Fanfic / Danny Phantom: Fire And Ice

Fire And Ice is a Danny Phantom fanfic written by Kilaknux. It can also be found on Archive of Our Own here.

After encountering a dispirited Ember during a routine patrol, Danny proposes a truce - he'll help with her problems if she'll help with his. Quite how this leads to benevolent kidnapping, demolishing buildings and Ember waving an axe around, they couldn't tell you.

The story has a side fic, The Phunky Phantom Phenomenon And Phriends, which follows the group chat introduced in the tenth chapter of the main fic. It can also be found on Archive of Our Own here.

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Tropes found in this work:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Paulina. Star complains she's relentless about it - Danny's epic rejection of her is noted to likely only stop her for a month or two before she goes back to trying.
• Adaptational Secrecy Downgrade: The fic is set after the end of the series (and the end of Danny's keeping a Secret Identity). One of the catalysts of the fic's story is Danny starting to crack under the pressure of he and his family always being in the public eye.
• Affectionate Nickname: Danny and Ember appear to have settled on “rockstar” and “baby pop” for one another. “Baby pop “is supposed to be an insult, but as Kitty notes, it would need to be said like an insult, otherwise it's just a pet name.
• Almost Kiss: Twice. The author has said they only intended to use this once, but the second one was too funny not to do.
• Alpha Bitch: As in canon, Paulina, although it's here given the slight twist that her obsession with pursuing Danny has drawn a lot of her attention away from terrorizing anyone else.
• Amazon Chaser: Tucker muses that although Danny pretends he isn't this, he very much is - all his love interests have been some iteration of strong and dangerous, and Ember is in some respects the exemplar of both among the girls they know.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Kitty pokes and prods Ember about her feelings, and gets a rather... explosive response.
  Ember: Fine! Maybe baby pop's always been cute! Maybe seeing him charge in to fight Pariah Dark with nothing but a suit of armor that was killing him got him my respect! And yeah, maybe seeing him drop every guard he’s got against someone who’s given him nothing but trouble just to help made me look at him differently! Maybe seeing him fight my corner with his own friends just to give me a nice day and make me feel less alone was more than nearly anyone else has ever done for me! A-and maybe I’ve never clicked with anyone like I have with baby pop, m-maybe he’s the only person who ever thought my music was worth something on its own, maybe everything just feels... better with him around… but even if that were true, none of it matters, Kitty.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Valerie asks one to Danny about Ember, who up to that point had been defending her valiantly. Danny can't answer, and Ember admits the implication of the question isn't wrong.
  Danny: [Ember] doesn't want to do any of that any more!
  Valerie: Yeah? Because it’s wrong to brainwash people and take their will from them, or because it didn’t work out for her?
• Ascended Extra: Star, given the commonly used last name of Strong. From Paulina's Beta Bitch to the newest member of Team Phantom and accidental rival queen of the school.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The final setting on Ember's guitar, Grand Finale. It's comparable to the Ghostly Wail in terms of destructive power, but it's much less directed, comes in multiple waves instead of all at once and leaves Ember utterly exhausted.
• Bad Liar: Danny is utterly awful at lying. He's actually proud of the fact, as he disliked having to lie to everyone for over a year. Considering he has to hide his association with Ember for her safety, though, it's less useful.
  • He is, however, quite adept at half-truths when he has a good reason for them.
• Badass Normal: Besides all the usual examples from Danny Phantom, it's implied Star is one as well. She has yet to get into a fight in the real world, but she holds her own very well against Ember in Cyberspace, an environment that Tucker had previously specifically noted forces you to use your own skills instead of any provided by the game.
• Battle Couple: Danny and Ember of course. Danny in particular almost seems to have this as a requirement for any relationship, remarking more than once that fighting alongside Ember is a feeling he can't replicate.
  • They get a chance to fight directly alongside one another properly in chapter 26 of the fic, and hoo boy, do they qualify. The deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle onto the Fright Knight, an enemy both emphasize they can't fight by themselves.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: She would never admit it to his face, but Ember is grateful to Danny for taking the time to talk to her and try to help her instead of just sticking her in the Thermos. The gratitude pushes her to a lot of her earlier, more platonic actions.
