Chapter Text
It’s been two weeks since Wesley Weston joined the team, and although Valerie Gray did in fact get fired, things have settled into a sort of uneasy routine.
It’s not Wes’ fault that things are uneasy. If anything, as suspicious as he was at first, Wes has proved himself to be invaluable as an ally. He has connections at the school that they don’t, allowing him to counteract rumors before they start. He and Tucker make an excellent surveillance team, between Wes’ sharp eyes and Tucker’s questionably legal access to the two cities’ traffic cameras. He’s even become something of a publicity photographer for them, and while the local news isn’t interested, social media is.
Training has been going well, too. Sam and Jazz have ensured the two halfas stick to their regimens, and Valerie’s hard work is paying off in spades. She might not be able to match Danny’s raw capacity for power yet, but thanks to her experience with her suit, her ectoblast control and agility are already nearly on par with his.
Hell, even her father’s gotten in on it. His suggestion, to try manipulating things the way she did in the suit, is how she learned just how much like liquid metal her ghostly form actually is. Her one and only win while sparring against Danny came from that malleability, herding him in close using crude mimics of her old cube drones before shunting as much of her mass into her leg as she could and slamming it into him.
Val concedes that it would never work on him again now that he knows she can do it, but the way he sounded like he was gargling static at the time was so damn satisfying after days of the two dancing around each other that she doesn’t think she cares.
The problem—the friction, Jazz has called it—is that she and Danny are both protectors, at the rawest essence of them. Both defenders. Both heroes, if her father is to be believed. She's gotten to the point where seeing someone else take a hit isn't sending her into a completely blind rage anymore, even when it's one of the humans. Hell, she was present three days ago when some nobody shade split off from the pack the pair were fighting. It managed to catch the first aid team off guard, and despite the nasty bruise Sam had been nursing afterward Valerie had only mildly mauled the stupid thing before she souped it.
And yet, she has to be sneaky about it if she wants to patrol or fight alone, because Danny can't seem to help being the most obnoxiously overprotective mother hen imaginable.
The one time Val brought this up to Jazz, in hopes she could get him off her back, Jazz had mused that she hadn't even been half-dead for a month yet and she wasn't sure if Danny wasn't in the right to be worried.
Whatever.
Things are otherwise looking up, as much as they can for two sort-of-dead fourteen year olds and their pseudo-vigilante friends. With the pair of them working together in fights against the usual suspects, they're both missing less class, which makes Jazz and their respective parents happy and leaves them less stressed out overall. Val's own intervention has resulted in Danny being encouraged to eat higher-calorie meals with more actual nutrient value, and although he'd never admit it himself, he already seems more alert and energetic as a result.
The more dangerous members of what Danny refers to as the frequent fighter club have been laying low, with no new sightings of Skulker, Walker's men, Desiree, Technus, or Spectra and the assistant Wes refers to as 'the fuckstick' since their fight with Skulker that first weekend. Danny, Valerie and Wes have all expressed that they're almost disappointed Spectra isn't stupid enough to show her face yet so they can forcefeed her ectoblasts until she stops moving.
The tension finally starts to crack open while the pair are watching a passing jet liner from above on a slow Wednesday afternoon.
"I'm just saying, fear from that scary movie we hung out at last weekend tasted more like root beer than normal." Valerie says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the community movie theater in Amity's arts district.
"You get root beer?" Danny tilts his head. "Always thought it was more like vanilla ice cream, personally."
"I don't know about that. But we agree normal fear is like honey, right?"
"Oh yeah. Even feels thick."
Valerie laughs, creaking like crumpling steel. "Glad it's not just me. How do they all have a texture, too? Why does this shit have to be so weird?"
Danny's about to respond when the air is split with the sound of Scooby-Doo exclaiming 'Ruh-roh, Raggy!', and his jagged-scar smile and brilliant eyes vanish in response. She levels him with the most unimpressed look she can manage with only a few of her eyes manifested, and he somehow looks sheepish even without a face at all. "Blame Tucker."
"Oh, I will. If he tries to mess with mine I'm phasing his PDA into a wall."
Danny snorts, which Valerie thinks sounds kind of like a transformer blowing, and retrieves his phone from inside his ill-defined self. "He has like five backups at this point. Sam's not letting him go without them anymore. You think about her offer?"
Valerie hums noncomittally, metal scraping on metal, and waves a hand in a 'so-so' motion. She's not entirely certain why Sam Manson wants to meet up at a restaurant across town for dinner sometime, just the two of them, but she has a vague hope that it has to do with her lack of income ever since she got canned. She still doesn't regret not going back that day, but damn if it wouldn't be nice to have a little more spending money sometimes.
