lunabo

Danny sighed and put down his food. He didn’t know which arm she was complaining about, but both felt fine. He wasn’t tingling like he did when parts of his skin turned translucent and green—the border between his human and ghost forms degrading, and leaking into one another. 

He would know if he was, in that case. The sensation of ectoplasmic, unliving flesh superimposing itself over the breathing constructs that made up his human form was a distinctly uncomfortable one. It was quite the sight, and a markedly disturbing one, too—or so all his human companions told him. 

He understood why it would be strange to look at, in theory. But he didn’t experience the unease his friends and sister did when they saw him like that. He didn’t really get a feeling about it at all. 

He pulled his sleeves down, and stared at his left arm. 

It looked… normal. 

There wasn’t even any ghostly flesh this time! He was 0% see-through! His forearm was pale, boney, and entirely opaque, and the world was as it ought to be.  

He poked at the skin of his wrist, pressing a finger into the tendons and bones there. The veins running under his skin were slightly green in color, as they had been since the portal accident. It wasn’t something someone would notice unless they were looking for it, and if they did notice—well, who was to say he didn't have a health condition? 

Otherwise, the skin of his human form was exactly that: human. Perfectly as it should be. 

“I give,” groaned Danny. “What’s wrong with it this time? I can’t tell.”

Sam buried her fingers in her hair, and dropped her head onto the table. Beside him, Tucker looked up from his PDA. Tucker stared at Sam for a moment, before he twitched, and his eyes darted to Danny’s left hand as if magnetized.

Tucker’s dark skin turned pale, and he swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed violently, as if he was fighting the urge to be ill. Tucker pulled his eyes away from Danny, and looked at the spot beside Sam with longing. Danny had the strangest, most certain feeling Tucker was jealous of Sam, at that moment. He desperately wanted to be where she was. 

Notably, on the other side of their cafeteria table. 

Danny squinted at his wrist. He pulled the cuff of his sleeve back, and watched as the last of the flesh clinging to his arm sloughed off. It fell back into his sleeve and rolled down to rest below the crook of his elbow, before disintegrating into nothing. 

He still didn’t see what was wrong. 

He had started molting last night, but that wasn’t much to be concerned with. His flesh would come back in a day or two, as good as new. 

Slowly, Tucker reached forward to pinch Danny’s jacket sleeve, and guided his arm underneath the table. With his other hand, he grabbed Danny’s ear and pulled it until Danny was hunched low against the table, and staring deep into his eyes. 

Danny was deeply, intensely confused. 

“What?” he yelped. “What is it?”

Sam groaned loudly from across the table. 

“Danny,” Tucker practically hissed into his ear, “your flesh is meant to stay attached to your bones. We’re not meant to see your bones! Or your tendons! Or any other parts of your body that are meant to stay beneath your skin!”

Danny opened his mouth. He blinked, and looked at his arm again. 

This wasn’t the first time he’d… renewed his flesh since he’d died. He could always stop himself from doing it, and his ectoplasm would work doubletime on regenerating his missing flesh, but then his human form would start slowing down and rotting. The smell was dreadful, and just about impossible to cover up. 

Surely his friends knew that by now, right? He could’ve sworn he’d told them… 

But then again, Danny’s molts only happened once every other month—as far as he could tell—and the timing was off for this one. Usually he started losing flesh on Friday afternoons, not Thursday.

“I… uh. I see now,” he said, intelligently. “Hm.”

“Don’t ‘hm’ us,” Sam growled, fists slamming against the table. She had stood up to lean over the table, and in her eyes, he saw the definition of infuriation. She looked a moment away from launching herself over the table and choking him to death. “Fix it before someone wisens up and notices, you idiot!”

Shoving his hands deep in his pockets, Danny got to his feet. He backed away from the table, and subsequently, further away from Sam. 

“You know,” he said, shifting his weight on his heels, “I really have to go to the bathroom, all of a sudden.” Tucker and Sam looked at him like he was the bane of their mutual existences, and he chuckled. 

He loved his friends, even if they were way too worried about small things like these. It was funny how Sam thought this was an issue he could simply… will away, though. He couldn’t. 

Too bad he didn’t have any powers that could affect his appearance. Even if it was only a temporary change, something like that would be handy in circumstances like this. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about someone noticing his liminality spilling into his human form.

Illusion powers, he thought wonderingly. Man, I wish I had those.

Before Tucker or Sam could say a word, Danny slipped into the crowd and left the cafeteria. 

“Do you hear this guy?” Sam muttered to Danny’s left. Danny looked up as she leaned against his desk, backpack held loosely over her shoulder. “Dash is going to need that time, stupid jockey.”

Danny snorted, standing up from his seat. He stowed Frankenstein in his bookbag, and zipped it shut. Maybe it’ll be gone the next time I look inside. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said, rubbing at his jaw. His teeth had been rather sore today. “But I also wouldn’t be surprised if he made it somehow. The guy has better grades than me, and he does sports and extracurricular activities all week long.”