• Befriending the Enemy: Danny ends up doing this to Ember, and successfully tries to invoke it for her, Sam and Tucker. And this ends up happening with all of them and Star by complete accident.
• Beneath the Mask: According to the author, everyone has something they're dealing with they're not showing except Jack and Paulina. The former is simply living his best life currently and the latter is too shallow to have these kinds of conflicts. The truce between Danny and Ember got started because they both drop their masks in front of one another. In rough order of our discovery of them so far:
  • Ember had found her previous schemes and attempts at world domination ultimately hollow and not worth the literal decades she put into them as Revenge for how she was treated when she was alive. She's currently feeling adrift and with no idea what to do. She's also insecure about her music when she can't mind control people into liking it.
  • Danny is coping badly with fame and being in the public eye, feeling a constant weight of expectations and fearing he'll never get to be what he wants to be, instead being trapped as Danny Phantom forever.
  • Sam broke up with Danny out of self-loathing when she realized she was only with him because of his powers. The self-image issues it created persist to the present.
  • Kwan has taken an interest in computer programming, but can't display it openly for fear of losing his social status and place on the football team.
  • Dash is festering with rage and jealousy over Danny stealing what he views as "his time" as the king of Casper High. It's made him a worse Jerk Jock than he's been previously, all because he can't get status or hurt Danny in any meaningful way anymore.
  • Star had a Jerkass Realization and Heel–Face Turn after apologizing to Team Phantom after the Disasteroid, and has spent the last year helping people where she can in secret. The only reason she hasn't outright left the A-List is because she doesn't want to be alone. Notable in that taking off her mask results in becoming an Ascended Extra.
  • Maddie is absolutely terrified at the prospect of Vlad's return and assault on her family, and at least partially blames herself for his obsession with her.
• Big Damn Heroes: Seven words and one energy blast.
  Ember: Take your stinking hands OFF MY DIPSTICK!
  • At least three times in the 25th chapter. In order, Johnny and Kitty, Danny, Frostbite.
• Big Man on Campus: What little we've seen of Casper High indicates this is Danny's current status. Effectively Dash's whole problem is that he isn't this anymore.
• Boy Meets Ghoul: Played With a little. Danny and Ember met almost two years ago from the start of the fic, and were at minimum antagonistic to one another, if not downright hateful. However, over the course of the fic, they gradually begin to play this straight.
• Brought Down to Badass: Neither Danny nor Ember can use ghost powers in the VRCade. This doesn't stop them in the least.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Subverted. Both Danny and Ember appear to have every intention of playing this straight, and then Kitty and Jazz show up and blast this trope aside to get the two to confess to each other.
• Cassandra Truth: One of the joke answers Ember gives Danny when he asks why she's gone as far as she has in Reciprocity, Part 3 is "maybe I'm madly in love with you". As Ember would reveal to Kitty in Girl Talk, 10 chapters later, she was already attracted to him by this point, although it took the subsequent events of the fic to solidify it into anything more than a crush.
• Celebrity Is Overrated: The crux of Danny's issues. Although touched on less so far, he hates that the public eye is never off him, and he can't just stop doing the things that get him the attention otherwise people will die.
• Character Development: Ultimately everyone, some that we see and some as the result of the Time Skip. Although the lions share of focus and development has gone to Danny and especially Ember, there are no static characters here except Paulina. Sam has learned to cope better with jealousy, Jack and Maddie have been drastically changing their approach to ghost hunting and are making an active effort to be accommodating to Ember, etc.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Defied by Sam. Aside from a brief moment, she is well aware she has no right to treat Danny as hers or act as she has in canon and forces herself not to in regards to Danny and Ember. That she blames herself for their breakup helps her to do so.