Danny squints at his phone, and Valerie grunts and stiffens at the way the air is suddenly full of his anxiety and anger. She has two blasts ready to go before he shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. "Shit."
"Talk to me, Phantom." Valerie says, the charges in her hands dimming but not disappearing.
"It's Jazz. Apparently Vlad is coming to visit, and. Shit. Shit, Val." Danny taps out a quick response, then shoves the phone into his body again violently. "He'll be here tomorrow."
Valerie falters for a moment, wracking her brain, then scowls. Or, well, that's what she intends to do—her helmet creaks a bit, the grass splintering into a deep frown—but mostly it's just in the way her glow intensifies and pulses. "So what's the plan? How do we deal with him?"
Danny hisses, like static out of a broken TV, then shakes his head. "If we're lucky he doesn't know about you yet. So you stay away from him, I deal with him while he's here, and he goes back to Wisconsin thinking there's only the one other halfa here."
"You know the news has covered me already." Valerie growls. "Don't sideline me, Danny. You've told me about how dangerous Vlad is. I don't want you to face off with him alone."
"Him being dangerous is why I don't want you to get near him." Danny says, crossing his arms. "At least I know how he's going to react to me, as creepy as it is. You don't have the connection to my mom, so I don't know what he'll do with you."
Valerie groans, crossing her arms right back. "If he only bothers you the whole time, fine, maybe. No promises if I catch a single whiff of his vampire ass anywhere near Elmerton."
Danny looks like he's going to argue, he really does, and Val wonders if he'd disengage from a brawl fast enough to avoid the ground if she tackled him from this high up. Then he sighs. "I just don't want you to get hurt. And he's very good at hurting."
And that, well, it doesn't smooth over all of her feelings, but it dulls them enough that she feels less like a tensed spring. Danny's fought Vlad before, lost to Vlad before, from what she's heard. He has every reason to be concerned, as much as she hates acknowledging it. "Yeah. All right."
He at least has the decency to look sheepish when he relaxes. "Thank you."
"So what, he's staying at your place or something?" Val asks, changing the subject.
"I hope not, but with dad you never know." Danny says. "Even if dad offers, though, he's probably going to prefer a hotel room, thankfully. And last time he stayed at our place overnight mom managed to spill hot tea on him and make it look like an accident."
Val snorted. "She doesn't even know about the whole 'hates your dad' and 'secret ghost asshole' thing, and she still gets the bad vibes."
Danny nods. "That's mom for you. If he stays at a hotel it'll be one of the fancy ones uptown, but he'll still come over to be around me and her as often as he can."
"Ugh. I'm not running and hiding if he shows up during patrol, you know."
"Wish you would but figured you wouldn't. Speaking of, we should probably head home so we can check in with everyone before we have to go back out later." Danny stretches, nearly forming a neat loop in place, then snaps back to his normal proportions. "See you tonight, Val?"
"Yeah. Tonight." Valerie nods, accepting the break before they can start arguing again for what it is. She watches Danny's green light blur as he arcs away toward FentonWorks, debating once again the merit of talking to Jazz and trying to make her case a little more clearly.
It frustrates her, but she knows they're not wrong to be cautious. Danny got thrown into the deep end, and from what she remembers seeing and what she's been told, the other ghosts have grown more capable and serious as he has. Her experience as the Huntress doesn't always translate to her powers, and while instinct can help carry them offensively, she still has serious deficiencies defensively.
Valerie gets it. She also understands that Vlad 'Plasmius' Masters is hardly the ghost to test her strength and strategy against, given his history of manipulating her and throwing Danny around.
None of that keeps the humming center of her ghost-self from aching at the thought of how much more they could do if they split up at night, of feeling incensed at the implication that she's not enough as a protector. No amount of logic can make her emotions stop running so hot about this. She knows. She's tried to talk herself around to acceptance. It doesn't work.
She chases the problem around in her head as she flies for home, alongside the problems of wanting to change her 'hero' name and needing to tackle some homework. Her thoughts are broken when her throat spasms, her mouth flooding with the taste of iron, a just a block away from home.
Shit.
She charges ectoblasts, pulling up and looking around wildly. Her sense hasn't gone off like that much when Danny isn't around, and initially she wonders if he's pranking her. But no, because she would've surely seen him reverse course to get here this quickly. But then—
"Ah, Miss Gray." Purrs Vlad, materializing out of thin air three feet away and neatly blocking her route home. Her metallic skin crawls in a quite literal sense at the way his voice oozes condescension, and she lifts her hands defensively, trying to keep her calm. "I do hope you don't mind a visit from your employer. I simply had to come and see how things were going for you, before I went to check up on my dear friends."
Another Vlad puts a hand on her shoulder, and she shrugs him off, lowering her hands slightly. Ah, shit.
"How have you and your father been?"