Chapter Text
It all went wrong on the way home from school. It was nearly summer and they were stuck walking all the way home in the blistering heat. Danny was on his phone leaning against Jazz acting as a personal AC unit for her since she was currently without her car. Which was mostly Danny’s fault so he couldn’t complain about it too much.
“Thanks again for trying to cover for me the other day. I really didn’t think mom and dad would ground you for it though.” There was a ghost attack in the middle of the night. Apparently Maddie had a burst of late night inspiration and on her way down to the basement she went to check on her two kids she found Danny’s room empty. Thankfully Jazz managed to calm down her panicking mother with a few lies about his whereabouts but they didn’t line up when Danny was back in his own room the next morning asleep. So now they were both grounded for the foreseeable future. Which meant Danny was going to be tasked with cleaning the lab again , he was definitely not looking forward to it. Last time he had to, one of the experimental ecto-guns went off and hit him right in the shoulder because his dad forgot to build a safety into it.
“Of course, not like I could let them find out about the whole ghost thing. A week or so without a car is nothing as long as it means you’re safe. Or at least as safe as you can be. Plus I can use you as a way to cool off so walking isn’t too bad. It’s a good form of exercise.”
Danny was pretty sure he got enough exercise already in the form of fighting a ghost every few days. But Jazz was the smart one of the two so who was he to argue. He was jerked to a stop, almost dropping his phone, as Jazz froze and put an arm in front of him. “What the hell Jazz?”
Jazz didn’t even have time to point let alone explain before a small blob ghost collided into Danny setting off his ghost sense. It then decided his hair was a great place to sit, which honestly was pretty common for blob ghosts to do, something about the ambient ectoplasm he let off. He turned to tease his sister about freaking out over a harmless blob ghost of all things, or he would have if a woman wearing brightly colored spandex wasn’t charging at the two. At any other time Danny might have commented on the bizarre getup or the fact that something about the woman didn’t feel right, like she was out of place. But at the moment he was more focused on the fact she was running straight at him and her hand was glowing, and then a second later the fact she was grabbing him. All That information was pushed aside as the world started spinning around him and the air left his lungs. It felt like he was being sucked into the Fenton thermos, while it was in a washing machine, which in turn was chucked into a tornado. To say the least it was unpleasant.
Danny couldn’t say how long the experience lasted, all he knew was that it was too long. Once the attack on his senses stopped he let out a groan. If he never did that again it would be too soon. Slowly he became aware of the world around him once more. Except there were a few problems. He was now laying on a bed of grass when before he was in the middle of the city. The heat of late spring was replaced by a cool breeze. Already he could feel the lack of ectoplasm in his surroundings, so he was definitely not in Amity anymore.
He opened his eyes and was met with a cloudy sky. He turned his head to the side and saw Jazz with her arm over her eyes. “You okay Jazz?”
“No.” Jazz grunted. “I feel like I have a nasty hangover, or a concussion, or both.”
“How do you even know what a hangover feels like?”
“If aunt Alicia ever asks if you want to celebrate her divorce with her and of her friends, say no. None of them seem to understand watering down drinks or drinking responsibly.”
“Mom was okay with that?”
Jazz snorted. “I think she was just happy she didn’t have to face that alone.”
Danny finally managed to sit up, he didn’t feel like puking so he considered that a plus. Now they just had to figure out where they were. Jazz got up off the ground soon after and pulled out her phone. She dialed a number, then she dialed again, and again, and again. “Danny, give me your phone.”
“Uh okay?”
He handed it over. Jazz dialed more numbers on his phone, though by the look on her face she wasn’t getting anywhere. She ran a hand through her hair. “There’s no signal.”
“Well I guess we try to figure out where we are then? We can try and find our way home from there.” Looking around it seemed they were in the middle of a small nature park. Past the treeline Danny could see the top of buildings. Neither of the two had much of a better idea of what to do so they picked a direction and started walking.
They barely made it a few steps outside the park when they were met with the next shock of the day. The sidewalk was crowded, Danny and Jazz were struggling to even stay together. The person in front of Danny came to an abrupt stop causing him to collide into them. “Hey, watch it!”
