“Connor? Jason? Samuel?”

The tiny clone shook his head as he rejected the suggested names Liam read out of the book they’d taken from the library below their hiding place.

Elle let out a sigh and snatched the book out of Liam’s hands.

“Hey.”

Elle tossed the book aside.

“This isn’t working. Is this really how Danny and Jazz helped you find your name?”

Liam gave a shrug.

“That’s what they started with, but I guess it really came from a news article.”

“News article?”

“Uh yeah it was mixed in with the name books Jazz brought and it had the name the town called Danny before he told them to call him Phantom. So, I may have used that as inspiration.”

Elle let out an exacerbated groan.

“So, the books weren’t even a part of it?”

Liam shrank back with a guilty look.

The tiny clone flew down and placed a hand on his cheek with a chirp to comfort him.

Liam relaxed a bit and leaned into the tiny caress.

“Yeah, we can take a break. It’s your name, you can take as much time as you want.”

Elle stood up from her position on the floor.

“Maybe getting out and taking a walk will help.”

Liam frowned in worry.

“But it’s the middle of the day. What if someone sees us?”

“So? We both look entirely human, and Tiny is small enough to go unnoticed. If you keep your hood up we’ll just look like two teenagers hanging out on the weekend.”

Tiny nodded in agreement.

Liam still didn’t seem convinced but after being outnumbered he agreed, and they headed out.

-

It had taken a while to get fully out of the GiW facility.

Thankfully humans, even humans who studied and hunted ghosts, often forgot that the same rules of the living world didn’t apply to ghosts.

It had just been a matter of hiding himself in the floor under the assistance scientist as they scanned her before using her body to get past the ghost shield and making a break for it. The spilled ecto dejecto on her clothes was able to hide his ecto signature long enough for him to escape.

After getting out he wasn’t really sure what to do.

Fa… Master. He wasn’t allowed to call him father unless the others were around. Master would not be happy with him if he returned to the mansion and the mission to capture Prime Daniel wasn’t completed.

The problem was he didn’t know how long he’d been in the GiW facility. He didn’t even remember being taken there. Just sensations.

The last clear memory he had was…

“We’ve been walking around for a half hour, maybe we should head back now?”

That was Prime Daniel’s voice.

“Ugh, come on nothing’s going to happen.”

That was Danielle.

This was the set up for him to attack.

Danielle would bring him outside and he would attack. Then they would…

It didn’t matter. He had to do this. Couldn’t fail. If he did then Master would stop using him and focus on the other clones.

Something panged harshly at the thought of Master harming the two clones made after him the way he had done to him. They still believed they were loved the same as Danielle and for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to shatter that illusion for them.

He was getting sidetracked. They were only a block away from turning a corner and him possibly losing sight of them.

He needed to attack now.

-

Liam was the first to sense the approaching ghost first, tensing and looking around just as Elle and Tiny registered their own ghost senses.

A loud roar came from above and all three clones scattered as their attacker landed where they had been only a few seconds before.

Elle recovered quickly, having more experience than her brothers. She got ready to transform and grab her brothers to get out of there, but stopped at seeing who was attacking.

A horrible pit of guilt plummeted in her gut as she stared at another brother she’d thought lost. A brother that she had overestimated and encouraged Danny to blast point blank.

The blasts that had…

Her mind recoiled at the memory on instinct just as it had for the near year since the incident.

Her attention was brought back to the situation when she saw the new clone turn and bring a fist up to strike Liam.

NO!

She flew faster than she thought possible and put up a shield before the fist came down.

“Stop!”

Unfortunately, the larger clone didn’t listen to her and continued to pound on the shield.

Thankfully, Liam had snapped out of his shock and had transformed to help Elle keep up the shield.

“That’s one of our brother’s. Why is he attacking us?”

“I don’t know.”

Another strike to the shield had them both stumbling back. When it came to raw strength this clone definitely had them outmatched.

Two on one would probably even the odds but neither were in the mood to actually fight him.

Wait two? Where was…

“STOP!”

Everyone froze and turned to the new voice.

It had been Tiny. However, he wasn’t very tiny at the moment, instead he was nearly to his full size and not looking very good.

Some of his features were wispy and see-through while others drooped and shifted like puddy.