• Crush Blush: For a brief while after confessing their interest in one another, flirting causes both Danny and Ember to display these regularly. They both grow out of it pretty quickly, flirting shamelessly without a hint of a blush.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Danny (without powers) vs Dash. As the narration states, it was not a fair fight - Danny floors him easily.
  • Skulker gets this both ways. On the giving end, his initial plan to finally kill Danny goes off without a hitch - Danny can't fight back properly, can't leave and can't meaningfully damage his new suit. The only reason this doesn't end in his victory is Ember turning up, who fights him much more evenly. On the receiving end, the instant Danny gets powered up by Ember, he can no longer land a single hit or deal any real damage. He does not take this well.
• Cyberspace: The VR Troopers arc introduces the VRCade, a virtual reality arcade that Team Phantom routinely plays in.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Or death, in this case - Ember starts the fic legitimately lost on what she should do now that she's accepted her villainous actions haven't brought her anything worth having. Danny later helps her at least try a new purpose - making it as a legitimate musician. That and she gradually starts to find new purpose in, well, him.
• Easily Forgiven: Downplayed, but arguably present. Barring some early hostility with Sam and Tucker, nobody really has an issue with Ember being around. Justified by her limited appearances in the original canon, and not appearing for more than a year prior to the beginning of the fic.
  • Averted with Valerie, who very vocally does not trust her. Danny even lampshades that most should find it difficult to look beyond Embers past, and that it took a lot for him to do so completely
  • Ironically, Ember herself is beginning to take this view. She's increasingly unsure about why she's been given the chance she has by Danny and friends, due to the Positive Friend Influence altering her perspective.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Ember really likes Danny's pirate outfit.
• Everyone Can See It: To a degree. It can sometimes take a while for people to recognize that Danny and Ember's relentless sarcasm and general banter is their form of Belligerent Sexual Tension, but everyone does eventually.
• Everyone Has Standards: Quite where she falls on the good/evil scale is unclear at the time, but what's certain is Ember does not like or approve of Paulina and her nonsense.
  • Similair to the Christmas Truce, ghosts have a strict rule against desecrating anything that honors the dead. Danny recalls a time when Skulker called a timeout on a fight because it was getting dangerously close to a war memorial. It's also how he knows Ember's Halloween party is on the up-and-up, due to it happening at a graveyard.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Danny gets a message from his dad in a code he insists on using for ghost hunting. Danny spends a bit of time griping to Ember about how ridiculous it is he insists on this before realizing what the message actually says: The Guys In White are coming, run.
  • Also Kitty.
  Kitty: Mr. Fenton put the gun down! We’re just here to talk about throwing a party for Danny! And maybe setting him up with someone as well!
  Jack: … set him up? With who?
  Kitty: My friend, Ember! You know, rockstar ghost, flaming hair, mind control… powers…
  Johnny: ... smooth, babe.
• Fire/Ice Duo: Ember and Danny. In the title, even.
• Flaming Hair: Goes without saying for Ember, but post Super-Empowering by her, Danny also has this. Given it's still there even after he uses the borrowed power up, it's likely permanent.
• Freudian Excuse: Ember has a doozy. Bullied by everyone at school, cruelly tricked by a popular boy into believing he had an interest in her, and then died in a fire when she was too exhausted from waiting after being stood up to notice it spreading, and spent decades ruminating over it. And then Vengeance Feels Empty.
  • We can also add Abusive Parents to the list - although not many details are given, her mother was known to snap her guitar in half for playing "the devils music".
• Friendless Background: Ember for sure. Downplayed with Danny, who mentioned he did have Sam and Tucker from a young age as friends, but they were all he'd ever had until more recently.
• Forbidden Friendship / Forbidden Love: Monster/Slayer Romance variant. Nobody on the human side of things seems to much care inherently about Danny and Ember being friends or more than that, most objections being along the lines of Ember's previous villainy. Although there have been a few remarks about how weird it is for Danny to befriend/date a ghost. Many of the inhabitants of the Ghost Zone, however, are going to be absolutely furious that Ember is consorting with their mutual enemy should they discover it.