“Me watch it? You’re the one who-” Danny stopped mid sentence as the person(?) who was in front of him turned around. They had to be at least twice Danny’s size, their hair was practically a blond mane, but what put Danny off the most was the fact that they had the face of a dog. Now if he was back in Amity that wouldn’t be too weird, Wulf was a great friend to have around, but the person in front of him was not Wulf, nor were they a ghost. The lack of ectoplasm in the environment wouldn’t allow any advanced ghost to remain in a stable form for more than a few seconds. The only reason Danny was fine was because he wasn’t a full ghost and could survive off of things like a normal human.
Not-Wulf looked him up and down. “You okay kid?”
“Uh yeah I’m fine, sorry for bumping into you!” Danny turned and ran off to catch up with Jazz. As he worked his way through the crowd he noticed more strange things about the people around him. He finally found Jazz who was part of a group of people looking up at the sky. Danny followed their gazes up and saw someone flying through the air. Said person was wearing the second obnoxious spandex suit he saw that day. It was an awful mix of red, yellow, white, and blue. It reminded him of the crazy outfits some people wore to the firework show on the Fourth of July in Amity. Before he could critique the outfit more the flying man left his line of sight.
Jazz turned to him. “You saw that too right?”
“The ugly outfit? Yeah, wish I didn't but yeah. Only slightly better than Vlad’s vampire getup.”
Jazz lightly swatted the back of his head. “You know what I meant you brat.”
Danny shrugged. “Yes I saw the flying man. But I also ran into someone with a dog head a few minutes ago, and I’m pretty sure the person who just walked past us had bright orange skin so…”
Jazz looked around trying to see if she could spot who he was talking about but the crowd around them had somehow seemed to get even larger. People were pointing up to the sky where the ugly outfit dude was just a few seconds ago talking about some ‘tall night’ or something. If he was being honest Danny wasn’t too interested.
They decided to make their way past the crowd. They continued walking as they discussed their current situation. “So we are definitely not in our dimension anymore.”
“Gee Danny what makes you say that? The fact people are flying through the sky and others with orange skin, or was it just a weird hunch you happened to have?”
“Hey I’m the one here with experience in other timelines and dimensions and stuff.”
“Okay then,” Jazz huffed, “if you have so much experience how do you usually get home?”
Danny was suddenly very interested in the ground. “Oh you know-” He mumbled something under his breath.
“Sorry, what was that? I couldn’t quite hear you.” Jazz hummed.
“I said either Clockwork sends me there and brings me back or I use the infi-map!”
“And you don’t happen to have the map, or the pseudo-god of time in your backpack do you?”
“No.” Danny grumbled as he kicked a rock. His eyes followed its journey as it skipped down an alleyway. Only for the rock to come to a stop after hitting someone's shoe. Danny probably would have apologized for hitting them with a rock, if it didn’t look like the person was in the middle of an attempt of mugging.
Danny and Jazz stopped at the entrance of the alley and for a moment just stared at the mugger and victim as they stared back. Danny wasn’t a stranger to stopping petty or even more severe human crimes when patrolling Amity for ghosts. Sure it didn’t happen as often as fighting ghosts but it did happen. Protecting people from ghosts or from other people made no difference to him. All he knew was that he wouldn’t leave someone who was in danger.
“I may be wrong but I’m pretty sure robbing people, or whatever you’re trying to do is illegal.” Danny said.
The mugger seemed to snap out of the shock of them walking in on him threatening someone. “Look, how ‘bout you two scram and I’ll pretend I never saw you. Otherwise you’ll be in a world of hurt.” He pointed his knife at them.
Danny could feel Jazz leave his side and take cover against the side of the building. There wasn’t much she could really do to help in this situation. “You know I’d really like to, but sadly I do have morals and I’d feel pretty bad if I just left this poor dude to fend for himself.”
