FOREWORD

Heyo! This is my first real fic, I've mostly just dabbled in drabble and comics before. All the art is by me; reading this on AO3 or Wattpad is recommended if you want to actually see the cover/eventual other art, since FFN isn't media-friendly.

Constructive criticism and corrections are encouraged. As you find them, please call me out on every typo, wonky wording/punctuation, factual inaccuracy, illogical or too-OOC weirdness, and plot hole, because every contribution makes the story stronger and more enjoyable for you to read. Also, betas would be really appreciated.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy my darker and edgier™ take on Danny Phantom!

CHAPTER 1

Suspended Animation

A family basement is not typically used as a government-sanctioned laboratory.

Despite this, in an otherwise largely unremarkable city nestled in the central United States, a spacious laboratory sprawled under the home of a fanatical scientist duo, dedicated to the study and development of weapons against the paranormal. It was within this lab that the acrid smells of burned flesh and something peculiar and sour invaded the air, an unappetizing omen of the winds of change headed for the humble city of Amity Park.

As the smoke and odors cleared through the industrial vents of the coldly lit room, a thin figure stirred on the floor.

"Always be careful around our ghost-hunting equipment, Danny," echoed the voices of the boy's parents in his pounding head, their warning competing for his focus against the buzzing in his head. He unseeingly blinked awake, trying to get a grip on what had just happened, thoughts coming in scattered fragments.

His house. His friends. A portal. Curiosity. And... something happened. Something hurt. No, everything hurt.

He closed his bleary eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to get his thoughts in order faster. Scenes floated around in his head, their chronology falling into place as his mind cleared up and the ringing started to fade.

The "portal between dimensions," his parents' magnum opus, stood out at the forefront of his memory. Seemingly little more than a bus-sized hexagonal tunnel embedded in the furthest wall of their lab, it was briefly abandoned in frustration after failing to engage. Then he and his best friends, Tucker and Sam, had taken the opportunity to sneak into the lab to investigate, curious what had happened. Caution made Danny put on the custom hazmat suit from his parents before he walked into the dark tunnel, but too preoccupied with fantasies of the other world where ghosts supposedly lived, he'd absently reached out to touch the side of the tunnel - and felt a large button depress.

Before he could react, a huge flash of light seared the darkness and swallowed him, bringing with it an immense spasm of pain that coursed through his paralyzed body for what must have been forever, yet in actuality stopped as quickly as it had begun.

And now, he was facedown on the cold, hard floor.

His friends screamed his name as they ran to him, crumpled just beyond the now ominously glowing portal. Tucker gingerly rolled him over, then moved aside for Sam to check for signs of life. Their hearts pounded in their ears and cold sweat crawled up their backs and clammed up their hands, both scared for the worst.

It was Danny, yet... not quite. His hair and clothing had somehow inverted colors, his messy, straight black hair turned white and white hazmat suit turned black. And his eyes, when they fluttered open, were now a startling electric green mirroring the portal's color instead of their natural sky blue.

Tucker and Sam were bewildered, questions caught in their throats as they tensely monitored their friend. Danny's unfocused eyes darted back and forth, seeming to not see anything. With a heavy breath, he shut his eyes again, seeming ready to pass out... and passed out of their arms.

More accurately, he passed through their arms, dropping through them like a mirage as he sank into the floor with a yelp. Their eyes all widened in panic, but only Sam reacted fast enough to grab his hand before he completely slipped into the ground, pulling him out with all her might. They collapsed, panting.

"Wh-what is going on?" Danny warbled, looking down at himself. The impossible fall had pumped adrenaline through all three of them and shaken him wide awake.

Tucker shook his head, patting the pale boy's shoulder both in consolation and to innocuously reassure himself that his friend was still solid. "Your guess is as good as ours, man."

Sam carefully helped Danny sit up before registering the sickly green light being cast on them. She turned to stare into the glowing abyss behind them, its thick depths obscuring both the metal tunnel and whatever lay beyond the eerie, swirling entrance. "The portal. You turned it on somehow," she said in awe, taking in every detail of the ethereal sight. After a moment, she whipped back to him and said in concern, "Are you okay, Danny? It sounded like there was a pretty big shock in there, and for some reason I couldn't find your pulse a minute ago."