Dash wasn’t known for his spectacular work ethic, to the surprise of literally no one that met him. He was going the tried and true path of letting his sports career carry him into a decent college. It seemed to be working well for him so far, except for how his grades were going in an endless loop of ‘acceptable’ to ‘poor.’

Danny guessed Dash’s grades were back in the ‘poor’ category, once more. He looked forward to when Dash’s coach decided to come by and pound some fear into his blonde head. It was a spectacle the first time it happened, it was sure to be the same the next time.

Someone jostled his shoulder from behind. “He’s not the one skipping out on classes every week, though,” crowed Tucker. “Mr. Cool Guy, tryna collect up on all the detentions, yeah?”

He missed so much class time because ghosts attacked him during it. 

What else was he supposed to do? Let them hurt people?  Let them destroy the school? Do nothing but watch as his parents arrived to capture and bring the ghost back home to dissect, study, and subsequently kill them because they were clearly unequivocally, undeniably evil? 

He scoffed at the thought. 

Unless he wanted to wait for his parents to show up, it was up to him to put an end to the disruption—but it all came at the cost of his grades. 

Before he’d died, they’d been decent. More than decent, even! He was a Fenton—he practically came preinstalled with 5+ scientific intelligence and a stubborn need to see things through. Whatever struggles he’d encountered before the Ghost Portal, he’d slammed his head into them until they made sense. 

But he couldn’t do that, now. Not when most of that energy was going into figuring out how to function as a high school student and the ghostly Danny Phantom at the same time. 

His hands curled into fists. 

Couldn’t they see that?

“No need to nag me about it, Tuck,” he snapped, rounding on Tucker. “S’not like I can avoid most of it.”

Tucker’s ears darkened with blush, and he looked away. “I know,” he said. “That was—sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Sam slapped the back of Danny and Tucker’s heads, and they both jolted forwards. Danny grunted and gripped his skull, the impact jarring against his teeth. His overly sore, sensitive teeth. Had that much force really been necessary? 

When Danny looked up at Sam, she was twisting a strand of her dark hair around her finger. “You two need to knock it off,” she said coolly. 

Tucker slumped against Danny’s desk, and moaned dramatically. “Oh, my head! You wicked witch…” he cried. “I said sorry! What more do you want from me?”

“To have tact,” Sam said, purple eyes half-lidded. She pursed her lips, and met Tucker’s gaze. There was a light in them that meant bad things for Danny’s sanity. “Or, better yet, how about we talk about your horrid eating habits?”

Danny could see where this was going. He didn’t care for it. He wasn’t going to weather out another of Sam and Tucker’s food philosophy debates, not if he had a choice in the matter. Danny put on his backpack, and coughed loudly. 

The concerning light in Sam’s eyes had spread to Tucker’s, who’d begun staring at her like she had murdered his pet dog. His teal eyes shone madly. 

Sam would rather die than eat meat. Tucker would rather die than eat plants. Both of them were violently opposed to the other’s cause. 

He, unfortunately, was often caught in the crossfire. 

Danny’s teeth hurt. He wanted to go home. 

“I’m heading out,” he announced. “You guys have fun with your food argument… without me.”

The concerning light flooded out of Sam’s eyes. Tucker remained infected. 

“Are you sure?” Sam asked, face creased with concern. “We can still walk together. Tucker—” Sam jabbed her elbow into Tucker’s stomach, and he curled over. “Tucker will behave, promise.”

“No, I won’t,” Tucker muttered. “OW! Sam!”

Danny ran his tongue over the back of his teeth. No one specific spot hurt when he applied pressure on it—the ache was a uniform, steady thing across his entire mouth. It sort of felt like a bad cavity, but dispersed through all of his teeth instead of concentrated just around the cavity. All around, a distinctly uncomfortable sensation. 

Could ghosts even get cavities? What did that mean for him, being half of one?

Vlad would know, but there was no way Danny would ever bother asking him.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said absently. His tongue glided across the tips of his canines. They pricked the surface of it pleasantly. “I won’t be doing much talking this afternoon anyways. I just want to get an icepack and go to bed with it.”

Tucker gave Danny a perverse look, then flinched. He glanced back at Sam, confused, when he realized she hadn’t hit him yet. Then, Sam decided to plant her elbow back in his side. Tucker wheezed and fell to the floor, eyes squeezed shut. 

“Oh, c’mon, Sam!” he groaned. “He was asking for it!”

“No,” Sam said. “He wasn’t.” 

He really wasn’t, Danny agreed. He also felt that comments like those deserved repercussions, and kicked Tucker’s foot as he walked past. Tucker cried out in pain, and threw himself further onto the classroom floor. He cried out in actual pain a moment later, when he could only assume Sam kicked Tucker’s fallen body much harder than Danny had. 

“See you guys later,” he called back.

