Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Danny faces Walker with a sneer, floating over Casper High with an angry glare. Walker meets Danny with an equally spiteful expression with a few goons to back him up. It’s the middle of the day, so most of the people around are either at their jobs, or in class, which Danny WAS as well, up until a few moments ago.

“What do you want?” Danny folds his arms over his chest, one of his fingers angrily tapping against his arm impatiently. Walker hasn’t shown his face in Amity Park since the incident with the mayor. And, he came with backup this time too, which can really only mean “good” things for Danny Phantom and the rest of the town.

“I only come around these parts when you go around violating the rules, punk,” Walker replies with a snarl of his own. The patrolling officer ghosts backing their boss up nod in agreement. Danny might be outnumbered here, but it’s never stopped him before as he takes a more defensive stance in midair.

“Oh come on, I haven’t crossed your territory in months. Wasn’t that the agreement? You stay on your turf and I stay on mine?” Danny huffs sarcastically. “But, fine, what rule did I break this time?”

“Using my prison as a garbage dump is against the rules,” Walker snaps.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me, snot nose. Clean up your damn trash next time before I drag you back in cuffs and make you clean the whole Zone for being a littering little brat,” Walker elaborates, reaching into his jacket and pulling something out of it. Whatever it is, it smells, and Danny reaches up to cover his nose the moment Walker pulls whatever it is out in the open.

“Ew, gross! What is that!?” Danny waves his free hand at Walker in an attempt to get the awful smell to waft in a different direction. Walker gives Danny an incredulous look in return before floating closer and dropping the smelly thing on top of him.

“It’s yours.”

Danny has to fumble a bit to keep the thing from falling to the ground and splattering on the pavement. The last thing he needs is to clean this off the ground with how awful a smell it’s giving off. Something tells him it wouldn’t wash out no matter how many rounds of soap and water he’d take to the pavement. He’d rather not subject any unsuspecting civilians to that.

“So what, you think I just dropped some smelly sack or something in the ghost zone? I think I’d remember something like that!” Danny barks at Walker angrily, baring his fangs as he tries to adjust his grip on the smelly thing. Some kind of green fluid seems to seep from it, covering his chest and arms. Great, speaking of not being able to wash the smell out…

“I’d take a closer look at what exactly it is you’re holding, boy…” Walker’s expression seems to become bemused. Danny doesn’t know what the other ghost finds so funny, but even his goons appear to be snorting behind their boss. “But now that this… issue has been taken care of, I’ll take my crew and leave. We have an agreement, after all. Don’t let me catch you dumping your garbage near my prison again, punk. I’ll have you charged for defacing public property faster than that hybrid heart of yours can beat.”

Danny can’t help being confused as Walker and crew float away.

“What the hell was that about?” He mutters, before looking at the smelly thing in his arms. And, well, if the scent wasn’t going to make him gag before, the sight of a mangled corpse leaking ectoplasm out of every hole in it’s face just about makes him lose his lunch.

He grips the body a bit more tightly, because he definitely doesn’t want to drop this on the pavement. The last thing he needs is to create an impromptu crime scene with this thing. Besides, what the hell is a random corpse doing floating around the Ghost Zone anyway? Though, Walker was prattling on about it belonging to….

Danny moves the ectoplasm soaked bangs away from the leaking body, noticing the raven black strands as he pulls his hand away from the corpse’s head.

Oh.

Now that he thinks about it, this is kinda his…

Danny shakes his head, thinking back to the accident that gave him his powers in the first place. After waking up as Phantom, his own dead body was lying next to him. He was in a bit of a panic after dying, and he did sort of… kick the corpse behind him to hide it. And it slid into the portal. And when he turned human again after his core exhausted itself, it slipped his mind that it existed in the first place.

…and now it’s back to bite him.

Goodbye, Danny’s years of well sustained denial used to convince himself he’s still alive. Considering he’s currently holding proof of the exact opposite, and it reeks of decomposing flesh (...which it basically is). It’s leaking all over his jumpsuit. Where the heck is he supposed to put this thing?!

Suddenly, there’s the loud chime of a school bell behind him, interrupting his thoughts. Danny flinches, nearly dropping his own body for the third time now as he whips his head around to look at the school. Wincing, he flies toward the building, knowing his crappy attendance record really can’t take another hit if he’s going to graduate at all this year.

He pauses. Right, the uh… the corpse…

“Where am I supposed to hide a body until school lets out?” Danny mutters under his breath, looking around the school campus for some kind of answer. There’s a shed outside the football field he could probably hide it in. Danny floats towards the field, readjusting his grip as his nose wrinkles from the awful smell. Lancer’s gonna give him an earful for this one…

Then again, someone could stumble across it while it’s out of his line of sight, and that’s a whole host of problems he doesn’t want to mess with. So, when he reaches the shed, he finds a large backpack somewhere in the back and phases it out of the pile of sports junk it was buried in.

It takes a bit of stuffing, and rearranging the admittedly very flexible limbs, but he crams the corpse into the bag and zips it up tight. There, out of sight, out of mind. Though, admittedly, it’s not out of smell yet. Danny uses the cover of the shed to turn back to normal, slinging the backpack onto his shoulders and quickly vacating the premises so he can get to class at a reasonable ten minutes late.

-

Danny rushes into the gymnasium with a panicked look on his face, and as a result the entire class turns to look at him. It only takes a few moments for them to go back to what they were doing, seeing as Danny is late all the time anyway. He quietly slips in with Sam and Tucker before he draws even more attention. It’s really the last thing he needs right now.

“You know, you should really go to a doctor and get your bladder checked out,” Sam mentions offhandedly while elbowing Danny in the arm. Danny rolls his eyes, dropping the backpack in a corner where he can keep an eye on it while running laps around the gymnasium.

“Yeah dude, everyone’s starting to think your need to go is an early warning system for ghost attacks. It’s turning into a meme on the internet,” Tucker wheezes as he rushes to keep up with Danny and Sam.

“Gross!” Danny snaps at Tucker. And he thought the corpse he brought to class was unsettling. “My bladder is not a ghost alert system, Tuck!”

…his breath fogging up is, but his friends don’t need to know that. At least Danny should just be able to just roll with the punches and finish his gym class-

“Dash! Get away from that backpack!”

Danny takes a quick one-eighty and bolts across the gym. He’s much faster than he was before, running at an almost inhuman speed during his panic to stop Dash from opening the bag he left in the corner.

“This is one of the bags from the shed, isn’t it?” Dash replies, grinning and turning his attention to Danny. “It’s just sports gear, Fenturd. No need to get all defensive about it.”

“Y-yeah, but we’re doing laps right now!” Danny stutters. “We don’t need the sports equipment yet, so just leave it alone and we can move on with finishing what we’re supposed to be doing right now!”

Dash looks Danny up and down. He then grins widely. “Whatcha gonna do about it?”

Danny trips over his own words trying to find a response as Dash starts reaching for the backpack. Danny reaches a hand out, recoils, clutches it to his chest a moment, watches the bag begin to leak green fluid from the bottom and then shoves Dash away from it. Dash lets out a surprised gasp as Danny shoves past him, grabbing one of the bag straps and rushing out of the gymnasium.

“FENTON!!” Dash roars after Danny as he runs away from certain doom.

Danny quickly picks up the pace, adjusting the backpack strap on his shoulder and rushing down the hallway as fast as he can. He can hear Dash’s thundering footsteps behind him, and he can feel his heart hammering in his chest much faster than it usually does. If it pounds any faster, he might get a regular heartbeat.

Rushing around the corner, turning hard enough on the linoleum floor to hear his sneakers squeaking against it, Danny finds himself coming to an abrupt halt. Ahead of him is a row of lockers and a closed classroom door. Dash is already rounding the corner behind him, preventing him from phasing through the wall to escape.

Dead End.

Danny can only stare at the lockers dumbfounded and panting heavily as the quarterback catches up to him with ease. Though as Dash approaches, the bully slows his stride to increase the intimidation factor. For a normal human, Dash can be as dramatic with his bullying as most of his ghostly enemies.

“Nowhere left to run, Fenton…” Dash sneers, sounding all too pleased with himself. “Now, what do you have in that bag that’s so important you gotta shove me? No nerd just shoves me and gets away with it, you know?”

“Dash, please-”

“Shut it, Fentonail,” Dash snaps at him. “You know what? I’m gonna take what’s in this silly little backpack of yours and show it off to the whole school! That’ll teach you a lesson!”

“Dash, don’t!”

But Dash shoves him against a locker to keep him pinned instead of listening. Already, Danny can hear the small metallic sound of the zipper handle clinking against the backpack as Dash fumbles to grab it behind him. Danny struggles underneath the bully, trying to shake Dash off before he can open the backpack. The jock is laughing to himself as he opens the bag.

His stomach drops when the telltale sound of the zipper sliding along its track can be heard behind his head, and Dash pulls the bag open.

The bag with his corpse in it.

Dash’s smug laughter stops abruptly. Limbs spill out of the backpack, leaking green fluid and hanging limply out of the sack it had been roughly stuffed into. The hallway becomes eerily quiet as a result. Danny had heard Mr. Lancer’s talks about dramatic pauses and quotes like “you could hear a pin drop” and he’s pretty sure that kind of sensation applies to this situation.

