Work Text:
“Danny! Danny! Danny!”.
“Oh my Ancients what Tuck?”.
Tucker plops down at the Nasty Burger booth, shoving some paperwork -paperwork clearly jacked off of the G.I.W. servers- at Danny, “dude look”, doing small jazz hands as Danny takes the papers with a quirked eyebrow, “you are worth so much money. Like so much”.
Danny glances down to the paperwork to see that yeah, the G.I.W.’s personal bounty on him has been upped to four million dollars. Snorting, “this is so totally because I finally surpassed an ecto-level of fifteen and thus can no longer be quantified by regular standard ecto-scanners”. Sam rolls her eyes at him and goes back to sipping at her veggie shake.
Tucker nods and grins, “oh definitely, but dude, think bigger. Way bigger. This is way more than what Vlad put on you and that old nutter obviously wasn’t going to payout fuck all to anyone. But this is the government and people can fuck their shit up if they cop-out”.
Danny blinks and starts wheezing, “are you saying I should turn myself in for a quick buck”, he pauses and blinks, “wait shit, that’s glorious. Because they would pay, wouldn’t they. Especially for me”, putting a hand to his chest and seemingly bleeding cockiness, “I mean, I am me after all. Couldn’t ask for better”.
Sam snorts, “Skulker would definitely agree”, eyeballing the two boys, “this is already stupid”. Tucker holds up a finger, “no no, you don’t get it. Think. If Danny-dude here can’t be properly scanned by general scanners anymore then general base model containment devices can’t hold him either. It’s perfect!”. She glares at him, “I hate that that makes any amount of sense”, pointing her drinks straw at Tucker, “but it is still stupid”.
Danny nods to himself basically ignoring the second bit of Sam’s comment, “and there’s no way my folks would sell them better ones, since they’d know exactly why the G.I.W. would be trying to buy them. And the G.I.W. are too stupid to make their own shit”; that actually gets both of them to laugh.
Tucker leans towards Danny, “but listen, it gets better. You know who else has bounties on you?”.
“You mean besides Walker? which no, I’m not super into getting tortured and ghost money doesn’t work in the Mortal Realm anyway”. Sam snorts, “with how much you let yourself get injured from perfectly avoidable hits I would have thought otherwise”. Danny glares at her.
Tucker snickers at Sam before looking to Danny and rolling his eyes, “well duh, but look”, and reaches over the table to start flipping the pages; Danny staring down all the while.
Fifty-six thousand
Seventy-eight thousand
One point five million
Fifteen thousand
And there’s even one for seven corn chips and a penny.
Danny snorts, “I would so sell my soul for a corn chip”. Sam can’t resist chuckling at that, “I already sold mine for some fucking good water”. Danny snickers, “fucking nice”, and gives her a little high five.
Tucker rolls his eyes and taps on the paper, “dude, we could be halfway to becoming billionaires”, waving off Sam’s quirked ‘what about me’ eyebrow, “hush you, you’re practically already a billionaire”. Sam points at Danny, “he’s got a massive inheritance too. Vlad’s literally richer than entire countries”.
Danny gives a slightly offended, “hey”. Which goes completely ignored.
Tucker waves Sam off again, “that’s a species thing and barely counts. Plus Danny would have to run the guy’s businesses and estate. You just get to sit pretty”.
“Fuck you”. Sam throws what’s left of her drink at the techno-geek. Danny just laughs at his friend's expense. Sam pushes herself up, “are you two really going to do something this stupid though? Like seriously?”.
Tucker crosses his arms and huffs, “it’s not stupid. Give Danny over, break Danny out. Easy. Fuck, dude can break himself out”. Danny nods, “fair”. Which results in Sam throwing up her hands, “you guys are idiots. Don’t say I didn’t warn you”, and walks off. Both Danny and Tucker snicker over that.
Eventually Tucker leans forwards, “okay here’s the plan...”, good things seldom started with ‘here’s the plan’; but that was seldom being said by a hacker who could probably take out the entire American government with a keystroke.
