There should be more Supernatural x Danny Phantom crossovers in this world.

Sacred Circle

April 15, 2013

Danny woke to reality very slowly, taking a while to crack open his eyes—when did they get so soupily heavy?— and even longer to recognize any part of the derelict building he was currently occupying.

Green eyes blinked hazily at the rusty metal rafters above his head, trying to place them in one of the many locations in which he might have found himself scattered throughout Amity Park. Cement floor and cinderblock walls far to either side of his field of vision pretty much confirmed warehouse, probably near the water.

His brow furrowed as he digested that revelation. He generally knew where he was, now, but could not remember how he ended up here, on the floor, surrounded by overturned wooden crates and covered with dust that layered thickly upon his hair, lashes, face, and dark hazmat suit.

Lifting his head to shake some of the excess off, he finally caught a glimpse of how tangled his fallen limbs were and the pain arrived with the realization of just how much they should be hurting.

He bit back a groan that caught in the back of his throat.

Right. Box Ghost. The load of empty crates boxes earlier that evening. Flying toward his head as soon as he had arrived. After pulling the ghost into the Fenton Thermos, the boxes hovering mid-air had lost their magical floating properties and came crashing back down to earth. On top of his head. Right. That was what had happened.

A quick— painful but worth the relief it brought— glance to the right showed an occupied and still intact thermos. Good. Boxy was still trapped and hadn't been released by a crate crashing back down to earth.

That would be a pain. More than the one in his head already. It was definitely bruised and buzzing. In fact, he could almost imagine someone shouting somewhere through the fog even though he knew he was alone. Sam and Tucker had been studying when Danny had been about to leave for home anyway and they all agreed that Danny could candle Boxy solo.

He gave a grunt as he shoved part of a splintered crate off of his legs and began sitting up when he stopped and stilled, not daring to move a muscle when he realized that he was not imagining the shouting and it was not just clanging inside his head. He wasn't alone. There was movement just on the edge of his peripheral vision, behind him on the left. A sharp twinge in his leg when he tried to push up and turn for a better view made him give up on getting a visual, concentrating instead on what he could hear.

A shout. But who was there and why would they be shouting unless… his head whipped around and yes, there it was. Movement in front of him now, on his right, placing him in between the two figures, like some odd game of monkey in the middle with rules he didn't know about yet. He did not like this.

Squinting eyes revealed a man in jeans and a worn jacket, hurriedly wrapping clanking ends of a chain into a loose bulky knot, keeping up a stream of words— barked questions, Danny could tell now— and with both eyes squarely on him now that he was conscious.

"It's up and moving, Sammy," a strong, gravelly voice warned.

A long, harsh noise behind him, like something sharp being dragged along the concrete floor. Danny grit his teeth to try to block out the way it invaded his head with jagged stabs, ringing against his skull.

"Yeah," came the voice from behind him, softer, soothing after the dragging noise, even if it was coming from a threat. That he should probably get away from. Right now. If only he could persuade his battered body to move…

"Almost done," the voice continued. "You good?"

More movement in front of Danny drew his attention to the figure who had moved on from his strange knot-tying and was now kneeling down shaking something in his hand. He began to awkwardly shift his weight so that he moved sideways, still shaking his hands and leaving a trail of something along the floor. Danny couldn't tell what it was from this distance, nor could he imagine why a man might be pouring anything on a warehouse floor, no matter what it happened to be.

"Laying the salt now," the crouching man said as he picked up the pace of his sideways shuffle.

Salt. Huh. Go figure.

Yeah, he still had no idea what that was for.

But he didn't like the increasingly hostile looks he was getting from the guy who skirted around him in a circle and knew it was time to get out of there before he came any closer.

Danny rolled his legs to one side and pulled them toward him when they could not seem to come all the way on their own volition. He hissed as hand made contact with bone, though. Cascading crates must have landed on top of his legs before splintering into individual boards.

Hands tenderly ghosted down one leg as he made an assessment of the injuries. Very bruised and a tear through the hazmat that would disappear next time he transformed over a gash on his leg that would take longer to go away. But nothing broken. Just tender enough that walking would be very uncomfortable for the next few days.

And agony standing up now, but he had dealt with worse before and probably would again. Putting out a shaky hand on the wooden box he had woken up leaning against, he slowly propped himself up on one knee. Then gave himself a much deserved rest to catch his breath and clear the pounding in his ears.

As soon as he had half-risen, the man's head snapped up and yelled a more hurried warning to his companion. "Sammy!" he drew out the name. "It's moving. You got the gun? I need another minute on the salt line!"

The word 'gun' pierced through the fog in Danny's head with an urgency his actions had lacked until then. These weren't just weirdo townies hanging out in an old abandoned warehouse pouring salt on the ground because they had strange hobbies. They were armed. And encircling him.

