I Do not Own Danny Phantom.
"Night, Val," Dad called up to me.
"Good Night," I yelled back. I pulled the covers around me and started fidgeting in my bed. I was getting a crick in my neck from the eco-gun under my pillow, but I couldn't sleep a wink without it.
I grunted and shut my eyes, ready to let sleep overtake me when a gust of wind hit me in the face. I grudgingly opened my eyes and saw my bedroom window wide open. My curtains were blowing, turning, as the breeze pushed them. I groaned and pushed myself out of bed.
I tried to be as quiet as possible as I walked over to the open widow. I could have sworn that the widow was closed. But I was so tired I probably couldn't think strait. With a sigh I grasped my hands around the widow sill, and pushed down, forcing it to shut. I turned back around to face the bed, and then jumped back. My eyes popped open with surprise.
"Phantom!" I snarled. Hey looked up and gave a little half-smile.
"Hey"
"What are you doing in my room? On my bed?" He was sitting near the foot of my bed, his hands were folded between his knees, and he was twiddling his thumbs.
"No reason really," He flew over to me and scooped me up in his arms, and before I could complain he had me tucked in bed. I crossed my arms, "I just wanted to tell you a bed-time story,"
I hesitantly lied down and slowly reached my arm under my pillow. Nothing was there. A low growl escaped from my lips.
"About?" I asked sourly. I wasn't stupid, Phantom wouldn't try to harm me, at least not while I was defenseless, he had to much honor for that. But I had to stay on guard, every fiber of my being was telling me to use every martial arts move I knew on him. His mouth appeared disturbingly close to my ear.
"Superheroes," He whispered. He got back up and floated towards a chair, "Love," he said as he brought the chair in front of my bed, "Confusion" He sat down and looked me dead in the eye, his eyes were nice; they reminded me of the ocean, I wondered if he had blue eyes when he was alive, "Betrayal," he said finally.
"It doesn't sound like a happy story," The ghost boy laughed. He flew over to the most wanted list I had near my exercise equipment. He leaned foreword to look at it strait, but that might have been easier to see if he wasn't floating a foot off the ground.
The only thing that kept me from transforming and shooting him while his back was turned, was the faint sound of my Dad snoring down the hall.
"Nice room you got here," he said as he was examining a photo of his face.
"I'm not in the mood Phantom, why are you here?"
"Didn't I just tell you? I thought I did," He turned back to look at me.
"Quit the games, Phantom," My voice was venomous.
"Why, Valerie," he started, "Our whole relationship is a game, don't you think?" I felt my eye twitch. "We truly are two separate people. He's wimpy, shy, but sometimes benefits from my power, heaven knows he's just as cocky, we're almost the same," He was starting to scare me.
"I-I don't know what your talking about, Phantom," I told him, but he just kept on, like I hadn't said anything. His nose was now in a leather bound book that looked vaguely familiar.
"But I'm… well I'm more confident, more powerful, more brave. His enemies admire me, and I don't feel anything towards his crushes. But you must know we are the same, Valerie, we are exactly the same; this form is but an outlet. He and I are one, and we will be one, until the day Dan destroys us," He focused his attention back on me, "And I've made sure that will never happen, you'll never have to deal with him, you'll never have to face that…thing. I'm so sorry, I can't imagine what he put you through, but you have no idea what I'm talking about," I nodded my head slowly, that ghost boy was really scaring me, confusing me. Maybe he had gone insane, "That…thing… killed you, Sam, Tucker the Fentons, Me," I just stared at him, "But he only killed half of me. He is Half of me, was half of me, will be, but he can't. Because I stopped him Valerie! I stopped him! He'll never hurt you!"
"What are you talking about? Who's Dan?" A look of pure hatred appeared in his eyes, it was a look I had never seen before on him, and it scared me more then his insane ramblings, "Alright sorry I asked," I said quickly.
"No, you deserve to know," His eyes softened and I relaxed a little, "We truly are two separate people. He's wimpy, shy, but sometimes benefits from my power, heaven knows he's just as cocky, we're almost the same," he said again.
"You and this Dan?"
"No, Dan has no emotion, the whole of his humanity was ripped out," I put my hand on my hand.
"Okay, I'm really confused,"
"Then let me finish. I'm more confident, more powerful, more brave. His enemies admire me, and I don't feel anything towards his crushes. But you must know we are the same, Valerie, we are exactly the same; this form is but an outlet. He and I are one, and we will be one. So you see why I was the one who had to tell you,"
"Tell me what?" In a flash he was back by my bedside, sitting in the chair, that book in his lap.
"To tell you a bedtime story," He opened the brown book to the front.
"Alright," I agreed, and he began to read…
"Once Upon A Time…"
There was a boy. He came from a weird family in a weird town. He was a geek and a loser, but he still had two incredible loyal friends. Those friends would stick with him through thick and thin, and that trio would do everything together. His parents were eccentric ghost hunters who had never actually seen a ghost, his sister had convinced herself that she had to be the mature one in the family, and the boy, he was just trying to survive High School.
"Wait," I interrupted, "This story is about ghosts?"
"What did you expect?" Danny's joking self had returned, "It's not too scary for you is it? You're not scared of ghosts, are you?"
I raised an eyebrow and motioned for him to continue.
