Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Danny was missing.

Sam and Tucker had been the last people to see him. They had hung out at the Nasty Burger that day, Danny complaining about his parents’ latest failed invention—supposedly a portal to the Afterlife, Sam remembered clearly. She had been a little too excited about it, asking question after question about the portal until Danny snapped at her to stop. So Sam had bought Danny the Nasty Smoothie Monthly Special as an apology—and when they walked home together, dropping Danny off first because his house was the closest, he had still been sipping that violently red drink.

The police found the smoothie sat on Danny’s kitchen counter during the subsequent investigation. The plastic cup was still half full with cherry smoothie, as if Danny had set the drink down for a moment and forgotten about it. The viscous red liquid reminded Sam of blood. She tried very hard not to think about how this might be the last meal Danny ever ate—the last gift she would ever give him.

About half an hour after Sam and Tucker walked Danny home, every electrical appliance in FentonWorks shorted out at once. The brightly lit house plunged into darkness, the neon sign proudly proclaiming the Fentons’ residence going out for the first time since it was put up. Burnt fuses, the Jack and Maddie later found out, except it didn’t make sense. A fault in the electrical wiring destroying everything connected to the house wiring would be a disaster, but at least logical. But even the appliances that ran on battery—Danny’s phone, Jazz’s laptop, and every last one of the Dr Fentons’ machines (their lives’ work), broke down in an instant. The sudden blackout alerted the neighbors, who called the city police. The police immediately deployed the special task force dedicated to the Fentons, issuing a block-wide evacuation in case this was one of the Dr Fentons’ new inventions threatening to blow up the neighborhood.

Danny wasn’t in the house when Jazz and her parents were allowed to return, despite the clear signs of his arrival. They didn’t think much of it initially, assuming he had evacuated the house alongside his neighbors. But as nightfall made its presence known unaccompanied by Jazz’ wayward brother, they began to worry.

A break-in? There was no sign of such thing, and no Amity Park resident would have so little common sense as to kidnap the youngest Fenton child—if only because Jack and Maddie, despite their paranormal work that was derided by the wider scientific community, were brilliant engineers who excelled in building weapons of dubious legality. And Jazz was known to be very protective of her brother—she knew how to use all of her parents’ inventions, and wasn’t afraid to put that knowledge to use. Even so, the blackout had shorted out the FentonWorks security system, disengaging all the locks in the process. For all they knew, a burglar could have waltzed in during the confusion, been startled by Danny’s presence, and took him as a hostage. If Danny was still alive at all.

There was another thing too—the activation switches in the basement portal had been flipped on. Both the control switch embedded in the wall, and the failsafe Jack and Maddie had included within the portal itself—which they only realised they had previously forgotten to disengage when cataloguing the extensive damage caused by the Blackout.

Not that it seemed to matter in the end. The portal remained as silent and lifeless as ever, with a noticeable lack of green sparks or strange energy. Perhaps the Blackout had destroyed the portal too. Rendered Jack and Maddie’s most ambitious project into nothing more than a hole in the wall. Perhaps the two switches had flipped on due to an irregularity of the circuitry caused by the Blackout, proving the portal was never going to do anything other than be a useless wall decoration. Or perhaps it was the act of both switches flipping on that led to the Blackout in the first place. It didn’t matter. The portal was now nonfunctional, Danny was missing, and Jack and Maddie could only afford to focus on one of these disasters at a time.

They contacted Sam and Tucker, who confirmed Danny had made it home. Then their neighbors, who replied less politely that they hadn’t seen Danny during the evacuation that the Fentons had caused, in case they so conveniently forgot. Finally they called the police, whose Fenton Task Force immediately issued an AMBER Alert, if only so that people would know to avoid a Fenton on a warpath.  

Before midnight, the entire Amity Park and most of Elmerton knew the youngest Fenton was missing. A search party was organised—a race against the clock before Jack, Maddie and Jazz began ripping the city apart in search of Danny. A few optimistic souls hoped whatever idiot had kidnapped Danny would release him once they caught wind of this commotion, but several others were of the opinion that Danny had simply wandered off, and silently vowed to make him regret it once they caught the boy.

