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Published:
2025-07-16
Updated:
2025-09-21
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3,107
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2/3
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The King of Kings

Summary:

Seeking to restore balance to a planet separated from the Infinite Realms, Danny was not expecting the crazy shield he needed taken down to be powered by a KPop girl group, of all things.

… Their songs slapped, though.

Or: The parallels between KPop Demon Hunters and Danny Phantom are making me rabid so here’s some of the visions I’ve been tormented by.

Notes:

You know how some authors write an entire novel of context to create to the one (1) scene they want? Yeah, no. You’re getting thrown in and I’m only writing the bits I want. My apolocheese.

!! CWs !!
Ghosty blood
Stabbing (rude)
Cussing

Chapter 1: KPop Ghost Hunters

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When Danny heard reports of an Earth that forcefully cut itself off from the realms and decided to investigate himself, this was not what he had expected.

Don’t get him wrong, he’d seen weirder. It wasn’t like he thought it’d be normal or straightforward since an entire planet had a spiritual wall around itself.

However. Finding the most impressive—and, frankly, gorgeous—ecto-shield he’d ever seen and tracking its signature to it a KPop girl group was not on his bingo card.

HUNTR/X’s songs slapped, though.

So, there he was: listening to KPop on a park bench at 1am and hoping that the little shits who screwed up the balance between life and death would take his letter seriously enough to show up.

Danny had dug up pictures of the demons they’ve fought (ah yes, “costumes”) and gathered that they had shitty experiences with the Infinite Realms, but definitely preferred the idea of them taking the shield down willingly rather than going through all the effort it’d take to destroy it himself just to risk them putting it back later.

As he was about to click on something about the “Saja Boys”, three presences snuck into the park. He smirked at the screen, letting them play and think they could surprise him, before a burst of cold crept up his throat.

A… liminal? No, more than that. Interesting.

They were almost to him, now, so he played Takedown again for shits and giggles. It only got about 30 seconds in before he had a glowing moon blade in front of his throat. He paused the song and pocketed his phone.

Running his eyes up the hilt, Danny saw someone with long pink hair on the other end. Another with a big purple braid stood next to her. Mira and Rumi, according to an absolute ton of articles.

He smiled. “Yay, you came! I hate doing house calls.”

“How did you get here, demon?” Mira snarled, bringing the blade close enough that it’d nick him if he so much as breathed. Lucky for him, he didn’t have to do that anymore.

Carefully projecting his movements, he raised a finger to push it back a few inches. “Not a demon, but about that-”

A hand grabbed his left sleeve and pulled up, making him jolt.

“Huh,” the black-haired one, Zoey, said as she squinted at the Lichtenburg figure that ran from his hand to past his shoulder. “These are weird patterns.”

Danny’s core shuddered as he yanked the sleeve down and bared his teeth, letting the fangs show. “They’re called scars, thanks,” he hissed.

“What do you want?” Rumi demanded.

“Right.” He cleared his throat and stood, heedless of Mari’s weapon rushing to aim at his jugular again. “Phantom, Guardian of the Veil at your service,” he greeted with a bow. “I’m here on behalf of the Infinite Realms inquire as to why in the ancients’ name is there a massive fuck-off ecto-shield covering the entire planet.”

Silence fell, leaving a trio of blank stares.

“I know some of those words, but not in that order,” Rumi eventually said.

Mira sighed. “C’mon, let’s go back to couch time. He’s clearly just some fan messing with us.”

Zoey seemed curious, at least. “Well-”

Danny cut her off with a groan and ran a hand down his face. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.” He muttered before straightening and saying, “Please don’t attack me, it’ll just make this take longer.”

That was all the warning he gave before a white ring formed around his waist and split to run up and down his body, revealing his mortal-friendly ghost form in their wakes.

However, “mortal-friendly” did not equal “friendly mortals”.

The light show put them on edge, but it wasn’t until after they saw Phantom’s death mark turn green and glow through his suit that all three had weapons at the ready.

“DEMON!” Zoey screeched, throwing the daggers she pulled from the ground’s energy.

“GET HIS ASS,” Mira cheered, running opposite of Rumi to flank him.

”What did I just say?!” he shouted, dodging projectiles and turning intangible. “I’m not even-“ a sword passed through him, but instead of being normal about it, the thing burned and his core almost left his body.

He yelped and rose out of the kill circle they made. “Ow! Not cool! What was that?!”

The girls paused, mouths open.

Rumi, the rude one who stabbed him, waved her weapon at Danny. “What are you?!”

”I’m a ghost! Usually a friendly one, but I’m getting impatient now!” he replied, throwing his arms around. “Just tell me why that shield is up, or I’m taking it down myself!”

