Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or any of its characters.

King of Pranks

...

Danny absolutely loved April Fools' Day. It was a fun little tradition full of laughter and pranks, but unfortunately, he had nobody to celebrate it with. Everyone he knew loathed that day, but only because he constantly pulled pranks on them.

It was the one day of the year where people could just blatantly pull pranks on others and get a pass for it, so of course he was all for it.

His first victim of the morning was Jazz. He woke up earlier than usual and tiptoed out of his bedroom, crossing the hallway and making a beeline for her room. He slipped inside and cast a glance over at her sleeping form before grinning mischievously.

After reaching his hand into the pocket of his pajama bottoms and pulling out a tiny bottle of blue food coloring, he moved over to her bathroom door and phased through it. The prank he had in mind was simple compared to the one he pulled on her last year, where he put paint in her favorite shampoo bottle.

His eyes shortly roamed around the bathroom in search of her toothbrush. Once he spotted it in a cup near her medicine cabinet, he grabbed it and squeezed a small drop of food coloring into the center of it. He then placed it back into the cup before exiting the bathroom, making sure he quietly closed the door behind him on his way out of the room.

He could've retreated to his bedroom and waited for his plan to take effect, but he decided that he wanted to prank his parents as well. Since Maddie was a little harder to trick than Jack, he figured he'd go after the weakest— er, oldest Fenton first.

That's how he found himself in the kitchen, equipped with a spare tube of mint toothpaste while stealing Jack's package of oreos from his not-so-secret stash.

He separated the first cookie he saw and scraped out the filling with the flat edge of a butter knife. Then, he whipped out his toothpaste and squirted a blob onto the center of the first half of that cookie before taking the second one and lightly pressing them together.

He didn't tamper with all of the cookies, as he wanted his father to guess which ones were original and which ones were his deluxe surprise. When he was finished, he neatly placed them back into the package and sealed it shut before sticking it back into Jack's stash.

After glancing at the kitchen clock and noting the time, which was quarter to seven, he smiled to himself and chose to just go back to sleep. He could always prank his mom, and others, when he woke up later with more energy.

And more ideas.

He had only been asleep for about four hours when Jazz burst into his room with blue food coloring staining her teeth and her tongue. Her face was twisted into an expression of mild irritation and she was holding up her toothbrush in a somewhat threatening manner.

Danny sat upright in his bed and tried his best to avoid laughing out loud upon seeing his sister's face. She slowly walked forward, glaring eyes trained on him, and then she inhaled deeply. "You know, Danny, I'm afraid that at some point today, I'm going to hit you so hard that I'll become an only child."

He merely rolled his eyes. "With what, a toothbrush?" he retorted. "No offense, but you're as intimidating as the Box Ghost." Her gaze dipped towards her toothbrush for a fraction of a second before she huffed and crossed her arms. "Besides, you're the one who said laughter is the best medicine."

"Yeah, when you're actually sharing the laughter with someone other than yourself. It doesn't count when the source of that laughter comes from playing weak, vile, and obnoxious pranks on your family for an entire day."

"I don't just play them on you guys! I prank Sam and Tucker, too. I may play dirty, but I also play fair." Danny started to peel his blanket from his lower body, preparing to get out of bed, but then he paused and frowned at Jazz. "Wait, did you just call my pranks weak?"

She stared almost lethally at him for several seconds before closing her eyes and letting out a sharp breath of air. "Look, I get that today is one of your favorite days for some reason, but all I ask is that you please take it easy on me this year. You always prank me more harshly in comparison to everyone else."

He opened his mouth to protest, but he immediately shut it again once he realized that she was absolutely right. She was usually the main target of his April Fools' pranks, but only because he thought her reactions to them were hilarious. Despite that, he reluctantly decided to go easy on her this time.

Just this one time.

"Okay, Jazz. You have my word," he vowed. "I'll go easy on you this year." She opened her eyes and studied him closely, probably to determine whether he was being genuine with her or not. After a minute, she smiled warily and started to back out of the room.

"You seem like you're telling the truth, but because it's April Fools' Day, I'm choosing to remain skeptical." She fully stepped out of the room, but right before she did, she added, "I'm leaving the house for today just in case, and whatever prank you're going to pull on mom and dad, please make sure it's nothing like the one you pulled on me last year."

Danny rose to his feet and lifted his arms in a stretch. "Relax, Jazz. I promise I won't do anything I'll regret." He lowered his arms seconds later and began to shoo her from his room. "Since I'm up, I might as well stay up. I have to shower now, so excuse me."