Only a few students remained in the room, most having left as soon as class was released. In the front of the classroom, Mr. Lancer was slowly cleaning off the whiteboards. He kept an amused eye on Sam, Tucker, and Danny as he did so. His tidy handwriting was scrawled across the boards, which he’d filled as the class discussed the previous two chapters of Frankenstein. 

As Danny walked past his desk, the man nodded at him. “Have a nice rest of your day, Mr. Fenton.”

Danny nodded. “You too, sir.”

His teeth clacked together, and briefly, he wondered if all his teeth had cracked at once. His hand flew up to inspect his jaw. Danny felt along it gingerly, then winced when even a light press sent a dull ache through his teeth. Message received, he thought sourly. Seriously, what was going on with him? 

“Mr. Fenton,” Mr. Lancer said, putting down his dry-eraser and giving Danny his full attention. “Are you feeling okay?”

Danny blinked. “Ah, yes, sir.” Mr. Lancer gave him a disbelieving look, the wrinkles on his forehead growing more pronounced. “I am,” Danny insisted. “It’s just—well—” he motioned at his mouth. “My teeth. They hurt.”

Mr. Lancer’s expression cleared. “I see. You are at that age, aren’t you,” he said to himself thoughtfully. “You might see about asking your parents to bring you to have them looked at. Dealing with wisdom teeth too late is never fun.” Mr. Lancer touched his own jaw with an expression that spoke of unpleasant recollections. 

Danny rubbed at his face. He hoped that wasn’t the case. If he was lucky, it would be a cavity and nothing more. Cavities filled him with dread as it was. Wisdom teeth, he feared, would make him feel ten times worse. 

“I will, sir. Thank you.”

“Of course,” Mr. Lancer said. “I’ll see you next week, Mr. Fenton. I quite think that you’ll enjoy this weekend's Frankenstein reading.”

I think not, Danny disagreed. 

Something about Frankenstein, aside from its antiquated writing style, left him with a growing sense of disquiet. After reading the first four chapters, Victor Frankenstein’s motives—and the results he was sure to promptly receive—hit a little too close to home. 

Victor Frankenstein, and his creation crafted from corpses. Jack and Maddie Fenton, and their half-dead son, unknowingly killed by their careless hands. He was a being not entirely unlike what Victor wanted to make—a boy trapped in a state between life and death. 

I guess that’s what happens when a Ghost Portal opens on you, he figured. Most dead people aren’t flooded with the energy of the ghost realm upon their deaths, so… 

Mentally, he shook aside his thoughts. As unusual as his death might be, that was beside the point. 

He and the being Victor was creating were not entirely alike, but still. Frankenstein had the signs of a story that ended in tragedy. With what similarities there were between the tales of himself and what he knew of Victor’s creation, he did not want to see where—or how—its story would conclude. 

“Goodbye, Mr. Lancer,” he said instead. 

Mr. Lancer laughed. “Yes, yes,” the man said, waving him off. “You may go.”

Danny nodded and left the classroom without a word. 

—

Danny was about halfway home when a stream of icy vapor slipped from his mouth. 

He slowed to a stop on the sidewalk, and stared blankly at the next street sign. “Why now?” Danny groaned, burying his face in his hands. He was so close to home. So close to his bed and a nice, relaxing nap. But, no—a ghost had to decide to make trouble. 

Not a day went by that Danny didn’t wonder if he was the unluckiest soul in the world. 

Danny strode over to the signpost and kicked it, perhaps a little bit too hard. His foot throbbed violently and he hissed, baring his teeth together—then he yelped at the sharp ache that seared through his mouth. Too much pressure, he scolded himself. Too much!

A pedestrian eyed him strangely, and he averted his gaze, blushing. 

He needed to go and deal with this ghost. 

Even if he really only wanted to rest, if he didn’t return the ghost to the ghost zone, then someone with less benevolent intentions would do it for him instead. The ghosts who invaded Amity might wear Danny down to his very last nerve, but he’d never wish them dead like his parents did. 

Except for Vlad, maybe. And Spectra and Walker. 

His parents could be incredibly oblivious when it came to anything but their work, and that included their relationship with Vlad. Even if the man flirted with his mother while Danny’s dad was in the same room, he and his mother would do nothing but laugh about it. 

Spectra and Walker were pretty terrible, too. Spectra preyed on the fears and insecurities of children, completely unabashed. Warden Walker’s purported brand of law enforcement, taken a degree or ten too far. 

All three of them would deserve what came to them, should they be captured, nonetheless Danny wasn’t anywhere near comfortable with any of them being killed. Especially if it was because of  what they were, rather than for everything they had done. 

But even then, who was he to act as their judge, jury, and executioner? And, more horrifying still, what happened to a dead ghost? The idea unsettled him. 

If someone couldn’t live safely in their afterlife, then what sort of afterlife was it?

Danny slipped into an alleyway between buildings. It was narrow and dark, and smelt strongly of wet pavement from a rainstorm that had passed by earlier in the day. 