Dash takes in the sickly, pale and slightly charred dead thing spilling out of Danny’s backpack for only a few moments before he jets down the hallway in the opposite direction. The sound of retching across the hall can be heard as Danny quickly phases the backpack off his shoulders and haphazardly shoves the body back inside of it. One of the zippers jams, and Danny decides he seriously doesn’t have time for this before grabbing the bag by the straps again and phasing through the wall with it.

Going ghost, Danny rushes at high speed across town to find a place to just get rid of the stupid thing before it causes more trouble. There’s gotta be a way to convince Dash it was just a prank, right? Just something to mess with him and get back at him, yeah. Danny can play it off easily enough. Hopefully.

Danny abruptly stops in midair when police sirens begin to wail like crazy somewhere across town. Red and blue lights move in sequence toward Casper High, and Danny quickly realizes that someone called the police after Dash saw the body.

Not good.

Look, maybe if he just dumps it in the trash, he can forget about it and tell Dash it was just a prank at school tomorrow. Once everyone sees he’s alive and well, Danny will get another detention for the cruel prank or whatever, and it’ll blow over by the end of the week.

Plan in place, Danny rushes behind the Nasty Burger and shoves the backpack in a dumpster. Good enough. …that’s good enough, right?

Suddenly, a puff of blue mist leaks past his lips. Guess he’ll have to leave the body there for now, and once everything blows over, he’ll find a better place to get rid of it. Right now, there’s a ghost he’s got to go deal with. So, Danny quickly turns around and blasts off at rocket speed, failing to notice the bag falling out of the dumpster behind him.

-

Turns out it was the Box Ghost that set off his ghost sense.

But then the Box Ghost turned into The Lunch Lady coming in on the other side of town as well, and she was tearing through the nearby mall and leaving the food court in shambles behind her. And then the Box Ghost got out again and started helping the Lunch Lady.

One thing leads to another and Danny is left running after them on a wild goose chase in an attempt to catch up to them. After that, Skulker and Technus appeared just as he was finishing up, leaving him distracted for even longer. Finally, Johnny 13 and Kitty decided it was date night, and their date involved tearing up the highway on their motorbike.

It’s the early hours of the morning when he finally manages to corner both of them. A quick trip to thermos town, and he’s finally done cleaning up for the day.

“Well, thankfully it’s over now. Better drop these two off and go pick up that bag.” Danny mutters, strapping the thermos to his belt and heading off toward Fentonworks. Though as he gets closer, it becomes increasingly apparent that Fentonworks has a lot of visitors today. Visitors with red and blue flashing lights and…

Oh no.

Danny peeks over the roof of a nearby building, seeing both his parents out on the front doorstep talking to the police. There’s at least five cars lined up outside the house, and he can just barely make out what the authorities are saying from his perch.

“...already had your son up on file. The student who made the call reported seeing him with the bag the body was discovered in.” the officer tells the Fentons. Danny can see his mother in tears, leaning against his father as he comfortingly strokes her back. The officers continue to speak. “We ran the tests on the body’s finger prints, and checked his dental records. They’re a confirmed match.”

Danny feels his heart sink. He was so busy chasing down the ghosts invading the town that the police discovered the body that Dash must have reported. Before he realizes it, his hands are shaking as the implications of such a thing begin to sink in. The police are here to tell his parents that he’s dead. The police are going to announce that he’s dead. There was a corpse in a backpack that had all of his DNA attached to it, and now his entire life is moments away from inevitably falling apart.

That is, unless it already has. Even if they haven’t declared it yet, it was only a matter of time. And the solid proof is already getting presented to his parents. Irrefutable DNA evidence of his death. If he goes back to them now, they’ll instantly assume he’s a ghost impersonating their son.

Considering he left a corpse behind, they’re not exactly wrong, either. That’s really it, isn’t it? When the portal zapped him, he left a body behind. Does that mean he is an impersonation of himself? Has he just pretended to be Danny the whole time? Is that body he left behind the real Danny?

Danny shakes his head, telling himself to get it together. It isn’t safe for him around here any more. He’ll need to find somewhere else to dump the thermos, because now that his parents know their son is dead, there’s no way he’s going to get anywhere near the ghost portal. They might even take him out of the house’s genetic lock for all he knows, and then he won’t be able to open the portal anyway.

Sparing one more glance at the scene before him, cop cars littering his front yard, his mother wailing into his father’s chest in an agonized cry, as everything he thought he had vanishes from him in an instant, he can’t help but regret not giving his family, or his friends, a proper goodbye.

If he’s been declared dead, there’s no point in sticking around, is there? Not like he has to worry about his grades any more. Maybe it would be better to make like the ghostly side of his nature and disappear…

Chapter Text

BZZT.

“Greetings Amity Park, I’m Tiffany Snow! And we have some breaking news for you today. Instead of the usual ghost attack one would expect to see in our usual broadcast, authorities are reporting the discovery of a body outside the Nasty Burger downtown. We now go to our own Lance Thunder, reporting at the scene of the crime. Lance?”

“Thanks, Tiffany. I’m reporting to you live at the scene of the crime. Police are investigating the murder of a local teenager, whose body was discovered in a backpack next to a dumpster at the Nasty Burger. The body was stuffed into the backpack and presumably dumped here. Police have identified the body as a minor’s and will not be revealing any information about the teen’s identity at this time. An autopsy will be performed on the body later today, and the family has already been informed. We will keep you up to date on this emerging story, Tiffany. This is Lance Thunder, Action News, signing off.”

“Thanks, Lance. In other news, local ghost hero, Danny Phantom, is currently-”

BZZT.

Danny turns off the junky TV and sighs. He’s currently in the more run-down part of town, where a lot of the local ghosts usually stay. It’s unoccupied by human life, making it a good haunt. It took a bit of tinkering to get the old CRT TV to work, let alone get it connected to the network, but Danny’s still a Fenton, and his engineering skills aren’t to be scoffed at when he actually has time to exercise them. The model rockets he left back in his room can attest to that, at least.

Since this part of Amity Park is mostly empty, it was pretty easy finding an vacant flat, all things considered. Too much of a safety hazard for a human up here, plus Danny’s had bigger buildings fall down on top of him before, if worse comes to worse.

The local ghosts themselves don’t really bug him, either. If Danny was to go out on a limb, he’d think the ghosts around this part of town are scared of him. Which, considering his reputation, does make some sense. He’d probably be scared too, all things considered. None of the ghosts here are very big or powerful though, so he’s gonna let them be for the time being.

Though, being Phantom makes it hard to connect with other ghosts. Too alive to fit in with them, too dead to mingle with the human crowd, the only allies he does have only came to like him because of how powerful he is. Phantom had to earn a lot of respect from the ghostly clans that do tolerate his existence.

Danny takes stock of his little, run down apartment. Sure, the furniture is a bit cobwebby, he had to build a working TV from scratch, and the building might collapse any second from how run-down it is, but it’s better than nothing. Gives him a place to stay and recuperate after a long day of patrolling the town and driving the ghosts away. Though, it’s hard to deposit his catches without easy access to a portal…

Some days, Danny wishes he could take a page from Wulf’s book and tear his own portals open whenever he wants. It would certainly be a lot more convenient than waiting for his parents to stop wallowing in despair for a few minutes so they can leave the lab, or, heaven forbid, he uses Vlad’s portal. Honestly that one just sounds worse. Danny’s been actively avoiding Vlad since his death became public news. The creepy dimwit taking advantage of the situation and offering Danny a place to stay “out of the kindness of his heart,” or whatever is the last thing he wants to deal with.

Pass, Vlad. He hasn’t heard the other halfa ask yet, but the answer is already NO.

He’ll take a crummy, broken and rundown apartment over lavishing in stolen luxury any day. Danny rolls his eyes at the thought before moving to dust up a few more of the cobwebs. If he’s staying here for the foreseeable future, he can at least make the place a little more homey. Clean up a few things here, get some nicer furniture in better condition somewhere else, probably raid another scrap yard to make his own appliances… Now that he’s got nothing but time on his hands, he can probably rig something useful together to decorate the place. Maybe he’ll make some new model rockets too, and display them next to the bed just like-

Just like home…

Danny shakes his head to clear his thoughts. Homesickness is some seriously awful stuff, and the crawling feeling in his gut about how much he misses his room with his glow-in-the-dark stars and sky blue painted walls, with his computer and his model rockets he built himself, and all his Nasa posters and…

“Gah, shut up brain,” Danny grumbles, knocking his knuckles against his skull a few times to take his mind off of how much he misses home. Crummy, run-down apartment is his home now, he can’t go back to his old room. Well, he was going to move out one day, right? He’s just doing it way earlier than he thought he was going to.

Heaving out a sigh, Danny tries his best to focus on cleaning, like before, but it turns out to be wasted effort as his thoughts keep drifting back to home. Seeing as cleaning up is turning out to be a useless endeavor, Danny decides to leave the apartment and go scout out the town for a bit. If there’s any benefit to these powers, it’s the ability to turn invisible and disappear from the radar when he wants to go outside. Last thing he needs is someone recognizing him and attempting to “force his spirit to move on” or whatever.

He can’t move on, he’s got a town to protect! The only way to get rid of Phantom is to destroy him, and Danny would really rather not be destroyed. Dying once was enough, thank you very much. It’s why he’s in this mess in the first place. Still, the need to go patrol the town is nagging at his obsession again, and it makes a really good mix with his homesickness, the result being restless pacing around the apartment.