He blinked at the portal, cogs still creaking slower than usual in his head. It really was on. If the portal was working as intended, then that meant he had probably briefly ended up in the unknown dimension on the other side of it. But if he had really been in the rumored other world, then he hadn't seen any of it, since he'd been blinded from the pain.

Pain. His body.

He patted himself down for injuries, then shook his head. "I dunno what happened in there, and I sorta have a weird buzzy headache, but I think I'm alright." His friends stared in obvious disbelief. "What?"

"So no one's really mentioned this yet, but your hair is, um, white. And your eyes are green, and you're sort of... glowing," pointed out Tucker.

"And did you not see your clothes? Or, y'know, remember you just fell through the floor? Or through us?" Sam added incredulously, cringing at the thought.

Danny took a second to process their words before he stumbled to the lab bathroom and gaped at himself in the sink mirror, forgetting to turn on the light in his hurry. His stomach dropped sickeningly when he saw that his friends weren't kidding. Staring back at him was a reflection he didn't recognize, eerily lit by the fluorescent lights from the lab and the soft white glow somehow coming from his own body.

Spooked, he spun on his heel and mentally replayed everything his friends had said as he rushed back to them. "Wait. Sam, did you say I don't have a pul-" he began, but yelped mid-word as one foot, then another, left the floor and just kept leaving, suspending him helplessly in the air like an astronaut in zero gravity.

His friends' eyes were huge as they ran to him. "No way. Dude, you're flying!" Tucker said excitedly. Fascinated by the sight, he stood watching just out of Danny's reach, despite his protests.

"How is this possible? Are you doing this?" Sam asked as she looked at Danny from every angle and scanned the lab for any wayward equipment that might've caused him to levitate.

Danny flailed his arms around as he slowly lost balance and tilted sideways. "I don't know! Get me down!" he yelled.

As if his words held power, he fell back down to the ground just as suddenly as he'd left it, unceremoniously landing on his side with a surprised grunt.

"What is happening?!" he wailed.

Sam leaned down to check his pulse again, then frowned and took a deep breath before she said, "You got electrocuted by your parents' ghost portal, you're glowing, you fell through solid objects, and you can sorta-maybe fly. And, well, I still couldn't find your pulse. I dunno, Danny, it sorta seems like you're..." she trailed off, gesturing vaguely towards the ominous portal.

He stared blankly at the swirling abyss for a moment before his mind leaped light years to a possibility he felt sick considering. "A ghost?! I can't be a ghost! My parents would kill me!" Danny yelped.

Despite himself, a moment later he sputtered and cracked a half-smile as the immense irony of his words hit him. As they caught onto the dark humor, his friends also stifled laughs and the tension lifted slightly.

Sam's face fell again, still troubled. "But what's happening to you? How can you be alive without a heartbeat? It just doesn't make sense."

"Then... what, am I really dead? Did the portal kill me?" Danny asked, voice cracked and face stricken.

Tucker snorted and waved dismissively. "Alright, guys, I betcha five bucks that dead people don't have a sense of humor or ask their friends if they're dead. You're outta the tunnel of light in my book," he said as he nudged Danny with a grin.

"But what're you gonna do about your parents? They're gonna come back here soon, and judging by your dad's half-grayed head, I don't think you guys stock black hair dye at your house like Sam does," he warned in a more serious tone, well familiar with the Fentons' obsessive work ethic. Ghosts - or rather, hunting ghosts, even if they had never actually seen one - was their life.

Danny froze.

"They can't see me like this," he said quickly and shook his head, flustered. "Wh-what if I do something, y'know, not humanly possible? I can't, they can't know, I can't-"

A bright flash interrupted his panic. The three of them blinked at the large ring of white light that had mysteriously shot out in thin air around his midriff, encircling him. In a split second, it spliced into two identical rings that repelled from each other and disappeared after they completely passed over his entire body. Left behind was Danny as they knew him: black hair, blue eyes, unaltered clothes, and no odd glow.

Danny looked at his white jumpsuit and held up his black-gloved hands in shock, then tentatively touched the dark hair that framed the corner of his vision again."I-I'm normal again?" he gasped. Sam nodded, and he laughed, beyond relieved.