Okay so obviously these two boys were going to target the G.I.W. first, sure it was the most risky but they were also the government; and the government will take any excuse they can get to get out of giving people their dues. Including an excuse like, you know, other people ‘obtaining’ Phantom only to lose him immediately after money transfers? Yeah that would just about do it.
Danny waking up that morning and waving to his parents as he heads out the front doors, “going to turn myself in to the government to rob them! Bye!”.
“Alright sweetie! Have fun!“.
“Go get ‘em, Danny-boy! Bring back some of their new prototypes while you’re at it!”.
Danny laughs, “sure thing, dad!”, and heads into the garage to get the car Vlad went and gave him; being on nice terms with your rich archenemy-turned-pseudo-uncle was awesome.
It takes all of nine minutes to be at Tucker’s and swinging up car the door to let the guy in, “okay so you’ve got the whole voice modulator thing working?”.
“What do you think, dude?”, judging by how Tucker sounds like he just swallowed a subwoofer, Danny’s taking it that Tucker has been successful in his endeavours to be unrecognisable. Danny gives him a thumbs up before gunning it towards the G.I.W. factuality building that happens to be located just outside of the city limits. Coincidence? No obviously not. It wasn’t there before ghosts became a massive problem after all.
Pulling up on the shoulder of the road some ways away, Tucker turning on Danny while pulling up his hoodie's oversized hood, “Alright, into the totally-can’t-actually-contain-you containment device, ghost boy”.
Danny blinks at him, “you know, with the voice modulator thingy that actually sounds vaguely threatening”; Tucker very blatantly tries to cackle as ominously as possible which just completely kills the effect. Danny rolling his eyes before crawling into the back seats and setting to the fun task of cramming himself into a box without just straight-up breaking the thing to bits.
Tucker chuckles while he takes the driver's seat, “that looks comfortable”.
“Fuck you, go eat a packet of salt. I’ll add your pained gagging to my fucking Spotify”.
Tucker only chuckles more as he starts driving off, stretching an arm over the back of the seat at Danny, “here, put this in your mouth so they won’t wonder why Mr. Talkative Snark Machine is being silent”. Danny eyeballs the ball gag, “really, Tuck. Can you ever not be vaguely creepy?”. Tucker hurls the ball gag through the bars at Danny’s face. “Hey!”. Regardless Danny does, in fact, put in the ball gag while feeling just slightly awkward. Hopefully Tucker was nice enough to not give him a used one, because ew. Tucker gets on the phone to inform the government scum that he’s bringing them a little present and that sure they’ll accept e-transfer why not.
Agent D grins down at the caged ghost, paying little attention the unisex-dressed person of questionable age and gender, “looks like we’ve finally got you now, ghost. Your own town turned on you, just goes to show how humans will always side with humans”. Danny just does the most effective scowl he can with the ball gag blocking his mouth and rolls his eyes harshly.
Tucker interrupts the white-suited idiots gloating by clearing his throat, “the four mil ain’t transferred yet, whitey. Hold your knickers, heck might as well spit shine your sunglasses while you’re at it”. Both agents present scowl but don’t make moves to nab the caged ghost. Agent C grumbling, “very well, should be any minute now anyways. Just understand there are no returns or exchanges after”.
Tucker snorts, “of course”, glancing at his phone -because using his PDA would be too suspicious, Tucker was literally the only person in Amity who used one after all- when it dings. Tucker chuckling, “well would you look at that. Looks like we’re finished here, funny how quick the government moves when they’re motivated. Now if only the guy who handled my taxes was that efficient. Good day, Agent Dick and Agent Cunt”, then chucking Danny’s cage at them so they’re too busy catching their prize to give him shit; Tucker immediately sauntering into Danny’s car and driving off.
Danny dude could handle himself, Tucker’s done enough hard work. Said amount being very little, which is already too much in his opinion. He’s a thinker, not a doer! He also isn’t a taxpayer but his dad loved to make jokes at the expense of the taxman.