Okay, no matter how befuddled his brain was at the moment, he knew what that equated to and it was high time for him to be out of here. He stood, one leg collapsing a bit before he could straighten and lock himself in place.

No sooner done, however, than he realized he had abandoned his cover and now his head and chest were now exposed to whoever was behind him.

Bad idea, he realized as soon as he looked over to see a really tall young man hefting a shotgun that was pointed directly at him. Ecto-energy based weapons like the ones his parents made were bad enough, but seeing a non-ghostly weapon trained on him sent a shiver down his spine. This was a different kind of game. One that he really was not liking the look of at all.

Danny crouched down quickly, ignoring the flaming pain in his leg, just as the young man, Sammy, the salt-pouring guy had said, fired the gun. Shotgun casings clinked to the ground behind him as tiny pellets sped overhead to eventually fall to ground in a cascade of tiny pings.

"Missed him!" Sammy shouted across the room, his words echoing against the empty walls. "You got a shot?"

"Little busy at the moment, bro," came the tight rejoinder.

"Dean," Sam warned of dwindling time and Danny heeded it as well. It would be easier to get out of here with only one gun in play as opposed to two.

Time to make his move.

Danny shot up in the air and rocketed forward, toward the warehouse door and freedom, when he banged against an invisible barrier and crashed back down to the hard ground. Danny barely had enough time to register the unexpected fall and tuck into a roll to cushion his landing.

His flight had startled the two men and pushed them into action as they shouted at and over each other— "Sam, he's moving!" "Damn it!" "Whoa, he's going up!" "It can fly?" "Can you get a shot?" "I—whoa, he's coming back down, hold on, I'm coming to you—" "No, I'm good, you stay there, just keep him in your sights!"

Despite his efforts to break his fall, the concrete was hard and it had been a long way down. Danny lay completely still for a moment, breathless and numb, then groaned when feeling caught up to him again.

He wanted to curl up and lay there until the pain had passed, but he knew he had no time. He needed to get out of there and it looked like it was not going to be as easy as he was expecting. He still had no idea what had kept him from leaving and he knew it was a pretty naïve wish to hope these two men didn't have any other tricks hiding up their sleeves.

Thick boots strode toward him and stopped in his line of vision. Danny rolled his head to look up at the man. Dean. Short cropped hair, angled features set in a hard face, and an easy but lethal carriage to his bow-legged frame. The sawed off shotgun he carried casually in his hands was an unnecessary clincher to the argument that this man was dangerous.

Danny propped himself up on his elbows, panting for a moment through gritted teeth as he waited for the room to stop spinning.

"What did you do?" he finally asked, trying to keep his voice from sounding like it was as scared as he felt.

Dean smirked and Danny did not like how the face transformed. "Oh nothing much," Dean said. "Just some pure iron, consecrated, and a salt line. Nothing you're getting through, ghost."

Danny blinked up at him. These guys were ghost hunters? After Danny Phantom? With… salt and metal? That made absolutely no sense. Except something had stopped him from flying away. And they did have guns that could hurt Danny Fenton just as easily as Danny Phantom. Which meant that he should start paying attention even if this didn't make much sense. Perhaps it was time to get some more information about what exactly was going on.

"Oh yeah?" Danny said with bravado that belied the nervous way he licked his lips. "Yeah right, of course, salt," he drawled before breathing out an empty chuckle. "What was I thinking? Because that's a really effective weapon against ghosts."

Dean's eyes narrowed fractionally as his brows momentarily contracted. Although his eyes never left Danny's, something in his face changed, and his voice too, when he replied a little too casually, "Yeah, well, we think so."

Danny didn't even know what hit him. With all his attention on Dean, he hadn't seen Sam walking around to get a clear shot. Must have been too out of it— or had too much blood running through his head— to hear the footfalls and the cocking of the firearm. He did hear the report as the gun went off. And felt the pain of a hundred pressure points forcing their way through his body.

The pain as he lay sprawled out on the dirty floor—burning, stinging, ripping, invading, dagger points everywhere— left him unable to do anything but breathe in short pants.

He was far too out of it to notice or understand the shocked silence coming from the brother hunters.

"Dean?" asked a blinking Sam, confusion evident in his voice.

Dean interrupted when Sam began to call his name again— "Yeah," he said shortly, not taking his eyes off of the prone figure on the ground in front of them.

"That was a rock salt casing. He was supposed to dematerialize when I shot him," he said in a slow even tone, as if hoping that a vocal replay of the anticipated reaction would help to tell him why it had not come about.

"I know!" Dean snapped. Then he took a deep breath before continuing with a more even tone, "I know. I haven't heard…" he reconsidered. "I didn't expect…" dragged a hand down his face. "That was new." He paused, taking stock of the picture before him, even crouching to get a closer look. "Theories?"