“It’s to keep monsters like you underground where they belong!” Mira scowled.

Phantom pinched the bridge of his nose between his claws. “Look, if you let me know what you’re so afraid of to put all that effort into making that thing, I’ll handle it. But I can’t do that if you keep-“ he must’ve dropped his intangibility, because when he couldn’t dodge a dagger in time, it lodged into his shoulder and hurt like hell.

His core spasmed, wanting nothing more than to retreat to the Realms, but he fought against it, keeping the searing pain. It felt like holding onto blood blossoms to escape a thermos. It ate at him, but he was scared of letting go; even though his skin was flayed and his blood was lava, the idea of being spirited away was worse.

He probably fell since there was something solid against him, but he didn’t care, just stop-

The blade was pulled out, and the fire went with it. His everywhere still ached and he now had a knife wound bleeding green, but it was over.

He took a shaky breath and opened his eyes to see the trio leaning above him, Zoey the closest as she held an ectoplasm-coated dagger.

They watched warily as Phantom sat up and swallowed down bile. “That sucked,” he huffed. “2 out of 10, would not recommend.”

“Are… you okay? What was that?” Rumi asked.

“Oh, now you care? That’s nice,” he grumbled as he got to his feet, thankful that he was already starting to heal.

Zoey stepped back to give him space. ”Well, demons don’t usually react like that, so I guess you’re… what was it, a ghost?”

“Yeah, and I protect the balance, which is something that your world is severely lacking. So, care to explain yet, or do you need to stab me again?” He glared, clenching and unclenching his fists.

Mira rolled her eyes. “The moment there’s a crack in the Honmoon, demons come flooding out to eat people’s souls like candy. So yeah, we’re keeping that shield up.”

His head tilted like a hawk. “Well, do they have a leader? Usually when there’s such mass crossing, there’s something pulling them together.”

“Uh, yeah? The King of Demons, hello?” Zoey scoffed. “He’s a pain.”

“And what does he look like?”

“A gaping maw made of pink flames,” Rumi answered.

“Alright, I can work with this. Probably the section of the Realms closest to here, huh?” Phantom clapped his hands together as he lifted off the ground, forcing a smile. “So I’ll pop down there, talk to him, then lift that barrier. Cool.”

Mira’s eyebrows raised. “Woah, woah, woah, talk to him?”

“Well, ‘talk’ is a loose term, in my profession. There’ll probably end up being more butt-kicking than normal conversation entails. By human standards, at least,” he said with a shrug.

Two of them opened their mouths, probably to argue again, but Zoey spoke first. “We’ll come with you!”

“We’ll what?!” Mira spat.

Zoey brightened as if she received a polite invitation to explain her reasoning. “We get Gwi-Ma taken care of, he gets backup—“

“You’d just get in my—“ Phantom tried to cut in, but she was already rolling.

“—we get to take notes, and this way we can make sure that guy actually gets rid of him!”

“‘That guy’? I’m right here and I told you my name!”

Mira thought for a moment. “Huh. Okay, sure,” she nodded, like an explanation really was all she wanted.

“Yeah, I guess we should keep an eye on things,” Rumi agreed.

“Nope, nuh-uh.” He crossed his arms. “I don’t know you guys. I’m not having ghost hunters as my backup.” He ignored the fact that his normal backup and himself were literally ghost hunters. That wasn’t the point. Shut up.

Rumi sighed and let her sword dissipate. “If you’ll really try to get rid of Gwi-Ma, then… we won’t attack you again. Sorry about that.”

Zoey leaned over to whisper in her ear—not that it’d keep whatever secret they have when the person in front of them had enhanced hearing. “If you tell him you’re part demon, it might help him trust us.”

”Oh!” Phantom snapped his fingers, making them flinch. “That’s what you are!” He floated closer to sense her better as she backpedaled. “I was all ‘woah, she’s like a halfa!’, but I’d know if there were any others, so obviously not, I just—“

Rumi kept moving further, head shaking, and he finally took the hint to back off. “You can tell? Jinu didn’t know till he saw my patterns!”

His smile turned sheepish. “Sorry. Forgot how scary it is to be outed like that.” He let his feet touch the ground again. “But, uh, perks of being…” the High King “… me.”

“You?” Mira questioned.

“I’m more powerful than most ghosts,” he grinned, all teeth.

Zoey glanced between them. “So, uh… Can we come?”

He hummed. “You know what? Sure. Just stay behind me, alright?”

He turned around, reaching for the veil with a clawed hand and tearing it in one swift motion. A few lightbulbs shattered nearby as the green-tinged darkness spilled out into the park.