• Genki Girl: Star. She says she only gets like this when excited, but she must always be excited. Although given how the last year or so has gone for her, she might just be happy to have better friends in Team Phantom now.
• Girls Like Musicians: Gender inverted. Danny has his Love Epiphany when he convinces Ember to play him a song, and she completely knocks his socks off.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Everyone, but Danny at least provides the excuse that he promised his parents he wouldn't swear until he was eighteen.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: More or less what's happening with Ember. She's not given up trying to conquer the world or mind control people to like her music because it was wrong, but because it didn't give her the catharsis she wanted and she's adrift now. Having this pointed out to her by Valerie makes Ember wonder what she is now, and sets off her insecurities about whether someone like her deserves someone like Danny.
  • Also Kitty and Johnny when they decide to take Danny's deal - that they can come over to the human world for date nights, just don't cause trouble. Everyone acknowledges they were barely villains and the pair switch over to being friends with Danny and later Jazz quite quickly.
• Heel–Face Turn: By later chapters, Ember has turned her Hazy-Feel Turn into this, by willingly shattering The Masquerade to save Danny's life from Skulker.
• Hidden Depths: Again, most characters, but probably most notable is Ember and her secret love of sci-fi. She turns out to have loved the original Star Wars film before it was retitled a New Hope, and remains interested in the genre to this day, getting agitated when the Show Within a Show doesn't have a proper conclusion until the next season.
  Ember: So what did they do with the usual hero? You know, the far too manly hero type, best at everything, beyond boring goody-goody. How do you make that interesting?
  Danny gives Ember a surprised look
  Ember: What, I have interests outside of music.
  • More generally, when Ember isn't acting like a villainess, she's surprisingly good company to hang out with, at least if she likes you. She acts way more like her old self when she's around people she dislikes.
  • Kitty, it turns out, is a surprisingly good amateur detective, able to gather information reasonably subtly and make accurate deductions with what she knows. Her interrogation skills need work, however.
• Imaginary Love Triangle: Paulina is deeply delusional, believing her and Danny to be playing out a Comic Book romance, complete with rivals for his affection - namely, Ember. Danny is quite quick to point out that not only is he not interested in either of them (or so he believes), but that Paulina has absolute no chance with him due to her behavior both past and present.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Played for Drama. Ember spends a short period wrestling with her insecurities, wondering if she's too selfish and horrible a person inherently to be worthy of Danny, before she notices Danny despondent and immediately shoves the inner conflict aside to help him. She doesn't appear to notice how much her actions are at odds with her insecurities.
• Improbable Hairstyle: Ember regards Danny's hair as this, whilst her hair is literally fire.
  Ember: Dipstick, your hair looks like a saw blade. Going bald would just save you the hair gel.
  Danny: Hey, my hair looks great! And for your information, I don’t use any hair gel. It just does this by itself.
  Ember: It says a lot about how ridiculous that sounds that you being selectively dead seems normal by comparison.
  Danny: I’m not taking this from you, you don’t even have hair! If there’s a heavy rain, we’d see how well you pull off being bald!
• Insecure Love Interest: By the time they admit their feelings to someone/themselves, Danny and Ember both qualify, neither believing the other could possibly return their feelings. It doesn't last very long for Danny. Ember, on the other hand...
• Kid from the Future: Ember briefly believes Danielle is this for Danny, as Danny is very vague about who Danielle is and why she exists when he explains the situation to her. It takes very little prodding for Ember to realise Danny's Kid from the Future could also be her Kid from the Future and promptly freaks out.
• The Kindnapper: When she learns that Danny was up all night fighting a ghost viking and is still trying to go to school, she tells him that he needs to take care of himself. He refuses, saying that, unless something happens that he can't prevent, then he's expected by his parents and teachers to attend school. Hearing this, Ember leads Danny on a very public chase through town ending with a confrontation in front of the school (in front of the entire student body) before kidnapping him. She takes him to her realm in the ghost world and forces him to get some sleep.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Danny and Ember achieve this status almost immediately on seeing each other on more neutral terms, arguing and trading insults as their form of fun. They do get much more tender as time goes on, but this remains the cornerstone of their relationship. They thoroughly enjoy bickering.