Chapter Text

That very same night Danny disappeared, a man saw an amorphous blob float by his back porch, glowing eerily green.

John lived in a house next to the woods surrounding Lake Eerie. That night, he had stepped out to his back porch to indulge in a glass of whiskey before bed. The porch gave John a fantastic view of the pitch-dark woods, with the weak illumination of the porch light only ever serving to make the shadows seem that much starker. As he sat on a chair sipping whiskey, a pair of red glowing eyes peered at him from the trees.

But that alone did not alarm John—there were plenty of wild animals in those woods, and sometimes their eyes reflected strange colors from the porch light. John merely reached for his hunting rifle, which he kept on the porch for situations like this, ready to scare off the animal in case it proved hostile. He didn’t bother to stand up.

But then the red eyes were joined by a strange green glow, illuminating the rest of the creature’s body—or lack thereof. It was an amorphous green sludge, lacking any distinguishable features aside from those glowing red eyes, suspended in the air without wings or legs to hold it there, as if it was merely floating.

And float it did—creeping slowly, coming ever closer to John with his glass of whiskey and gun. John gave a cry of alarm, eyes locked upon the thing that was clearly no animal. His whiskey slipped from his hand, the glass shattering upon the wooden ground, but neither John nor the creature gave any indication they noticed. In an abrupt motion, John brought his rifle up to eye level, his left hand propping up the forearm as his right hand disabled the safety. He lined the sights at the disgusting green sludge, and fired—once, twice, thrice.

The bullets found their target, and then went through it, phasing through the creature as if it didn’t exist. John’s breath hitched. He had hit it, he knew he did, he was a good enough shot—and despite the pounding of his heart, his hands had been steady.

The thing floated steadily closer, unprovoked by John’s attempt on its nonexistent life, just as it had been unaffected by the shatter of John’s whiskey glass. John sat frozen, his rifle still held in front of his face and his finger still on the trigger. It moved forward, and forward, never wavering in its trajectory towards his face.

He could now tell it was bigger than he had expected, perhaps large enough to encase his entire head. John had terrible visions of exactly that—suffocating as that sludge wrapped its wretched body around his head, pushing what passed as its flesh into his nostrils, down his throat, into his ear canals. The last thing he would see would be that sickening green, the last thing he would taste the revolting slime crawling across his tongue, and the last thing he would hear the sound of viscous sludge as it made its home in his head. John had enough time to think those thoughts, but not enough to act on them, before the blob stopped in front of him.

Their eyes locked, John’s brown eyes wide with terror and the slime’s red eyes beady and emotionless. John tried to move, to scramble away from this monstrous creature and spare himself a gruesome fate, but his limbs refused to listen. He could only sit there, frozen, as the thing…did…did nothing. The slime simply floated there, silent, inches from John’s face.

Until finally, John managed to jerk back with a startled cry, the legs of his chair making a deafening screech as the sudden motion jarred it backwards. John’s eyes stayed on the sludge the entire time, watching, waiting for signs of movement that would precede his impending death. That was the only reason John saw the moment the slime abruptly vanished.

It wasn’t that he blinked and the thing was gone, like many would claim when John recounted his experience afterwards. John’s eyes had remained open throughout, terror stopping him from closing them for even a moment—because even if he could do nothing to stop it, John was not going to let his demise take him by surprise, damnit. It was simply…the slime was floating in front of his face, its beady eyes staring into his soul, and then it was…gone. Disappeared. Vanished into thin air, leaving no trace behind, as if it was all a figment of John’s imagination—as if there had never been a slimy creature that did not breathe and did not have limbs but floated towards him all the same.

John sat there for a very long time, a shattered glass of whiskey at his feet, and his sweaty hands still clinging tight to his rifle.

It took what felt like hours before John came back to himself enough to realise his finger was still resting on the rifle’s trigger, taut and ready to fire. Swallowing, he slowly untangled his finger from the trigger, resting said unruly finger on the trigger guard long enough to flip the safety back on. It took all his willpower to put the gun down, despite knowing it would offer no protection from that slime-thing if it made a reappearance.