Looking over at him the mugging victim looked to be in a pretty rough shape too. Not in the sense that he was beat up or anything he just looked like he spent a little too long living on the streets. His clothes were black and baggy, he had a long grey scarf that covered most of his face, what parts of his face that weren't covered by his scarf seemed to be hidden behind a curtain of messy black hair. He also seemed to be studying Danny, it felt like his eyes were staring straight into the boy’s soul. Danny briefly wondered if the man even had any money on him to steal.
Looking away from the man with a knife was a bad idea. The next thing Danny was aware of was a knife lodged into his side. Which was definitely strange seeing as the mugger was still a few feet away from him. Stranger yet was that there were now several knives hovering around the mugger all pointing at Danny. Huh he must have telekinesis then. That wouldn’t be much of a problem though. The mugger sent another knife his way but Danny just went intangible as it soared through him.
The mugger seemed only a little phased at this as he readied more knives. Danny at that moment remembered the fact that there was an open street behind him, and letting a bunch of knives just fly into the open probably wasn’t a good thing. The knives started flying towards him and he threw up a shield. Before the knives could make contact with the shield they froze midair and clattered to the ground.
Danny looked around trying to figure out what just happened. Then he saw it, the homeless man’s hair was floating and his eyes were glowing red as he stared the mugger down. He then, in Danny’s opinion quite gracefully, kicked the mugger right in the head knocking him out cold. The scarf he was wearing reached out and wrapped the mugger up restraining him. The man then rushed over to Danny. “Listen it’s all going to be okay. I've already sent a call out for an ambulance and it’ll be here any moment.”
Danny looked up in confusion at the, surprisingly badass, homeless man. “What for? Are you hurt?”
“Kid, you have a knife in you. You’re probably running on adrenaline right now but that won’t last long. Let’s sit you down okay?”
Danny looked down, oh yeah he was stabbed he almost forgot about that. Not the first time it happened, it wasn’t even ecto-based like Skulker's knives so no big deal. He reached down and grabbed the handle and braced himself with his other hand and pulled. He felt a burst from his core as it aided his body in the healing process.
“Woah kid careful don’t touch it, what are you- holy shit!” The man pressed his hand up against where the knife had just been. “You’re supposed to keep foreign objects in the wound until you get actual help.”
Danny probably should have realized that straight up pulling a knife out of his gut would cause panic. Oh well. “Oh it’s fine it won’t even need stitches, look it’s already healing.” Danny pushed the man off of him and lifted his shirt up. He wasn’t wrong either, the wound already stopped bleeding. It’d probably still leave a scar though, just one more added to the list he supposed. The man seemed to just stare at the wound.
Jazz peeked out from behind the building. “Danny everything okay?”
“Yeah, got stabbed though.”
“Again?” Jazz asked.
The man turned to Jazz and after he seemed to assess that she wasn’t a threat he turned back to Danny. “What does she mean again? You’re what, twelve? How have you been stabbed multiple times?”
“I’m fourteen actually." Danny shrugged. “Plus it’s better than getting shot. Hurts a lot more. I usually need stitches when that happens.”
“You’ve been shot before?” The man ran his hands down his face.
“Well yeah but that usually only happens when our parents have a new invention they want to try out.” Danny said. Jazz gave her brother a look that clearly said ‘stop talking idiot’.
The man put eyedrops in his eyes and blinked a few times. “Alright I’m not unpacking all of that right now. I need to bring this villain to the police station, he’s been the suspect of multiple muggings and assaults. I’ve been trailing him for a while. You both will come with me.”
Jazz crossed her arms. “How do we know we can trust you? We don’t even know your name.”
The man almost looked impressed. “I suppose you don’t know if you can. I’m pro hero Eraserhead, or you can call me Aizawa if it makes you feel better.” Aizawa picked up the unconscious mugger like a sack of flour. “But I'm giving you an option you can come with me peacefully or I can call in some backup. Technically you used your quirk illegally in public and interfered with the work of a pro hero.”
Danny looked over at Jazz who shrugged. “I don’t think we really have a choice. Plus maybe they can help us find a way back home.” With their minds made up and very little other options, they followed the hero to the police station.