His parents invented something strange, it was a portal, designed to rip open our dimension, to make an entrance to a zone, a ghost zone.
I shut my mouth at this. I had been wanting to learn about the ghost zones forever, and the fact Phantom had clearly lost it, well that wasn't going to stop me. Maybe I would get something after all.
But when they had decided to demonstrate how it worked to their son, it just didn't. Nothing happened, and the boy's parents just walked away disappointed. A few days later, one of the boys friends convinced him to explore the portal. He was hesitant at first, but she was very convincing. So the boy put on a white hazmat suit, and walked into the tunnel like thing. He felt the way of the wall with his hand, and he accidentally pushed an on button that was inside the device.
All he could see was a flash of light, a jolt of pain, and then it was over, and he had changed.
"Wait!" I interrupted again. Phantom groaned, "He died? What kind of story is this?"
"If you listen until the end, you'd see,"
"Fine,"
When the boy woke up, he realized that his black hair had turned white, and his blue eyes had turned green. He looked a lot like you would expect a ghost to look like. In truth he had turned into his negative, even his white suit had turned black, and his black gloves white. But when he thought about being human, he just turned back. This is what made the boy special, he was half-ghost. One half ghost, one half boy, and the power to switch between the two. So the boy continued to go to school, though sometimes he would turn intangible, invisible, start to float; but no one paid enough attention to him to him to notice, not even his ghost hunting parents. The only ones who knew were his two best friends.
"Is that even possible?" I asked. A knowing grin spread across his face.
"Very"
The boy was still human, he still had emotions, feelings, a sense of duty, the only thing that changed was the fact he had ghost powers, and a new alter-ego. About a month after he had gotten his powers, he found his purpose in life…
So I laid and listened, glad it was a Friday, because I was going to sleep in the next morning. So the ghost boy sat and told me about the halfa, and all his adventures. From the time his date turned out to be a dragon, to the time he got shrunken to the size of a golf ball with his worst enemy. It was absolutely captivating. But I had especially been interested in the red huntress. I felt like I connected with her a little. But she was an idiot. How could she not see? She was obsessed with both halves of the boy, but I guessed she just didn't want to think of the ghost part as anything more than prey. But how could she have been used like that by the other half-ghost? How could she not see that at least? It was a little ironic though, I admitted to myself, that she had a crush on the boy, and wanted to waste the ghost. I imagined that she only wanted to protect the human part, to keep him safe. What a moron she was, and when she saw him kill her suit, maybe, if he stuck around to tell her, it would have been different. I secretly wished that he had told her, if that bell hadn't rung.
At that moment my alarm clock went off.
"Valerie!" I heard my Dad yell, "Shut that thing up, it's Saturday!" Phantom pressed the snooze button for me, and I suppressed a yawn.
"I thought bedtime stories helped people go to sleep,"
"Common mistake," he said with a smirk. I laughed. "Did you get why I told you the story though? Do you understand?"
"Understand what?" I saw the look of disappointment on his face.
He sighed and got up, the ghost boy stretched a little bit then he headed for my window.
"Wait!" I called to him. He turned around, "Where's the happy ending? When does the girl ghost hunter realize the ghost boy's a good guy? When does the evil halfa get put to justice? When does the boy a his Goth friend get together?" I swear I could see him blush.
"Wh-why would you think that w-would hap-happen?"
"Oh isn't it obvious?" I rolled my eyes. "Where's the happy ending?"
"It hasn't happened yet," He said sadly and he disappeared.
-DP-
If I hadn't been half-asleep the whole time, I would have figured it out sooner. That afternoon, I was walking down the street, coming back from work. I noticed Danny Fenton walking with Sam and Tucker on the sidewalk parallel to me. I quickly looked both ways, and jogged over.
"Hey guys," I greeted them.
"Later Dude," Tucker said to Danny as he dragged Sam away.
"What's up?" said Danny once Sam and Tucker were gone.
"Nothin', just wanted to say 'hey', I haven't seen you in a while,"
He looked shocked.
"Valerie, I saw you this morning,"
"No you didn't," I laughed.
"Look, I guess I made the wrong choice. Of course you wouldn't listen to him, you hate him. But he's more confident then I am, I wouldn't have been able to tell you the whole story, if I was me. So don't you see? I had to be him. But that was stupid,"
"What are talking about Danny?" He was acting as crazed as Phantom.
"I told you the story so you could know without judgment. I thought you would see by the end. Because you needed to know, but the hunter will never know that the ghost boy is good, because the hunter won't open her eyes,"
"Danny?" He pulled out the book that phantom was reading earlier.
"Where's the happy ending Val?"
I examined the cover of the book more closely. It was a journal, it was Danny's Journal.
"Phantom...?" I asked cautiously.
Right before my eyes the boy I thought I knew, the boy I wanted to protect, he changed. He changed into the ghost I had been hunting, the boy I had tried to kill. The first feeling that came was embarrassment, then shock, then brief anger.
I had spent the night with Danny. Danny was in my room all night. Danny was half-ghost. Danny never tried to kill me. I told him to date Sam.
Wow.
He picked me up and started flying me over the city. One of his hands was securely around my waist; one of mine was around his chest. And I was flying.
And it felt great.
You know, this took most of the day to type, so I'd appreciate it if you could hit that little review button. It makes me very happy.