The moment he was sure nobody could see him, he reached for his ghostly heart. His… core, so to speak. Though he’d tried before, he’d never been able to explain how it felt to his friends. Three months of being half-dead, and still, he remained wordless on the matter. 

Danny didn’t know if this core lay within him, as solid and real as his heart was, only that it was there. Perhaps it only became physical while he was a ghost, or maybe it always existed in him, simultaneously there and not until he shifted forms. All he knew, really, was that it radiated a deep chill that pervaded throughout his entire body. Not that he noticed at first, though. 

According to Sam and Tucker, he was a blessing in the summertime, which had confused him. Then Jazz shoved a thermometer in his mouth, and he discovered he had a naturally low body temperature. 

Danny pulled at his core and transformed. A ring of white light formed around his waist and separated in two, before sweeping over his body from head to toe. When the rings vanished back into the ether, or wherever they came from, he was wearing a black and white version of the hazmat suit he’d died in, and his hair had bled into a stark white. It was quite the opposite to his normally dark hair. 

It was a strange sensation, shifting from a living, breathing human body to a ghostly one. Who needed flesh, blood, and bones if you could have ectoplasm instead, right? In this form, he had no heartbeat. His skin was pale. His eyes were an eerie, ectoplasmic green. Danny jumped in place for a moment, shaking out his arms by his sides. 

So weird. 

Nothing about this felt wrong to him. It was perfectly natural, actually, and the more he thought about that, the more uneasy he became. 

Man, this was weird. Months of this and it was still so weird. But at the same time, everything was just as it should be. 

This is so weird. 

“Okay then,” Danny muttered, shaking his head. His jaw twinged from the movement, and he frowned. Hopefully he’d still be able to fight like this. He didn’t want to be knocked out of commission because a ghost socked him in the teeth. 

Either way, he would do his best to try and be quick. His bed was calling for him. 

It was time to find this ghost.

A cold breath shuddered out of him, sharp and clear on his tongue, and he stiffened. His ghost sense. That had felt—closer. Much closer than before. He glanced around, rising off his feet to drift over the ground. 

But from where?

“Phantom!” 

Danny barely managed to throw himself out of the way as a net hurtled towards him from above. The mesh crackled with electricity as it collided with the concrete, and he took another step back. His eyes narrowed as a large, hulking figure vaulted over the rooftop to land in the alleyway. Danny recognized the ghost immediately. 

He had no hair, not to human standards, anyways—instead, he had a mohawk made of green flames. His false body was made of interlocking metal plates, to protect the much smaller body inside that piloted it. Over his shoulder, he held what looked to be a net launcher. 

“Skulker,” Danny said, reluctantly. “Do we really have to do this again?”

Skulker grinned viciously. “Until I am unmade, you will always remain my prey, ghost child. I will skin you for your pelt, and display it for all to see!”

“You failed last time!” Danny snapped. “You’ll fail this time, too.”

Skulker laughed raucously, and it made Danny want to claw his ears out. A voracious, prickling ache built in his teeth, spreading like oil through his gums. He would rip through Skulker’s metal body, reach inside to take the smaller ghost into his claws… bleeding away the ceaseless ache from his teeth till Skulker’s ectoplasm flooded his mouth like fresh blood—

Would that relieve his pain? Or would it make it worse? Did it even matter?

He wanted—needed to make it—

No. Wait. Danny shook his head. No, no, no, that’s not me, he thought. It’s not. Skulker’s cackling filled the cramped alleyway, echoing and echoing, until Danny’s head felt stuffed with cotton. He couldn’t hear himself think.  Where did those thoughts come from? What was happening to him? 

Finally, Skulker stopped laughing. 

“I welcome the challenge!” Skulker exclaimed, hefting his gun up on his shoulder. “Now, come and meet your doom!”

I don’t want to fight you, he wanted to cry. I don’t! 

If even the slightest of movements made him wince, he’d be far better off in his bed than fighting ghosts, wouldn’t he? 

Yet here he was, because he couldn’t trust anyone to do his job without lives being lost. Between the people with the ability to stop ghost attacks, not one of them bothered to wonder whether or not the ghosts should really be killed for their actions—not one of them was capable of being kind! 

Ancients, it all made Danny want to scream. 

(And so he did.)

A white-hot livewire of pain tore through his face and neck, and Danny nearly fell out of the air. It burrowed claws into the muscles of his back, and spilled slowly down his spine. A scream spilled from his mouth before he could even contemplate muffling it, and he crumpled inwards. 

This—this felt like the—the portal. It was electric, furious, and utterly ceaseless in its mission to drown him in agony. His nails dug into his arms, strangely sharp through his gloves, and he trembled until the worst of it passed. He bit his lip to keep himself quiet. 

Gradually, the livewire slowed from a rushing river to a wandering creek.

His suffering waned. 