“I need some air,” Danny huffs, phasing through the window. There’s a few flashes of green light as the ghosts haunting around the alleys dash away from Phantom’s presence. Yeah, there’s no way he’s making any friends out here. Well, he’s not out here to make any, anyway. With a pulse of his own energy, Phantom vanishes from the visible spectrum and heads off down the street.

-

“I’m just saying, don’t you guys find it suspicious?”

Danny pauses in his tracks when he passes by the school. The familiar sound of his sister’s voice caught him off guard, and he found himself backtracking. He’s a ghost almost full-time now, so there’s nothing wrong with a little invisible eavesdropping, yeah? Might make this yucky feeling in his chest go away for a while, at least. Heading across the school grounds, he finds Jazz confronting Sam and Tucker with a newspaper clipping, practically shoving it into their faces.

Leaning in closer, Danny sees how uncomfortable Sam and Tucker both look with Jazz jumping down their throats about the story. Despite the police’s efforts to keep the identity of the minor that died under wraps, the media seems to have already clawed out the info for themselves and are releasing it everywhere. Guess the son of the most prominent ghost hunters in a ghost infested town is a bigger deal than he thought.

“Come on! Both of you, and Dash, told the police you saw Danny carrying the body down the hall. There’s no way he could have swapped what was in the bag before with his own corpse in the two minutes he was running from Dash! And how did it get all the way to the Nasty Burger anyway!? It doesn’t make any sense!” Jazz waves her arms up and down, newspapers scattering across the field.

“What, so you think Dash murdered him and stuffed him in the bag?” Sam grumbles. “Sure, Dash is an asshole, but I don’t think he’d go THAT far. Besides, where would Dash have gotten all that ectoplasm from?”

“Dude hasn’t been to school in a week either,” Tucker adds, doing his best to brush it off. “From what I hear, the guy’s been inconsolable ever since he cornered Danny in that hallway before….” Tucker cuts himself off. “Before Danny… before he….”

Sam pats Tucker on the shoulder. “I think Jazz has said enough.” Her tone is ice cold and she begins leading Tucker away from Jazz and back into the school. Jazz herself deflates, shaking her head and gathering up all the newspapers she dropped trying to get answers out of Sam and Tucker. If only she knew…

“It doesn’t make any sense….” Jazz mutters under her breath. “What happened when Dash left Danny behind? Why did Danny go from holding the bag to being stuffed inside it, dead! Dash was the only one around, but he hasn’t said anything on the matter and there’s no way he could have stuffed that much glowing green junk into Danny’s body in that little time. He’s the one that reported it to the cops after all, after he thought DANNY murdered someone!”

Jazz bites back a growl. “If I’m going to get to the bottom of this, I’m going to need to solve the mystery of those two minutes between Dash chasing Danny down the hall, and Dash calling the police. And I need to talk to Dash to do that-”

Danny floats up behind his sister while watching her pace in circles. A part of him feels bad for putting her through this. She thinks her brother is dead, and now she’s setting out to solve an impossible mystery. Danny knows the answer to what she’s looking for, he “lived” it, after all. But, if he were to appear or tell her anything, she wouldn’t believe him.

Danny also has the strong impression his parents are blaming ghosts for his death, like usual. There was ectoplasm leaking from his corpse though, so it’s not as far of a jump as it usually is. And well, as much as he hates Dash, he doesn’t want the guy to get blamed for his murder. Even if it’s the logical conclusion.

Dash chases Danny down a hallway, Danny’s body is reported a few moments later, all eyes turn to Dash to be the killer.

Jazz stops her pacing. “But if Dash was at the school reporting the body the whole time, how did it get to the Nasty Burger?” She wonders this aloud, rifling through the papers in her hands again. “The fact alone that the body was moved while Dash was still reporting it points to evidence of a third party.”

“Man, I thought you wanted to be a psychologist, not a police detective,” Danny chuckles in Jazz’s direction with a stupid grin. Sure, things are a little bleak right now, but he’s still allowed to have some fun at his sister’s expense, right? Though Danny backs up a bit when Jazz whips her head around to look in his direction, only to see no one there.

“Who said that!?” Jazz snaps at the empty air in front of her.

Danny goes still.

“I know you’re there! Who said that!? How do you know about me wanting to study the field of psychology!?” Jazz insists a bit more loudly, walking forward. “Show yourself before I make you, what do you want?!”

Well, it would be just plain rude not to, even if Danny really shouldn’t. After looking around to make sure that no one’s watching, Danny pulls himself back to visibility, staying translucent so he can easily disappear at a moment’s notice if things go sideways. Jazz jumps out of her skin (metaphorically speaking, the last thing he needs is two bodies from Fentonworks littering the floor) and backs up a few steps.

“Phantom?!”

“In the ectoplasmic quasi-flesh, yes,” Danny grins, playing up his hero persona and resisting the urge to laugh at the frazzled expression on Jazz’s face. He doesn’t usually talk to anyone directly while he’s Phantom, so it’s a bit awkward starting a conversation like this for the first time. If his parents were here, they’d probably rattle off something about breaking behavior patterns or some other nonsense.

“How’ve you been?” Danny attempts to fish for a conversation starter. Talking to Jazz hasn’t felt so awkward before, and that’s really saying something. “You know, since the Spectra thing? That was a crazy thing to walk into, let me tell you.”

Jazz holds up one finger. “Wait a sec, YOU’RE the ghost that saved me from that crazy school counselor?”

Danny nods enthusiastically, folding his arms in front of his chest with a big smile. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Wait, maybe you can help me with this!” Jazz holds out the newspaper to Phantom. “My parents are being their usual crazy selves and blaming the ghosts, Danny’s friends are completely ignoring me when I try to bring it up and the last person who saw Danny alive hasn’t been to school in days. I’m not going to rest until I figure this all out. So, please, Phantom. Help me put my brother’s murder to rest.”

Danny finds himself pausing in midair, at a loss for words at Jazz’s request. He wasn’t expecting his sister to ask a ghost of all things about something like this. What is he supposed to say to that? It’s his own murder she’s trying to solve, for ancients sake! But he can’t just leave her here! His core is screaming at him not to ignore a cry for help, buzzing under his skin as his obsession demands he goes out on a limb and helps her.

…okay, maybe he can compromise. He doesn’t want to hurt her with the REAL truth, but he also can’t leave her hanging like that. Maybe he can give her a hint? Something small, insignificant, relevant and barely believable at the same time.

“Well, I haven’t seen your brother’s ghost or anything, if that’s what you’re asking,” Danny reveals after a bit of an awkward pause. “But if what that Dash guy was saying is true, and Danny was the one carrying the backpack with his own corpse in it out of the building, maybe he’s been dead for longer than the two minutes you think it was?”

Jazz blinks, dumbfounded. “You mean, Danny’s own ghost was carrying the corpse out of the school?”

“Might have been,” Danny quickly corrects. “It’s just a theory, and it usually takes a while for a ghost to be formed enough to be corporeal. Though, I do know of a case or two where a few spirits formed instantly… Still, if he was dead before, and his ghost was trying to hide the body, it might explain what Dash saw that day.”

Danny huffs a bit proudly. That should be enough for Jazz to go off of, while keeping him out of the situation. After all, she knows her brother was “Alive” that morning, eating breakfast and waking up to his alarm and all that fun being alive stuff. She shouldn’t connect Phantom to her brother if Phantom’s been around years longer than Danny’s been alive.

That way, Danny doesn’t have to tell anyone he’s been dead for years.

“So you really think it was a ghost or something moving the body? Danny’s ghost? That doesn’t give me a lot to work with. In fact, it opens up a whole slew of other questions if that’s true!!” Jazz huffs. “If no one knows where Danny was when he died, if there were no witnesses, if no one knows the time of death, it puts me back at square one!!”

“Well, I am a ghost,” Danny hums cheekily. “Superhero or not, it’s kind of my job to be uncooperative and problematic.”

“Jeez, you sound like my brother when you talk like tha-” Jazz blanks the moment the sentence leaving her mouth registers in her brain. “...you sound like my brother…”

Danny freezes in place before instantly becoming a bit more on edge. “Welp! Time for me to leave! Goodbye, farewell, see you again never!”

Poof, and he’s gone, leaving Jazz alone at the school with more information than he had meant to give away.

Chapter Text

“Are you sure it was a good idea to call us in here?”

Danny watches as his mother and father look at the police with befuddled expressions as he floats above them invisibly. Sure, he probably shouldn’t get THIS close to his ghost hunting parents, all things considered, but seeing as the authorities called them in here for their ghost expertise while trying to examine his body and find a cause of death, he really couldn’t sit this one out.

“The body is practically generating a flood of ectoplasm, and we couldn’t go to the Ghost Investigation Ward because they don’t deal with human affairs like murder cases. They’re interested in the body after we’re done trying to give it an autopsy, but while the case is still open, they’re staying out of it. That just leaves you two.”

Jack and Maddie share a cautious look. Danny himself isn’t too pleased with the idea of the Guys in White picking up his corpse when the morticians are done with it. He makes a mental note to finish what he started a while ago and hide the darn thing or destroy it before it falls into their grubby hands. He doesn’t want to destroy it until after the police are done with it though. Better to lay the issue itself to rest before dealing with the body. Then Danny will cremate it or something with an ecto blast later.

Actually, why didn’t he do that before? Things would have been so much easier if he just blasted the darn thing into smithereens. Still, considering it was his corpse, that he completely forgot about until Walker dumped it on him, he supposes the unnerving thought of vaporizing his own body was a bit too much for him to think about on top of everything else.