• Mama Bear: Both used for and against Ember. Maddie Fenton, upon talking with Ember's mother for twenty minutes, becomes outraged at her treatment of her daughter and invites Ember to their Thanksgiving dinner in retaliation. She gives Ember her blessing to her and Danny's prospective relationship in the same breath as threatening to break Ember's legs should she hurt him.
• The Masquerade: A more personal example, but it's noted that Ember being seen being friendly with Danny without some pretext is likely to get her targeted by the other inhabitants of the Ghost Zone. This necessitates a few layers of secrecy to their deals and meet ups, which they are both absolutely awful at. Hilarity Ensues.
• Meaningful Echo: Used as part of the Ship Tease. Danny and Ember frequently find themselves using similar or identical phrases when describing how they feel around the other, without ever having told the other about it.
  Danny/Ember: Everything just feels better with her/him around.
• Missing Child: It's gradually made clear that the Fenton's are looking for Dani with the intent of adopting her, but they're having a hard time tracking her.
• Never My Fault: Skulker takes this attitude to everything that goes wrong for him.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: In grand Danny Phantom tradition. Although it's not Danny for once. Ember turns out to be capable of transferring the power she gains from chanting if she dedicates a song to someone, and she had no idea she could do that. As is pointed out, the circumstances just never really arose prior to this.
• Nice Guy: Danny in spades. It never occurs to him to not treat Ember kindly when he finds her crying, despite acknowledging her as one of his more dangerous enemies, he goes out of his way to do grand gestures to make her feel better about her situation once she does so for him and directly inspires Star to make a Heel–Face Turn because of how dedicated he is to helping anyone he can.
• The Nicknamer: Ember. Almost everyone gets a nickname from her, flattering or otherwise.
  • Becomes a problem for her early on.
  Ember: Anybody seen the dipstick?!
  Casper High Students: *collective shrugging*
  Ember: You know who I mean! Baby pop?
  Casper High Students: *blank confusion*
  Ember: Who else would I be here for, you idiots?! Phantom. Fenton. Danny!
• Never Say "Die": Unlike canon, averted entirely. Several ghosts make passing references to being dead, we get the specific circumstances of Ember's death, and Danny in particular makes several jokes about being half dead.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Danny. Ember notes that she'd gotten so used to Danny acting like a goofball who wanted to make his friends laugh that she'd almost forgotten he's also Phantom. She's reminded rather forcefully when he instantly rattles off the weaknesses of the GIW Ectoskeleton without even knowing it existed until a few moments prior and comes up with a working plan to destroy it without casualties. And by forcefully, we mean...
• Oblivious to Love: Danny occasionally stops to wonder why he's so focused on helping Ember over dealing with his own problems, but something always distracts him from looking too far into it.
• Odd Friendship: Ember, Kitty and Star. All three have met in the human world and gone shopping together, and they're close enough that when Ember has her minor Freak Out about Dani, she turns to the both of them for help and advice.
• Older Than They Look: All ghosts, at least according to Kitty, age neither physically or mentally outside of specific circumstances, so they're all much older at least chronologically than they appear.
• Popularity Power: Ember is still capable of gaining power when people chant her name. The mechanics of it are gone into a little - the power gained from chanting when the people are mind controlled is more intense but burns out much faster, whereas given willingly, it's more lasting and feels better overall.
• Positive Friend Influence: Why Danny incorporates Ember into his social circle. As he says, he can be there as often as he can, but having people other than the rest of the jerks in Ghost Zone or himself to talk to would probably help.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner:

  Danny: No powers in here, Dash. Take your shot.

  • A case could also be made for:
    Ember: Take your stinking hands OFF MY DIPSTICK!
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Jack and Maddie take the news that Danny has been "kidnapped" by Ember exactly as you'd expect - they load up on guns and go on a rampage through the Ghost Zone to get him back.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Danny denies any interest in Ember on a knee-jerk basis. Kitty and Jazz flatly refuse to believe it.