Danny effectively tunes out all of their vaguely threatening and ominous chitchat about all the wonderful awful things they were going to get to do to him now. He doesn’t care and he’s not sticking around to experience them anyways, so what’s the point? Danny does however count at least four new prototypes though, so those are getting mentally jotted down. Eventually they go and very roughly toss his little cage in a sterilised containment area -ha! Like that’s gonna do fuck all- while laughing at him and his predicament.
Danny, meanwhile, just waits for there to be a more sizeable number of G.I.W. agents. The more the merrier! Especially when he was going to be shoving how much they sucked in their faces. Unsurprisingly it doesn’t exactly take very long. They had ‘caught’ THE Phantom after all, he was absolutely an all-hands-on-deck sort of big deal. He was the shit, in short. This kinda shit absolutely inflated his ego.
“Alright Agent P-”. Danny has a really hard time not crushing the ball gag and laughing because, heh, ‘Agent Penis’. “-turn on the fields and nullifiers. Then we can remote access the cage and release the thing for proper studying”.
“Right away, sir”.
Danny looks up at the humming sound, ahh typical containment field, he can slip through that shit like it’s goddamn butter; just... less messy. Actually slipping through butter would probably be disgusting. Now the nullifier stuff was new but that shit never worked on him to begin with, ah the perks of being a halfa.
The boss guy speaks up again, “Agent V, are the ecto-homing chains ready?”. Danny blinks disbelievingly before choking and crushing the ball gag in his teeth, wheezing loudly in laughter because this other guy was fucking Agent Vagina! Oh my Ancients!
Agent whateverthefuck scowls, “yeah laugh it up, you won’t be laughing soon”. That cliche ominous comment really only makes the ghostly teen laugh harder.
Danny decides fuck it, now’s a good a time as any -that and he doesn’t feel like getting chained up any time soon- and stretches out, completely buckling the cage bars and snapping them, suddenly the agents look mighty nervous, while Danny stands and stretches out; still laughing some. “Guys really?”, chuckling, “I mean come on”, chuckling some more while gesturing at the agents in order, “dick, cunt, penis, vagina; you so need to rethink your naming scheme”, then floats up into the air while snapping his fingers loosely, ectoplasmic electricity shooting off him and zapping all over the walls; completely fucking frying everything. The smell of burnt metal and wires fills him with determination. Determination for money... and freedom.
Agent Penis gapes, “but- what no- you shouldn’t be able to do that!”.
Danny facepalms and laughs to himself some more, “what am I? An ectopuss?”; and promptly teleports directly in front of the men. Agent Cunt suitably and ironically screams like a little girl. The rest give the more hunter response of whipping out weapons and try firing at him. Danny does the thing he typically does and just absorbs the ectoplasm from the blasts, easy enough to do with weak ecto-weapons; instead putting his effort into mockingly inspecting his gloves, his claws were coming in pretty nicely if he says so himself.
When one of the other agents runs in with a bazooka though... yeah Danny’s not about to attempt absorbing a shot from that. He’s not quite that strong... yet. So instead he zips up in the air, avoiding the shot entirely, and watches the green goo splatter on the men. Who of course scowl and shout, “cleanliness breach!”, and start throwing smoke bombs so they don’t have the embarrassment of being seen in dirty suits. Ancients these guys have such a massive stick up their collective assholes. So Danny, being petty as shit, decides to mess with the air pressure enough to make all the smoke from the bombs just sink unceremoniously to the floor.
“Hey Agent Dick?!? You want the D? D as in destruction! Or perhaps, dick-struction; if you know what I mean”, with that Danny spins in a little ball sending out a repulsion field that more or less obliterates the room while merely knocking back the agents. Danny flying forwards while pointing his finger around at prototypes, green energy surrounding them before they’re telekinetically pulled towards Danny, “and I’ll be taking these, yoink!”.
“Hey!”.
“You get back here, you filthy ectoplasmic manifestation!”.