Or, maybe there was the fact that in an alternate universe, Phantom had already done something similar to his human half, while it was still breathing…

Danny shakes his head to clear his thoughts, trying to pay attention to what’s going on in front of him.

“I know it’s a lot, his death is relatively recent still, but we’ve made no advancements in the case. Without a cause of death, we can’t convict anyone with the flimsy evidence we do have. You two are the only ones we have left,” one of the officers puts a hand on Jack's shoulder and gives both parents a pitying look.

“Alright… we’ll do it,” Maddie sniffles, solidifying her determination after a moment. Danny can’t help but think it ironic as she pulls a scalpel from the workbench and begins working with the morticians to cut open the corpse laid out on the table in front of them. As she works, she runs her gloved fingers through the body’s raven hair with tears in her eyes.

Danny’s turned away at the moment so he doesn’t have to see his own mother dissecting his corpse to help the morticians, but the thought of Maddie finally making due on her threats to tear Phantom apart without realizing it has him choking back a bitter laugh. He’d rather not make the same mistake twice.

After the incisions are made, there’s a wet sploshing sound, with the remaining ectoplasm that was leaking from the body spilling out all over the table and floor, causing a few yelps. Danny can hear his father heaving, and he hears his mother’s breath stuttering.

There’s a few moments of silence.

“That doesn’t make any sense.” Danny hears someone say.

Risking a look at what’s going on at the table, Danny turns around to see one of the workers rooting around inside his smelly corpse and coming back with more runny, ectoplasmic fluid.

“You’re seeing this too, right?” The same voice asks Maddie, pulling back the skin flaps so the other people in the room can see what’s baffling them.

The body is completely hollow. No organs, no bones, nothing. Just flaps of skin and leaky, smelly ectoplasmic fluid. It’s more of a shell than a corpse with nothing inside to hold it together. The ectoplasm inside it was the only thing giving it any kind of structure, and seems to deflate now that it’s completely empty.

“Where…. What?” Maddie mutters, reluctantly sticking her own hand inside. She comes back empty handed as well. She’s clearly nauseated from rooting around her own son’s insides, but the scientist part of her must be going into overdrive because of this discovery. Danny knows the look on his mother’s face under the repulsion and apprehension.

Danny wasn’t expecting it either. His spectral strength must not have alerted him to how light the body he was carrying was. That, or all that condensed ectoplasm from the Ghost Zone that built up in there was heavier than it looked. Though he feels how his dad looks, a bit sick and a little green in the face. And, he’s pretty sure it isn’t from the ectoplasm.

The baffled morticians and ectobiologists keep crowding around the body, trying in vain to locate the missing organs. The ectoplasmic fluid that spilled out doesn’t yield any results either, and everyone’s left scratching their heads.

“Could whatever have killed him have caused the organs to liquify?” One of the morticians asks.

Maddie quickly shakes her head. “Ectoplasm and physical matter don’t mix. If whatever killed…” she stops herself, choking on her breath. “Whatever did this to Danny couldn’t have turned the organs into ectoplasm in any sense. If the fluid leaking from… from him, were his organs, then they would have been made of blood and physical matter. Ghosts… they don’t just form inside their own bodies like this. Something else put the ectoplasm in there.”

“So we know that this stuff isn’t a part of his body at least…” Jack murmurs, stepping out of the puddle of ecto-gunk he’s been standing in with a bit of reluctance. Danny knows that stuff like this isn’t his strong suit. He knows his dad would rather build big weaponry that goes boom, rather than study the why and how.

“Where do ghosts form, then?” A mortician asks.

“It goes a little something like this,” Maddie sighs, stroking “Danny’s” hair again as she talks. “When a human dies feeling strong emotions, especially in an ectoplasm rich environment where the barrier between our world and the Ghost Zone is thin, the ambient ectoplasm latches on to those emotions. It feeds on them, turns them into an energy source and then subsists on that energy for as long as it exists. There’s no physical matter involved in the process. The “body” of a ghost is the result of how ectoplasm interacts with and feeds on human emotion leaking into the ghost zone as an energy source.”

“The ectoplasm here would have definitely been enough to… create a ghost, especially if there was a… violent death involved. But, the ectoplasm that spilled out had to have been added after the fact, if not the cause of death itself,” Maddie reasons through shaky breaths, doing her best to keep her composure and make her explanation professional despite the situation.

Danny holds back sighing. He knows there’s exceptions to the rules. He IS the exception to the rule. His own formation was almost instantaneous, he died in between dimensions where the ectoplasm was rich enough, electrically charged enough, to chemically fuse to whatever was left of him while the portal was tearing him apart from the inside out. Which, according to what he’s learning here today, was everything except for his outer layer.

Danny guesses it makes sense? He’s always had a heartbeat, even as Phantom, since the accident. He also still needs to breathe, eat and sleep like he’s still alive. So maybe it’s less of a corpse and more like, shed skin he left behind? With all his old teeth to boot, considering he’s got a mouthful of sharp fangs instead. Still, the thought causes him to shiver. How inhuman do you have to be in order to just… drop a body and grow a new one?

“Something isn’t right…” Maddie suddenly mutters.

“This cadaver is completely hollow on the inside, and we don’t know where those insides are, of course something isn’t right,” One of the morticians mutters, both Jack and Maddie flinching. “N-no offense, of course. But stuff like that doesn’t just disappear into thin air.”

“Jack, look at his face,” Maddie brushes the mortician off, ushering her husband over, holding up Danny’s body so Jack can see it better. “There’s something off about the outside too. You see it, don’t you? Even without the impressions a skull would make?”

Jack leans in closer, still holding back his nausea from the looks of it, but he looks Danny’s old body up and down. “He looks young.” Jack suddenly perks up. “He looks WAY too young. Like, kiddo ain’t even done puberty yet, young! But the Danny-o we know was in his senior year of High School! He was taller than you, Mads!”

“Yes… but this body is… it’s still significantly shorter than I am, among other things…” Maddie mutters.

“What are you implying…?” Jack murmurs.

“If this is Danny’s body, then who’s the boy who's been living with us since he turned 14?” Maddie asks silently.

“That CAN’T be right!” One of the morticians cuts in. “Unless this body was preserved or mummified up until now, there’s no way it can be more than a few months old. Bodies decay! And there aren't any bones in this one! If it was years old, it would be nothing but dust by now!”

“Unless the ectoplasm preserved it?” Jack suggests.

“CAN Ectoplasm do that?” Maddie backtracks. “I know it’s an energy source more than anything, it feeds on human emotion and it turns those emotions into its own fuel source, but could that energy preserve a body? Maybe if it was completely submerged… but still, that doesn’t explain the lack of organs or bones.”

“Then maybe it was Danny’s own ghost trying to get rid of it,” Jack declares, snapping his fingers. “Just like Jazzy said! She thinks Danny’s ghost was trying to move the body so no one would find it!”

“That would make our son a ghost, Jack. He would have had to have been a ghost for almost four years now, but that can’t be possible either. I’ve seen him eat, I’ve seen him sleep, I’ve had more than enough calls from his professors about how much he passes out in class if he attends them at all, and we know he’s been alive up to this point,” Maddie counters.

“Then what does that make this weird body of his?” Jack gestures to the cut open cadaver on the table. “If this is his body, and a ghost with all his memories was running around, then what does it mean?”

“I don’t know, Jack.” Maddie admits quietly.

Danny, figuring he’s seen enough for one day, decides he’s just going to leave before things get any worse. Though, it looks like he did say too much to Jazz that one day, seeing as she went to their parents with the theory he’d accidentally given her too much info about.

Though, speaking of his need to eat…

With a wince, Danny moves back around the rear of the Nasty Burger. The pile of flowers arranged next to the dumpster had grown since the last time he was back here. There were even a few cards and the like now, wishing condolences as some of the more wilted offerings sway in the slight evening breeze.

He’s not here for the flowers though. Opening the lid to the dumpster, Danny starts rooting through the trash for something decent since no one’s around at the moment, thankfully. It’s not like he can walk inside and order food. Ghosts don’t have money, let alone eat, and the last thing he needs is Valerie pulling an extra shift when he walks in the front door.

Plus he has an image to uphold. Flighty, lawless, elusive spook no ghost hunter in the world can ever catch. Danny’s real advantage over human ghost hunters is how they continue to underestimate his intelligence. So, it would be smart for him to stay out of the limelight if he can help it in between ghost attacks. After a bit of rooting through the trash, he finds a mostly in-tact burger that just needs a bit of intangibility to clean up and make it slightly edible.

“...better than nothing,” Danny groans, shutting the dumpster lid. He’s been tossed into enough of these things that he’s gone a bit nose-blind to the smell, anyway. Taking other people’s leftovers is as good as he’s gonna get without any money or the ability to get a paying job, after all.

He’s about to take a bite of the burger when he hears someone recoil in disgust. Danny hears the sound of gagging from across the way, and he whips around to find Sam and Tucker standing at the edge of the building with a bunch of flowers in their arms. Turns out it was Sam recoiling in disgust seeing him digging food out of the garbage.

Danny’s getting a little sick of awkward silences, that’s for sure.

“...dude, is that Danny Phantom?” Tucker pokes Sam’s sleeve. “Like, THE Danny Phantom?!

“Rooting through the trash at the Nasty Burger….?” Sam mutters in disbelief.