Before his friends could answer, the lab door slammed open and loud footsteps thumped towards them. "-telling you, Maddie, we've got to try again! We almost had it!" yelled a familiar, eager voice. "We just gotta tweak the settings or something!"

A lilting voice answered, "But our calculations were all right, Jack. I don't know what went wrong, it should have worked."

The trio exchanged nervous glances as Danny's parents clunked down the stairs into the lab, still clad in their usual brightly colored hazmat suits. His mom, ever the watchful one, was the first to notice them.

"Kids? What are you doing here? It's not safe," she reprimanded. They couldn't see her expression well due to her full body suit's skin-tight mask and large red protective goggles, but they could feel her frown all the same. They laughed nervously, and Danny stepped forward to offer an answer.

Abruptly, his dad let out a loud "AHA!" and pointed a large gloved hand beyond them with almost comic gusto. "Maddie, the Fenton Ghost Portal! It worked after all! Danny-boy must've gotten it going. Good work, son!" he boomed as he grinned broadly and bounded over to slap the boy on the shoulder.

Maddie paused to stare at the eerie vortex in awe, then broke into a matching smile as she turned back to them. "Danny, is this true? How did you do it?" she asked sweetly, excitement barely contained.

"It, um, lit up after I pushed a button inside it. You guys didn't press the 'on' button, I guess," he shrugged, plastering a reassuring grin on his face.

"It wasn't on?" she repeated as she gazed into the green abyss, dumbfounded by their simple mistake.

Jack slapped himself in the forehead, flabbergasted. "I can't believe I put the switch inside and forgot. Jack Fenton's better than this, I know it," he muttered.

Maddie's attention snapped back to the kids. "Danny, are you alright? You must've been inside when the portal engaged." Her voice dripped with worry.

He waved his hands wildly in denial, still grinning. "No, no, Mom! It took a second to start up, so I got out of there as fast as I could! I-I'm fine!" Tucker and Sam nodded, talking over each other in their eagerness to back him up.

She regarded the flustered teens for a second, then ran over to hug them all. Danny's face flushed as his parents hugged and kissed him, thanking him for saving their invention.

Pushing out of their embrace, Danny and his friends started backing away. "Well, I'm glad we could help get your ghost portal going. We're just gonna go, y'know, do homework and regular kid stuff now, okay?" he said with a small smile, eyebrows creased upwards hopefully. His parents nodded and waved them away, Jack already halfway to the active portal to check it out.

The three took off to Danny's second floor bedroom and shut the door behind them. With Danny in the middle, they all sank onto his unmade bed, shaking a little as they caught their breath.

"You lied to your parents?" Tucker panted.

"What was I supposed to do?! Tell them I got e-electrocuted by their most important invention and now weird stuff is happening to me?" Danny whispered harshly. Tucker grimaced and shook his head, then propped his elbows on his legs as he held his head pensively, eyes closed.

Sam sighed, staring out the room's skylight at the afternoon clouds. "So what now? What if something weird happens again?" she prompted, sounding calmer than she felt.

Danny barked out a nervous laugh as he pondered the possibility, but the unfamiliar tightness of his suit had started to make him feel uncomfortably self-conscious. "I don't know. I feel like I'd wanna disappear outta pure mortification. Anyways, I'm gonna change in here 'cause I saw Jazz was in the bathroom. Don't look, 'kay?"

His friends mumbled affirmatively as he got up, and he wriggled out of the suit, then threw it at the clothes hamper next to his closet, carelessly missing. Nonplussed, he tossed on the nearest pair of clean jeans and one of the many Fenton Works logo-emblazoned t-shirts his parents had pushed onto him over the years. Feeling much better in his normal clothes, he took a running leap and flopped heavily back onto the bed, making them all bounce.

Tucker cracked an eye open to look at him, then gasped when he couldn't.

"Dude. Where'd you go?"

Perplexed, Sam tore her gaze from the sky to look at her friends. To her surprise, Danny was indeed nowhere in sight, yet the unchanged weight balance on the bed and a human-sized dent in the messy blankets implied he was there.

"I'm right here," he said indignantly as he popped back into view, right where he was supposed to be. His friends reflexively jerked back and Tucker banged his head on the wall with a strangled yelp. Danny sat up, brows furrowed. "What?"