Where—where had that come from? He’d been fine, earlier. Decent. Acceptable. The pain had been irritating, but tolerable. A mild discomfort, if anything at all. But now, his core was sluggish with an exhaustion that had appeared as if from nowhere. Even doing nothing but hovering there, his eyes were heavy. Unconsciousness felt only a blink away. 

Had he always been this tired? 

Danny forced his jaw loose. He’d been clenching it, though not nearly hard enough to result in what had just happened. Danny would wonder about it, but he wasn’t alone. 

I have to keep them safe. 

“I won’t… let you,” he rasped. 

Skulker watched Danny with a strange expression on his face, as Danny forced himself to straighten in the air. “Ghost child,” Skulker began, lowering his net gun to a more neutral position. 

Before Skulker could do anything, Danny fired an ecto-ray at his face. He wasn’t surprised when Skulker propelled himself out of the way with the thrusters in his boots. What did startle him was the way his hands seized with a surge of volatile ectoplasm, and his gloves seemed to glow, suctioning into his skin. 

It hurt, of course. The ectoplasm spread like lava through his veins, a wildfire across the plains of his skin. But it wasn’t anything compared to the torment—dimmed as it was—still tearing through his body. 

Before his eyes, his gloves were melding into his skin. Danny could feel the two merging, twisting into one till his hands were just as white as his gloves had once been. He could see the distinct shape of each fingertip, where the thickness of the glove would’ve once obscured them. The tops of his fingers were distinctly claw-shaped. 

He flexed his hands, core shivering. What… was this?

“Phantom,” Skulker said. “Why are you here?” 

“Because you’re here,” Danny spat, looking up at Skulker. “And I need to keep my home safe. Where else would I be?”

Something resembling bashfulness flitted across Skulker’s face, and he shook his head. “That’s—not what I meant,” he said. “Why are you here, now of all times? You’re Settling. You should be in your lair, not in the mortal realm.”

Danny’s vision was hazy. He wasn’t sure when it had gotten that way. Fruitlessly, he rubbed his eyes. His eyelids felt strange under his rubbery fingertips, far smoother than he was used to them being. 

Settling? My lair? “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. It didn’t seem like Skulker wanted to fight anymore. The ghost actually looked concerned, which was unlike himself. “If we’re done now, I’d like to go home.”

“Which one?” Skulker pressed. “The home of the human you’re overshadowing, or your lair?”

Was that what most of the ghosts thought he was doing? Possessing the body of a human for his own sick amusement? “I’m not overshadowing anything, Skulker. This is my body. My home is my home. I am Danny Fenton.”

Skulker stared at him for a moment. 

“How long ago was it?” he asked. At Danny’s blank look, Skulker shook his head. His solid green eyes, though without a pupil or iris, flickered with a disturbed light. “It hasn’t even been a year, has it? And yet, we’re all… Ancients.”

Danny opened his mouth to speak, when something in him throbbed. Struck with a heavy wave of vertigo, he wavered in the air. This time, he failed to lift himself back up in time, and grunted as his knees collided with the ground. A bone-deep cold came over him and rippled outward from his core, and he shuddered, suddenly feeling as naked as the day he was born.

He was… cold. More than that, the cold was bothering him. 

He hadn’t felt like this since he’d died. 

The pain that had spread across his face and neck sparked with vigor once more, and he groaned. Not again. 

“Do you know what a Settling is, Phantom?”

Danny pressed his face into his legs. Why was Skulker asking that right now? Did Danny look like he would care? Did he not seem even slightly preoccupied at the moment? 

“No, I don’t,” he answered, voice muffled. Danny's gaze rose for a moment, and he jolted upright at seeing Skulker standing before him. Reaching out toward him. “Keep back!” he hissed, dragging himself back by his hands. “Don’t. Don’t touch me.”

His teeth felt wrong in his mouth. None of them had changed shape, beyond the slight sharpness his canines underwent in ghost form. Yet somehow… there was a difference. Something wasn’t as it should be. 

He touched his jaw lightly, brow furrowed. 

“It’s only going to get more painful, ghost child,” Skulker whispered. “Most ghost your stage remain in the Ghost Realm until they’ve gained more strength, and for good reason. Your core is reaching for ectoplasm it cannot find, so it has begun to take from itself instead. From you. If you stay here, your Settling will strip you bare.”

The more Skulker mentioned this Settling thing, the more curious Danny became about it. It sounded important. Life changing, even. It made it all the stranger that he hadn’t heard about it before, not from any of the ghosts he had encountered and fought. 

“You said that it’ll ‘strip you bare,’” Danny stated. “Meaning… I won’t die from it?”

Skulker crouched, and set his net launcher beside him on the ground. Danny eyed him warily as he shook with cold. “No. But it will hurt and take weeks to recover from,” he answered, frowning. “Or months, if you’re particularly unlucky. You’ll need that strength, if you want to continue defending this paltry town. If you stay here, you will be crippled until then.”

Something in Danny shrieked in outrage at that. A growl rumbled in his chest. 

