasn't buried under a mountain of feathers and scales.
Instead, Astra had been standing in ghost form between him and the others every time, displaying her iridescent colors and flaring up her aura as an intimidation tactic.
He had chided her every time to be more gentle with the others, since at the rate she was growing she was already taller than them, though Danny was almost sure that the development pace was actually slower than what was normal for T-Rexes.
At least, that was what had happened to him in his teenage years, so he guessed that the same would happen to a child of his ectoplasm.

(Was she trying to stake a claim on him? While heartwarming, she should already have known that their bond ran deeper than caretaker and hatchling, since he already considered them father and daughter. Maybe he had to explain it better before a brawl could happen.)

So, yeah, so many things had changed from his adolescence, some in the worst way possible, but he didn't mind this particular change in routine.
(At least until Astra would become bigger than a St Bernard and his bones and internal organs would cry in protest under the pressure. But that was for another time and place, for future Danny to deal with.)

Chapter Text

Danny… had no qualms about admitting that even living in an apocalypse could get boring after a while. And that was counting the shenanigans the hatchlings brought every day, too!

So. He needed some sort of continuous entertainment (since Halloween could only happen once). He was only (half)human, after all.

Thus, the Three Days Crown was established!
(At first he had tried weekly, but seven days were too long to wait.)

Much like the affixed photos of best and worst puppy/kitty in animal shelters, the “Crown” would be awarded to the hatchling who had behaved the best in the previous three days.
However, the concept of Crown had evolved with the passing of time, according to what worked better or at all . 

The first attempts at making a literal small ice crown were a failure, since the hatchlings treated it like a toy or rebelled when it was time to pass the regency (not wanting to part from the item).

The second tries were a bit more manageable, since the reward was a food treat and additional cuddles, however this method had to be binned because in the long term it would take a dent into the pantry and some hatchlings could fatten a little too much .

The third solution (apparently “third time's a charm” did have some basis after all) seemed to be the most successful outcome and it was, once again, because of Astra.

His Problem Child’s fascination with the bracelet that Team Phantom had gifted Danny for his graduation seemed to be shared among the other baby dinos, though she had shown her desires better than the others by tugging at the jewelry every time it was in range and its clinks reminded her of it.

Once Danny noticed that yearning, he decided to try the crowning-thing one last time (and if that didn't work, he would just go back the “boring” route of immediate praises and pets).

First thing first: he gave each of them a (crocodile) leather string necklace with three crown-shaped ice beads so that they could clink.
The immediate reaction had been to recoil (since they weren’t used to having anything around their neck), but as soon as they realized what they had been gifted, they paraded and trotted around all smug and happy.

(Whoever had assumed that dinosaurs were dumb because of their “peanut sized” brain, clearly hadn’t met his hatchlings or considered that crows/ravens had technically as much gray matter and they were smart .)

Thus it soon became evident for them that if they behaved well, every three days they could receive (along with a pick-up long-cuddle) an additional bead, which in turn would make them more noisy and so “higher rank” than the rest.
It was adorable to witness how they all would try to appease Danny on the Crowning Day, sparkles of hope in their eyes.

(Less adorable when they attempted a coup when Danny crowned Enif, one of Ed’s children, for the third consecutive time, but that was the charm of tending to these beautiful creatures.)

Chapter Text

Danny, in order not to lose his sanity anymore, had decided after the hatching to do "an activity" at least every "Sunday" with his dinosaurs.
He had been counting the days since his arrival and made a makeshift calendar on the ice wall beside the entrance of the building to keep track of the pseudo date.
This was a tradition he had done since starting to do assignments for the Time Master, something like "if I were home, what holiday would it be?". 

And this was how and why Danny found himself muffling his snickers as he finished the last touch on Thuban's cape.
The Pachycephalosaurus Dracorex was making donuts by chasing the edge of the "demon lord" leaf cape, while his other two siblings Rastaban and Eltanin seemed unfazed by the similar costume and the dust-based paint on their face. 

Rigel and Bellatrix, the Parasaurolophus, sported a funny comb of small leaves on their backward horn, which made them look like parrots; Merak and Polaris the Ankylosaurus, instead, had bear-lookalike costumes made with conifers leaves (since their name came from the Ursa major constellation).

The Triceratops Aldebaran, Elnath and Merope had become lions due to completing their crest with leaves to imitate a mane; Ed's children Enif and Sirrah displayed mini wings on their back, since they were named after the Pegasus stars and seemed pretty proud of them since they were strutting. 