Sam took a shaky breath. "I think you can turn invisible, too," she said slowly, standing up to face him. He stared into her purple eyes for a long second, gauging her words.

"I'd ask if you're pulling my leg, but considering what happened five minutes ago, I'm inclined to believe you," he said, laughing nervously again. "But... how? I'm back to normal now, not all glowy like earlier."

Sam pinched the bridge of her nose, her theories boiling down to the same conclusion again and again.

"All the occult books I've read... Intangibility, invisibility, flight. All of those are hallmark abilities of ghosts, Danny, and you just got shocked by a portal that's supposed to connect to the ghost world," she said, leveling her voice.

He grabbed her hand and placed her fingers on the side of his throat like she'd done earlier. "B-but I can feel my heartbeat, see? I can't be... you know! Dead!"

Sam's eyebrows shot up, mind racing. There was definitely a pulse now. Why couldn't she feel one earlier, when he had white hair? And, she realized, why was he so cold back then? His temperature felt fine now, but earlier he was frigid when she touched him, despite having just been electrocuted. Shouldn't an electrical charge have made him warmer, if anything? And what was with his appearance at that time? Did Danny have superpowers now, or were those just lingering effects from the portal shock? Was he really alive, or not? What did that make him? What should they do now?

Sam flopped face-down on the bed next to him, the mounting questions pounding her head. "Nothing makes sense," she groaned into the blankets.

Tucker nudged Danny. "Hey, whether you're alive or dead or have freaky superpowers or whatever, you're still our best friend. Just making that clear," Tucker said lightly, clamping an arm around his shoulders.

Danny smiled back weakly. "Thanks, Tuck, but I'm still alive."

"But you DO seem to have powers now," Sam said, muffled. She rolled onto her side, meeting eyes with the others. "Unless those were just temporary side effects of the ghost portal, I think it gave you some kind of supernatural powers. And... and you have an alternate form of your body, somehow. The glowing version of you with white hair and green eyes, it's your ghost-like self," she said carefully, voice firm and words calculated.

"You mean like a superhero alter ego?!" Tucker exclaimed excitedly.

Danny snorted, brushed Tucker's arm off, and stood up to pace in front of his bed. "I get what you guys are saying. And it sorta makes sense, even if it sounds crazy. But me, a superhero? Powers? I-I'm too normal for that. Too average. Just a regular weakling that gets shoved around by the jocks every day at school. I can't be special. You guys know me," he strained. The haunting reflection of himself in the lab's bathroom mirror creeped into his mind, making him shudder. "And more importantly, the son of ghost hunters definitely, absolutely, positively cannot be a ghost."

He stopped pacing and spun to face the both of them, emphatically clapping a hand onto his chest as he tried to stop the image of glowing eyes and white hair from overwhelming his thoughts.

"I. Am. Alive."

No sooner did he say that than an unexpected flash blinded them again.

In silence, Danny stared his friends down, but their expressions were telling of what had happened. Then, hand still on his chest, he realized with growing dread that something vital seemed to suddenly be missing. he tore his gaze down.

Black suit, white gloves, white boots. White hair fringing the corner of his vision. And the soft white glow seeming to come from his body had returned.

"Uh..."

With urgent speed, Sam bounced off the bed and reached for him.

"...Sam?"

After a few uneasy seconds, her hand retreated and she glanced between him and Tucker.

"Danny," she started, voice high with worry, "right now, you really, really don't have a pulse."

His breath hitched in his throat while Tucker looked wildly between him and Sam in confusion. Sam was right: nothing made sense.

"How?" he croaked. They wracked their minds for answers, but logic only seemed to point to illogical conclusions.

"I don't know, Danny! You're... alive. But you're also a... a ghost. I think. You're both somehow, maybe. The portal must have done something to you during the, um, accident," Sam rushed, at a loss.

Danny growled in frustration. Fear tingled up his back, and the urge to escape the thoughts and fear and possibilities began to overwhelm him.

Before he could process what had happened, his feet had left the ground and he was suspended helplessly in the air again. His friends reached wildly for him, grabbing his arms and lowering him back to the ground.

"You're freezing," Tucker winced as he let go. Sam nodded, concerned.