Danny tosses the burger back in the trash can and backs away from the duo. He takes a closer look at what kind of flowers they’re holding, seeing the yellow roses bundled up in their arms. He remembers Sam saying something about yellow roses being a symbol of friendship, and he can assume she grew the flowers herself. She’s always had a green thumb.

“Not what I was expecting, that’s for sure,” Tucker sighs. “ ‘Scuse us, dude. We’re here to drop these off for our friend.”

Danny backs up a bit more to give the pair some space. Looking at the flower display dedicated to him, Danny can’t help but think it could use a little something extra to tie it together. “Wait a minute, before you put those down, um…”

Putting his hands together, Danny forms a crystal of ice between his fingers. The crystal expands and shapes to his whims, forming a sort of rocket-ship themed vase with starry patterns along the rim. “I heard your friend wanted to be an astronaut, right?”

Sam and Tucker gape in awe at the vase, and Danny hands it to them to put the flowers in. “It’s ecto ice, so the cold temperature won’t kill the roses. It shouldn’t melt unless I make it do that, either.”

Sam works on rearranging the display with the vase while Tucker looks at Danny all teary eyed. “Dude, he would have loved something like that. How’d you know?”

“Well uh… just rumors. I know I would have appreciated some flowers at mine…”

Sharing a look, both Sam and Tucker nod to each other. Good to know they’ve been able to get along without Danny there to mediate, at least. Sam backs away from the display, smiling as the rearranged yellow roses with the addition of the rocket themed vase tie the little scene back together. The wilted flowers pushed to the back to accent the fresh ones, and a small photo of Danny’s human form at the head of the display to remember him by.

Danny thinks he might cry. Something in his core seems to warm with a bittersweet feeling of nostalgia, making him glow a little brighter.

Something yellow gets shoved in front of his face moments later. Sam hands Danny, Phantom form Danny, one of the yellow roses. Danny floats there a little dumbfounded before taking the rose and twirling it in his gloves. “What’s this for?”

“One for you, since everyone deserves a bit of a tribute to their life. And as thanks, for the vase,” Sam explains. “Yellow roses are a symbol of friendship, so feel free to talk to us if you need it.”

Danny holds the rose to his chest. “...thank you.”

“You’re not at all like I would’ve expected,” Tucker comments. “All the ghosts up until now were all like, tropey and junk. I was expecting you to be a walking public service announcement or talk like you walked out of a comic book. You’re actually pretty chill.”

“Hah. Chill,” Danny chuckles.

“Shut it, ectoplasmic Jack Frost. Bad puns are Danny’s thing, we don’t need a new bad influence running around.” Sam groans.

“There he is!!”

Man, speaking of Jack. Danny whips around to see his mother, father and sister rounding the corner in the GAV. Jack has his head out the window as all three members of the Fenton Family barrel out of the vehicle.

“And, that’s my cue to leave.” Danny tells the duo behind him. So much for getting something to eat. Still, he takes the yellow rose with him outside the realm of visibility as he vanishes into thin air in front of his pursuers.

“Danny, wait!!” Jazz calls after him, swiping her hands around the air he previously occupied. She growls with a bit of rage, clenching her fists. “Why didn’t you two stop him??”

“Why? Ghosts do what they want.” Sam counters.

“Because that was DANNY’S ghost that just flew away!!” Jazz shouts angrily.

“No way, that was Danny Phantom. Phantom’s been around for years, no way that’s our Danny!” Tucker argues.

“Tucker. Take two seconds to think about how much Danny loves stupid puns, and then tell me that ghost’s name again,” Jazz deadpans with a tired expression.

“Danny Pha- ohhh wait a second.”

“I’ve connected the dots.” Jazz declares proudly.

Danny comes out of his invisible state for a moment, a few feet up in the air. “You didn’t connect shit!!” he shouts down at the group.

“I connected them!” Jazz shouts back. “And I knew you were going to finish the reference, Danny!”

“Shut up!!” Danny vanishes again.

“....holy crap that was him,” Sam mutters.

Chapter Text

Danny twirls the yellow rose between his fingers a few times, taking a deep breath. So much for not telling his family he’s been dead for years, huh?

He’s back in the apartment, having managed to clean it up a bit since he started living here. Coming back to hide in the more run down part of town is starting to become necessary, considering how persistent his troupe of pursuers have been lately. Every time he leaves for patrol, there’s at least two of them running around.

The last fight with Skulker was especially harrowing. After sucking the hunter ghost into his thermos, his usual ending quip was interrupted by both his parents and his sister rapidly firing nets at him. As if Skulker’s weren’t enough, right? And they’ve been shouting weird things about trying to bring him home, too.

Hell no! He’s not falling for that! Ghost boys and ghost hunters don’t mix. The last thing he needs is to willingly walk into a trap so they can force his spirit to move on, or give his parents the opportunity to do all the stuff they’ve been threatening to do for years. Even Sam and Tucker are trying to catch him, now! They know he needs to eat, so they’ve been leaving food out as traps recently in an attempt to get him to come down and get close. And sure, Danny may have been a C average student barely scraping by, but he’s not as gullible as your typical obsession driven wraith, thank you very much. He picked up that lesson rather quickly into his superhero career.

As a result, he’s been hanging around his new little haunt more often. He’s cleaned up a few cupboards, reverse engineered a microwave he picked up from the dump, phased clean a mattress and some sheets so he can try to get some semblance of sleep in between patrols and even hooked his phone up to some wifi for good measure so he doesn’t keel over from boredom out here, relatively speaking.

The local ghosts are still pretty scared of him, though. Before Danny became a ghost himself, he didn’t think that was possible. Part of becoming something he was raised to hate and fear, he supposes. But, if he thinks on it too long, he’s gonna give himself another existential crisis and he’s getting really, really sick of those.

Despite being a ghost full time now, Danny still needs to revert to his physical form to conserve energy from time to time. He’s powerful, but he isn’t bottomless in terms of ecto energy. Still, he doesn’t really know what to think of his “human” body. Seeing as he has a corpse, what is he supposed to make of his current one? It still needs to eat, sleep, breathe…

Well, he has always healed rather quickly. The broken bones he’s managed to hide from particularly brutal fights can attest to that. He’s also healed injuries that normally would have been fatal to a normal person. So, maybe the reason his body was hollow is-

*BANG!!*

Danny’s jolted out of his train of thought when a loud explosion rocks the apartment he’s staying in. It’s followed by the shrieking of various ghosts and the sight of them fleeing past the window. Not good. Danny shifts into his ghost form and pokes his head outside to see what all the ruckus is about, and to make sure his flat isn’t going to fall over. This apartment complex isn’t the most stable, being haunted and run-down and all that.

“...I knew I was forgetting something,” Danny grumbles under his breath, seeing an armada of Ghost Investigation Ward-operated vehicles tearing into town. With all the hurry and flurry of running from his family, he forgot to go pick up his old corpse from the morgue and get rid of it. That means the GIW did get their hands on it after the morticians were done examining it, just as planned.

And now, the smelly old thing led the GIW right to him.

Great.

Perfect, even.

Time to get out of here. Danny quickly pulls his head back into his apartment, grabbing Sam’s yellow rose and quickly pouring on the spectral speed in order to get the heck outta dodge while he still can. Shaking his head, Danny does as he always had when flying: imagines himself as a rocket. The many hours of flight simulation, the angles the rocket would pitch and swerve to… his mind is the control center, his core the fuel, the tail is the exhaust…

The mental image helped him to fly. And soon, he was moving just as fast as his mind’s eye perceived him to be. Streaking across the midday sky, Danny moves into town to shake the GIW off his tail. Not without lack of trying on their part, as various beams of energy attempt to shoot him out of the sky. Danny is still faster, though. He makes it into Amity Park’s more populated area with plenty of time to turn human and throw a disguise together.

Nothing a pair of sunglasses and a hoodie can’t hide. And, since he’s human, his ecto signature should blend in with the rest of the ambient ecto energy throughout Amity Park. Simple as that. And, once the GIW and all their cronies leave, he should be able to retreat back to the apartment. Though, Danny also knows how persistent they can be first hand, so it might take a while.

Back at the Nasty Burger again, huh? He’s really got to stop winding up here…

Rifling through his jacket he totally didn’t steal from a dump, Danny finds a twenty in one of the pockets. Score! Money for some actual hot food while he’s lying low. With how bad his luck usually is, he’ll take what he can get. So, making sure his hood and sunglasses are properly adjusted so no one can recognise him, Danny strolls into the sliding doors and up to the front counter.

Oh, of course Valerie is working the counter today.

Danny walks forward, feeling a little intimidated now as he walks up to the counter. Valerie knows his usual order, since they’d hang out while she was working from time to time, so ordering his usual might clue her in if he isn’t careful…

“Welcome to Nasty Burger, what can I get ya?” Valerie prompts. She looks a little less than pleased, so Danny had better make this fast. After coming up with a plan on the fly, he quickly orders a burger meal, no tomato, with fries and a small chocolate shake, instead of the usual extra large one. A genius move on his part, switching it up just enough while still satisfying his craving for fast food he hasn’t had in months.

Valerie’s eyes narrow at him, and Danny just kinda hands her the twenty and shoves his hands in his pockets. “...keep the change,” he mutters before moving over to the next counter. He can feel the intense gaze of skepticism on him on his way over. Still, Valerie puts the twenty in the till, leaving to head into the kitchen behind the counter. Danny keeps his head down and waits for his order.

