#xeshirefm0

On the other hand, the situation as a whole, which included damage to Fentonwork’s foundations, was decidedly not miraculous.  Danny did not enjoy living in a motel.  He enjoyed even less Vlad’s offer of letting them stay at his place that Maddie had only narrowly talked Jack out of.  

He missed his room.  He missed the comforting hum and pulse of the portal thrumming through the walls.  He missed being able to deal with ghosts before they left Fentonworks.  

But, at the very least, he didn’t have to miss his stuff.  The important stuff, like his first-aid kit, his favorite model rocket, and his indestructible space-themed alarm clock.  Not any longer.  He couldn’t deal with it.  Questions about how he’d gotten them out of the house be damned.  

Invisible, he glared at the building and the excessive amount of vaguely glowing chartreuse ‘caution’ tape that had been wrapped around it.  His parents thought ghosts would use their absence to rob the building.  It hadn’t done much good against the ghosts escaping from the Ghost Zone.  

Danny circled until he found a large enough gap to phase through, dove through, and turned to fly directly to his room… then he stopped, looking down.  His parents had said that the portal was free-floating, standing in the air like a natural portal, gathering energy from who-knew-where.  He kind of wanted to see that.  

Well.  It had already killed him once.  What was there to lose?

… Okay, yeah, that was a dumb thing to think, but Danny was, by his reckoning, responsible for the portal.  He really should be aware of what was happening to it.  He wasn’t going to repeat his death by trying to fix it.  

He phased through the floor, down into the lab.  It wasn’t much of a lab anymore.  Jack and Maddie had really gone to town on whatever ghost had come through.  Danny winced just thinking about it.  Really, the only things recognizable were the stairs, the floor itself, and the portal, and even the portal looked strange, the light it cast on the hollow that had once been the portal tunnel looked off-color.  

No, it was off-color.  The light cast back was purple.  

He tilted his head.  What could cause that?  Was it just what the backs of portals looked like?  No, he’d seen the reverse sides of portals before.  Usually, they were the same color as their fronts.  

He caught himself drifting closer, then jerked to a stop.  No.  No, he was not repeating this.  He wasn’t going back there again.  

He fled.  

.

Maddie set her bag down on the floor and swung her flashlight around the room, frowning as it hit both objects she did recognize and those she did not, all reduced to rubble.  She flattened her lips.  It wasn’t a good feeling, seeing this much of her work destroyed.  

“That no-good spook!” grumbled Jack, dropping his bags as well, dust curling up around them.  “When we get our hands on it, I’m gonna–”

“We’ll need to get our lab back together before we go looking for ghosts,” said Maddie, regretfully.  “Otherwise, we won’t have anywhere to put them.”

“Could put them in the Fenton Weasel.”

Maddie pointed her flashlight at the sad remains of the Fenton Weasel.

Jack deflated.  “Yeah, you’re right, Mads, we need to get the lab up and running again.”

“It won’t be so bad,” said Maddie.  “We built all this from scratch in the first place.”  She looked around the room.  “I think the first thing we need to do is make sure everything is stable.  We’ll have to get down into the stockades…”  She frowned at the remnants of cabinets that covered the trapdoor down into the stockades and how little of it the flashlights illuminated.  “Maybe we should have brought more lights…  Maybe some of those ones that construction workers use at night.  What do you think, Jack?”

“Uh,” said Jack, “what is that purple light coming from?”

“Purple light?”  Maddie followed Jack’s finger.  

“You don’t think it’s coming from the portal, do you?”

“It… could be,” said Maddie.  She approached, cautiously, minding her step.  There were wires strewn over the floor, and Maddie was once again glad that they’d turned off the electricity at the meter before starting.  

She leaned against the remnants of the wall, peering behind the portal.  

“The portal’s a different color,” said Maddie, frowning.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” said Jack.  

“I know,” said Maddie.  The front and back of the portal should have been the same, leading to opposite sides of the portal’s counterpart in the Ghost Zone.  They should both be the same color.  

Why was it like this?

“Jack, can you give me the mask?  I want to take a look and see where this leads.”

Jack zipped one of his bags open, and pulled out an ectoplasm filtering gas mask.  She walked back to him, and clipped it on under her goggles, fastening it behind her head.  Jack started to take his own out.  

“No,” said Maddie, “I need you out here to make sure that I come back.  Ten minutes.”

“You sure about this, Mads?  We don’t have anything we’d normally use for exploration.”

“We need to know what to expect to come through while we’re working,” said Maddie.  

“Let’s at least find a tether, so I can pull you back.”

They were able to find a tether and hammer a hook into the wall to serve as an anchor. Jack still wasn’t happy about the plan, but between the two of them, Maddie was the brawn. Jack was the inventor. 

Maddie armed herself.  They'd enough weapons upstairs and in the GAV for her to have an assortment of weapons: a rifle, a blaster, and her bo-staff.  She shouldn't need them.  This was just going to be a quick look. 