“Tiny!”

Elle and Liam started for him but the larger clone was closer and got to him first.

Tiny shrank back down and curled up in the massive hands cradling him.

The large clone looked down at him worriedly.

“Tiny why would you do that? You know growing makes you less stable.”

Tiny let out a trill and the large clone’s eyes widened.

“Siblings?”

He looked over to Liam.

“You’re not Prime Daniel?”

Liam hunched his shoulders and pulled his hood down even more over his face, not sure how to react to another clone mistaking him for Danny.

Elle shook her head.

“No, this is Liam. He’s our brother. He was made after me.”

A look of horror and guilt crossed his face.

“Oh, Liam… I thought… I’m so sorry.”

Liam shrugged.

“It’s ok. Not the first time someone mistook me for Danny.”

The large clone shook his head.

“That still doesn’t make it ok. I’m still sorry.”

Liam gave a small smile and nodded showing he still forgave him.

The large clone nodded back, then looked thoughtful.

“If you were made after Danielle does that mean the mission to capture Prime Daniel was a success? Are we supposed to return to Father now?”

“NO!”

The large clone startled at the sudden shout from all three of his siblings.

Tiny, now stabilized back in his small form floated up and explained in hums and trills the horrors they each experienced under Vlad, shattering any illusion of him being the loving father he had tricked them into believing he was.

Elle stepped forward.

“He hurt us.”

Her eyes lingered on the many stitches and scars lining the larger clones body.

“And he hurt you too, didn’t he?”

The large clone ran his fingers over one of the scars.

“Yeah, he did…”

Tears welled up in Elle’s eyes.

“I didn’t know. You were unstable and being hurt and I…”

She was cut off by another stream of mist coming from her mouth.

Everyone looked up to see a streak of blue being chased by a streak of black and white, identified as the Box Ghost being chased by Danny.

Danny sucked the Box Ghost into the thermos and looked down at them.

He flew down to great them but before anyone could exchange any words, Elle, Liam and Tiny found themselves being pulled behind the large clone.

A glare was directed at Danny with teeth bared and fingertips extending into claws.

“What?”

Researcher S sighed as she looked down at her latest experiment. Not that long ago the Fentons had retracted their support for the GiW meaning all access to their work was cut off.

Apparently even the doofus that was Jack was able to catch on that their work relationship was not mutually beneficial after so many times of being taken advantage of.

Thankfully the GiW had hacked the Fenton’s computers a few weeks ago and found some valuable information that would help them keep the edge on being the top ghost hunters in Amity.  

Ecto dejecto.

A stupid name for such a promising substance. If the notes the GiW had stolen from the Fentons were true, then this compound could weaken a ghost to the point of full destabilization, if made potent enough.

True the files they had were a little out of date, coming from before any actual tests had been run, but given the knowledge of how ectoplasm worked it was theoretically sound.

Other GiW researchers had also tested on just plain ectoplasm and results of the samples disappearing overnight, presumably having boiled away to nothing, were promising.

Researcher S placed her materials next to the large vat of ectoplasm used for experiments.

It had come from a large puddle on a back street of Amity Park, found not that long after a reported fight involving Phantom.

The sample was so large it easily could have been the remains of a fully destabilized ghost and then some. Way more then they initially believe considering they’d used at least a liter of the stuff and the volume had yet to go down significantly. They all had to wonder what exactly Phantom was fighting since he rarely, if ever, went far enough to actually destabilize his opponents.

Not that it really mattered. If Phantom had really destroyed the ghost he’d been fighting, then that was one less monster in the world.

Right now, she had to focus on her work.

She locked eyes with her coleeg, Researcher V, across the worktable and they started to set things up.

The higher ups had ordered her team to create a bullet with enough ecto dejecto to destabilize a ghost in one shot, which would not be easy.

Creating a highly concentrated form of the ecto dejecto required a lot of pressure and precise temperature control. Which is why it didn’t come as much of a surprise when it exploded, splattering the workspace in the substance.

Researcher S sighed and went to find the decontamination kit but stopped when she saw something odd happening to the vat of ectoplasm.

It had become coated in the splattered ecto dejecto and as the two substances mixed it shuttered. It then seemed to jump out of the container and splatter itself over the worktable.