After a moment, Valerie puts up a tray with his order, including a much bigger shake than he ordered and an extra sandwich. Danny blinks in confusion, tilting his head.

“You keep the change, Fenton. Just this once,” Valerie mutters to him under her breath. “But you’d better scram, quick. Don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but you’re pretty big news right now, dead or alive. This is the last favor I’m going to give you, got it?”

“...thanks, Valerie.”

“Take your shit and go, Phantom.”

Danny takes the food and leaves the building without another word. Finding a more secluded spot, he unwraps the food Valerie gave him, only to find a note inside one of the wrappers, along with a twenty dollar bill. He unfurls the note, looking it up and down. Danny knows Valerie’s handwriting from the time they looked over their book reports together, so he knows the note is from her.

“Danny, when you get this, one way or another, I wanted to warn you.
Vlad Masters leaked the truth about you in an attempt to get you to join
him. There’s another bounty on your head as a result. The GIW also want
you for unknown reasons. They stole the body without consent from your
family. I’d get out of Amity Park while you still have the chance.

Next time we see each other, I want an explanation in return.
-Valerie.”

“Should’ve figured…” Danny mutters under his breath, crumpling up the wrapper and burning it to ash using a concentrated ectoblast. There isn’t any level Vlad won’t stoop to to get his hands on the perfect half-ghost son. Heck, Danny’s impromptu cousin who’s out there traveling the world is proof enough of that.

As always, he’s on the run, and everyone wants a piece of him. Except this time, he can’t retreat into his human life to hide. There’s no reality gauntlets available for a do-over. Clockwork would have interfered had this not been fated. It’s up to Danny, and Danny alone, to find a way out this time.

The sounds of clattering and smell of burning ectoplasm have Danny jump to his feet. He knows the smell of a freshly fired ecto weapon well, which means one of his tails has already caught up to him. That means it’s time to move, so Danny stuffs the twenty into his hoodie pocket and dashes off with a quick swap to ghost form. The tail in question very quickly makes themselves known, firing at random in his direction in order to get a lucky hit. Danny turns back to spare a glance at the plethora of GIW Agents trailing behind him.

“Man, whatever was in that skin suit must’ve been potent if they can still track me in human form,” Danny mutters. He swings around one of the taller buildings in town, wincing at the sound of shattering glass as one of the shots meant for him ends up breaking a window. The owner of the apartment can be heard shouting profanities, so Danny throws a quick “Sorry!” behind him.

Zigzagging around a few structures in an attempt to shake his pursuers, Danny heads for a less populated area. The fact that the agents shot out a window just to hit Phantom pisses Danny off. His obsession burns in his chest seeing the destruction, making it painfully clear that the GIW are willing to do anything to get at him today, including destroying public property. If the broken window wasn’t enough of an indication, Danny can hear them smashing their way through town in order to keep up with him.

“That damage to town’s coming out of your paycheck, you know!!” Danny quips at the persistent agents. Heck, it’s not like the ghost can pay for insurance. Besides, the government’s ghost attack relief fund should realistically come from the same people who fund Ghost Investigation Ward, right? Danny doesn’t know for sure, he failed Social Studies too.

There’s more protests from the confused citizens as the GIW tear through public infrastructure to chase Phantom. Since Amity Park as a whole is Danny’s haunt, he can feel the building unease and anger from where he is…

Come to think of it, the feeling of unease in the whole city has been rising for a while. Danny just ignored it or passed it off as his own conflicting emotions up until this point, now that he’s actually paying attention. His ghost half usually feeds on the positive emotions of the town he drums up by appearing to save the day, even if unintentionally, so it makes sense why he’s been feeling so drained and depressed lately.

Perhaps ghost and haunt are more connected than he first realized.

Danny’s realization distracts him, and the agents firing on him manage to get a clean hit. Danny shrieks, writhing in midair, before his altered flight path has him careening into the park below. He lands with a thud in a grassy patch, groaning and rubbing the wound. It stings, majorly. More than most other weapons he’s been hit with kind of majorly.

Gripping the dirt to steady himself, Danny stumbles to a more upright position as the thundering footsteps of a dozen bloodthirsty government agents move to surround him. Tilting his head left and right, Danny finds himself surrounded on all sides in a matter of moments. Each and every one has a modified ecto gun that Danny just now realizes must be designed for him specifically.

Now he really regrets not cremating his own corpse when he had the chance. Honestly, everything that’s gone wrong up to this point is because of that stupid, smelly thing. So now, here he stands about to get vaporized entirely because of the corpse in a backpack he couldn’t hide properly.

“Thanks, Dash,” Danny mutters sarcastically. May as well make his last words a final jab at the bully who couldn’t keep his hands to himself and put Danny in this predicament in the first place. Going down a sass master is always the way he wanted to bow out, after all.

*CRUNCH*

“You’re welcome, Fenturd.”

Danny whips around to see Dash tackling one of the agents to the ground, giving Danny an opening to escape being deep fried. There’s only a moment where they lock eyes, but it’s all Danny needs to take the hint to book it.

“Fine, consider us even,” he relents on his way past Dash. There’s a hot blast behind Danny that just barely misses him as he jumps out of the way. The GIW holler and shout after him, more near misses passing Danny as he leaps up in the air again. One blast manages to singe his ear, causing him to wince and pick up the pace. Legs become a wispy tail, and Danny is passing over the park at high speed.

Despite his attempt at a quick escape, Danny barely escapes being hit by a GIW jet intercepting him from high up. Frankly, the lengths they’re going through today are a bit ridiculous, especially for just one ghost. The jet deploys a missile, and Danny shifts the shape of his ghostly body to have it pass right through his midsection.

The missile sails through him and slams into the ground with a rather massive explosion, upending dirt and causing rubble to fly. Spectators at the park angrily jeer at the jet for blowing up a perfectly good patch of ground. There’s a bit of an angry mob forming, actually. Danny can feel their building rage as more people come out of smoking wreckage the GIW trampled through and around wrecked infrastructure.

“Wow, and I thought I got slack for property damage,” Danny jokes at the agents staring him down. “Keep that up and you’ll end up the new public enemy number one.”

The agents all respond poorly, and begin firing on Danny again. A few quick weaves and dodges are enough to evade their furious blasting, leaving Danny to take off in the opposite direction again. Overhead, he spots a few helicopters flying in to get coverage of the all out attack in the park. One of the missiles fired from the jet swerves just past him, heading for said helicopter instead.

Leaping into action, Danny rushes past the thing and grabs onto the helicopter door, turning it intangible so the projectile doesn’t hit it. “Hey, watch where you’re aiming those things, you’re going to hurt someone!” He attempts to warn, though his efforts are only met with him turning the news chopper intangible again because the GIW are still firing.

“Sheesh, don’t these guys ever run out of ammo?” Danny rhetorically asks the news anchor in the chopper, flashing the camera a grin before vanishing and leading the GIW away. The chopper turns to follow Danny’s exit, though it stays significantly further from the conflict now to keep from endangering the crew. The monochrome blur corkscrews through the park, an army of determined agents right behind him.

A red beam of energy flashes past Danny and hits the engine of one of the jets. The telltale sound of a certain hoverboard has Danny flinching, already on high alert as is, before the smoking barrel of a gun is pointed his face. “Getting real tired of bozos and hacks cutting off my chance at an explanation from you, Phantom.”

“...yeah, you and me both,” Danny tells Valerie, hands up by his shoulders as the ghost hunter lowers her gun. “They came after me not long after I left the Nasty Burger, as you can clearly tell…”

Valerie huffs, unimpressed. “At least I have standards.”

“Compared to those guys? You’re a saint,” Danny jokes.

“Don’t push it, ghost boy,” Valerie rolls her eyes. “Now get outta here while you still have the chance, I can’t hold them off for too much longer.”

Danny nods and moves closer to the other edge of town, just past the park. And then what, he asks himself? Is he really going to be on the run forever, from this day forward? Hiding for the rest of his life was unappealing at best. But, with the GIW able to track him endlessly, what choice does he have? The sounds of the GIW destroying things just to get at him ticks him off even more.

“Danny!”

Jazz runs up underneath him and Danny can’t help but internally groan. Of all the bad timing he’s been dealing with lately…

“What are you doing, get out of here!!” Danny shouts down at her.

“No way,” Jazz huffs. “I’m sick of watching you run away from home, Danny. You’ve been running away from your friends, your family and everyone that loves you, and for what? But this time, I’m not going to let you run away again.”

Danny looks between the approaching GIW squad and Jazz. “Yeah uh… no thanks.”

“I don’t mean that!!” Jazz huffs. “Though that is a problem, which is why I brought backup!”

At Jazz’s words, the sound of the GAV honking a triumphant fanfare loudly blares through the park. The hulking tank of a vehicle jumps over Danny and Jazz, landing just in front of the agents before they finish catching up to Danny. Jack’s bulky frame pushes out of the driver seat, holding a weapon befitting his size in his arms.

“This is your one warning!” Jack shouts into a megaphone he also apparently brought with him. “Get outta my town, and get away from my son!!”

“Stand down, citizen. Do not get in the way of our operation, this is for your own good and the good of the world,” one of the agents declares, raising their weapon. A shadow slides in behind said agent before roundhouse kicking the back of their head. Sam scoffs in the face of the poor agent she just knocked to the ground with her steel toed boot.