Sirius and Adhara belonged to the same species (so they got the names of the Canis Major, since they somehow resembled dogs), but their kind wasn't featured in the joke book his college friends had gotten him for surviving Astronomy 1-2 with the Asteroid Enthusiast.
They looked similar to Merak and Polaris, but smaller, so they got werewolf costumes instead of bears.

Antares and Girtab had earned the name of Scorpio's stars not because of their (bird-like and feathered) appearance, but for their hunting skills: any scorpion or similar arthropod was struck fiercely and then eaten, so Danny painted their plumage as hawks'.

The literal twins Castor and Pollux (hence their names, how could have two dinosaurs fit inside one egg was still beyond him), who looked like smaller, pruner and grumpier versions of the Triceratops, got the matching Grumpy Cat paint job.

Deneb along with Al Na'ir were the last two species Danny had been able to identify (the former an Ornithomimus and the latter an Oviraptor) and so he had dusted their feathers with chalk and painted their muzzles to resemble respectively a Cygnus and a Gru.
Altair, for how he didn't know what he was, looked similar to Al Na'ir, so he got the name and the colors of an eagle. 

Vega, the unidentified peacock-like feathered diva she was (meaning she had a beautiful feathered long tail), got the future-bird's plumage, which seemed to immensely please her; last but not least Arcturus, the sneaky hunter he was (like his namesake) got the trash panda treatment and Danny painted a black domino mask around his eyes and darkened his coat to make him look like a raccoon.

As for Astra… either T-rex were really smart despite their fame, or Danny's ectoplasm had boosted her brain, because she had the level of intelligence of a one-or-two years old human child. Because, even if there still was a language barrier between them, she had managed to convey to Danny what costume she wanted.
And how could the human halfa disappoint his Core daughter? 

Yeah, he couldn't.

Thus, she got the Phantom treatment.
Her "living" form was brown-reddish with a black mane, but the charcoal and chalk components of the paint Danny used still stood out on her scales.
Was it odd to feel flattered that Astra wanted to dress up as him? Was this how his father had felt when Danny (in an attempt to pass more time with him when he had been a kid) had put on one of those orange tent-like jumpsuits to match Jack?
(Was this why the man had bawled worse than an infant? Because Danny now kind of understood him.)

Once finished the last touches, Danny looked at his attempt at throwing a Halloween Costume Party from under his own hooded cape, complete with charcoal painted clocks and watched on his skin. 

The hatchlings seemed to enjoy their costumes, either displaying them like trophies or trying to take them off as if they were playthings. 

In the garden where they were holding the party, there were morsels of food on the side along with a bowl of water in case they needed them; three globes of Spectral Suns that softly pulsed with different colors (Danny could control them effortlessly now due to all the extra exercise) and projected odd shadows out of the reinforced ice walls that surrounded his temporary Lair.
The Halloween vibes were reinforced by the heavy (acid) rain that pelted the crystal roof of the biosphere along with the rumble of the thunders… or was it another earthquake?
(Danny seriously couldn't tell anymore, he had gotten used to the near continuous tremors of the ground a while ago.
Evidently the planet was still "upset" about being hit by something larger than mount Everest and it manifested it by quakes.)

The Clockwork-disguised man took out his Fenton Smartphone and took several pictures of the party with a small smile. While the time-displacement had made communications impossible, the piece of tech was still able to function with a little of ectoplasm and had a practically empty memory card in anticipation of life in college.
One could never know what could happen, after all, as demonstrated by the current events. 

As Danny huffed amused at one of the hatchlings' antics, Astra snuck on his lap and nudged his chin insistently, demanding attention. 

"Yes yes, you spoiled beast, it's been five minutes since I scritched you, it's clearly been too long." The human halfa sassed his reptilian daughter, but that didn't stop him from complying to her demands.
Even if messed up with the chalk dust, the proto-feathers were soft and Danny did enjoy their texture under his fingers. Sometimes he jokingly called her his Service Animal Featherduster, because she seemed to always know when he started to get upset and was able to distract him.

"Oh, let's take a selfie to remind the Old Clock that we're still waiting for one of his portals. What do you think?" Danny looked into the brown slitted eyes of the hatchling, who murred in acknowledgement (even if probably she hadn't understood a thing). 

Picking up the phone with telekinesis, the human halfa turned to have the party goers behind him and angled the camera to catch everybody in the frame. "Everyone, say cheese!" He grinned, then he took the photo.

