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Danny didn’t mean for it to spiral out of control. In hindsight, he probably should’ve seen it coming.
It all started with Sam betting him twenty bucks that he couldn’t handle having neon hair for a week without chickening out. Danny, ever the sucker for a dare and broke teenager, accepted immediately. After all, twenty bucks was twenty bucks, and he’d do just about anything short of shaving his head to prove Sam wrong.
Cue Tucker showing up the next day with an aggressively neon green hair dye he claimed was "totally safe" and "definitely wouldn’t burn through your skull." Danny should’ve been suspicious when Tucker refused to elaborate on the latter claim.
But he figured, What’s the worst that could happen?
The answer was far worse than he anticipated.
At first, everything seemed fine. Danny dyed his hair in his bathroom at home, ignoring Jazz’s concerned hovering outside the door. The smell was horrible, and the green was so blindingly bright that even Tucker winced. But the color stuck, and Sam grudgingly admitted it looked good on him.
Then he transformed into his ghost form.
The moment the white rings of light passed over him, Danny’s scalp prickled uncomfortably. His snow-white hair turned into a blinding, radioactive green, glowing like it had been dunked in nuclear waste.
“What the—?!” Danny ran to the mirror in the lab and groaned. “Oh, come on! Why is it glowing?”
Tucker, who’d been filming for posterity, winced. “Yeah, uh, maybe the dye got ecto-infused or something?”
Sam snorted. “You think? Danny looks like a human glow stick.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t just a temporary side effect. No amount of washing or phasing through his own head made the glow go away. By the next day, Phantom’s hair was the talk of the school.
The pro-Phantom crowd at Casper High noticed immediately.
“Did Phantom get slimed?!”
This was the first panicked question when Phantom appeared mid-battle with Skulker that evening. His hair radiated under the streetlights like some kind of radioactive beacon. The pro-vigilantes clustered together, their eyes wide with concern.
“Head injury,” Valerie muttered grimly, narrowing her eyes at Skulker. “I bet one of the ghosts went for his head.”
“He’s still flying!” Star piped up. “That’s a good sign, right?”
“Flying while concussed isn’t a good thing!” Dash snapped, cracking his knuckles. “We’re kicking that tin can’s butt right now—”
Danny, overhearing them, groaned mid-air and yelled, “Guys, I’m fine! It’s just hair dye!”
Another collective gasp.
“Phantom dyes his hair?!” Kwan asked, sounding scandalized.
“Does it… glow?” Paulina’s eyes sparkled. “That’s so cool!”
“Okay, technically,” Danny admitted sheepishly, dodging another one of Skulker’s missiles, “it’s a ghost thing. The dye got ecto-infused or something, and now it’s stuck like this!”
The pro-vigilantes went absolutely feral. Overnight, the trend caught like wildfire. Suddenly, everyone at Casper High decided they needed glowing green hair. Sam, who hadn’t been involved in the hysteria at all, got dragged into helping students replicate the look with a mix of industrial hair dye and glow-in-the-dark paint. Tucker, bless his chaotic heart, uploaded a DIY tutorial to social media.
Within days, Amity High was a sea of neon-green hair. Danny felt like he’d accidentally started a cult.
The chaos peaked when Lancer announced the winter field trip to Gotham City.
The class didn’t get many weird looks on the bus to Gotham—it was January, after all, and everyone had their green hair tucked under hoods and hats.
That all changed at the planetarium.
The lights dimmed. The stars appeared overhead, casting a soft glow across the room. Then, Wes (because of course it was Wes) piped up, “You think my hair still glows?”
Kwan immediately yanked off his hat. “Holy crap, it does!” His glowing green hair lit up the dark space, casting an eerie, ectoplasmic glow over their group.
Naturally, everyone else joined in. Hats and hoods came off in a flurry of excitement. Paulina pulled a mirror from her bag and started showing off her intricately styled glowing braids, complete with star-shaped hair clips.
“Does it look good?!”
“Better than mine, ugh,” Star groaned, gesturing to her glow-painted space buns.
Paulina smirked. “Well, I am better at hair than you—”
And that’s when the Joker Gang decided to crash the field trip.
The Joker Gang burst into the planetarium, guns blazing, only to freeze at the sight of thirty glowing, green-haired teens glaring daggers at them.
“Uh, boss?” one of the goons muttered, visibly unnerved. “Why do they all look like you?”
The Joker, bless his egotistical heart, loved it. “Ah, my adoring fans!” he crowed. “Such dedication to my aesthetic! Truly, I’m touched—”
Paulina cut him off with a scream of rage. “I JUST GOT THESE NAILS DONE!”
The Joker never stood a chance.
What followed was nothing short of a massacre.
Paulina, her glowing hair whipping like a battle flag, was the first to launch herself at the nearest goon. Despite her broken nails, she managed to slam her fists into his face with enough force to knock him out cold.
The rest of the Amity Park students followed suit, wielding whatever they could find—chairs, trays, literal telescopes. One particularly chaotic kid (*cough *cough Danny) blinded a goon by shining a flashlight into his eyes while yelling, “LOOK AT THE STARS!”
The Gothamites watching from a safe distance were stunned.
“Uh,” Nightwing said from the rafters, trying not to choke on popcorn, “are we… supposed to help?”
“No,” Red Hood said firmly, leaning back against a wall with a grin. “This is hilarious.”
“And effective,” Oracle added, watching through the cameras. “I haven’t seen the Joker Gang get wrecked this hard in years.”
By the time the dust settled, the Joker Gang was tied up in a pile, groaning in pain. The Amity Park students stood victorious, glowing green hair gleaming like some kind of chaotic vigilante army.
Batman arrived moments later, dropping down from the ceiling like a storm cloud. He took one look at the scene—the tied-up gang, the destroyed telescopes, the smug teens glowing like radioactive fireflies—and sighed deeply.
“What,” he said slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose, “happened here?”
Paulina crossed her arms, radiating righteous fury. “Those losers made me break my nails.”
Batman looked like he aged five years on the spot.
“You’re welcome!” Tucker chirped, snapping a picture of the tied-up gang.
Nightwing, perched on the rafters above, burst out laughing. “Oh, man. I like these kids.”
“Don’t encourage them,” Batman said sharply.
Red Hood, grinning, crossed his arms. “I dunno, Bats. They did a pretty good job cleaning up your mess.”
Batman leveled him with a look. “They destroyed a planetarium.”
“And the Joker Gang,” Oracle pointed out over comms. “I’d call that a win.”
The fallout from the incident was legendary.
Tucker, of course, took full credit for starting the trend.
“You’re welcome,” he told Danny smugly.
“For what?” Danny grumbled. “Turning my life into a meme?”
“Exactly.”
Danny groaned.
Sam, meanwhile, handed Danny a crisp twenty-dollar bill. “You win the bet,” she said grudgingly.
“Thanks,” Danny muttered, pocketing the money.