”Wait, we’re going now?” Rumi said.

Phantom replied over his shoulder from where he was stretching the rip wider. “Well, yeah. I got things to do.” Once it seemed big enough, he stepped through, not bothering to check if they followed.

Notes:

Alt title: King Shit of Turd Mountain

(Don’t know when/if I’ll update this, but there is a plan for next chapter)

Bouta follow-up on a divemaster job application (again) wish me luck 🤙

Edit: Me receiving comments on this fic
A crappy screenshot of Zoey getting smacked in the face with a heart

Edit 2 electric boogaloo: my Tumblr is xeniashrimp if ya want lol. I post pretty irregularly lately tho

Chapter 2: King Shit of Turd Mountain

Summary:

Okay SO!! I have made the executive decision to split this chapter and hope that the dopamine from posting this helps me finish the last bit because I REALLY want u to see the dumb stuff I thought up. Sorry if u got a notif from this and were like “yay it’s finished!” oops.

Notes:

Put that alt title to use lmao

Wrote some of this on a plane and suffered through the indignity of not being able to use Word Hippo (my wife) until I landed. Was also typing huddled over my phone instead of on my iPad cuz I’m a coward who didn’t want the poor guy next to me to get a glimpse of the utter bullshit I was writing.

Wrote most of the rest while procrastinating smth I absolutely needed to finish asap for the sake of my career and sanity.

:D

!! CWs !!
Strong feelings of fear
Deadnaming (It’s immediately corrected tho)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Rumi’s shoes met the rough ground on the other side of the portal as she took in her new, red, surroundings. The Demon Realm. She was in the Demon Realm.

“Hey, nice, there’s gravity for you guys,” Phantom said.

“Is…” Zoey hedged, “is that not always the case?”

“Nope! Never know out here.” He tilted his head as he walked off, leaving them to trail behind. “Anywho, I sense him this way. He’s totally projecting his aura. Must think he’s hot shit.”

Rumi scrunched her nose. “Aura?” 

Mira smirked. “Damn, this whole time he was stealing souls for aura farming?”

He barked out a laugh. “Yeah, well, if he is who I think he is, he’s bad at it. His aura crops have long withered away.”

“Bet he hasn’t watered them in-“ Rumi started, but a wave of fear snuffed out her words.

Phantom was glaring at something to the right, his form buzzing and glitching as his eyes glowed so bright they seared an after-image into her vision.

Every part of him radiated don’t get within 10 feet of me or you’ll be vaporized. She was inclined to oblige, stopping in her tracks and waiting until he was a good way ahead to continue walking.

Once she could breathe again she followed his gaze to see a demon. Her heart skipped a beat and her hand darted out to grab a hilt she hadn’t summoned yet, but paused when she saw how scared the demon was.

They gaped, wide-eyed. Like a prey animal, they made slow movements backwards. Rumi felt one more hiss of GO AWAY before the demon booked it.

“Sorry. That was for them, not you guys.” Phantom said. “Stay close, please.”

That was when Rumi noticed that Zoey and Mira were also unsettled. They had slowed with her, but didn’t seem quite as aware. More like they were following her lead in their discomfort.

He must’ve seen it, too. “It’s because you’re part demon. Your friends don’t feel as much.”

Right, she mused. Because all demons do is feel.

“Alright, seriously though. I won’t bite, but I don’t know about them.” He gestured them to the absolute army of demons that appeared through the fog in front of them.

The three of them tensed and forced themselves to huddle behind him as he parted the crowd like an ocean with one venomous look. In his wake, some demons hid behind each other, while others bared their teeth like cornered cats.

“Yo, Sparky!” Phantom yelled, making every being present jump a foot in the air. “Get a new job!”

Upon a pedestal the size of a stadium, Gwi-Ma’s pink fire blew up into a jagged smile. “Mm. What do we have here?”

Phantom rolled his eyes and whispered, “Stay by the stairs and don’t put your back to the demons for too long. I’ve got flame-face,” before floating up to the king.

Rumi glanced at the crowd. They didn’t seem like they’d intervene—for now, at least.

“What makes you think you can get away with terrorizing the mortal world, Yeomna?” He asked once he reached the top, crossing his arms like he was dealing with a middle schooler rather than the King of Demons.

Wait, ‘Yeomna’?

Gwi-Ma’s flames shook with irritation. “You come into my realm, mock me, and call me that name? I-”

“Oh, shoot, sorry! Didn’t mean to neglect your chosen name, I guess the stuff at the Library is outdated, huh?” Phantom then proceeded to reach inside his chest and somehow retrieve a notebook and pen. “What should I call you?”

The king was silent for a beat. “… Gwi-Ma.”