She fastened the tether to her harness and stepped through the portal, into the… lab?

Not the destroyed lab she had just left, but the lab as it was.  Or… almost the lab as it was.  The arrangement of work benches was off, many newer inventions were missing, and some of those visible hadn’t been worked on since the portal opened.  It was also the wrong color, everything green having been replaced with purple.  She glanced back at the portal behind her.  It glowed so brightly purple that it hurt her eyes.  

“Hello.”

Maddie whirled, bringing her rifle to bear on the figure that had stepped out from the shadows behind one of their larger pieces of equipment.  Her first thought was Danny, her second thought was ghost.  

It looked like Danny.  It was even wearing Danny’s old jumpsuit, the one he’d ‘lost’ (Maddie knew what the children thought of their parents’ mode of dress, and didn’t push it - Jack had made two dozen spares of various sizes in orange).  But its skin looked purple even accounting for the light, and the suit was visibly burned and melted in places.  

She fired three times, hitting the ghost dead-center.  They passed through the ghost without leaving a mark, striking the wall behind it with a shower of sparks and vanishing.  The ghost looked down at itself, then up, eyes wide, fingers touching its chest.  It took a step forward.  

Maddie fired another shot, just in case, then whipped out her bo-staff.  They didn’t have the portal doors, barely had any containment equipment.  A ghost able to ignore ectoblasts like that would be a disaster.  There was a reason she’d brought more than one type of weapon, though

The ghost, still wearing Danny’s face, looked at the bo-staff with something like curiosity, tilting its head.  Maddie didn’t hesitate, driving the end of the staff down at the ghost’s face.  Much like the shots from before, the staff slid smoothly through the ghosts without resistance.  Maddie leaped back, before it could grab her or launch a counterattack.  

The ghost watched her, but didn’t make any move to stop her.  

“Hello,” it said again.  It even sounded like Danny.  

“What are you?” asked Maddie.  She wouldn’t be surprised if it was entirely mindless, pulling this scene from Maddie’s mind through instinct alone, but some, like Phantom, would engage in conversation.  

It pulled an expression of hurt.  “You don’t recognize me, Mother?”

“You’re stupider than the usual ghost if you think I’d mistake you for my son.”

“I’m not a ghost,” said the thing in front of her.  It smiled, revealing fangs.  “I am the death of Danny Fenton.”

The tether latched to her harness went taut, and Maddie was pulled back through the portal, into Jack's arms.  She looked up at him, the back of her head pressing against his chest. "We need the big guns," she said.

.

"Do you know what you being here tells me?" asked the creature from where it sat on one of the tables, swinging its legs.

Jack and Maddie fired their bazookas as one.  The portals that were the usual output of the weapons, even in the Ghost Zone, failed to form.

"It tells me that the other side of that portal isn't blocked off anymore.  It tells me that I could leave and find Danny whenever I want."

"You aren't touching my son, ghost!" shouted Jack, indignant, reaching for another weapon.  

"You couldn't stop me," said the thing.  

"So why are you still here?" asked Maddie, firing another shot.  If they could get more information, they could find a way to destroy this thing.  

"I'm not in any hurry."  The next attack passed through it as well.  "You know, if you went up the stairs back there, you'd find your deaths as well."

"Is that a threat?"

"A fact.  Everyone dies.  They'll hear you if you keep this up.”

“Shut up,” said Jack, pulling out another gun.  This was a more dangerous item that was usually mounted on the GAV and would only fire after bypassing a parental lock.  As its discharge consisted partially of electrically charged ectoplasm, it could hurt humans.  

“I’m only trying to give you advice,” it said.  

“After threatening our boy?” growled Jack, hefting the gun into position.  Maddie helped him stabilize it.  

“He doesn’t need to fear me.  Not like you should be afraid.”

Jack fired.  The weapon had no more effect on the creature wearing Danny’s face than any of the others.  

“Danny?  Dear, are you alright?”  The muffled voice echoing down the stairs was unrecognizable to Maddie, but, it seemed, not to Jack.  

“I’m fine, Maddie,” called the thing, voice pitched to carry.  “I’m just listening to echoes from the other side.”

“Are you sure?  That was awfully loud.”

The creature looked at Maddie, then Jack, lavender eyes glinting blue.  “You should go.  Before it’s too late.”

Jack bared his teeth and went for another weapon.  The door at the top of the stairs was thrown open, hard enough to clang against the wall.  Maddie looked up to see herself.  

“Jack,” called the other Maddie.  “You need to come see this.”

No.  Not herself.  Her eyes had never been so purple.  

.

“Wow,” said Jazz, appreciatively.  “You guys got all that cleaned up fast.”

Danny nodded, agreeing, as he looked around the lab.  It felt a little off, sure, but that could be attributed to it being entirely rebuilt from rubble or to Danny’s little freak-out last week.