“Damn ghost!”.
“PHANTOM!”.
“Not again...”.
Danny flips around in the air, grinning merrily, “you’re just mad I did you guys dirty like that”, and cackles before flying off into the sunset with a massive burst of speed.
Meeting back up with Tucker at the Nasty Burger results in finding out that Tucker, being the hacker genius he is, backtracked the e-transfer and effectively drained all of the G.I.W.’s accounts. Danny blinks at him, “so wait, just how much money did you get?”. Tucker grins very maliciously, “oh only a few billion”, leaning towards Danny, speaking unnecessarily ominously, “but don’t you dare think I’m done with you yet”. Danny cackles loudly.
Tucker throws his arm around Danny, “so guess what I also whipped up last night?”.
“What?”.
“Ransomeware”.
Danny laughs very loudly, “nice! G.I.W.?”.
“G.I.W.”.
That gets Tucker a solid high five.
Sam across the street gives the two boys a scowl before just j-walking across the road, easily avoiding all the oncoming traffic and ignoring the horns they blare at her. Her coming to stand in front of the boys and crossing her arms, “I’m surprised you made it back in one piece”.
Tucker smirks, “oh we’re not done yet”. Danny quirks an eyebrow, “you never did tell me who the next target was”.
“Oh only the Groovy Gang, apparently they’re miffed enough over you embarrassing them to pay big bucks for you”. Danny snorts though Sam’s scowl quickly becomes thoughtful, “okay, I’ll help if you can get that albino tiger away from them”.
The two boys absolutely beam. Guess Danny’s stealing an entire motherfucking tiger today.
Again they take Danny’s car and again they pull the Danny-in-a-cage trick again. Though... Danny points at Tucker, “I’m not wearing another goddamn ball gag this time, Tuck. These guys are, like, legit morons”. Sam snorts next to him, her feet up on the cage’s roof, “did you really?”.
Tucker huffs from the front, “the G.I.W. know how mouthy Phantom is so needed a reason for his silence. And dude, do you just think I have a stockpile of ball gags?”.
“With you? Who knows”.
Tucker drives jerky enough to thrash Danny’s cage around for that one.
Getting to the compound those Groovy Gang guy’s worked out of, the three teens just stare at the atrociously painted neon thing. Sam grimacing, “oh that’s horrible, I am so here for fucking this shit up”, looking at Danny, “still stupid though”. Danny just rolls his eyes.
The Fred Jones rip-off greets them immediately, keeping a very very wide berth away from Danny; which yes, Danny’s smirks over meanly. Guess they were still really leery of him. “Just put It in the centre, Elma’s got the money already set up. You’re doing the world a load of good, youngsters”. Sam actually flips him off at that.
Danny meanwhile, results to his typical snark, “ah yes, call the world-saving super-suit an ‘It’, real nice”. He gets completely ignored. Typical. And Tucker and Sam decide to be slight dicks by swinging his cage around while they walk. Him muttering, “jerks”. And earning a whispered, “this is what you get for being reckless and stupid, you idiot”, from Sam. Tucker quietly snickers as the two leave him alone.
Danny wastes little time before just moving himself to sit upright, the cage effectively just collapsing apart. The three present members of the Groovy Gang whip out ecto-weapons at him, because of course they do. Danny just moves to sit cross-legged, rests an elbow on his one knee, and puts his chin in his hand, “so real talk, why do y’all hate me enough to offer over a goddamn million to get your hands on a restrained me?”.
That gets the Velma rip-off to blink and pause as she enters the room, “well... you, a teenager, made us look silly; that’s our mo”. The Shaggy rip-off sticks his head up over a cabinet he was hiding behind, “yeah, man”.
Danny snorts, “oh I embarrassed you and literally everyone else. Embarrassing hunters is kinda my thing. Teen or no”.