She bitterly grumbled underneath her breath as she left, no doubt still irritated from the totally harmless prank he played on her. He wanted to remain true to his word, so he chose to lay off on her. Although she was no longer available for him to prank, at least not currently, he still had four other victims in mind.

After he finished showering and getting dressed, he left his bedroom and went to check on his parents. Jack was down in the basement, fixing up a creation of his while Maddie was in their bedroom, folding and inserting some of his clothes into a drawer.

That's when an idea for a prank hit him like a stone.

He waited for her to leave the room first, which she ended up doing about five minutes later. She seemed to go downstairs for some tea, so that's when he kicked his prank into gear. It involved a little more work than he wanted to do, but he still went through with it.

He flipped almost everything in the room upside down: his parent's picture frames, their mattress, their nightstand table, their computer chair, and a few other things. He didn't want to flip every single item over and completely anger them, even though he was certain that just flipping over a thing or two would be enough to irritate them.

He expected Maddie to come back into the room when she was done drinking her tea, but she was taking longer than he thought she would. He popped into the kitchen to see what she was doing, while invisible, of course, and spotted her now sitting at the kitchen table with Jack.

"Did Danny leave yet?" she inquired, leaning forward and clasping her hands around her cup of tea. "Yesterday he told me that he was heading over to Sam's house today with Tucker."

Jack didn't even glance up from his newspaper. "Not to my knowledge," he answered. "As far as I know, he's still asleep. He should be up soon, though." She hummed softly in response and stood up, announcing that she was going to go check on him. "Say, Mads, before you go, can you fetch my Oreos? I don't know why, but they really help me think."

Danny grinned toothily to himself as he watched the entire scene unfold before him. Maddie grabbed Jack's cookies from his stash and handed it to him before moving towards the staircase again. The man peeled open the package immediately and reached for a cookie, but as soon as he popped it into his mouth and chewed it, he froze.

His reaction was priceless; Danny had to quickly slap his hand over his mouth to smother his laughter. Jack's right eye began to twitch and he shot up from his seat, rushing over to the garbage can to spit out the tampered cookie. "Maddie, take cover! He's already begun!" he shouted before scurrying out of the kitchen.

Danny's eyes brimmed with tears of mirth as he doubled over, holding his stomach as peaks of boisterous laughter burst from within. He continued cracking up like that until he heard Maddie yell at him from her place upstairs.

"Daniel James Fenton! You march your behind right in here and fix my room this instant!"

Sam was his next victim— or target. When he arrived at her house, he phased through her bedroom window, only to discover that she was wide awake. This took him by surprise because she usually slept in on Saturdays, even if she was aware that company was coming over.

He knew she recently showered because she was clad in nothing but a towel while standing in front of her bathroom mirror, preparing to blow dry her hair. He didn't feel the need to awkwardly stand there, especially since this was his girlfriend of two years, so he announced his presence by clearing his throat.

Her head swiveled towards him and her eyes followed, widening once she saw him standing there. "Oh, no." She pointed her blow dryer at him and, for some odd reason, he raised his hands defensively. "It's April Fools' Day and you're here a little too early. I don't trust you or that combination."

"Whoa, relax, Sam. If I was going to prank you, I wouldn't have announced myself first." She hesitated for a minute before lowering her blow dryer, but she retained her dubious demeanor. He smiled lopsidedly at her before plopping down onto her bed. "Mind if I hang here?"

"That depends." She set the device down on the bathroom counter and slowly walked towards him. "Am I going to randomly walk over to my closet and find out that all of my clothes have been replaced with nothing but pink dresses again?"

His eyebrows peaked and he pursed his lips. "To be fair, I just swapped your wardrobe with your mother's, but that was one time."

"It only takes one time. That prank almost gave both of us a heart attack," she told him. She then paused for a second before rushing over to her closet to check if he had repeated that prank. Once she saw that he didn't, she hummed and shuffled for her bedroom door. "Just to be safe, I'm going to go check her closet real quick."

He simply stared after her, but then the corners of his lips curved into a smirk as an idea formed in his head. It was risky, but Danny Fenton was a risk taker.

As quickly as he could, he phased downstairs and straight into her kitchen. He knew her parents room was located somewhere upstairs and around a corner or two, so he wasted no time in searching for a bag of flour. After he found one, he grabbed it and flew back into her bedroom.