This better be the first and last Halloween in the past, because otherwise there would be no memory left in his Fenton Smartphone…

Chapter Text

Phantom quietly stalked his prey across the wastelands, floating low and and with his aura dimmed to the minimum. He glanced at his side where his companion was imitating him, still trying to adjust with that new means of movement. 

He had already brought the other carnivorous hatchlings as his hunting party (while he was Fenton, though) to learn those skills in hope that they could hunt on their own in the future (be either in the Past or in the Future with him).

(Danny really w- hoped, he wouldn't get caught wishing ever again even if he wasn't in Amity anymore, that they would come with him. They had become like family to him, so he didn't want to lose them before their time.)

The prey stopped moving so he halted, flaring for an instant his aura at the same time and Astra obeyed immediately, perking up at the promise of incoming food.
Silent communication between the halfas had taken a while to get this smooth and Danny had waited to bring his daughter with him until she could understand every one of his signals and meanings.
(He had done more or less the same with the other carnivores but with clicks of tongue and whistles since they were mortals.)

Now that she was as big as a German shepherd, Astra could do some mean lunges to pin down any prey equal to her size and considering what was still around after the cataclysm, Danny hadn't wanted to bring her sooner.

(Her smaller companions had been fine hunting small insects and fishes, but the T-rex had become restless lately, so she deserved to stretch her claws, so to speak.)

Their prey seemed focused on trying to dig out of the layer of ashes some sprouts, so it was the perfect moment to attack. The two hunters waited until it had turned its back to them, then as one they pounced on the animal. Skulker would be proud of them with how quickly they dealt with it and with minimal suffering (after all the ghost hunter only wanted his pelt, but that didn't exclude that he was humane with the rest of his objectives).

"Good job, little star!" Danny grinned once the deed had been done, ruffling the mane at the top of her head. The other halfa preened at the praise. 

However, not even a moment after that exchange, a rumble started to shake the ground. A rumble that had nothing to do with the post-impact earthquakes.

"Oh shi-! Astra, pick it up and let's go!" Phantom urged her, looking trepidant to the source of the noise, ready to flee.

Because, in his hunter rush, the human halfa had forgotten an important detail: the animal they had just hunted, usually moved in packs of hundreds and they were coming in their direction. 

Astra, definitely feeling his anxiety, immediately complied, picking the prey up with her strong jaws and lifting up from the spot he had been standing.

Not soon enough, a dust cloud became visible, prompting the duo to flee in the opposite direction from it.

It took a while to shake them from their tails, but once the halfas took refuge inside the walls of the Ice Fortress, the situation caught up with them and the adrenaline crash made them dissolve in hysterical laughter. 

While the hunters had almost become prey at the end, the hunt had been definitely a success.

Chapter Text

In the end, it all finished like it had started: with a wish.

It began because his college dorm wasn't in Amity Park, so Danny had been lulled into a false sense of security. After all, Desiree had no reason to be there, hadn't she?

(After this incident, the halfa swore to forgo the verb "wish" all together, sans counter-wishes exceptions.)

He and Jazz had been moving the boxes with his things to the college dorms for his second year and chatting about the lessons program.
Everything had been so normal!

But then Danny had carelessly jokingly wished something along wanting to know what the dinosaurs had been able to see of the night sky and the very next second his Ghost Sense had gone off and a portal had opened under his feet and sucked him and his luggage in the past.
The passage had closed right behind them, making Jazz unable to catch him, but fast enough to trap Desiree in an Ecto-net and interrogate her about where she had dropped him.
(More information she had about the destination and more precisely Jazz could make the counter-wish.)

Once the Fenton heir felt secure enough about what to do, she finally wished for a stable portal to safely bring Danny back from the wished past.

The swirling gateway opened right in front of the redhead and after a few seconds to make sure it wouldn't close, she souped the genie, sent a message to Team Phantom just to be sure and entered.

Whatever Jazz had been expecting, she found nothing of it.

The portal had opened on an ice wall that circled a yard. On the other side of it, stood an ice palace (which looked hilariously like the FentonWorks) nestled into a high cliff.
Before the portal, a path led directly to the front door and on the sides of it two cultivation of odd and prehistoric-looking plants flourished under the dim light of two globes of what looked like ectoblasts. There were also trenches that led to a mismatched machine that could have been only Danny’s work from cannibalizing the tech that had been dragged along with him. It was probably an irrigation device?

Awed, Jazz walked forward, looking around in wonder until she reached the clearing before the palace.
There, she finally found her brother, unconscious under an equally passed out dinosaur, which was clearly a carnivore, on his chest.