• Ship Tease: Somewhat subtler than most at first, becoming more blatant later on. The author has said they were interested in proving compatibility before getting to out and out romance, to whit:
  • Danny and Ember both have demonstrably the strongest ability to bounce off one another and work with what the other provides in conversation, several characters noting that their banter both resembles a rehearsed comedy bit instead of on the spot exchanges and seems to only end when they're interrupted in some way.
  • They're able to spend hours together happily, throwing insults and swapping stories even before they really get to know each other properly.
  • Both are able to intuit the other's likes and dislikes without seeming to try, although this is more strongly associated with Danny.
  • Kitty near instantly notices there's something going on with them despite their attempts to hide it, and the first conclusion she comes to is they're secretly dating. How they act around each other where she can see them only reinforces this notion for her.
• Shipper on Deck: Kitty is ridiculously enthusiastic about getting Danny and Ember together. To the point she tricks the whole Ghost Zone into a Halloween truce and a joint human/ghost party purely to help the two confess to each other. Jazz is similarly on board with the idea, but to a lesser, more sane extent.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Ember, natch. Although her attraction to Danny is as much based on their personal chemistry as it is on Danny's good qualities.
• Shout-Out:
  • The fic opens with Jazz trying to talk Danny out of asking NASA to help him build a pirate ship with solar panels for sails.
  • One of Jazz's options for what Ember is up to in the forest includes "Lure out and kill the forest spirit to cause it to become a rampaging corrupting god?”
  • Danny and Ember initially bond over Pokémon, complete with Danny's ghost team named after other denizens of the Ghost Zone, Danny naming a Phantump after himself and mockery over some Pokémon designs.
  • The Snark-to-Snark Combat that Danny and Ember routinely engage in is referred to as their Marx Brothers routine by either themselves or witnesses.
  • Danny compares the Show Within a Show that the VRCade made a game out of to "Crash Nebula but aged up."
  • The arc in which said Show Within a Show is introduced is called VR Troopers.
  • Ember names her axe Andre, after André the Giant.
  • Danny remarks that he doesn't have a decent name for the enhanced punches he's recently developed, that involve compressing the energy of his ectobeams into a crackling green energy aura that greatly increases his punching power and might cause him to explode or break his arm if used incorrectly. Tucker immediately suggests he name it his Amity Park Smash.
    Maddie: ... Is that a reference to something?
  • When Ember wraps her hair around her fist and punches someone, Danny cries "Falcon punch!"
  • "Shoryspooken!"
  • Danny also quotes from the Fantastic Four movie when threatening Skulker. Given he also describes it as coming from "bad movie night", also qualifies as a Take That!.
• Show Within a Show: Nebula Patrol. Danny's new favorite TV show, and the inspiration to their most played VR game, a Raygun Gothic throwback series.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Danny and Ember, all the time. Admitting how they feel to each other hasn't changed this dynamic - it just means the snark is flirtatious now.
• Something Only They Would Say: At first, Sam, Tucker and Valerie suspect that Ember has possessed Danny when Ember's power transfer both grants him similar fire and sonic powers and causes him to act more like her. Then he punches someone with a quip that is both a Pun and a Shout-Out. Sam and Tucker immediately dryly declare that it's definitely still him.
• Spanner in the Works: Skulker's plan to kill Danny had actually borne fruit for once. Most variables had been planned for. But given no one in the Ghost Zone knows about Ember's gradual Heel–Face Turn, her turning up wrecks the whole thing.
• Spotting the Thread: Kitty knows something is up with Ember when they meet in the human world, but she figures out it’s to do with Danny thanks to one thing - Danny flinched when Johnny went for a fist bump, where Ember was able to approach Danny and snatch a wig from his head without a similar reaction, despite Ember having a considerably more violent and dangerous history than Johnny. From this she’s able to unravel enough of the pair’s deception to confront Ember about it, albeit with the wrong end of the stick for a while.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Both Danny and Ember independently decide to call Valerie's floating laser drones her "murder cubes".