He peeked out into the hallway to check if she was approaching the room, but once he determined that the coast was clear, he slipped into her bathroom and hastily got to work. As quietly as he could, he opened the bag of flour and dumped some of it into her blow dryer.

Right after he set the device back down onto the counter and wiped away the excess flour, he heard a door close from somewhere down the hallway. He figured he wouldn't have enough time to return the bag of flour to the kitchen and then pop back into the room, so he just stashed it underneath her bed.

He managed to mimic the same position he was lying in on her bed just before she entered the room. She was no longer sporting a towel, but rather a plain black tank top and dark ripped skinny jeans. "Okay, my mom's closet looks decent. Still, it's a good thing she's not here right now. I suppose I can trust you, but only until Tucker gets here," she said.

Danny crossed his arms behind his head and nodded lazily, closing his eyes. "Fair enough." Silence washed over the room, but he didn't dare open his eyes again until he heard her shifting things around in her bathroom. That's when he cracked open an eyelid and watched her, trying to prevent himself from grinning.

She slid her fingernails through her damp hair several times before positioning her blow dryer a few inches away from her head and starting it up. In an instant, a stream of flour blew out from the device, coating her hair and her face with the powder.

With a yelp of surprise, she recoiled and rushed to shut off the dryer. Once it was off, she threw it down like it was on fire and started coughing. That was the main reason why Danny didn't start laughing right away; he was concerned.

He shot upright and was just about to race over to her, but then he caught a good look at her face and stopped himself. Though her glare was strong enough to make someone visibly wilt, it was almost hard for him to take her seriously because of the amount of flour on her face, which was also mixed into her now slightly disheveled hair.

"Danny," she growled through clenched teeth, her voice taunt with anger, "you'd better run. Run as fast as you can."

"...you can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man?" he quipped. When she charged at him, clearly not feeling his lame attempt at a joke, he gasped and bolted out of the room, booking it down the hallway. "Wait, Sam! I'm sorry!"

Tucker lightly shook his smoothie and brought the straw to his lips, sipping it with a satisfied smile. He was just about to sit down and watch tv until it was time to head over to Sam's, but then he heard someone knocking on his front door.

He glanced back and forth between his television and the door, trying to figure out which one was more important at the moment. When the person knocked again, much more impatiently this time, he sighed and went over to answer it.

He swung open the door, revealing Danny to be the one who was knocking. He was standing there, wearing a friendly smile and holding a box of chocolate donuts. "I brought breakfast," he announced. "Well, technically it's lunch." Tucker licked his lips and stepped to the side to give his best friend room to enter the house.

"You already know I'm a sucker for chocolate donuts." He gladly helped himself to a donut, sticking his hand into the box and pulling one out. He was expecting the sweet taste of chocolate to greet his taste buds once he bit into the treat, but he wasn't expecting to taste mayonnaise in addition to that. "Yuck! Not cool, dude!"

He made a beeline for his kitchen's trash can and spit out a chunk of the tampered donut, ignoring Danny's obnoxiously loud chuckling from his place near the door. He glared daggers at him before moving towards the kitchen sink to rinse out his mouth.

"Lighten up, Tuck," he heard the Halfa say. He finished rinsing out his mouth half a minute later and shut off the faucet, his face still twisted into a grimace. He spun over his shoulder, only to see Danny approaching him with his smoothie extended out to him. "Here. This might help get that taste out."

He took the drink from the boy and removed the lid, bringing the rim of the cup to his lips with the intention of gulping the smoothie down. To his great surprise, the drink was no longer sugary and delicious, but rather extremely salty and unbearable.

He immediately spit it out and glared at the smoothie before directing his leer towards Danny, who was now snickering. "Now you're just asking for it, dude. Bro code number nine specifically states that you never tamper with a man's smoothie, especially not with salt."

"No, it doesn't, but come on!" Danny exclaimed. "That prank was nothing compared to the one I pulled on you last year."

Tucker frowned and raised his right eyebrow. "Prank? Why are you randomly playing pranks on—" He halted his speech and his eyes started to enlarge with horror. "No. No, today can't be..." He whipped out his PDA and frantically checked the date, his heart sinking when he realized what day it was. "I forgot that today was—"

"April Fools' Day?" Danny finished, blinking innocently at him. For a long minute, they both just stared at each other, with Tucker looked horrified and Danny flashing him a growing smile. It wasn't until the prankster took a single step forward that Tucker grabbed a banana from his fruit bowl and brandished it before him.