While Amity would still be defended if he were forced to take an extended absence, the possibility for death or injury during that period was… uncomfortably high. His parents were clumsy, but competent—at least when it came to ghost-hunting. 

He didn’t want them to be hurt if a ghost-hunt went wrong. He didn’t want a ghost to die because his parents killed them. 

Danny’s decision had already been made for him, he realized. Deep down, in the part of him that was more Phantom than Danny Fenton, he was certain that his Settling had scarcely just begun. There was more to come, and if he stayed here? 

It would be the most agonizing thing he’d ever experienced—excluding his death, of course. Nothing beats having the energies of the Ghost Realm surge into your fragile human body and being electrocuted at the same time. 

Oh. And his parents would most definitely discover that he was Danny Phantom. 

There was that, too. 

Danny sucked in a sharp breath, and forced himself up to his feet. He leaned against the wall of the alleyway for a moment, feeling lightheaded. He breathed deeply through it. If that livewire of suffering from earlier came back fully, set his neck, shoulders, back—all of him, really—entirely ablaze with pain, he wouldn’t be able to pick himself back up. 

If he wanted to escape from the human realm, on his terms, he had to do it now. 

Danny drifted into the room proper, and touched down in front of the portal. He wished he could avoid this, but there was no other choice. Danny was certain of this now, after so many hours spent defeating the ghosts that spilled through it. 

How could Danny ensure its destruction, and leave through it at the same time? 

Was that even possible?

If he destroyed the portal, he would be stranding himself in the Human Realm. His only hopes of retreating to the plane meant for ghosts would be reliant on finding himself a natural portal.  With Danny’s luck, a new one wouldn’t form near him. Or, alternatively, he could wait until his parents reconstructed the portal, making the act of destroying it entirely useless. 

Destroying it from the other side was equally as unlikely, if only because the only thing on the other side—in the Ghost Zone—was the portal itself. Not the machinery that breathed life into the Fenton Ghost Portal. Not to mention, Danny's knowledge on how to demolish ghost portals was unsurprisingly sparse, especially with the fuel this one was receiving from the Human Realm. Unless he was able to permanently siphon away the energy, or take away the Realm’s ability to create a portal that opened to this location, he was—yet again—out of luck. 

His parents knew just as well as him that this was the easiest way to get in and out of the Ghost Zone. If they came in here and found him gone—not in his room, not in the laboratory, nowhere to be found—there were only a few possibilities. 

Either he was in the Ghost Zone, or frantically scouring Amity Park for a naturally generated ghost portal. The second option became exponentially more likely if the portal was reduced to a pile of broken machinery. 

His core twisted with unease, and he exhaled sharply. 

It wasn’t safe to leave the portal active, not with his parents acting so vengefully. They would come after Danny till not a speck of his ectoplasm remained, and his soul was finally at rest. Leaving the portal open would only give them a better chance of doing so. 

Danny glanced back at the entryway. The staircase was untouched by the phosphorescent green glow that illuminated the rest of the laboratory, drenched in a thick layer of shadows. Thankfully, it was empty. Ominous, but empty. 

It wouldn’t remain that way for long. Time was running out. 

Nonetheless, this was his easiest method of escape. 

It was also one that would provide Danny’s parents with the easiest method of coming after him. It’s not like I don’t know ghosts that could lend me a hand, he reasoned. Poindexter’s Lair was connected to Amity High. As clueless as Danny was about Lairs, he’d be surprised if Poindextor’s didn’t have a doorway into the Zone. 

So much of their life’s work is in here, his mind whispered. 

Almost against his will, his eyes found their way to the terminals and servers against the wall. The crates of weapons behind a wall, in a storage room to the side. Their materials, their achievements, their everything. 

In the past fourteen years, they’d invested more time and energy into the family business than they did into himself and Jazz. It was a bitter thought, and one he had often. This time, however, he did not shove it aside.

He swallowed sharply, ectoplasm coalescing around his fist. It’d be the work of a minute to ruin it all. Mom and Dad would eventually recover, of that he was certain, but it would take time. They would be forced to pick between pursuing him, and recovering their livelihoods. In a way, they’d be getting what they deserved. 

A single Wail, and it’d all come crashing down. Danny looked up at the ceiling, envisioning the house above. He’d be lucky if the rest of the building survived the assault. 

Was this really his only option? 

Above, the front door of the house slid open on silent hinges. There were two—no, three—pairs of footsteps. Two were especially loud. One was almost silent. Danny stilled and his ears twitched, folding back against his head nervously. 

There was his father, whose bulk and almost too boundless enthusiasm rendered him useless at espionage, and his sister, who was crashing about the house far louder than she typically did. With the noise Jazz and their dad made combined together, Danny had no issue at tracking their progression across the house. He had a feeling Jazz wasn’t being any louder because their mom would flip out, otherwise. He couldn’t help but smile at Jazz’s thoughtfulness. 

And then, there was his mother. Though his hearing had improved significantly since the accident, Mom barely made a sound as she crept closer to the basement. She was practically a ghost, but he was certain she was there. Mom was never far from Dad, anyways. 

