milliways_bar | (no subject)

Danny had a cast on his wrist. His parents and Jazz had been immensely relieved to find out he was okay when he got home, and coming up with an explanation as to why he looked like he'd taken a tumble down a cliff was easy with how trashed the town was. ("I was downtown--got hit with some of the rubble, but I'm okay.") They got him to the hospital, got his wrist in a cast, and took him home, tucking him in and babying him for a bit, before leaving him with Jazz and heading out to clean up the city--sending the remaining ghosts back into the ghost zone.

From their calls back home he and Jazz found out all the portals were clearing up.

Good.

Peace and quiet was a rare commodity indeed.

Before he could relax, however, he desperately needed a shower. He had to take a bath instead because of the cast, with his right arm in a plastic bag and rubber bands on it, to keep it dry. That was annoying.

He would've gotten into his pjs and gone to take another nap, but the bar had other plans.

As such, a lightly bruised teenage boy with wet hair, and wearing naught but a towel and a plastic-bagged, rubber-banded cast walked into the bar, still brushing his teeth distractedly with his good hand.

He blinked his eyes open. When he realized he wasn't in his hallway, he stopped brushing and went scarlet, turning to the door as it snapped shut behind him.

"I sfpill gav to sfpit!" he said to the door around a mouth full of toothpaste mange, his toothbrush still being juggled in his hand as he made sure the towel was secure so no one could see his rear. He tried to open the door and when it wouldn't, he kicked it, then started hopping because he'd hurt his toe. "No fwair!"

But of course this sort of thing would happen to him, considering his pants went clear and fell down at the most inoppurtune times on a regular basis.

Embarassment was his life.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Parents rarely are," he agrees, making a mental note of this. "No matter the age of the 'child' involved. Mother...she did a good job of concealing it, but she wasn't exactly thrilled when I decided to join the Anla'shok. In spite of our strengths, it is the most hazardous profession in our time."

"Superheroing generally is." More biting of the tip of his tongue as he concentrated. "For a while, I hid it because I thought my parents would think I was a freak. They knew abou the accident, but they thought I was fine afterwards--they didn't know what it had done to me. And I didn't tell them--they absolutely hate ghosts, and see them as this menace to society and whenever they saw Danny Phantom--me--on the news they just wanted to catch me and take me apart molecule by molecule," Danny explained. "I...I know better now though."

He gives the boy a long look.

"And, now that you know better, you keep this a secret from them to save them worry?"

One long finger reaches out to tap the crystal. "There may be a flaw here from that ripple in the sheen. Be extra careful."

"They would accept me. Something happened--my secret got revealed to the whole world, even though I was able to change it so it didn't happen."

He could have changed a lot of things then, but he hadn't. He still wasn't sure why.

"They would worry."

He took a moment to look at his little sculpture, thinking, before moving on again.

"Don't they worry about you already?"

He doesn't know the specifics about the lengths Danny has to go to to keep his secret...but he can guess.

"Yeah, but I'm a good liar. Jazz helps me come up with excuses for the broken bones, the bruises. At worst, they think I'm being bullied--they don't know I'm fighting some things to the death, and it's better that way."

"I'm not sure about 'better'," he says. "The longer this goes on, the harder it will be if something happens to you that cannot be explained away."

Like, maybe, dying?

"But I'm not one to dictate to you how you should live your life." He looks down at the nearly, completed work and nods approvingly. "Very good for your first effort."

"I know. Someday, I'll have to...figure out something."

It was...okay, it was a vague blob, with a hole for eyes and a mouth.

"It's a ghost."

And thus Danny shows a potential for a rewarding career making holiday decorations.

"I see," the Ranger murmurs and picks a couple of other blocks. "You should probably take a break for a little while, but you can practice on these later."

He eyes the cast. "I'll see about getting you a practice denn'bok by the time that cast comes off."

It was better than working at the Nasty Burger at least!

"Great!" A pause. "What's a denbawk?"

He reaches into his robes...and pulls out a cylinder about the size of a can of biscuit dough. Loa holds it away from the table and gives it a peculiar twist-shake.

Shhhhkkktttt!

Now he's holding a five-foot-long, metal staff.

"The Minbari Battle Pike," he says, handing it to Danny. "It's the traditional weapon of the Rangers. We are all trained in it...even if it's not often used in actual combat these days."

"Oooooooo." See, now, Danny had wanted a lightsaber when Ray showed him it but had known better than to ask how to make a weapon that could chop his own arms and legs off. But this...

"How long does it go? What's it made of?"

"That is its full length, I'm afraid," he says, grinning at his new student's reaction. "It's constructed using mnemonic alloys of various metals. The construction is a closely guarded secret, even today."

Although heavier than a wooden staff of comperable length, it's not as heavy as one would expect something made of metal to be. But it feels solid. Not something you'd want to take a blow from at all.

"Unfortunately, tradition bars me from giving you one of your own to keep until you've mastered its use." A shrug. "But I have every confidence that you will."

Danny only beamed at that.

Of course, judging from the lumpy little ghost...

It was probably going to take a while.