The Daphne rip-off purses her lips, “well then I guess that’s alright”. A few of the other gathered Groovy Gang members shrug or nod a little. Danny can’t help chuckling at that and quirking an eyebrow, “really? REALLY? That’s all this was? Just you being pissy I seemingly stole your teens-foiling-adults schtick? The one that you literally ripped off from a tv show?”, shaking his head and standing up to stretch, “I don’t know whether to be impressed with that level of pettiness or not”. That was worse than the Box Ghost deciding to show up every hour on the hour to specifically haunt Danny because Danny cut off the corners on one of his boxes. “Anyway, where’s that tiger of yours?”.
The Shaggy rip-off shrugs, “oh uh, he totally won’t stop hiding after you kinda traumatised him, man”. Danny actually cringes and rubs his neck at that, “ah sorry, you have to admit though, trapping you all in that dumpster was pretty hilarious”. The Shaggy rip-off is the only one to laugh at that, “you might be alright, little dude”.
“Cool because this was totally a setup so I could blow your company up”, grinning cheerily, “now I don’t gotta worry about that”. They look more than a little uncomfortable as Danny slowly phases down through the floor while waving.
By the time Danny finds the tiger, Sam’s already there and puts her hands on her hips, “took you long enough”. The tiger, meanwhile, starts cowering and shaking. What then results is the very long process of Danny slowly approaching said tiger to gain his trust. Which fine, eventually works, and results in Danny flying home one very strung out nervous wreck of a big cat.
Sam throws at text in the Fryin’ an’ Dyin’ Chat stating that she would be staying home and working with the tiger she had now named Syber, with an ‘S’ not a ‘C’ because she’s unique like that. Danny looking up from his phone as Tucker elbows his side, “okay ten bucks for the ghost teen who can guess who’s next on the hit list”.
“You make it sound like we’re killing people”.
“Well we are extorting cash from them more or less”.
Danny rolls his eyes though chuckling, “point, and considering the running theme here: I’m guessing the Extreme GhostBreakers?”.
Tucker dramatically snaps his fingers, “darn it, ya guessed it”. Danny just snorts at that.
The sad thing is, by the time Tucker’s pulling up his hood and making his way to the Extreme GhostBreakers building, Danny’s just kinda used to being crammed in a cage. Though Tucker doesn’t even get the chance to knock on the door. Seeing as the guy? one sticks out his head, “wicked dude, money's already wired”. Tucker actually checks and gives a slightly impressed huff. But also decides to be a dick and gives the, “I’m a girl”, standard comment that the guy’s partner always said.
“Ah man, sorry dudette”. Any further comment from him gets cut off by a motor reeving, the girl? one driving up, “ah Hell yeah”.
“I know, dude”.
“I’m a girl”.
“Ah right, sorry. Let’s get this sucker loaded up”.
Danny almost wants to laugh, of course they’d load him up onto a fucking quad. Of fucking course. Danny gives a little wave to his friend as the guy drives off. But Danny, also deciding to be a dick, does his cage busting while the girl’s still driving, which obviously causes her to crash.
“Oh so not wicked, man”.
Danny snickers and floats up into the air, “but it was very crash”, easily dodging around the pair's weirdly epic attempts and stunts at nabbing him. Danny snickers and shoots a little green ball at one of the pair's chests, “surprise delayed reaction ectoblast!”, said delayed reaction ectoblast going off halfway through Danny’s comment, sending the guy one flying backwards and crashing into the girl one. “Honestly, you guys should apply as crash test dummies, you’d do better at it”, then zipping up through the ceiling. He wasn’t going to hang around, largely because he wants some goddamn french fries.
Danny flopping into the booth with Tucker, “so, did you jack all their money to?”.
“Couldn’t dude, they gave us literally all the money they had for you”.
Danny blinks, “wow, I almost feel bad, but that was so ridiculously stupid of them, Ancients”. Tucker nods and chuckles to himself before starting in on his burger and shoving Danny’s food at him.