Danny was shaken, but not shaking. "I'm not cold, though. I feel fine," he insisted.

Taking that as enough reassurance that, at least for now, he was as okay as a conscious person without a heartbeat could be, Sam asked the next most pressing questions she could think of. "Why did you change back to this form? And why did you start floating again?"

He groaned, mentally backtracking as well as he could. "I dunno. I was trying not to think of the way I looked in the lab, but I couldn't get it out of my head. It didn't even look like me, Sam. And then I transformed back to this," he said, waving at himself with a pained expression. "And just now, I wanted to run or escape or something, and then I started floating."

"So basically, you control them, right? The transformations and powers. They respond to what you want to do... sorta. You probably just need more practice to control them," Tucker interjected as he typed everything strange that had happened that afternoon into an encrypted document on his PDA. His programming prowess made him attuned to logical processes, quick to link causes and effects even in real-world situations, so his friends often trusted his judgement.

"They're linked to your thoughts and wishes. That makes sense," Sam said thoughtfully, tapping her chin. "It's like the powers in superhero stuff, they're just part of you now."

Danny frowned as he considered the likelihood of their theory. Given everything impossible that had already happened today, it was worth a shot. If he could actually fly... that might make the other weird stuff worth it. He immediately tested their hypothesis by focusing on the feeling of weightlessness and wanting to escape gravity, since that method made the most sense to him.

After a moment of deep concentration, he levitated off the floor of his own volition, hovering not far above it. His friends reached for him again in alarm, but he held up his hands to stop them.

"I-I guess you guys are right," he said, eyes alight with awe. "I'm flying!"

Tucker scoffed, hiding his own excitement under a thin veil of mock derision. "You're not flying til you start moving, dude. Right now, you're just floating like three inches off the ground," he criticized good-naturedly.

"Party pooper."

With that, Danny carefully leaned forward, perplexed at how to propel himself. After a fruitless attempt at swimming through the air, the old NASA space camp poster on the wall caught his attention. Rockets have fuel and engines. What did he have?

A memory of his mom reading to him as a child sparked in his mind. She regaled him with the tale of Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up and fought pirates in a magical land - and who taught other children to fly with a little help of his fairy friend's magic dust. The wonder four-year-old Danny felt had spurred him to aim for NASA, and fantasies of flying in the cosmos still burned strong.

"I just gotta believe, right?" he muttered to himself. He took a deep breath to steel himself, then mentally pushed, willing his body to move forward.

Suddenly, he lurched forward higher in the air. His friends watched warily, ready to try to catch him if need be. Danny wobbled as he shot forward a short distance at a time, going further with each attempt. Soon, he reached the wall on the far side of the room and tapped a hand on it triumphantly before making his way back to where he started.

"Made it," he panted, feeling drained. He sank out of the air, stumbling as his feet hit the floor. The white rings of light popped out and whooshed around him again, leaving a tired but very normal-looking Danny to fall into his friends' arms.

"You alright?" Sam asked, relieved his body temperature felt within average human range again.

He gave her a sluggish thumbs-up. "Still freaked out by this whole thing, but if I can fly, well... I can't complain too much," he laughed.

"You sure you're not gonna tell your parents? This is huge, man. You're like a living scientific breakthrough or something," Tucker said, eyes lighting up. After a brief pause, he amended, "Well, maybe just half-living."

Danny cringed. "Half-dead is better than totally annihilated by your own parents," he stated bleakly.

"They're your parents. Ghost hunters or not, they wouldn't hurt you," reassured Sam.

Fervently shaking his head, Danny insisted, "You don't realize how often they yell they're gonna tear ghosts apart molecule by molecule. It's like their mantra. If I'm really, y'know, a ghost now - even if I'm not entirely one, however that works - then they can't know. They just can't."

Tucker and Sam exchanged mutually worried glances, then nodded uneasily.

"But if things go south for whatever reason..." she warned.

"They can't know," Danny pleaded again.

"We'll have your back," Tucker replied lightly, emphatically patting him on the back.

Sam sighed, defeated. "My goth senses are telling me things will just get more complicated from here on out, guys. At least I've watched enough anime and read enough about supernatural stuff to be genre-savvy enough to know this," she said, wrinkling her nose at them.