Both researchers stumbled back catching the attention of other teams in the lab.

What happened next was so far out of the realm of expectation that the scientists could only stare in wide eyed shock as the ectoplasm started to absorb the mess beneath it. However, instead of bubbling away into nothing as they assumed the other samples had it seemed to solidify and stabilize.

The realization that the ectoplasm was reconstructing itself back into a ghost only barely registered when things took another unexpected turn.

Instead of just simply solidifying into a human shaped mass of solid ectoplasm, as all ecto researchers believed ghosts to be, it seemed to form layers. First was a translucent glowing, crystal like structure that had never been observed before. Then what appeared to be a full skeleton only with the bones being black and glowing. Then came the layer of solid ectoplasm that was now clear to be only the surface of the ghost’s form and finally a skin like membrane that held it all together and gave the ghost its appearance.

And its appearance was intimidating.

Reaching at least six feet tall with muscles to match, it had gray skin with a bluish tint and wore what appeared to be the tattered remains of a hazmat suit around it’s waist as shorts.

It glared down at the scientists with intense glowing green eyes, seeming to pick out the one in charge with ease.

It leaned down towards Researcher S and snarled with teeth just on the wrong side of too sharp.

“You just made a big mistake.”

With that it vanished, and chaos exploded as the base’s lockdown sirens started blaring. However, despite a thorough investigation and many scans for overshadowing it was not able to be found.

Some time later there was a meeting for the full researcher team where it was ordered that all research on ecto dejecto was to be halted and any information already gathered would be deleted.

Researcher S understood this. If any ghosts or ghost sympathizer groups got their hands on the formula, they’d be a much greater threat then they already were.

Yet she couldn’t get that image of the ghost reforming out of her head. Its insides had been complex, skeletal structure almost human. That flew in the face of everything ever known about ghosts.

They were supposed to be simple monsters running of instinct and whatever dying thought from the human that had imprinted on the ectoplasm. Mindless monsters they could fight and destroy for the continued safety of humanity.

But if in fact that assumption was wrong, and ghosts were indeed more complex than that… Then that meant it was possible that their behavior could be more complex as well.

She suppressed a shiver at the idea of what it would mean if ghosts could think and plan, possibly even work together…

Kindred Spirits happens with Perfect Clone aware in his pod. x

GiW find and gather up the ectoplasm from the melted Franken Clone.

Vlad dumps the ectoplasm from melted Tiny Clone into the Ghost Zone. x

Destabilized happens

Vlad remakes Perfect Clone, now stable and unable to resist any order Vlad gives him. Vlad orders Perfect Clone to kill Dani, but Perfect Clone is able to break the control Vlad had over him before he can hurt her. This leads to Danny, Dani, and Perfect Clone fighting Vlad, but Perfect Clone is separated from Danny and Dani and is unable to be found. x

Perfect Clone is found by an adult, mistaken for Danny skipping school and taken to Casper. There he runs into Sam and Tucker while Danny is out fighting a ghost. They confront him and the truth comes out. They tell Danny and Perfect Clone is surprised at how happy Danny is to see him alive. x

Perfect Clone changes his name to Liam. x

Liam is reunited with Dani, now called Elle, and lives on the streets with her. x

Liam offers to cover for Danny at school while he’s ghost fighting and runs into Wes who gets suspicious. He also encounters Sidney Poindexter which leads to Danny’s first truce that allows a ghost free access to the living world. x

Tiny Clone eventually reforms in the Ghost Zone and finds his way to the Fenton portal. x

While avoiding Danny’s parents Tiny Clone hides in Jazz’s room and scares her, drawing Danny’s attention. He tries to run but is caught by Danny, who reassures him that he’s safe. x

Tiny is reunited with Elle and Liam. x

Tiny changes his name to Kenny.

During an experiment with a stolen ecto dejecto formula the melted ectoplasm from Franken Clone is covered, causing him to reform.

After escaping the GiW base, Franken Clone sees Elle and Liam together and mistakes it as the set up for Vlad’s plan for him to attack. He is stopped by Elle and Kenny and the situation is explained to him.

Franken Clone changes his name to David.