On the fourth target Danny doesn’t even get to so much as start his whole cage breakout routine; having just been dropped off by Tucker yet again to the oddly business-looking types from a company neither of them had ever even heard of. Sam had called them stupid yet again when Tucker let her know the new target but she also said the company was into some shady shit, he’s pretty sure she had also been laughing slightly on the phone.
And now Danny knew why. Seeing as Vlad just walked in looking entirely unimpressed. Danny grins awkwardly and gives a sheepish wave at the man; he can see the sigh written across his face.
Vlad puts his hands behind his back and walks over to the caged ghostly teen, “really, Daniel”. Vlad’s completely ignoring the pleased proud looks on his employees' faces, Vlad looking up at the ceiling then back down before pinching his nose, “do any of you actually believe this kind of containment genuinely works on this one? Because anyone who does is fired”.
Quite a few people cringe but they don’t even attempt defending themselves before just leaving the building, apparently Vlad's orders were strictly followed and they knew he’d find out if they lied. Vlad just kicks the cage, it busting apart immediately. Danny floating up, “to be fair, wasn’t aware it was you I was attempting to pull my con on and swindle money from”, grumbling at the floor, “though I think she might have”.
Vlad shakes his head though grins a bit, “why Daniel, you? Swindling people? Out of their money no less? Should I be proud or flattered, my boy”. All the employees around are very obviously pretending they can’t hear this conversation, seeing as Vlad absolutely had a policy of strict gag orders. All conversations and actions were private and never happened. Talking got you maimed or at least bankrupted. That was one thing Danny was not cool with it the slightest but, eh, he picks his battles.
Danny scowls slightly and crosses his arms in a very petulant way, “hey, ghost hunters are fair game”.
“You tell yourself that”.
Danny glares, “whatever. Why do you even have a bounty on me? I though we were good?”. Vlad gives that evil-looking lopsided smirk of his at that, “you’re quite good at testing the quality of my men’s skill and weapon effectiveness”. Danny facepalms, “figures”, shaking his head and looking back to the rich man, “anyway, the G.I.W. have pretty much been defunded, so have fun filling in that gap in the market”. Vlad looks absolutely delighted.
Danny doesn’t manage to get out of the building without getting a commemorative wristwatch and pretty well getting dragged around by Vlad to be shown off as a ‘contact that helped them further dominate the market, excluding what fell under FentonWorks’.
Danny throws a ‘fuck you Sam, that was Vlad and I now have a new watch’ text into the chat. Of course receiving 😈 emojis in response. Tucker just keyboard smashed and said that ‘well I guess I’m not going to be defunding that one. Fucker wpuld kill my ass’.
Danny flops down on Tucker’s bed, “so now what? Since Vlad was kind of a bust”.
“You did get a new watch though”. Danny just snorts at that, while Tucker continues, “besides dude, we have well over a billion dollars now, why would we bother with the fifteen thousand dude and the corn chip guy?”.
Danny waves a hand around in the air, “because I’m just enjoying dicking with all these hunters at this point”, shrugging and snuggling slightly into some pillows, “we can skip the fifteen thousand guy, since corn chip guy getting Phantom would be just really funny”. Tucker wrinkles his face before laughing, “oh yeah the cheapest bastard gets the most expensive ghost this world’s ever seen”. Danny finger guns at him, “exactly”.
Tucker pauses outside of the alleyway, both him and Danny from his cage eyeballing the dark entrance, Tucker muttering, “well this isn’t suspicious at all. It’s like the opening scene to a really bad horror flic”. Danny snorting, “eh I’ve been dragged into creepy alleyways to be passed off for a bounty before”. Tucker looks down at him, “you have such specific experiences that the fact that anything happens to you repeatedly is probably super weird actually”.
“I know right? Anyway, move your ass”.
Tucker rolls his eyes but does as he’s told, hood already up and doing the ‘serious walk’ all over again.
Tucker, however, stops walking when the mystery buyer comes into view; the techno-geek dropping the cage, walking to the side, bending over, and wheezing in laughter.
Danny glares from his cage, “really, dad?”.