John sat there for a while longer before he gathered enough strength to return inside. It took even longer to gather his wits to make the call to the Fenton Task Force, but once the haze of terror left his mind, John knew it was necessary. Gunshots, a supernatural encounter, and the Fenton’s youngest disappearing all in one day—the last thing John needed was a Fenton showing up at his doorstep.

Best to let the FTF know, and hope their meagre protection will keep the Fentons away from his house. At least until they were less likely to level it to the ground.

Chapter Text

The search for Danny continued.

Casper Elementary, Casper Junior High, and Casper High were all shut down. Nominally because the adults were worried there might be a serial kidnapper running around, but mainly because the teachers were all preoccupied by Jack and Maddie taking an interest in Danny’s relationship with his fellow classmates and teachers for the first time since elementary school. This led to the discovery that Danny had apparently been bullied in school, which led to a rather violent discussion between the Drs Fenton and Mr Baxter—who apparently believed “you should be thanking Dash, my boy was only passing on my lessons on how to become a proper man. If he had succeeded, your son wouldn’t be such a wuss that he’d let himself be kidnapped.” Both the Fenton Task Force and Child Protection Services had to be called, and the meeting ended with one near-hospitalisation, several restraining orders, and Dash having to live with his mother and stepfamily for the foreseeable future.

Tucker discovered all of this through the incident report by the FTF. He had hacked his way into the Fenton Task Force servers shortly after the special task force was established two years ago, coding himself a backdoor for his own amusement. It took about a month for the Task Force to notice and close the backdoor, and another few days for Tucker to reopen said backdoor. During that brief absence, an incident report regarding Tucker’s intrusion had been filed. The section for Recommended Actions noted that with Tucker’s clear aptitude for hacking and his close friendship with Danny since their elementary days, he was as much of a menace to the Amity Park populace as the Fentons. Hence, he should be considered an honorary Fenton—with all police calls regarding Tucker to be forwarded to the FTF. Tucker had been rather proud once he discovered that file, and Sam rather put out that she wasn’t worthy of being considered “enough of a public menace to be an honorary Fenton” by the cops. Danny hadn’t been particularly amused, and had offered to march into the police station until Sam and Tucker convinced him not to.

Tucker and the FTF Computer Programmer (a woman named Iris Tam, according to Tucker’s less-than-legal investigations) had been playing a game of tug-of-war ever since. Iris had closed Tucker’s backdoor entrance the day before Danny’s disappearance, and Tucker had been in the middle of coding his re-entry when he received Jazz’s call regarding Danny’s absence. He hadn’t been in the mood to indulge in his hobbies, afterwards.

But while it was true that Tucker’s regular hacking of the FTF was merely for his own amusement, they did need to keep up to date with the FTF’s investigation of Danny’s disappearance. So after two days of joining the search party for Danny and bull-headedly ignoring every adult’s order to “go home, Tucker”, he finally sat down at his desk and booted up his desktop computer.

The backdoor was already there. Attached to the code was the programer’s notes: “we are trying the best we can. get some sleep. IT.”

Tucker pressed his hands to his eyes, pushing up his glasses in the process, and began to sob.

“So why did you call this meeting?” Sam asked, voicing the question she and Jazz were both thinking. “You said you’ve found a clue about Danny’s disappearance?”

They were in Tucker’s room, Tucker sitting in his computer chair while Sam and Jazz were seated on the two beanbag chairs. Sam’s beanbag was the purple one she always claimed when visiting Tucker, while Jazz’s beanbag was blue. The sight made Sam’s stomach roil—that beanbag was Danny’s designated seat. They shouldn’t be meeting here without Danny—they shouldn’t be meeting at all. They should be out on the streets searching for Danny, because the search was a race against time—a race Sam feared they had already lost. The 72 Golden Hours to rescue Danny had long since passed.

Tucker adjusted his glasses. He looked like he hadn’t slept in the past week—since Danny went missing. To be fair, so did Sam and Jazz.

“Yes. I’ve found something interesting in the FTF incident reports.” he replied, “Are you aware that they’ve recently become in charge of paranormal sightings as well?”

Sam frowned. It wasn’t surprising—the Fentons were known for their study of the paranormal, after all. Of course the task force dedicated to the Fentons would also find itself dedicated to their field of study. But…

Jazz asked Sam’s question for her. “What does that have to do with Danny?”