“Good of the world? Don’t feed us that bullshit!” Sam snaps, moving to join the Fentons at the front of the defense before the other agents can detain her. She stands her ground in front of Danny, and Tucker joins her soon after with the sound of a certain missile firing jet crashing in the distance. Sam continues, loud and proud as always. “Look around yourselves! You’re destroying the city you claim to be doing so much good for, just for one ghost! Danny Phantom’s done more for this town than you guys ever have!”

“Phantom is a dangerous ecto entity with an unprecedented level of ghostly power. Leaving something that dangerous to just roam free will only serve to put people in danger,” another agent crones. “A ghost that powerful could crush civilizations if left to its own devices, so it’s better to destroy it while we have the chance!”

“That may be so….” Maddie’s voice cuts in, Danny whipping around to see her standing behind him. “But in all his existence, Phantom has never hurt anyone with that power. Can you say such things about how you use your own?”

Maddie draws her bo staff, moving to stand at Danny’s side. “Despite what’s happened, I know my son. Not as well as I hoped I would as a mother, but at the very least, I know my Danny would never use his power like that.”

Danny feels like he might tear up in the middle of all this. His friends and family standing at his side, defending him, PHANTOM him, despite everything, has his chest fill with an unfamiliar but powerful feeling. Well, if everyone’s going to make this effort to fight for him, why not join in? He’s not one to sit on the sidelines when his town is at stake, after all.

Ectoplasmic energy warms in Danny’s hands as he takes a battle stance with the rest of his family. He turns to face the GIW with as much bravado as he can muster. “You heard my dad. Last chance to leave town before we send you packing.”

“Not an option,” the agent at the head of the GIW lineup declares. In turn, the rest of the agents arm their weapons and take aim at the group. Sam, Tucker and Jazz arm themselves with weapons from the GAV while Valerie flies in to fight on Danny’s side once more. Even some disgruntled citizens, fed up with the Ghost Investigation Ward, join Danny’s side of the fight.

Battle lines are drawn across the park, leaving a wide, empty space between Amity Park’s citizens and the government agents.

It’s silent for just a moment.

Then, all hell breaks loose.

Ectoplasmic blasts kick off the fight, scorching the air between the combatants as both sides fire on each other, Jack happily tossing some smaller weapons from the GAV into the crowd before hefting his own Bazooka over his shoulder. Danny moves to stand next to his dad, flashing him a smile as the pair begin firing the bigger of the blasts into the fray. Danny’s aiming to disarm more than anything, because his blasts aren’t really programmed to be completely harmless to humans like most artificial ghost hunting weapons.

Jack just seems to be happy to be firing a bunch of big explody things at random. Danny can’t blame him, firing lasers at things and watching them go boom is fun, even if the intent is just to fry government technology. And speaking of technology frying, Danny spots Tucker using the GAV and the numerous functions he never bothered to pay attention to spit out pulses of energy that force any agents in its range to run clean out of power.

“Where’d you learn to do that??” Danny asks him, a bit surprised. Tucker grins widely, tapping away on his PDA with a stylus and redirecting the pulses toward more agents in the back of the crowd.

“I could always do it! I’m a techno wizard when I wanna be,” Tucker brags, “Just never had a good reason before now. And saving my bestie bro? Can’t think of a better reason to bust out my arsenal!”

More blasts from the opposing side move in, Danny jumping out of the way. He knows the GIW are only after him, no matter what stands in their way, so maybe he can use that to his advantage. Jumping and weaving in between the crowd, he puppets the agents into walking into a few traps before one gets close enough to grab his leg.

Danny yelps, the glove of the agent holding him beginning to shoot an electric shock up his body, before a swift karate chop hits the agent’s forearm. The arm recoils, giving Danny enough time to wriggle free, his mother helping him get back on his feet.

“You better watch those reckless maneuvers, young man!” Maddie scolds him, before kicking the agent in the face to knock them back. Danny nods quietly, only to jump back when three more enemies attempt to dogpile him. The whirr of a hoverboard, and Valerie lands in the fray to join Danny’s mother in battle.

“The Red Huntress, right?” Maddie asks. Valerie nods in acknowledgement. “You handle an ecto weapon expertly, but how’s your hand to hand?” Maddie continues, seemingly a bit concerned for the much younger ghost hunter.

“I’m a ninth degree black belt,” Valerie gloats.

“Then you and I will get along just fine,” Maddie’s grin turns sharp in return, and the amount of badassery from both his mom and his ex that follows is something so amazing, Danny can’t really put it into words. All he knows is that there was a lot of butt kicking, and a lot of knocked out agents as a result.

“Woah,” is all Danny can say, making a mental note to never get on either of their bad sides ever again.

Danny keeps weaving through the defense line after recovering from witnessing that display of martial arts mastery. He keeps it up for a while, the lines finally starting to thin out as he reaches his sister. Jazz is wearing the Fenton Peeler, using the contraption to tear the anti-ecto suits right off the approaching agents. She shoots Danny a determined smile, and Danny returns a smile of his own, stopping to rest at her side.

“I think we got them on the ropes.” Jazz tells him. “Once they run out of weapons, we can drive them out of town.”

“Good, cause I don’t think I can take much more running and hiding…” Danny wheezes. “I’ve got a lot of power, sure, but I’ve been using it constantly since this morning. I don’t know how much longer I can go.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Danny turns slightly, finding a gun pointed at his head. Another agent behind Jazz zaps her with something that forces her out of the peeler suit. The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps has Danny hold out some hope even though the agent that zapped his sister now has her in a headlock.

“This has gone on long enough,” The agent with the gun to Danny’s head growls. “I’d hoped to capture you alive for experiments, but you’re too much of a risk. Consider yourself terminated.”

“Danny!!” Jazz shouts, struggling to break free. But it’s too late.

The weapon fires, and the blast goes right through the back of Danny’s head.

Chapter Text

“Danny! Danny!!”

The shouting echoes in his head, multiple voices calling for him, begging him to wake up. Warm names, familiar sounds. The sensation gripping his shoulder and a flaring pain in his skull, a pain he never wanted to feel again. The pain of slipping away, taking a last breath, leaving loved ones behind…

Dying.

He’s dying again.

It’s not the cataclysmic supernova of an event that tore him apart the first time. The portal was hot and cold and loud and intense all at the same time, setting all of his nerves on fire at once. It’s more… blink and you’ll miss it, this time. A low, dull pain in the back of his mind that severs his body’s connection to his core in an instant. Much less painful, but no less restless.

He just got his family back. Is he going to lose them again? What happens when a ghost dies, is there an after-afterlife? Or does he simply just… fade away? Is this the moment the boy who once called himself Danny Fenton ceases to exist? Does everything just go quiet from here on out?

No.

No, he can’t die here. After everything he’s been through, everything he has yet to do, everyone he fought so hard to protect, after everyone fought so hard to protect him, is he really just going to lie down and die?!

No! He refuses! Just like the first time, he refuses to just die here! It’s not the end until he says it’s over! The burning energy in his chest, the tingling sensation of every nerve in his body being lit on fire, heart and mind fused together with one burning purpose, all over again.

Sensations come back to him as he fights for what little life he has left. This isn’t over, this isn’t over! Phantom was made to fight, so come hell or high water, he is going to fight!!

Concentrating his energy, Danny picks out every piece of GIW tech he can sense based purely on the ecto energy they’re running on. The energy is cool in his core, leading him to the agents forming a wall around where that last one shot him. None of the civilians are around. Danny senses living bodies behind him as well, his sister cradling a body while his core floats above it. Sam and Tucker are further back.

Good, they shouldn’t be in range for what he’s about to do.

After all, he’s more than fed up with these guys. And he can sense the town’s discontent with them, too. He did warn them to show out before things got ugly, and things are most definitely ugly now. The burning sensation in his nerves craves a release, one that only one power can accomplish. He calls upon the moment of his first death to give that power everything it needs.

Danny’s very essence begins to SCREAM.

The core of Phantom’s being flickers into corporeality above Jazz’s head, giving her very little warning before the wretched sound of death itself echoes in waves, blasting back the enemies with wave after agonizing wave of force from beyond the grave. The orb at the epicenter of the sonic blast pulses with each wave it emits.

As a result, the agents in the blast radius are nearly flattened against the ground with the force of each sonic pulse of agony and desperation Danny’s core flings at them. The wailing sound itself is enough to bring people to their knees as the sound of death itself seems to be personified in the crying and screaming of the ectoplasmic core.

As it wails, the core flickers and pulses, absorbing the ambient ecto energy around the park, draining the weapons on both sides of their power, taking the energy out of the GAV’s ecto converter, and even Danny’s own, fresh corpse is sucked dry. The body in Jazz’s hands slowly fades to the black-haired and blue eyed version of her brother, while the energy from the body pours back into the core that once gave it shape.

In return, a new shape is formed. A new body, starting from a burst of blinding light, that grows arms, legs and a head around the pulsing energy in its chest. Like Saturn and its rings, a bright circle of blue-white energy surrounds the core, before pulsing outward and splitting. The sound seems to cut out for a brief moment.

In the wake of the chaos, above toppled trees and crumbling rubble, Danny Phantom floats overhead.

Not a scratch or a scar remains of the previous battle. Something about this new Phantom is sharper, angrier and ghostlier. Pointed ears and ice blue skin replace what was once the more human specter, wisps of white hair flowing in antigravity while pure green eyes scan the battlefield.