• Super-Empowering: Turns out Ember can do this, she just didn't know it because the circumstances that trigger it had never come up before - she has to have been charged up by her Popularity Power, and dedicate a song to someone for her excess power to be transferred, which comes along with a few of her abilities.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Seeing Ember cry moves Danny enough to try to find out what's wrong and help, kicking off the whole plot.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Valerie and Ember do not get on at all. The only thing stopping a fight breaking out is the more imminent threat of the Guys in White and their Ectoskeleton. More or less the instant both are neutralized, Valerie points a gun at Ember's head.
• The "I Love You" Stigma: Danny, Ember and Sam. Sam catches herself before saying that she still loves Danny during their permanent breakup scene. With Danny and Ember, both think they're not quite there yet, Danny expressing annoyance that there isn't a word between "crush" and "love" for where they're at.
• Time Skip: The story is set a little over a year from Phantom Planet. Ember notably hasn't been seen in the human world all that time.
• Two Lines, No Waiting: The structure of the fic follows this - Danny and Ember's developing relationship and general shenanigans is the constant, but will be accompanied by other characters interactions with and perspectives on the primary pair along with their own, more minor plots.
• Uptight Loves Wild: Eh, kinda. Danny isn't especially uptight, but Ember is pretty wild. A point is made in later chapters that they're both beginning to rub off on one another, Danny letting his more mischievous side out around her, and Ember caring more about morality as it pertains to her villainous actions.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: The root of Ember's existential crisis - her planned way to lash out at the world felt "hollow" and meant nothing to her when she finally got a chance to enact it. Now she doesn't know what to do without it.
• Villain Ball: Skulker has discarded his and how. After thinking over all his failures, and more importantly why he failed, he gets an upgraded suit made of the hardest metal in the Ghost Zone, jams Danny's communication, keeps a bunch of human shields around to limit what he can do in retaliation, and ensures he can't just fly away from where he traps him. All in all, if Ember hadn't turned up when she did, Danny would be dead.
• Villainesses Want Heroes: Ember, naturally, although she's not much of a villain anymore. She reveals in a rant that she actually had some feelings for him after he fought Pariah Dark, when she more solidly qualified as one.
• Villainous Legacy: Vlad is still stuck in space (as far as anyone can tell, anyway), but a chunk of the things that've happened in the fic have his influence stamped on them - the fact that Danny never beat him directly or in any permanent way weighs on him and contributes to his issues, Danny nearly dies in a trap set by Vlad in the last building that's legally his, and the GIW Ectoskeleton was built from blueprints he stole and modified. The notion of him returning from space also pushes Maddie back into unhealthy working habits, although Jack is able to snap her out of that before it gets too bad.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Good God, Ember. She's ordinarily a Boisterous Bruiser, but the sight of Danny in danger of death tips her over into berserker territory, to the point of ignoring any kind of sensible defense to hurt their mutual opponent more.
• What You Are in the Dark: Ember has a moment where it becomes clear Danny is about to be killed by Skulker and she wrestles with herself. As the voice in her head that represents all her worst insecurities and impulses points out, there were a multitude of excuses she could use to avoid saving Danny at the cost of exposing herself to the whole Ghost Zone and the inevitable retaliation she'd incur. It takes very little time to declare to herself Danny is worth the risk, diving down to clock Skulker upside the head.
• Will They or Won't They?: Another trope Danny and Ember seemed to be about to play straight, until Kitty barged in and decided yes, they will, even if she has to make them.
• World of Action Girls: All of them. No, seriously. Every single female character that has appeared is capable of contributing to a fight in some capacity. Even Paulina has managed to pull off a few wins, albeit in VR.
• Worthy Opponent: Khudal Khan, a Mongol warrior ghost from Valhalla (which is apparently being warred over by the Mongols and the Vikings), has a remarkably high opinion of Danny even as he tries to beat him to death for the prestige.

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