Danny extinguished the ectoplasm around his hands, and looked back at the portal. Its siren call turned pleading, and the spiral of the breach, though once placid, became twisted and frantic. The ectoplasm swirled inwards in jagged waves, reaching towards salvation, yearning for safety. 

It was a deliverance that would never come. 

He felt its terror as if it were his own, and perhaps it was. Maybe he was imagining things, putting thoughts and fears into something that didn’t have an identity, but… in that moment, he didn’t care. The fearful drumbeat of his heart was there, regardless of who it came from. Same with the trembling that had overtook his hands. 

“What other choice is there?” Danny choked out, transfixed by the rippling green depths of the ghost portal. “What other option do I have?”

The portal pulsated in time with Danny’s pounding heart. He breathed in deeply, shudderingly, in this final moment of silence. The eye of the storm, as it were. Danny almost wanted to chuckle at the thought, but he couldn’t bear to break apart the quiet. The sound caught in his throat, and was swallowed just as quickly. 

The whirling vortex of the portal slowed, stripped of its overwhelming dread. 

Mom, Dad, and Jazz’s footsteps drew to a stop in front of the basement door. 

There is no other choice. 

“There is none,” he said. 

The doorknob turned, and Danny reached for the cold. He let it fill him to the brim, till he was shaking with power rather than terror, and his eyes glazed over icy blue. 

Slowly, Dad opened the door. He flinched back when he noticed Danny standing there at the far end of the room, at the base of the Ghost Portal. He must’ve looked a sight, silhouetted by the suddenly baleful ambience of the portal and visibly radiating an aura of pure cold. Dad’s finger hovered over the trigger of the ecto-gun at his side. 

“Danny?” Dad whispered to himself, eyes wide. Mom pushed past Dad, gun sights held up. He held her shoulder before she could make her way further down the staircase. “Maddie, wait a moment. Surely we can—“

Mom ripped out of Dad’s grasp with a furious snarl. Her eyes were burning with tears. Dad backed away as much as he could on a tiny staircase, holding his hands up. All combined, Mom looked an inch away from killing someone. Me, he thought, her son. Am I really so different as a ghost, as I was when I was fully alive? 

“No! That’s not Danny—it’s not! It can’t be! I won’t allow that abomination to—“

Abomination. 

The word drove a dagger of pain through his heart, and he only barely managed to control his expression. That’s enough of that.  Danny thrust his hands out at the door. Ice flooded out of his open palms and obstructed the staircase with an almighty groan. It pushed up the stairway into the laboratory-basement, and forced his parents to scurry backwards. 

“Phantom!” Mom screamed.

“Danny, no!” Dad shouted. “Wait!”

Danny turned away once more to face the portal. That would hold them for a little while, at the very least. It’d give him enough time to do what had to be done. Mom had taken no time at all to begin drowning his barrier in a volley of corrosive ectoplasmic bullets. 

Ectoplasm spilled out from his core, surging into his throat, and he held. 

He could only hope using his Ghostly Wail wouldn’t hit him as hard as it did last time. He’d built up endurance since using it last, but it still knocked him for a loop. Over the last year, it was becoming increasingly obvious to him that in order to protect the Zone, Amity Park, and the people and ghosts he was growing to care about, he would do whatever had to be done. 

Jazz hadn’t spoken a word for him, since she’d entered the house. If only he’d told her how his hearing was, while he was in his ghost form. He could only hope she would forgive him for this. The Fenton house was sturdy, and Jazz was the smartest of all of them, so he was confident she would come out unscathed. 

Perhaps, if he was lucky, he could speak to her one last time before he escaped to the Ghost Zone. Somehow. He’d never admit it otherwise, but he really wanted his big sister, right now. A hug sounded nice. 

I’m sorry, he thought.

A thick line split across the iceberg. The energy building up within him lurched into his mouth, thrashing against his teeth. 

I’m so sorry. 

A ghostly Wail tore from his mouth, and slammed against the ghost portal in a rush of screaming, destructive ectoplasm. The air itself seemed to shudder, trembling under the force of the attack. A chunk of ceiling fell to the ground, and cracks spidered down and into the walls below. More looked to be soon to follow. 

The metal casing of the ghost portal collapsed in on itself, and his Wail faltered. The breach fell to its figurative knees, and—for a brief moment—he felt its [loss/absence/agony] like a jagged spear through his lungs. Where the frame once stood, the portal was nothing but dying wisps. It was—white-hot. Torturous. Painful. 

There were far too little synonyms in the world to describe just how much it hurt, nor enough time to find a proper one. 

The pain was a steadily increasing thing, vibrating across his bones, churning through his bloodstream, throwing his heart into a frantic, petrified tempo. His head spun, and spun, and spun. Before he could be rendered utterly comatose by it all, he shoved it into something more useful.

