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Unlike in the series, Danny has grown up dealing with violent bullies, and being the eldest, his patience is much shorter. He's gotten into fights plenty of times and had detention for it, but even when coming home with a bad mood and bruises to boot, he's always managed to keep his grades up impressively.

After his accident, things changed, and the kids at school noticed. Danny's pulling his punches now; refusing to do anything more than a verbal jab here and there. His attendance is spotty and his grades are dropping. His school-received injuries are worse-off without him fighting back, and people are noticing injuries appearing that none of the bullies caused.

Unknown to the school, however, is Danny's dealing with things much bigger than bullies now, and he's gotten a lot stronger to handle them. If he slips up even a little just to lay a hit on one of these guys, he knows it won't be just a bruise they receive from it. Doesn't mean he isn't tempted to get a hit in at times.

Danny lost everything in this alternate timeline and even though he manages to get to keep everything intact by the end of it, it all still happened. He still saw a time where it all fell apart, and worse yet, he actually witnessed the explosion; that brief moment where he had lived through that horrible incident that took it all. Yes, Clockwork saves them and then resets things back to when the C.A.T.s were being taken, but Danny still saw it; felt it. Then, being someone who's used to the responsibilities being on his shoulders; the one who's grown up looking after a little sister and then had an accident that allowed him to look after everyone else. It was all his job, but here he is seeing all of them stuck to a ticking time-bomb. Wide, watery eyes staring back at him from many loving faces (and Lancer); filled with many bright emotions. Then he sees his little sister's and they're full of an unrecognizable fear. The image plays on in his nightmares; always ending in flames. He still jolts awake at night in a cold sweat; unable to go back to sleep, needing to make sure Jazz (and his parents) are still in their rooms; okay. Until one night, he jerks upright in his bed, tears blurring his vision without his consent and he looks to his bedside to find Jazz, glossy-eyed and worriedly staring back. He wipes his eyes with his sleeve and tries to ask what she's doing with a lack of a voice. Jazz looks away and mutters a question; asking if she could stay with him. The two duck under the covers, practically squished together as Jazz clings to her brother, and Danny keeps a firm arm wrapped around his sister in return. That may be the first relatively full night of sleep he's gotten in a while.

Yes, I'm well aware this is technically late since the first scene was already started in posting, but... where I originally wanted to dodge this scene since it's not heavily connected to the story (as it was an introduction to the show's premise in the series), I ended up missing the introduction to the Fenton Thermos, and trying to keep it close to canon, this scene would still happen. Though, the random squid attack? Either doesn't happen in this, or happens kind of vaguely 'unmotivated,' since Danny's accident was supposed to have happened roughly a month before this (unless this scene specifically happened much earlier on and for some reason the writers didn't want to specify as such, but whatever). So, I want to highlight the fact that Danny's dealt with ghostly shenanigans since the portal opened (maybe not all being ghost attacks, but definitely ghostly problems of some kind). So, either Danny and friends are left to Jack's relentless rambling for a boring amount of time, or the squids do show up. - Sam and Tucker, glancing Danny's direction as he sighs. When he sees that his dad isn't paying attention, he gives the spectral squids a swift kick back through the portal and drops back into his seat like nothing happened. Basically: nothing too spectacular.

The show having the portal open for a month without a single ghost attack feels rather weird, since it's implied in Bitter Reunions that the squids were the first ghosts he fought. Especially with Danny being more inexperienced and uncertain in his abilities at the beginning, having him be perfectly okay with jumping into fighting these ghosts like he knows what he's doing was a bit of an odd choice for the starting direction. They could've implied that he's fought some smaller ghosts before then or something, but nope! That was his first fight, and as a 14-year-old boy, faced with his friends being attacked by giant squid-like ghosts while his ghost-hunting dad was in the room, instead of telling his dad, he fights the things? But- I digress. lol

This is just my way of explaining the original episode's starting scene still happens, just more as minor background information over anything.

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Every Halloween, he has to take his sister and her friends out for trick or treating, while juggling hanging out with his own friends. It's not usually that bad, but with his parents out Ghost-Hunting every Halloween night, leaving behind the most ridiculous costumes for him to wear, it grows tiresome. He dreads the day every year. If he could pick his own costumes and just enjoy some time with his friends; things would be much easier, but it's never been easy for him. Now, though; with the ghost portal open, he's got to figure out how to juggle trick-or-treating, babysitting, and ghost-fighting without cluing his little sister's friend group into who he is. At least he can still dream of a quiet night at home.

I had a few other image ideas for today, but I decided to go with this one since it's the most relatable one to me. lol I don't celebrate Halloween, so my October finisher is usually a quiet night at home: Sorry, Danny.

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