Cautiously and as silent as possible, Jazz stalked towards the duo on the ground and crouched (ready to leap away if the dinosaur woke and attacked) near Danny's head, which she noted had way longer hair than ten minutes prior.
…How much had it been for him?
The cultivation was so big and the yard had so many signs of being well-lived…!

With her throat tight, Jazz slowly stroked her brother's hair, trying to coax him awake without alerting the beast on his chest.
Blearly, the young man blinked his eyes open and looked up at her, taking a few seconds to register what he was seeing.

An exhausted smile dawned on his face. “Hey Jazzy.”

“Hey Danny.”

“Sure you took your sweet time, uh?” He mumbled without any resentment, but she winced nonetheless.

“How long…?”

Danny lifted his left arm, careless of the risk of jolting the beast awake, and looked at his TF-approved FentonWatch™.
“Six months, three days, 20 hours and 15 minutes.” He looked back up at her, squinting in the low light. “You?”

“Fifteen minutes, give or take.” She bit her lip. “I didn't word the wish well enough. I'm sorry.” 

Her brother waved her away placidly, like being stranded hadn't been a big deal. “Not your fault. If anything, it's mine, I shouldn't have been so careless to wish aloud. Should have known better, now that my rogues can't roam around in Amity anymore.” He huffed, looking down at the reptile on his chest and idly caressing the mane on its head.

Jazz inhaled sharply at the action, already leaning forward to take away his hand from the danger (it wouldn't be the first time that Danny petted animals that he shouldn't have), but when the dinosaur huffed, she froze with her arm still hovering.

Danny glanced up in askance at her and his expression would have been adorably confused if he hadn't been in such a danger… but before she could voice her hissed panicked reprimand, his face cleared and he snickered, snickered!, at her.

As she spluttered in indignation, her gremlin of a brother gently tickled the reptile's nostrils, who almost immediately sneezed (oh Descartes’s great spirit, that had been a kitten-sneeze!) and woke up, blinking as tiredly as Danny had done.
“Hey, Starlight! Sorry for waking you, but I have a surprise.” He all but purred at the dinosaur, who perked up at the last word, seemingly excited, if the tail that had just started slowly wagging was of any indication. Danny looked up at Jazz and the reptile followed the motion, freezing when he noticed her. “This is Aunt Jazz. She's my sister… like Sirrah is Enif's.”

The predator seemed to take a few seconds to process the sentence (like it was actually understanding it!) and when it finally did that, it suddenly surged forward and leaped at Jazz, who shrieked and fell back, but apparently not far enough, because the carnivore reached her anyway.
She tried to cover her vital points from the assault with her arms, hoping desperately that Danny would save her, but only laughter and clinking met her ears as something rough and slobbery stroked her forearms. What the…!

Jazz peeked from between the forearms to understand what was happening and when she finally did, she couldn't help but gape: the dinosaur’s onslaught was just… puppy kisses??

“Danny, what the hel-...?!” She exclaimed, lowering her arms to use her hands to grip the overgrown lizard on her lap so that it wouldn't fall (or keep on its “attack”) from how much it was vibrating from the tail-wagging.

“Sorry sorry,” he apologized, sitting up cross-legged to face her, not sounding sorry at all, more amused than anything else. “We needed this laugh, today's been a long day.” The mirth on his face stayed, but it took an exhausted edge. At her concerned look, Danny just shrugged. “I'll explain later; nothing serious happened, though, so don't worry.”

Jazz nodded, taking him up to his word (for now), then looked at the excited bundle of scales and… fur(?) on her legs. “Who's this?” She asked as she carefully offered her hand (palm up) to the dinosaur to let it sniff it.
The smooth snout buried itself in the hand inhaling a few times deeply, then it snuggled it, all attention-seeking like.

“That's Astra, one of the last T-Rexes on America's South-East Coast and… my daughter.” 

Jazz snapped her head up, flabbergasted and ready to see her brother up to mischief again, but she only met a soft smile full of affection as he looked at the reptile.
Danny glanced up at Jazz for just an instant, then the next he was Phantom, flaring slightly his aura that had Astra turn at him with a(n adorable) “mmmmhr?”

Another flash from him had the T-Rex scramble onto his lap with a clinking sound (why did she have a necklace full of beads?) and then a bluish-whitish ring of light passed over her, changing her appearance from a reddish-brownish coat to an azure-violet shade. Her once golden eyes now were the same shade of Phantom’s, as was her mane the same white of his hair.

Astra was an halfa.