Sam looked over in surprise. "You expect me to know what's going on?"

"I expect you to at least have a theory. Come on, geekyboy, give me something to work with." He snapped fingers rapidly to accentuate his need for hurry. "It's not going to take him long to regroup and we need to have something by then."

Sam glanced between his brother and the black and white figure inside the salt and iron circle, at a loss, but knowing that he needed to provide some ideas, even if they were not very good.

"Umm, uh okay," he drew in a deep breath. "Not a ghoul. Or a wraith." He paused to search his mental archives for similar creatures. "Phantasm?"

"This look like he's in your head?"

"No."

"Didn't think so. Anyway, I can't imagine we would be seeing the same thing if it was a phantasm." He thought for a moment, then double checked, "You've got a white haired kid in black and white spandex?"

"Yeah," Sam breathed out confirmation, wracking his brain for more supernaturals in this category but running out of candidates.

"Revenant wouldn't have asked me a question, so that rules that one out," Dean continued eliminating suspects when Sam fell silent.

"Specter?"

"Aren't they supposed to be freaky looking?"

"Oh, right. Eidolon or poltergeist?"

"Possible. Do we have the stuff to take care of either one?"

"Not on us. Most of what we'd need is in the impala. But we'd need more research."

Dean hummed in acknowledgement as Danny began to stir now that his breathing had steadied and his vision stopped whiting out.

"Are we totally sure he's not a ghost?" Sam asked.

Dean snorted. "That doesn't dissolve when hit with salt? That can freaking fly, Sammy? What kind of spirit can fly?"

At that, Danny began to chuckle. "Man, you guys are new around here, aren't you?"

Both men flinched as the kid entered their conversation, not quite knowing how to respond to the as-yet unidentified being.

Then Dean grinned sharply. "That easy to tell, huh?"

"You have no idea," Danny grunted as he eased himself into a sitting position, now staring warily at the two hunters standing together. "Definitely missed the memo about what weapons to bring. Seriously, bullets that wouldn't even kill a human?"

"Killing humans isn't the point," Dean bit out before a glance from his brother told him to tone the venom down a notch if they were going to try to get any information out of the ghost, or whatever it was.

"So, you mind telling us what you are?" Sam asked with a tilt of his head.

Danny gave him an impressively deadpan stare. "You mean, so that you can figure out how best to kill me?" Sam at least had the grace to look abashed. "No thanks. A chest full of salt was more than enough for me, dude. Don't need a round two with the pepper," he said, cautiously rising to his feet and taking a quick glance around him, trying to not make it too obvious that he was assessing his escape routes, even though he still wasn't sure how to account for not having been able to get out of the circle the first time.

Although, if the iron or salt or whatever was just supposed to keep a ghost from crossing the line, if he transformed, he might be able to make it through, just as he was able to pass through ghost shields in human form. Not that he could ever be persuaded to reveal his halfa status to these guys. He just needed to be able to transform without their seeing, walk across the line, and then zoom off home.

'Just.' Yeah right. Good luck with that since both Sam and Dean had straightened back into killing mode as soon as Danny had begun moving.

But all he needed was to get somewhere where they couldn't see him transform. That should be do-able, right? He was limited to the space inside the circle, but he could still go up or down. Going up wouldn't do him much good unless he made it past the roof and then it would become an iffy thing. Who knew if anyone else might be around to see him transform there, or if the worn, rusty sheet metal that made up the roof would hold his human weight without sending him crashing down to the ground from far too high?

He didn't think that there was much of a downward option, though. No basements in the dockside warehouses and he would be in trouble if he tried to transform in the middle of a cement foundation.

Maybe there was an easier way…

"Well," he said, forcing his gaze and voice to be steady enough that he wouldn't give anything away. "It's been great talking to you, but I've got stuff that I need to be doing so…"

Danny pushed up and flew toward the ceiling, swerving in a loose corkscrew pattern to avoid the gunshots he was expecting.

Dean swore loudly as he paused to reload. "Sammy!"

"On it!" his brother yelled, already running out the door to try to intercept the runaway ghost.

Once Dean realized that the black and white figure was realistically not worth shooting at anymore, he followed in his brother's footsteps out of the warehouse.

And that was why they both missed an invisible Danny flying straight back down through the roof, transforming to human form just long enough to cross the barrier, and then flying invisibly home at the top of his tested speed range.

He wanted to be as far away from that warehouse and those hunters as non-humanly possible.

Besides, his mom was going to chew him out for not cleaning his room before leaving for school. They had guests coming.

Having to play around with how well the Winchester's hunting methods would work on halfas and the ghosts of Amity Park, given that the weapons and techniques in both shows are so completely different, so I just chose things that worked with the plot I was creating, although next time I could easily have a different interpretation. And there will definitely be a next time. I've got lots of crossover plot bunnies hopping around my head. :3