Life's Great Lie is a Danny Phantom/The Avengers (2012) crossover fanfiction by Marsalias, a.k.a. FiveRivers, who has also written Danger First and Mortified.
Danny is summoned by SHIELD to help figure out what is going on with their Tesseract, only for the Halfa to subsequently fall under Loki's control, and the plot promptly goes way off the rails while the Avengers and Danny's friends struggle to save the world. Oh, and Danny.
It can be found here
on Archive of Our Own or here on FanFiction.Net. Currently complete, though the author may come back to ir.
- Adaptational Badass:
- When sufficiently provoked by Tucker/Duulaman, Loki proceeds to demonstrate the sort of power which adds considerable credibility to his claim of being a god.
- Because of the mind control preventing him from holding back, and the fact that he wants SHIELD and the Avengers afraid enough to take this seriously, Danny is showing the world just what kind of powerhouse he truly is.
- Armor-Piercing Question:
- Loki is noticeably shaken when Danny asks him how he's going to keep control of Earth with the Chitauri gone, since Loki's made it clear that they're a loaner. Unfortunately, Thor arrives before he can fully process the implications.
- When Coulson tells Tucker that Danny is acting as a consultant (after Tucker, being deliberately hyperbolic, accuses them of kidnapping the halfa), the latter asks if they're paying him. His silence speaks volumes.
- Badass Boast: A clash of them even:Tucker/Duulaman: “You think you are a god? I am Nebmaatre Djedamun, called Duulaman! I am the Son of Ra! The Son of the Sun! I have lived and walked through the Duat and returned, as Osiris! Who are you, foreigner, to take what is mine?”Loki: “I am Loki Laufeyson, god of mischief and rightful king of Asgard. Let’s see if you’re worth my time. Human.”
- Berserk Button: The first time Danny actually appears terrifying is when Tony accidentally shoots and knocks out Tucker.
- Bittersweet Ending: While the heroes manage to stop the invasion and save the world, SHIELD is in shambles due to the HYDRA infiltration being discovered, Coulson died trying to stop the plane with the missile from taking off, and most of the Avengers have to go into hiding to stay safe from HYDRA.
- Bothering by the Book: As part of his Fighting from the Inside, Danny does this with the orders Loki gives him, initially he is rather blatant about it until Loki gets very specific with his orders. However, he continues to do so afterwards, particularly subtly sabotaging the efforts with the portal in order to keep Loki far away from the guy controlling and torturing him as part of his orders to protect Loki from harm.
- Played for Laughs when he learns that Asgardians are immune to alcohol poisoning, so he's bummed that he can't knock bottles out of Loki's hands to "protect" him from the "evils of alcohol.
- He's ultimately able to escape the control by taking advantage of how the scepter can't control ghosts, as he's able to justify transforming when Loki is falling to his apparent doom, so he needs to transform to save him, breaking the spell.
- Child Soldiers: Tony is increasingly concerned about the ages of the people being brought in by SHIELD to help. The fact they are the ones actually able to do something is not helping.
- The Conspiracy: Tucker discovers SHIELD has connects to Hydra and the Guys in White, which means he, Sam, and Jazz consider them just as much the enemy. Interestingly, Coulson claims to have never heard of the GIW, and SHIELD has been completely dependent upon the Fentons and then Valerie for gear. A later chapter confirms that the non-Hydra part of SHIELD has no idea that the GIW exists, which understandably makes Coulson and Fury rather worried when they do learn of it. They are most upset when Tucker later proves it.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Danny's first fight against the Avengers is unquestionably this. He rips out vital components from Iron Man's suit, sends Captain America flying, disarms all the SHIELD anti-ghost weaponry, and just phases through Black Widow's weaponry. Tony later takes it as proof Danny is Fighting from the Inside that any of them are still alive.
- In the second battle, Danny was crushing the SHIELD agents until people actually able to stand up to him showed up.
- Drives Like Crazy: Jack and Maddie Fenton as normal. Consequently, when Loki drives a car for the first time in his life, Danny sees nothing wrong with the high-speed, reckless driving which ensues, and nor would Jazz.
- Fighting from the Inside:
- Danny, thanks to his powers, and previous experience with mind control, is able to resist Loki using the staff on him to a degree. Not enough to outright attack or defy Loki, but he can exploit the wiggle room in his orders and let information slip.
- Loki is also doing this to Thanos, if not to the same degree. Danny's experience with mind control makes him realize that his whole plan is set himself up to be defeated by Earth's forces by making them mad enough to throw whatever they have at him.
- Danny realizes that Dr. Erik Selvig is doing this too, putting in as many subtle types of sabotage into the portal as possible, trying to keep it from even working and be as inefficient as possible. Upon being free, Selvig outright acknowledges the entire team Loki had assembled, himself included, were doing this.