The mystery buyer, now revealed to be Jack Fenton, chuckles down, “I had to make an appearance somehow, Danny-boy. You are the spook to get you know! Anyways, here’s your corn chips... and a penny”, leaning down and fiddling with the cage with said penny, a trick the whole family -and his friends- knew to pick the things open.
Danny just spreads out and lays on the ground, “thanks for the corn chips I guess”; Jack nestles said corn chips under Danny’s armpit. Tucker slowly slides down the wall to sit on the ground laughing his ass off, hood falling down.
Jack looking to the teen with a grin, “glad to see it’s just you, Tucker-man! Was just slightly concerned over that phone call!”.
Tucker wheezes, “yeah I guess receiving a call that your son’s been caught and is up for sale might be a little alarming”. Danny grunts, “hey man, if we’ve proven anything it is that I am a very hot commodity”. Jack nods and chuckles himself, “and that would be more alarming if you weren’t the slipperiest ghostie out there”.
“Thanks, dad... I think”. Everyone laughs at that as Danny floats himself up off the ground, crunches on one of the corn chips, and jabs a thumb towards the alleyway entrance, “so... home? ‘Cause I think I’m done whoring my body out”. Tucker chokes at that.
Jack claps Danny on the shoulder, “that sounds like a good plan, Danno”, and starts marching out of the alleyway. Tucker staggers over and starts smacking Danny, “so much for a last hurrah, huh?”.
“Oh shut up you. Would you like me to spice up my Spotify even more by strangling you with a feather bowa and recording those gagging sounds”.
Tucker merely laughs.
A solid half month later Tucker damn near barges into Danny’s bedroom, “dude! Wake the fuck up!”. Resulting in Danny jolting up and into a battle stance, dropping his fists at Tucker pointing at his PDA. Danny grumbling, “you little shit, one of these days I’m going to punch you when you startle me up”.
Tucker waves him off and jabs a finger at his PDA again, “whatever. But dude, the fucking IRS is after as”.
“Excuse me”. Danny’s been on the wrong side of the government before and wanted by them before but not like that. He doesn’t even pay taxes! Which might be the problem actually...
Tucker nods and laughs disbelievingly, “yeah apparently you have to file taxes on bounty money, we are now wanted for tax evasion and owe the government five-hundred-and-fifty-five million dollars”. Danny chokes and blinks very harshly at him.
Danny shakes his head aggressively, “just... put it in Phantom’s name? You can’t tax the dead and technically... Phantom’s a citizen of the Ghost Realm and should thus be exempt from Mortal Realm taxes?”.
Tucker blinks before wheezing in laughter, flopping down into one of the beanie bags, “did you just make a new royal decree?”.
Danny blinks, “I- maybe. Yes”.
“Well then congrats, you untaxable fiend. I’ll do the paperwork”.
Danny snorts before faceplanting onto his bed laughing. Him one-handed throwing a message into the chat, ‘guess who else now wants a piece of me? THE IRS’. Promptly receiving a ‘like I told you, stupid’, message in return.
Next weeks newspapers come out with headlines reading: ‘GHOST TAXES WANTED: DENIED!’ and ‘GHOST ROYAL WANTED FOR MILLION DOLLAR TAX EVASION, BANS TAXES INSTEAD’ and ‘PHANTOM: UNTOUCHABLE BY ALL LAWS INCLUDING THE IRS!’ and ‘GHOSTS ALREADY KNOWN FOR IMMUNITY TO SEASONAL CHANGES, BUT NOW TAX SEASON TOO?’ and ‘ARE GHOSTS STEALING YOUR TAX MONEY: WHILE THEY PAY NONE, WE PAY MORE’ and ‘ALL ABOUT TAX EVASION FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE’ and ‘DEATH AND TAXES? A LITTLE TOO LITERAL? ONE GHOST SAYS YES!”.
Danny hung as many on his wall as he could, though Sam smacked and chased him with rolled-up newspapers for the rest of the week.
End.