AN: This will only update once a month, since I'm rather busy at the moment. During the summer that might change. Also, I haven't actually watched DP since September so this may be a little less canon compliant than you like. Feel free to point out any weird mistakes and enjoy!

The school bus groaned as it braked and slid to a stop in front of Fentonworks. At least the bus stop was right in front of Danny's house. He slung his backpack on and made his way down the aisle of the bus. He kept his head low as he went down the stairs. Tripping a little on the way down, he blushed and closed his eyes in embarrassment. The sound of the bus pulling away behind him made him feel only slightly better. At least it was officially summer now. Yeah, even though Dash bullied him extra hard to "make up" for all the opportunities he'd miss over the break.

He walked inside and dumped his bag on the floor. Fentonworks was strangely silent, although he wasn't surprised. Mom and Dad were working late. Jazz was at some seminar or other. Danny was alone.

No ghosts, either. Wow, this might actually be a quiet afternoon.

His thoughts were interrupted as his core went icy cold.

Damn.

A single trail of thick blue fog escaped his mouth and he shut his eyes again, this time in annoyance. He didn't want a ghost fight, not here and certainly not now. But although it was the literal last thing he wanted, he also knew that he couldn't ignore it. It wasn't his job, and he certainly didn't enjoy it, but he couldn't risk people getting hurt- people like his parents, who didn't really know what they were dealing with.

Since the house was empty, he let himself transform right there in the kitchen. The white rings brought a familiar feeling of confidence and three seconds later he darted out the door as Danny Phantom.

The ghost was only a level three, a blue panther-shaped humanoid with an armored club at the end of its tail. Hopefully, he'd be able to suck it into the Fenton Thermos in just a few minutes. The thing kept yelling, like it was trying to talk but couldn't. Then there was the large, wickedly sharp-horned Viking helmet on its head. There was a large ruby fixed to the forehead, and it looked pretty important… and suspiciously out-of-place on this particular ghost. It obviously wasn't the helmet's original owner.

Danny shot a ray of ecto-energy. The ruby glowed, a red aura appeared around the ghost, and the ecto blast bounced harmlessly off of it before hurtling back to Danny. He barely dodged it.

Every attack he tried was useless, blocked by the aura radiating from the helmet. None of his ghost powers worked against it. He had to figure out some other way to get the thing off the cat's head…

"Hey, stupid!" he shouted. "Over here!" He flew in small, dizzying circles around the ghost, dodging its club tail, before zipping towards a nearby streetlight. The thing lunged for him, but Danny was faster. He darted out of the way just in time, but the ghost was not so lucky. It hit the streetlight with a sickening clang. Danny clapped his hands over his ears as the groan of straining metal filled the air, and a few moments later the pole crashed into the pavement.

It didn't move.

Danny breathed a sigh of relief.

Then the thing got back up.

Tossing the streetlight away like it was made of Styrofoam, the ghost pounced at Danny. He dodged, again, helpless against it. He couldn't get close enough to hurt it, and ranged attacks didn't work either. It looked like the only way was to get the helmet off of its head, but he couldn't do that either- not without a distraction.

But how could he distract it? It obviously had heightened senses, even for a ghost. He flew through some power lines, hoping it would at least slow the ghost down.

It worked. The ghost ended up tangled up in the power lines, and after a few moments, the utility poles snapped in half, sending it to the ground. Surprisingly, it almost… didn't seem to mind?

It pawed at the lines curiously, forgetting all about Danny. Then he stifled a laugh as it started playing with them.

"Cats like string!" he said.

Danny slowly, quietly looped around, coming up behind the thing, and pulled the helmet off its head while it was distracted. The cat-person glowed green and dropped to the ground as a teenage girl barely older than his sister. Dressed like she died in the fifties, but she could've been Jazz. A flash of guilt suddenly went through him; he never could get used to fighting ghosts that reminded him of his own family.

If only his parents felt the same way.

He had to wonder, though. How much of his normal half did they see in his ghost form?

The ghost girl's echoing voice cut through his thoughts. "Thank you!" she cried. "That- that thing-"

"Whose is it?" Danny knelt by the helmet and inspected it. It was made of iron; at least, what looked like iron, with swirling designs scored in it, and it was surprisingly hot to the touch. Danny pulled his hand away with a surprised yelp and grabbed his wrist. His hand was pulsing slightly, its aura brightening almost angrily, and it was a few seconds before it cooled and returned to normal.

"I don't know- I don't remember anything," the girl admitted.

Danny rubbed his eyes in frustration. "Okay, look," he said, "here's what we can do. If you're not interested in taking over the world or anything, I can send you back to the Ghost Zone. I don't want to fight you, okay?"

She looked scared, but nodded anyway.

"That helmet…" He shook his head. "I'll do something about it. Where did you find it?"

"I don't remember."

"What do you remember?"

The girl looked away. "Dying. And some after that. I don't know how long I was… taken over."

She finally got to her feet, and Danny noticed how terrified she seemed. His expression softened. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm a ghost too, see? I'm on your side."

She nodded again. "I just want to go home."

Danny held out the thermos. "I'm gonna put you in here, okay? It won't be nice, but I promise I'll get you back to the Ghost Zone as soon as I can."

"I don't want to go in," she said, voice wavering, and shied away from the thermos.

"Ten minutes, tops. I promise. You can trust me. I just... the ghost portal's kind of in my house, and my parents aren't gonna just, you know, let you in."

"Fine. Just- please- don't leave me in there…"

Danny uncapped the thermos. "I won't."