“That’s the thing. The first report about the paranormal was filed on the same day Danny went missing, and it’s been ramping up in frequency for the past week. And they all have three things in common: they occur in places bordering the woods, the encounter happens at night, and they all involve a floating green slime—or slimes—with red eyes. Nobody managed to take a picture of these creatures, obviously, that would make my job far too easy. Which means there’s no proof, so I did consider whether it might be a prank, or a hallucination, but the details across the cases are consistent. This can’t be a coincidence.” Tucker swiveled his chair until he was facing his desk computer, his back to Sam and Jazz. He gestured at them to take a look at his computer monitor. “Here. I’ve marked all the incidents on a map of Amity Park, with notes about each incident for context. Take a look.”

Sam and Jazz glanced at each other, then stood up to take a look at Tucker’s map. The map was indeed marked by thirteen red dots, all bordering the woods of Lake Eerie. The timestamp for each incident ranged anytime from 19:00 to 05:00. And the summaries…well.

‘Man sees glowing blob emerge from the woods, tries to shoot it three times, fails.’ ‘Woman lets what she thinks is stray cat into house, finds out it is not a cat but a glowing green blob, almost burns house down.’ ‘Family finds group of glowing blobs attacking trash can like rabid raccoons, Abuela throws slipper at blobs, blobs vanish in terror.’

In Tucker’s defence, he did manage to summarize the main talking points of each encounter. Even if they read like the Onion article titles.

Sam furrowed her brows. “And you’re sure this all started when Danny went missing?”

Tucker nodded, “I’ve been going through the past reports—seeing if I had ever missed anything—but I don’t think so.” he glanced at Jazz, “And considering that your house went through a complete blackout on that same day…”

“All the electrical appliances stopped working in my house, Danny went missing, and these…blob creatures began appearing, all within a few hours of each other.” Jazz summarized. She drummed her fingertips on Tucker’s desk in thought. “You think these three things are related.”

Tucker shrugged, “It’s one hell of a correlation.”

“No, I agree with you.” Jazz told him. “When my parents were investigating the Blackout, they found both switches in the portal—wait, did Danny tell you about the portal?”

Sam nodded, “The portal your parents built, the one that’s supposed to lead to the Afterlife? Danny mentioned it before—before…” she cleared her throat, shifting in discomfort at the memory. “That afternoon, when we were at the Nasty Burger. Danny said your parents tried to activate the portal for the first time that morning. It didn’t work.”

“Yes. Turns out you need to flip two switches to activate the portal—there’s the obvious one in the wall, but my parents built a failsafe inside the portal, to keep the circuitry open while they were building the portal or something.” she grimaced. “When they tried to activate the portal for the first time, they forgot to turn off the failsafe. They only flipped the activation switch outside the portal. But when they were checking for the damage done by the Blackout, both switches for the portal had been flipped on. They weren’t sure whether the Blackout had caused the switches to flip on, or the switches flipping had been what caused the Blackout—Danny was missing, the portal didn’t work even with both switches flipped, and for once in their lives, my parents decided to prioritize Danny over their research.”

Jazz’s lips curled, a tired smile gracing her face before it fell back into solemnity. “It’s not just that, though. The blob creatures that have been appearing—they glow green, don’t they? My parents think all ghosts are made of ectoplasm—a green, glowing substance.”

“You’re saying those blob things are ghosts.” Sam said, “And the blobs—no, all three incidents are connected to the Dr Fentons’ ghost portal?”

“That’s my most likely hypothesis.” Jazz told her, “At any rate, it’s the only lead we have right now.”

 Sam pursed her lips. Jazz was right. But…another detail stuck with her. “But we’ve—as in the search party—we’ve combed through the woods at least twice already. If there’s a clue to Danny’s whereabouts in the woods, we would’ve found it by now.”

“Not at night, though.” Tucker pointed out, tapping the timestamps on his map for emphasis. “The searches always conclude before the sun goes down.”

That was a good point. Sam glanced at Jazz, who glanced at Tucker, who glanced back at Sam. Their next step was clear.

“We’ll meet at eight, at the start of the trail into the woods.” Sam decided. “I’ll bring the flashlights.”