He nodded, scribbling it down. “Are your pronouns still he/him?”

”Yes,” he answered, dumbfounded.

“Cool.” Phantom snapped the pages closed and slipped them back in his torso. “Anyways, care to explain yourself, Gwi-Ma?”

He let out a huff of ashes. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen anyone from the wider realms,” Gwi-Ma said, calm like a bonfire deciding whether to stay in its pile or spread to the woods, “but, last I checked, no one could stop me. So, little one, what makes you think you can?”

“Dude…” Phantom told him as if he might pity him if he didn’t think it was funny. “My dog could wipe the floor with you. It’s just that no one cared.”

“If that’s the case, what brings your audacious self here?” the king growled.

He brightened. “The Realms are under new management.”

With that, the weird western ghost guy before them unraveled in ways her eyes couldn’t follow.

Reality shattered, warping itself to make room for the lashing black and white mass that shouldn’t exist. It churned across itself, like stars being eclipsed over and over, giving no clues as to where it began or ended, until what could perhaps be called a “head” rose.

It had no discernible features besides four green eyes, which shifted in position as if static anatomy was a distant memory. Black holes should be, you know, black, but the way those swirling pools seemed to absorb and bend the light around them made her rethink that. Because, as impossible as all this was, it emitted truth.

Then it did something and Rumi was on her knees, her hands barely keeping her from face-planting into the ground. She felt king-submit-obey-king drilling into her bones, pinning her in place.

“Now,” it didn’t say, but rather willed her thoughts to form its ear-splitting words. “Still think I can’t stop you?”

She thought the glare against that lone demon had been a threat? That was a polite greeting with a cute little gift basket compared to whatever the hell this was.

When sensation relented enough for Rumi to lift her head, she saw green fire flaring in the shape of a crown above what was apparently still Phantom.

Oh, there was a hand shaking her shoulder.

“Rumi! C’mon, snap out of it!” Mira hissed.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” She took a deep breath and sat up. “You?”

Zoey made a face. “Well-“

A crack of thunder and static made them flinch.

“You cannot take what I have built!” Gwi-Ma roared, glowing eyes appearing along with the vague impression of a body behind himself. “You may be High King, but this is my realm!”

Phantom screeched with all the power of a supernova before colliding with him. Beams fired, masses burst; everything came undone in a way you could never prepare for when watching incomprehensible deities brawl. There were sounds she shouldn’t hear and colors she shouldn’t see painting the section of the universe before her.

Rumi could barely make out a shape in his flayed pink energy, but Gwi-Ma stayed defiant. “Defend me, fools!”

Screams sounded behind her, and the trio whipped around to see the crowd of demons with lit marks stampeding towards them.

The girls summoned their weapons and stood their ground. Rumi rushed to the horde of angry bodies, gaining momentum, before rearing back for a blow. She followed through and met… resistance?

Thrown off balance and rushing to correct herself, she saw her blade embedded in the demon that was injured, but still there. Why didn’t they disappear?

At least Mira seemed to recover from the discovery pretty quick. “MOVE!” she yelled, pulling the other two behind a pillar and out of the way.

Rumi took a moment to catch her breath as countless demons rushed past them. “What the fu—”

“You…” Phantom seethed, cutting her off with paralyzing rage that froze time itself, “made them like this. You didn’t just kill them; you twisted their obsessions against them to bind them to you and your petty schemes.” He let out a dark chuckle that sounded like planets crumbling. “I will enjoy this.”

Then his wound-up form broke apart into something all-encompassing. The world as they knew it was blotted out by a swirl of black, white, green, and death.

Rumi didn’t know what way was up—didn’t know where her body was, didn’t know her own name—but she knew without a doubt that the shattering she soon heard was Gwi-Ma being ended.

Reality slowly stitched itself back together after that, bit by bit. The pedestal remembered its shape, light regained its proper path, and Rumi’s mind found her body.

She laid there, shaking, for who knew how long until she gathered the will to shuffle herself towards Mira and Zoey. They were motionless.

Opening her mouth, it took a few tries until she was able to rasp, “Guys?”

Notes:

Btw since I released the first chapter I have: traveled overseas, found out my parents rehomed my cat without my permission, got my PADI Divemaster certification, took part in the hellish journey of job/house-hunting, moved to the other side of the country, got violently ill multiple times during a single working interview, started three new jobs (which still aren’t giving me hours, so I gotta look for another), and fucked up so bad I could’ve gotten sued. AO3 author moment.

Hopefully I’ll finish this, but I can’t guarantee it. Got the job shenanigans, but I also joined a project and have a different fic idea that has me in a chokehold ahaha