A dinosaur, a whole T-Rex, was an halfa!

“How?!?!” Jazz was beyond befuddled, completely bamboozled.

“I… accidentally incubated her egg in Phantom's hammerspace.” Danny scratched both his nape and Astra's mane, earning a pleased murr. “I think she assimilated my ectoplasm for one or two months before hatching. Made her literally a child of half of me.”
He looked up at his sister, appearing somewhat lost. “I didn't mean to become a dad, but now she's mine and I don't know what to do, Jazz!” He whined, distressed, hugging Astra to his chest and prompting her to try to preen him in reassurance.

(Jazz noticed how it slowly worked, as tension bit by bit bled out of Phantom's frame. And that was the only reason why she felt allowed to do what she did.)

Jazz snorted. Then it escalated into first a chuckle and then a full belly cackle.
(With the corner of her eye she kept attention to his reaction and when his previous distress had turned into a pout, Jazz felt she had reached her goal.) 

“Only you, little brother, could find your daughter in a situation like this! This is so like you, I swear…!” She chuckled again, sniffing to try to stifle the majority of her amusement.

“Are you done?” The pout was now encompassing on Phantom's face, arms crossed around the dinosaur held like a breathing and scaly german-shepard-sized teddy bear.

“Maybe.” She looked around, to get a hold on her emotions, and focused on the ice palace behind her brother. “I made Desiree make the portal stable, but better start retrieving your things.” Jazz stood, brushing her pants from the dirt.

The human halfa glanced at the swirling opening and floated up, face turning pensive as he examined it closer. “I think that it won't close until I pass completely to the other side. We have plenty of time for now.” He began floating to the house. “Com’on Jazz, I'll present you my wards while we pack all the necessities.”

“Your what now?”

Danny just laughed, free and far less stressed than before.

🦖 👻 

It didn't take much to gather up everything in the original boxes and the extra material in the emptied ones that Jazz dragged from beyond the portal.
Actually, the majority of the time went in presenting Jazz to the other mini-dinos and coaxing them through the portal into Danny's dorm room (thankfully a single, so no roommate would snoop on what they were doing) without making any messes.

All the while, Astra stayed glued to his side, both as an emotional support and part because his lingering anxiety was making her nervous and so clingy.
(Not that he minded, he did need her near him.)

Once all the (other) hatchlings were safely on the Present Side and Danny had sent telekinetically all his boxes inside as well, his anxiety made him sweep the “property” at least three times to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything. 

When asked about the plants to feed the herbivores (since he was leaving the cultivation where it was), Phantom had shaken his head and pointed out that one of the extra boxes already held a plethora of seeds and some saplings for Sam to cultivate for him in an isolated place, where they could adapt to the new soil and environment from zero better than grown plants.

(North America –and the world in general– had already too many alien species already shuffled all over the globe, where some had also become invasive.
Better not instigate another ecological rant from one (1) Sam Mason by adding ancient species to the load of already existing misplaced creatures.)

Plus, it felt… wrong to unearth all the plants, now that they had finally stabilized in the soil and the system he had rigged to keep on watering and lighting the biosphere was working.
Hypothetically, since they ran on both ambient ectoplasm and the purified remains of the Wraiths (kept in buried tanks), the Spectral Suns and the watering machine would last indefinitely, so maybe the scientist in Danny wanted to know what would happen if he left everything be (like in a terrarium).

Would a closed ecosystem evolve in millions of years or die off without someone to actively tend to it?
…Maybe it was the Fenton’s Mad Scientist gene talking here…

Danny sighed bones-deep, as he finished the last perlustration of the ice palace: now that it was empty it felt like a haunted mansion… which it was, because Astra and him were still inside, but that was beside the point.

This was the place he had called home for six months and the human halfa felt his Core ache at the incoming separation, much like it had done while leaving Amity for College.

It's probably a ghost thing, uh? Danny thought as he closed the front door behind him and patted it as if thanking it for the good job of sheltering him and th others.

Astra nudged his hip, dispelling the melancholy mood and reminding him that the future was waiting for him.

Yes, it was time to go back home.

At the portal, Danny picked up his daughter to go together, in case the wish-generated opening recognized her ectoplasm as Danny's and closed if she passed through before him.

Without much fanfare, they stepped through and turned to watch the portal blink away from existence, leaving them in his college dorm with 23 curious dinosaurs roaming around. 

Welp, time to get back at being the caretaker of his unruly wards and find a place to rehome them.
It wouldn't take long for them to become too big for his room…