Spinning to face the wider lab, he let out a bloodcurling howl. Under the weight of his Wail, the room crumbled. Anything not anchored to the floor rocketed back, leaving behind indentations into the walls with a loud crash. Glass shattered. Metal warped. The more permanent floor fixtures were removed from their places, shearing off the ground in terrible metal shrieks. 

For a place he’d known for his entire life, it was a terrible sight.

He took a few steps toward the storage room, forcing the span of his Wail to narrow and break down the wall. The wall broke in, and the debris was tossed violently back. The ceiling overhead fell in more. In his periphery, the laboratory had been turned into a sea of sparking machines, broken appliances, and rubble. 

He only closed his mouth when the weapons and materials within were ruined beyond repair. 

Danny was shaking. The room was, too. No, not shaking, not exactly. Trembling. The roof had begun falling in properly, now. The lab-basement was well and truly ruined. 

There was no going back, now. This bridge had been more than burnt—he’d practically dropped a nuke on it. 

His eyes landed on the stairwell, and a wave of guilt washed through him. He swallowed, throat feeling dry. He couldn’t see the iceberg anymore. The stairway had collapsed, leaving behind a pile of rubble and billowing dust. It concealed the iceberg almost entirely, except for a few glimpses of it between chunks. There was no blood, as far as he could see. He could only hope his sister was alright. 

Dizziness swept over him, and he stumbled back, groaning. 

His head…! Without his Wailing, there was nothing to distract him from the pain any longer. It was rushing back, pouring into his skull, and descending into the rest of his body like a waterfall. The pain was crawling into his core, and wrapping around it at the same time. Squeezing and squeezing and crushing it, but swelling inside and making it grow, too!

There was so much of it. Too much.

His foot caught on a big piece of ceiling, and he fell backwards. He barely noticed landing on his rear. His eyes were blurry. 

“What..?” he groaned, curling into himself. It wasn’t solely hurt and pain choking him, but an overwhelm of energy. A vast, vast energy. It was spilling into him from—from somewhere, but he was but a small pond compared to whatever veritable Ocean it was coming from. 

A water bottle versus a pool, times a thousand, he thought, only a bit hysterically. 

Was this from the portal? Was all this pain not just backlash from breaking the portal, but from the supposed energy of the portal going into him?

That—made sense, in a way. 

But why him?

Because you made the portal, you dimwit. You died in it, and came back alive in it, said his mind. 

Then why doesn’t this… energy go back to the Zone, then? he snapped at himself. I am not an energy receptacle! 

A darkness washed across his vision, and his eyes almost rolled back in his head. He gritted his teeth, pressing his forehead hard into his knees. There was something pushing up against the inside of his skull. It wasn’t his brain, but it sure felt like his brain was expanding to become too large to fit his head. 

“Stop,” he moaned, gripping his head. “No—no more. No!”

It didn’t stop. 

The energy pushed into him, swelling and swelling until it was almost too much, and he knew he would genuinely explode if it built anymore. 

Then, a strange lightness spread over him. He could breathe, if only for a moment. 

The energy stilled, hovering and buzzing—almost like a wasp, he thought dazedly. One of those really dangerous, angry ones. 

Contemplative. Considering. 

To sting, or not to sting?

Sting. 

It all rushed inwards, and he screamed. Before, the flood was dripping from the tap, because this—this was a proper tsunami. Into his brain, into his eyes, his heart, and most importantly, his core. 

Darkness was encroaching on the corners of his vision. He felt sick. His body was being crushed from the inside-out, by millions of weights, and he was being pushed out of his skin. He was going to pass out soon. 

When he woke up, would he still be alive? 

Would his parents have found him, passed out in their basement? 

His hand moved, and his eyes flickered open. When had he closed them? It was hard to keep them open, like this. His fingers were stretching, curling without his permission. They moved strangely, as if puppeteered by sticks and strings, or a person unused to manipulating their own body. Panic dashed through him, and died as quickly, extinguished by an outside force. 

Who are… he thought, weakly. He didn’t want to pass out now, but the darkness was nearby. His eyes were slumping, again. Don’t… don’t… MINE. 

Don’t worry. We will bring you home.

He blinked, hard. His limbs jerked, out of his control. His toes curled, his arms pushed his body up, and his legs pressed up underneath him. He rose on steady feet. He felt anything but. He couldn’t fight against this, even if he wanted to. 

His mind was… was… 

Rest, Danny Phantom. Exhaustion and sickness bore down on him. His mind was slow, as if it were dragging through sludge. He hurt. 

“Yo—you’ll,” he gasped, his voice a barely audible rasp, “I’ll be… o-okay?”

Yes. Sleep, the voice said. Recover. Knowledge will come later, when you are well. 

Danny struggled to stay awake for just a moment longer, but his eyes were too heavy to open. He didn’t want to sleep. He didn’t want to pass out. Unconsciousness was a pit of unfathomable shadows below him. He didn’t want to enter it. 

He wanted…

Sleep, they pressed.