"Get back, fiend! I have a banana." He slowly stepped backwards while Danny moved forward, matching his pace. "I said get back! I'll use this thing if I have to."

Danny rolled his eyes and stopped walking. "Don't be ridiculous, Tuck. What are you going to do, throw it at me? It's a banana."

"Yeah, well, I have apples here, too." When Tucker saw him attempt to take another step forward, he shook his head vigorously and pointed to his front door. "Nope, you're banned from my house for today, and since I'm going over to Sam's in a few, you're banned from there as well."

"Jokes on you because she already banned me from there today."

"Wait, you've been to her house already?" Tucker then formed a wide circle with his mouth and gasped. "That means you've already pranked her and you only came here because you wanted to save the best for last."

"Well," Danny's eyes slid to the side and he pursed his lips, his eyebrows rising high on his forehead, "now that you mention it..." Tucker scowled and motioned towards the front door again with a jerk of his head. Danny sighed in defeat and threw his hands up. "Okay, okay, I'm gone."

Tucker followed him as he shuffled over to the door, getting ready to exit the house. "You're more than welcome to video chat with us or call us so it feels like you're there, and you'd better not go invisible and pull any tricks on us!"

"That's actually a great idea," Danny remarked. When he saw that Tucker wasn't kidding around, he sighed and fully stepped out of the house. "Fine. I'll lay off on you guys."

"Thank you."

Despite what he and Tucker agreed on, Danny phased into Sam's house later towards the end of the afternoon.

He didn't enter through her bedroom the way he usually did because he didn't know if she was up there watching movies with Tucker or something. That was the perfect opportunity for him to prank them both, so he was definitely going to take it.

He thought about replacing all of her cleaning solution with watered down lemonade, but he quickly dismissed that idea and tried to think of something else. He had been pulling simple pranks all day, so he wanted to end April Fools' Day with a bang.

He hummed contemplatively and scratched his head, but the sudden sharpness of Sam's voice derailed his train of thought. "Hold it right there." He tensed briefly before turning around very slowly, greeting his exasperated-looking girlfriend with a tentative smile.

"Hey, Sam. How are you?" He tried being cordial with her to lighten the mood, as the atmosphere felt a little too dark for his liking, but she only narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms. "Okay, dumb question. I can see that you're still angry."

"Gee, what was your first clue?" She tilted her head to the right and sized him up with glaring eyes. "Anyway, why are you down here? What are you up to?"

"I'm not up to anything. I just wanted to hang out with you and Tucker."

"I had flour all over me, Danny. It was in my hair, on my clothes, and all over my bathroom." She closed her eyes and heaved a sigh before opening them again, her once hard features now softening. "Tucker told me what you did, and honestly, when I compare our pranks, it looks like I'm the one who's getting the harsh end of the stick this time. Last year, it was Jazz."

"What? I went easy on everyone today!" Danny spread his arms outward in disbelief. "All of the pranks I pulled today were normal ones. Besides, a real prankster has no favorites. This is probably the only day of the year where I'm not completely biased."

Sam frowned at him. "So you're still going to pull more stupid pranks on us?"

"I have to, Sam. It's a tradition. I'm the King of pranks."

She looked down at the floor for a second before giving a brisk nod of her head. "Okay." Her lashes swept upward as her eyes darted back up to him. "You can continue on with your pranks."

His eyes lit up upon hearing her say that. "Wait, really?"

"Yes," she confirmed, smiling gently. "Really." He was just about to cheer, but then he saw Tucker slip into the room with the Fenton thermos in his hand. Before his mind could even register what was happening, he was sucked into the device. "You just have to figure a way out of there first."

"Oh, c'mon! Let me out!" he pleaded. The last position he wanted to be in at that moment was trapped and cramped inside of a thermos. "Sam, I'll clean your bathroom for you, and Tuck, I'll buy you some real donuts!"

"Don't buy it," he heard Tucker tell Sam. "It's just sweet talk."

"Trust me, I know," was her response. "Don't worry, Danny. You can still hang out with us, but we're keeping you in there for awhile. It's just better for everyone this way."

Danny huffed as a great feeling of exasperation swept through him. "You guys can't keep me in here forever, you know. I'll get out, and once I do, I'm doubling the pranks!" When he received no retort whatsoever, he groaned. "Guys? Hold on, I was joking! Hello?"

And that is how he found himself crammed inside of the Fenton thermos for the remainder of April Fools' Day.