The GIW, all of their weapons drained and useless, stare up in horror at the absolute malice being directed their way. The very air itself is cold with ghostly wrath as Phantom touches the ground, light but powerful footsteps chilling all who dare to look to their bones. Rows of sharp fangs twist into a sneer as Danny looks the agent who shot him directly in the eyes.

“Get. Out.”

The command shakes the air as Phantom speaks. Shark-like teeth growl at the agents, a low rumble of angry energy that has them all shaking in their boots and clinging to each other for dear life. Despite Danny’s snarky attitude, making him lose his patience to the point of threatening humans, which will have them all regretting that mistake for a long time.

Danny takes one more step forward, and the GIW run away screaming. There’s the sound of roaring engines as various white vans, cars and tanks quickly vacate the premises, fading further and further into the distance. If they know what’s good for them, they’ll never come back. Danny huffs, blue steam coming out of his nose like that of an angry bull, before the sensation of the Ghost Investigation Ward leaving his turf for good finally has him relax his shoulders.

The tense energy in the air fades as Danny relaxes. The sky lightens, the atmosphere warms up and a wave of calm silence washes over Amity Park for the first time in months. With a sigh, Danny turns to face the people at his back. His heart sinks a bit, seeing everyone huddled around his corpse.

His second corpse.

“Great, what am I supposed to do about the second body?” Danny grumbles through gritted fangs. The sound of him speaking in a much less sinister tone grabs the attention of everyone huddled around the corpse. Sam, Tucker and Jazz are closest to it, Jazz leaning it against her chest somewhat protectively. His mom and dad are off to their left side, while Valerie in her huntress suit with a cracked helmet and Dash cradling his right arm are on the other side.

“Danny?” Jazz asks.

“Geeze Jazz, you sound like a broken record at this point,” Danny jokes back, far less intimidating now that he’s acting more like himself. Jazz looks between the body and the ghost of her brother in front of her.

“Are you… can you-” she tries to find the words.

“I mean… maybe? Worth a shot, I guess…” Danny scratches the back of his head, wincing as he knicks himself with his new claws. Pulling his hand away, he takes a deep breath and calls for his physical form to come forth. The blue rings appear, to Danny’s slight surprise. He thought he was out of second chances like this, he made a second body after all, he could have sworn-

But no… just as they always have, the rings whisk away his ghostly attributes and leave a perfectly normal eighteen year old by standing in Phantom’s place. Well… normal-ish. He can already tell that his eyes feel too bright and his teeth and nails feel too sharp compared to what’s normal, but he can still change, and that’s all that really matters.

His parents leap across the distance between his old body and new form instantly, hugging him tightly and whispering sorrowful apologies in his ears. Jack crushes Danny in a tight bear hug, and Danny returns the gesture with an equally forceful embrace. He missed his Dad’s hugs so much these past few months, how could he not?

Maddie’s in tears, whimpering about how she was so worried about her baby. Danny phases out of his dad’s grip, leaving him a bit baffled as the halfa moves to give his mom a hug too. She’s run out of words outside constant apologies, and Danny rubs her back to assure his mother that all is forgiven.

After a tearful reunion with his parents, Valerie is the next one to push her way toward Danny. They lock eyes for a moment. “So, I know I owe you an explanation, but-”

Valerie punches him in the face, hard.

Danny recoils and grips his nose, red and green fluid leaking from between his fingers as he mutters a string of curses akin to “what the fuck” under his breath while he waits for his broken nose to heal itself.

“Now we’re actually even. You can tell me everything after we’re not in a pile of smoldering rubble,” Valerie shoots him a fond grin despite her harsh words. “Then we can talk about a more long term truce. Don’t you dare die on me before you can explain, idiot.”

Danny sighs, finally feeling the blood flow stop long enough for him to ice his own broken nose. As long as his healing ability hasn’t been altered too much, it should be fine in about an hour. Though, that also means he’s going to be blowing frost out every time he breathes until then.

“Hey… Fenton.”

Looks like Dash is up next. The quarterback is still cradling his right arm, unsure as to how badly it’s hurt by the looks of it. He looks between Danny and his feet, unsure what to say. Danny decides to wait for Dash to find the words.

“I’m sorry.”

Dash has his eyes to the ground when he speaks. “Look, I know this happened because of me. I’m the one who found the…” he looks over at the more fresh corpse in Jazz’s arms, “..the, you know, while you were trying to get rid of it. And I’m the one who called the cops on it…”

“Go on,” Danny prompts, doing his best not to be TOO smug about it. He’s been waiting all his school life for Dash to apologize.

“D-do you know how hard it is to say this, Fenturd??” Dash snaps. “When I saw your corpse in that equipment bag, I thought it was my fault! I’ve been roughing you up for years so your dead body being in that bag while you were still carrying it-”

Dash seems to get teary eyed for the first time. “Then all the cops started suspecting me because I was the last one who saw you! They were ready to pin me for murder and I- I was just gonna let em, because I thought I made you…”

Danny cuts him off. “If the circumstances had been different, part of me thinks I might have ended up doing… that, yeah. You’ve been tormenting me my whole life, telling me how I’m gonna amount to nothing, shoving me into lockers, beating me up, making my school life hell, just so you could look good. Had Phantom not happened, I might have been a very different kind of ghost. So go on, if you’re going to say it, say it.”

Dash shuffles his feet a moment. “I’m sorry… for making your life hell, Fen- Danny. Can you forgive me?”

“You’ll have to work for it, but for now, yeah, I forgive you,” Danny sighs. “Now go get that arm looked at, I’m sure someone here can drive you to the hospital.”

Dash nods and scurries off, and Danny can still feel the quarterback’s guilt even as he leaves. At least he knows the apology is sincere, for now. It’s up to Dash if he’ll actually try and change his attitude from here on out. At least if anything comes out of this, a few lessons are learned today-

Danny’s suddenly punched in the arm. “Ow! What is it with people hitting me today?!” He snaps, eyes flaring green as he rubs his new bruise.

“Don’t scare me like that again!!” Sam yells in his face, before wrapping her arms around him and sobbing into his chest. “You asshole, don’t go doing that again!!”

Tucker comes up behind the pair. “She’s always better at articulating her point, but yeah. Dude, if you ghost us like that again, you’re gonna pay.”

“The bad puns are my thing, Tuck,” Danny quips.

“No duh! I mean really? Phantom?? Of all the cool ghost superhero names you could have come up with, and you just had to go with Danny Phantom. How did NO ONE figure that out until after you were declared dead!?”

“I’m just that good,” Danny snarks, earning another punch from Sam when she stops hugging him.

“Seriously though. Do that again, and I’M gonna be the one who kills you the THIRD TIME,” Sam threatens. “We’re supposed to be a team, right? So no more secrets.”

“Yeah,” Tucker nods resolutely. “We’re supposed to do everything together, dude. You don’t have to hide like, half your life from us. We got you covered!”

“Thanks guys… means a lot,” Danny smiles, taking in both his friends for a group hug, prompting a few “awws” from the surrounding crowd.

Jazz approaches last, looking Danny up and down before rushing to give Danny a hug their dad would be proud of. She whispers “Welcome back, little brother,” in his ear, and Danny’s core soars, feeling reenergized.

After the hug breaks, and the park clears out, Danny looks to the empty husk Jazz had leaned against a tree before rushing over to him. Only the Fentons, Sam and Tucker remained in the park, still ruined, though the heat from smoking rubble had finally died down a bit. The body sits under the tree limply. Danny can tell, now that he’s looking for it, that the corpse isn’t much more than a hollow shell, just like the last one.

Everything Danny needs to be himself is already part of him.

With that in mind, he points the tip of his finger at the hollow shell sitting under the tree, warming up his hands with ghostly power and blasting the shell with enough heat to vaporize it instantly. Danny’s not one to make the same mistake twice, after all. His friends and family look on in shock, but he only shakes his head.

“It’s for the best, guys,” Danny tells them. “I let the first one linger way too long, and look at all the trouble it caused us. I don’t even know what the Guys in White did with it, to be honest. For now, it’s better we don’t let this kind of information fall into the wrong hands.”

“That’s… a fair assessment, I suppose…” Maddie murmurs, a bit on edge watching her son vaporize his own body, probably.

“Saves us on holding a second funeral, I guess?” Jack shrugs. “Dunno if you were watching it, but man those things are pricey.”

Danny shrugs.

“So… what do you want to do now?” Jazz asks.

“Now?” Danny looks around one last time. His friends, his family, his whole town, still by his side despite everything. But, there’s only one place in the world he wants to be after all this. He’s missed it for months, after all.

“Let’s go home, everyone.”

THE END.

-BONUS-

“Daniel! I’ve come to finally take what’s rightfully mine! In a world that will never accept you, I am the only one in the world who could ever hope to understand the pain and rejection you must have faced these past few months. Worry not, I am willing to offer you comfort, safety and a roof over your-”

Danny can attest the look on Plasmius’s face is priceless, when his mom, dad, sister and two best friends jump out armed to the teeth with equipment to capture him.

“Vladdie! Danny-o here tells me you’ve been needing a time out, so we’re here to do just that! Fenton-style!” Jack declares chipperly, pointing a net gun at the elder halfa.

“Oh, for the love of cheese puffs,” Vlad growls.

Danny decides it feels good to be home, watching his arch nemesis get dragged off in a net with a caricature of his dad on it.

-FIN-