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Please. Most that'll happen is that Danny can invisibly peek on the girls' locker room now. And avoid getting pummeled by Dash better, I guess."

Danny raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise, contorting his mouth in an exaggerated O shape as he imagined the possibilities. Sam smacked his and Tucker's arms in quick succession. "No peeking, Danny! Especially not with your powers! You're both better than that," she chided indignantly, pointing accusingly at them.

He winced and rubbed his stinging arm, somehow still startled how strong she was despite the three close-knit years that had passed since they'd met her. "Alright, alright, no peeking. Superhero rules, right? Using my powers for good?"

She folded her arms and nodded approvingly. "That's the idea."

Tucker grinned mischievously. "Okay, though who're you gonna fight? Superheroes always gotta fight crime and help old people cross the street, yeah? And have an evil arch nemesis!" He punched and kicked imaginary enemies with loud whoops and grunts, badly imitating the martial arts he'd seen in movies.

Sam mirrored Tucker's eyeroll back at him while Danny sputtered with laughter at the thought. There was no way any of that would happen, except helping the occasional old person. He wasn't a fighter, and this wasn't a comic book. He was just Danny. An apparently super-powered version of himself now, sure, but still just Danny.

"I can't even really control this stuff yet, guys. And we don't know what happened in the portal, why I'm like this now, or what else might happen. But I'm not cut out for being a superhero," he laughed. "I'm just me."

The grumble of his stomach caught their attention before they could respond, and Tucker's stomach gurgled in chorus. Sam reflexively put her hand on her stomach, startled that she was also starving. They all snickered.

"Meeting adjourned? I think we need a trip to Nasty Burger to bring this day back on schedule," Tucker proposed.

Danny grinned appreciatively. "Race you there? Loser buys us a round of milkshakes."

An idea sparked. He focusing his mind on passing through the floor, unsure if he could do it without transforming. To his glee, it worked, and he dropped through the floor and into the hall below, landing clumsily. His friends gaped at the space he'd occupied just a second ago, then heard him yell at his parents to let them know they were leaving and slam the front door behind him.

"Hey, that's cheating!" Tucker yelled as he flung the bedroom door open, charging after Danny.

Sam shook her head and ran after him, thoughts still heavy but a smile on her face at her friends' antics. She was glad Danny seemed okay, but all the unknowns concerned her. Accident, ghost portal, ghost powers... and perhaps most bewilderingly, Danny's ambiguous alive or dead status. They had a lot to figure out.

After tumbling the same questions around in her head for a while, she sighed. Turning her attention back to the street, she smirked that Danny, while still in the lead, was rapidly losing speed and looked winded as usual. Tucker wasn't much better off, surprising no one.

"You're not gonna win at this pace," she called, taunting her friends. They picked up speed again, desperately eager to avoid the loser penalty.

"Zombie apocalypse survival 101: you only need to run faster than the guy next to you," Danny yelled back at her, panting every few words. "So even if I don't beat you, as long as I beat Tuck, at least I won't lose!"

"What? Don't throw me under the bus like this, I thought we were bros!"

Sam laughed, then lapsed into silence, shutting out the boys' ensuing banter. Usually, she'd be able to run laps around her spindly-legged friends, but today she decided to lag behind, falling into a comfortable jog to continue ruminating in her thoughts. Buying a round of milkshakes was the least she could do to keep the mood up, she figured.

Ahead, Danny gasped for air, not registering how frigid his breath was for a moment when he exhaled.

Too caught up in their race and thoughts, the shadows watching the trio run by went unnoticed.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Happy 14th anniversary, Danny Phantom! Whew. Can't believe the series is as old as Danny and I'm as old as Dan now. Spooky.

Hope I caught all the inconsistent tenses and Team Phantom's reactions were believable, oof. How'd the story flow and the chapter length feel? And who (or what) do you think are watching Danny and his friends? Drop a review and lemme know!

Updates will likely be every 2-3 weeks, crossposted to AO3 and Wattpad (AO3 version most recommended, seriously). But if this story is ever dead for more than a month (or you just wanna see my other art), then send DP memes and/or yell at me on Twitter or whatever. You can also tag relevant content with #DPboneapptheteethfic for me and other readers to find.

See you again soon!

SuperSarcosmic

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