- Godzilla Threshold: Tucker is reluctant to use Duulaman's Scarab Scepter again after what happened the first time, even to rescue Danny, but he and Sam have no better options. Eventually the temptation gets the better of him and he uses it.
- Gondor Calls for Aid: The heroes get aid from Danny's ghostly allies, like Pandora, to help fend off the attack on New York City.
- Good Versus Good: Danny's friends and Jazz and the Avengers both want to stop Loki and rescue Danny from the Asgardian Prince's control, but the former is distrustful of the latter due to Tucker having uncovered evidence of Hydra existing inside SHIELD, and their connections to the Guys In White, hampering Coulson's attempts to reach out to them for help.
- Hollywood Hacking: Using just his own computer, which he made by himself with what parts he could scrounge up on his limited allowance, Tucker is able to hack into the GIW, SHIELD, and HYDRA, all seemingly without any of the organizations involved knowing.
- Hulking Out: The trope is name-dropped by Tony towards the Trope Namer after the latter says that Gamma radiation makes more sense than ectoplasm, pointing out that the transformation seems to just allow Bruce to pull mass out of nowhere in violation of Conservation of Energy.
- Idiot Ball:
- What Loki is supposed to be playing with, as a consequence of his Fighting from the Inside, except due to the fact it would still cause too many fatalities, and realizing the truth about Loki, Danny proposes smarter, subtler alternatives while trying to move in a plan to save them all.
- This is the what Danny's friend, sister, and Valerie feel SHIELD and the Avengers are playing with, as they have absolutely zero clue how dangerous ghosts actually are, and are woefully underprepared.
- I Told You So: When a captured Hawkeye convinces Jazz and Sam to meet up with Tucker, Valerie, the Avengers, and the Fentons, Sam reserves the right to say this when things go wrong. Considering that Jack and Maddie accidentally send the Hulk to the Ghost Zone, he admits that she may have been onto something.
- Let Me Get This Straight...: Jazz uses this line word for word when a mind-controlled Danny tells her that he wants her to hand over a bunch of Fenton tech to Loki.
- Locked Out of the Loop: SHIELD, or at least the part that isn't secretly HYDRA, had no idea that the GIW exists before Tucker and Valerie tell them about the organization.
- Locked Out of the Fight: Upon being convinced that yes SHIELD is compromised by HYDRA, Fury takes the entire organization out of play, as it cannot be trusted. Leaving everything to the Avengers while he cleans house.
- No-Sell: Ghosts are immune to the power of Loki's staff. Danny was only able to be controlled at all because he was in human form when it happened, as switching to ghost form breaks him free of the staff's control, and even before then he's able to do some impressive Fighting from the Inside. This is part of the argument for why Pandora should be allowed to take the scepter after the battle, there's no one that it could be used on in the Zone.
- Spanner in the Works: Danny's presence at Loki's arrival on Earth, and Loki subsequently taking partial control of him, starts to drastically derail the plot of The Avengers, with the eyeball plan being abandoned entirely and Loki not getting captured.
- Tucker hacking into SHIELD exposes HYDRA's continued existence within the former organization years before it would have happened otherwise.
- Teleport Interdiction: Part of the plan by the heroes is using a shield to block the Chitauri's portal and keep reinforcements from coming. Unfortunately, it doesn't last long due to a miscalculation.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Both Sam and Tucker suspect that they know what Danny wants them to do with the Fenton tech parts that he supposedly wanted them to give Loki, but they're not giving any details on what that plan is. Building a ghost portal to provide aid by Danny's ghostly allies during the invasion seems to be part of it, but it's hinted that there's more to it than that.
- Uriaha Gambit: Referenced by Fury, when he is forced into intervening in New York after all, he has no problems with sending those who have been identified as HYDRA in against the aliens, hoping to kill two birds with one stone.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Danny is extremely peeved with SHIELD not only for getting him into this whole mess, spreading around his secret identity more and more, but also sharing all his abilities to Clint who in turn gives the info to Loki.
- Worf Had the Flu: If Danny goes ghost, the transition would free him from the mind control, so the entire time thus far he has been using what scant abilities he can manage in his human form. The terrifying thing is that even with this handicap he is still incredibly powerful, and his curb stomps would only have been worse.
- Worthy Opponent: Loki apparently views Tucker/Duulaman as this after their duel.
- Younger Than They Look: Loki, not realizing just how short mortal lives are compared to millennia-long Asgardian ones, initially thinks that Danny is significantly older than he actually is, and is rather shocked to learn that he's only fifteen years old. Comparatively speaking, Danny is an absolute baby.