David finds a place for them to live in the Green Light/Neon district and the clones move in.

Danny asks Sam and Tucker to help him bring back Skeleton Clone, but they’re only able to retrieve a small amount of ectoplasm. It’s not enough to resurrect Skeleton Clone on its own, so they make a plan to steal a clone pod from Vlad.

Danny, Sam, and Tucker steal a clone pod from Vlad without Vlad, or the clones knowing and use it to bring Skeleton Clone back.

Danny surprises the other clones with Skeleton Clone, who changes his name to Jack (Jax to avoid confusion)

A video of someone finding Vlad’s Colorado lab and early cloning notes goes viral and people start to think it’s connected to Phantom.

Elle and Liam get seen in human form wandering around the back alleys of the city and have to use their ghost powers to escape the police and social workers looking for them, creating an urban legend.

Some people see Liam in ghost form and there are a few rumors but more just think he’s Danny with a hood.

Maddie notices Jazz taking the ecto contaminated food out of the fridge and driving off with it one night and follows her. She sees Jazz meeting with Liam and spies on them until Liam notices her and bolts. Maddie tries to chase him, but he disappears down a dead-end alley and she doesn’t know what happened.

Maddie tries to confront Jazz on what happened and asks about Liam but Jazz refuses to tell her anything.

Kenny is seen on camera saving a kid in a ghost fight and it makes the news, drawing Vlad’s attention to the clones.

Vlad’s first attempt at kidnapping one of the clones (probably Kenny) in order to make Danny/Elle/Liam cooperate with him fails, but does reveal the existence of the clones to the general public.

David discovers his Echo power while confronting Vlad.

While out ghost hunting Jack sees Elle and Liam running from Spectra. Vlad (as Plasmius) then shows up and reveals Spectra to be a ghost. After keeping the kids safe from Bertrand, Jack notices that Plasmius does the same replacing swears with desserts as Vlad does and combined with Spectra showing that ghosts can disguise themselves as humans makes him start to think.

Jack explains a few of his worries to Maddie which add to her own worries, and they decide to build a device that can detect ghosts pretending to be human.

At some point Danny finds Flynn in the Ghost Zone and tells him about his parents.

While out exploring, Elle falls through a portal and ends up in a dangerous swamp in the Ghost Zone. She is then saved by Sojourn. He offers to take her to the Center (place for orphaned child ghosts) but on the way he starts to get attached to her.

While at the Center Elle is given a Caretaker to look after her until she’s adopted, but a random portal opens, and the Caretaker is pulled through.

The portal brings the Caretaker to the material world, and due to its lack of knowledge, mistakes human kids as orphaned ghost children. So, they treat them as such, by trapping them all in the school and preventing any adults from getting in. This includes Danny, Sam, Tucker, and the clones except for Elle.

Elle tells Sojourn about the Caretaker being pulled through the portal and when they find out what happened on Earth, they make a plan to rescue the kids. It works but it means the clones are registered as not belonging in the Center, so they are unable to go and be safe there.

Elle is adopted by Sojourn.

Kenny fines Undergrowth as a tiny weed in the woods trying to hide from some hungry deer. Spec scares off the deer, leading to them and Undergrowth getting close.

Eventually Undergrowth is able to grow large enough to gain his power back and offers to make Kenny’s larger form more stable, essentially adopting him. Kenny agrees and during the process, while they’re asleep, Undergrowth invades Amity again.

Kenny wakes up to his new leafy form and sees that Amity is covered in vines and appears to be abandoned. They eventually find Sam trapped in her greenhouse and helps free her as she explains what’s going on. Spec is furious to learn that the person they’ve been looking up to would do something like this and they both go to find Danny. They eventually find him trapped in a cage of power draining vines and start working on freeing him, only for Undergrowth to show up. Spec starts yelling at him and even goes as far as to try and rip out the plants holding his larger form together. This convinces Undergrowth to stop and let everyone go. There may also be some threatening of Vlad to turn the woods outside Amity into a nature preserve.

With Undergrowth just outside the city Vlad becomes more wary of directly attacking the clones. This leads the clones to feel safer being seen out in public.

Jax finds out he can create illusions and uses them to mess with people. His favorite is making himself look like a creepy version of Danny.