She was sucked into the swirling abyss reluctantly, but not regretfully. Danny put the cap back on and clipped the thermos to his belt.

He noticed two voices behind him. To any average kid, Maddie and Jack Fenton were just two scientists that were maybe a little weird. To Danny in his normal, human half that's all they were. But Danny was not an average kid, and at that moment he was also not entirely human.

"Look, Jack. It's Phantom!" Mom was pointing excitedly at him.

"Forget about Phantom," his dad said, staring past him. "What's all that?"

Danny spun around again, to where the ghost girl had first appeared. Ectoplasm was running in rivulets down the pavement from a twisting mass of faceless, formless ghosts. His nose wrinkled in disgust and he sighed before taking off towards the mess. Fighting these… things wasn't even fun.

He threw a punch and his fist connected with gooey sludge. The ghost shrieked, spitting more ectoplasm all over Danny.

"Aw, gross!" He wiped some of the goo from his eyes and, after floating back a few feet to wind up, rammed himself as hard as he could into the ghost's side. It spurted glowing green plasma like a fountain at the impact.

It was something, at least. Danny was psyching himself up for another hit when something- someone- knocked him off balance. Another ghost, this one a middle aged man in a weird suit.

"Seriously, dude?" he snapped. "I'm busy!"

This was, apparently, not the right thing to say. Flames shot out of the man's scalp where slicked-back hair once was. "NOBODY TALKS TO THE BOSS LIKE THAT!"

"Whoa, whoa, calm down." Danny put his hands up as a sort of peace offering. "Jeez. I'm sure we can work this out like civilized- hey!"

The Boss stuck out his hands and shot a stream of papers and file folders at Danny, who narrowly dodged them. "What is this? Your secretary's outbox?" he taunted.

"You're fired!" the ghost growled. "Insubordinate hooligan!"

Danny's mocking smile fell and he frowned angrily. "You can't fire me, I quit. And I think you'd be smart to quit, too."

The Boss screamed incoherently about insolent youth, blah blah blah. Danny, of course, ignored all of it- taking the chance while he was distracted to get in a good punch.

Something wrapped around his wrist. A cold, clammy hand. Danny turned around and not only was an angry-looking woman holding onto him, she wasn't the only one staring at him. A crowd of ghosts had formed behind her.

Danny groaned in frustration as more and more ghosts swirled around him. He snatched his wrist away from the woman. "Let go of me- I don't have time for this!"

"I got him, Jack," he heard Mom say, almost twenty feet below. He ignored her (it felt weird to say it about his mom, but she really was no match for him).

That was a mistake.

He cried out as his chest exploded in pain a moment later. He turned and saw Mom aiming a cooling blaster at him. She looked up from the scope and clipped it back to her belt, oblivious to Danny's shout. He fell and hit the ground in what seemed like less than a second.

Both of his hands flew to his chest in an attempt to stop the ectoplasm. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Nothing this bad. Green slime dripped through his splayed fingers as he pressed his hands harder against the wound. It didn't work- he kept bleeding out, and there was so much-

"Gotcha!" Mom aimed a new gadget, some kind of gun, and scooped Danny up in a net that shot out of the front.

"Huh?" Danny swiped at the walls of the net. The pain was spreading now, everything seemed to hurt. "Please…"

"Not a chance, Phantom," Mom said triumphantly. "Jack, I got him!" She turned back to Danny, trapped in the net. Frowning, she looked him up and down, not noticing- or caring- when he uncomfortably pressed his back against the net, as far away from her as he could get. "Who are you, Phantom?"

"Wh-"

"Rhetorical question. I'm a scientist, I'll find out." She waved Dad over. "Come on, Jack, let's go."

"Please," he repeated. "You don't know what you're doing."

Dad laughed, making Danny seemingly shrink even further into himself. "Nice try, Phantom. Oh, and don't try breaking out on your own. This is a Fenton brand net! Practically indestructible! Uh… what's it made of, Maddie?"

"Tungsten alloy."

Danny slumped over and screwed his eyes shut, letting Mom drag him to the van, where he was tossed into the back. "You don't know what you're doing," he murmured again.

He opened his eyes, and regretted it. There was a sticky green trail on the ground. His stomach heaved, and he choked out one more plea, the most he could manage as his head spun. "Please. I'm-" his voice broke- "I'm going to die."

"You're already dead," Mom reminded him. Her voice was flat, but Danny knew her well enough to know how excited she really was. It made him sicker- she didn't know what she was doing. She tossed the net-slinging device back with him, but that wouldn't help him escape. The best he'd do was maybe shoot another net, maybe at himself, and if it hit him square in the chest at point blank… He shuddered.

Danny weakly picked at the net. Tungsten alloy… He'd listened to enough of his mom's rants to know that tungsten was practically ghost-proof, so that put phasing through it out of the question. And he couldn't change back, either; he'd be even more useless as a human. Especially like this. If he changed back, he'd die for real, from his wound if his parents didn't start dissecting him first.

Staying a ghost was his only option.

What was he doing? He had no hope either way. If Jack and Maddie knew that their son was a halfa, would they even want to save him?

They were home before he knew it. Fentonworks. Mom grabbed the net and got out of the van, and his vision spun as she slung him over her shoulder. Was he going to make it? He'd never been this badly hurt before, and he didn't know if even a ghost could bounce back from what he'd been through. And he wasn't even full ghost. Just a halfa. Just a weak halfa, an even weaker human.

I'm going to die, he thought, not quite conscious enough to appreciate the irony in that.

His eyes closed and everything faded away.