Ecton gets wrapped up in a ghost rebellion against Walker and manages to overthrow him. In the process it’s revealed that Walker was the founder of what eventually became the GiW and is Danny’s great-grandfather. This leads to a truce between Walker and Danny.

During Halloween Danny gives Jax a constructive outlet for his obsession by making a haunted house. Fright Knight is summoned to the house and witnesses Jax skill in scaring people, making Fright Knight want to adopt him. Jax is wary of the offer but is also too scared by Fright Knight to say no and Fright Knight starts training him. Eventually Jax starts having fun and forgets why he was worried in the first place, which allows things to go too far. Jax is having too much fun to notice until the other clones get hit by Fright Knight’s sword. He realizes that they need to stop but isn’t sure how to tell Fright Knight. Danny helps him and Fright Knight brings the clones back. After a conversation on appropriate levels of scaring, Fright Knight and Jax begin to bond again.

Pandora learns about Ecton’s rebellion against Walker and goes to investigate. After talking to Ecton and being impressed with all the good he’s done she decides to adopt him.

While watching a ghost fight Liam sees Danny just drop and quickly goes to rescue him. Only to find the person he was fighting was Nocturn and is instantly knocked unconscious as well.

After realizing the dream he’s trapped in isn’t real, Liam wakes up. He confronts Nocturn and notices some inconsistencies between what’s happening and Danny’s previous encounter and Nocturn offers to explain. With a need to know what’s going on he agrees and Danny wakes up to see Nocturn pulling Liam into himself.

Danny fight’s through Nocturn’s dream to rescue Liam only to find that he seems to be enjoying himself. However, before he can figure out what’s going on Nocturn shows up and Danny tries to fight him, but Liam jumps in to explain that Nocturn isn’t a bad guy. He was actually trying to take care of Danny’s health; he just had a hard time relaying that in a way Danny’s obsession would let him accept. Liam also tells Danny that Nocturn offered to adopt him, and Liam accepted.

It is discovered that Vlad has the Crown of Fire and Danny, Sam, and Tucker steal it from him. Danny then ends up with the crown stuck on top of his head in ghost form, marking him King of Ghosts.

It is discovered that the house with the lab from the video that went viral belongs to Vlad and after the authorities find the lab he is placed under investigation. Vlad tries to pay people off but with how public the case is it just makes him look more suspicious. So, he tries to turn to the Fentons for help.

Jack is still suspicious from that night in the alley, so he uses the device to detect ghosts disguised as humans on Vlad and reveals him as Plasmius. Vlad bolts before Jack and Maddie can figure out what to do.

Jack and Maddie take a trip into the Ghost Zone to take some observations but get knocked off course and land near Flynn’s campsite. When they wake up Flynn informs them of where they are and their circumstances, then introduces them to Misery Vex. Jack and Maddie are horrified but have no other choice but to trust ghosts to get them home, in the process many of their beliefs about ghosts are challenged.

Jack and Maddie study an artifact they found during their time trapped in the Ghost Zone and get so invested they don’t notice Jazz struggling from all the stress she’s putting on herself. Eventually Jazz has a meltdown which the artifact responds to and latches onto her, connecting her emotions to the weather.

Danny tries to tell his parents how to help Jazz but they ignore him and lock him in the lab to ‘keep him safe’. Danny uses his ghost powers to get out and goes to help Jazz. He manages to calm her down, but his parents still insist they know the best way to help her when they really don’t and Danny snaps. This results in him activating his power to create portals and he disappears with Jazz into the Ghost Zone.

With no idea where in the Ghost Zone their kids could have gone Jack and Maddie turn to the only person they can think of that could help them, and go searching for Vlad.

Danny takes Jazz to the Far Frozen and it’s revealed that they can’t just remove the artifact because its properties have fused with the nanobots that are still in her from when Vlad pit her and Danny against each other. The only thing they can do is reduce how much power she lets out, but they’ll never be able to get rid of it. The best option is for Jazz to learn to control the powers.

While hiding from the Observants Vortex runs into Jazz training and he agrees to help her in exchange for a safe place to hide. Eventually these training sessions turn into emotional venting sessions and both Jazz and Vortex learn to process their emotions in a healthy way.