Rearranged
Axion Labs is big and empty. All the people inside have cleared out for the night, most of the lights are off. Emergency lighting casts the scene in a red glow. It is reflected off smooth metal surfaces.
Valerie Gray is waiting for her dad to finish his rounds, so they can head home together. After she lost her mom, she takes every opportunity to spend time with her remaining family.
If that means being all alone in a creepy lab, so be it.
For all that the lab is creepy, it's sort of interesting too. She's bored, curious and alone. Since she's supposed to be there for a few more hours, surely there would be no harm in exploring. Everything is powered down for the night, and she knows enough to look without touching. She'll even put on one of the spare HAZMAT suits before entering the lab proper.
Those are the sort of justifications she makes to herself.
She makes her way through the skeletons of machinery, around beakers of suspicious looking liquids that are safely stored in ventilated cabinets.
Deeper still in the lab is a hole in the wall. It's octagonal and painted in bright yellow and black. Warning colours.
She knows to stay away from something covered in a clear warning, but she stumbles on a cord.
Valerie breaks her fall on something, and he previous dark room is painted a bright green.
It feels like fire running through her veins, like electricity cracking over her skin. Everything is pain and bright and powerful.
She stumbles away from the machine, and the first thing she notices is that it's turned on. The hole in the wall is replaced by a glowing, spiralling green surface. The patterns of different green looks like cream in coffee.
The neon green clashes horribly with the red of the emergency lights. She gets the distinct impression that the green doesn't belong in the lab, or anywhere else on Earth.
Aside from a killer headache, she doesn't hurt anymore. She still checks herself for injuries, even as she's unwilling to turn away from the machine.
It is at that point she notices that her previously white suit is black.
A few seconds after that she realises that she's glowing.
She searches for a mirror, and faces a stranger.
Her curls are white, her eyes glow green. The same otherworldly, toxic colour as the machine that she accidentally turned on.
Her mouth starts repeating the word "no", like a chant. Like a prayer.
Somebody must have answered it, because rings of light form around her waist. When they travel across her body, she turns back into herself.
Except she's not.
She doesn't tell anyone about her new ghostly powers. She doesn't want any of her friends to get hurt on her behalf.
The ghost, Poindexter, extends an accusing finger in her direction. "You're a bully."
After what she had Kwan do to Fenton that morning, she can't deny it. If she'd managed to control her anger, she wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.
If she comes out of the fight in one piece, she resolves to be a little (a lot) less awful to people not on the A-list.
The Fentons aren't very good ghost hunters, but they are good inventors. Valerie tries to avoid them as much as possible, because she can never know what kind of invention they'll pull out next.
Even if she tries, she doesn't always succeed.
Danny stares at the remains of his basement.
There is ectoplasm covering the floor, scorch marks on the wall. A table is overturned. The lighting is weird since the ceiling lamb is only halfway attached to the ceiling, leaving half the room in shadow.
That fudging ghost girl, Intangi-Belle or Val Geist or whatever she's called, has destroyed everything his parents ever worked for. She and that ghost dog of hers have cost the Fentons their only source of income. They may have to move, since the destruction of the cellar threatens the stability of the rest of the building.
Tucker places a heavy hand on Danny's shoulder. The weight of it helps bring him back to the present, and he lets Tucker and Sam lead him up to the kitchen.
"I don't know what to do." The words trip over themselves as they fall out of his mouth.
Sam pushes him into one of the kitchen chairs. "Well, at this point we've got to admit that your parents aren't enough to protect the city."
Tucker nods.
"Someone's got to stop the ghost girl... and if they can't..." Sam trails off, lets Danny finish the sentence.
"You think we should!?" Danny blanches. "Sam, if you haven't noticed, I'm scared of ghosts."
"Somebody has to. Besides, don't you still have that experimental armour your dad was working on?"
Danny gulps, but nods. Maybe the ghosts will be less terrifying is he has an actual way to fight back.
"We'll help you," adds Tucker. "No matter what you decide to do."
Valerie bites back a curse.
She's handcuffed to the Red Hunter, and the two of them are about to be hunted down like animals by Skulker.
The Red Hunter hates her, and the feeling is mutual.
She knows his true identity as Danny Fenton, but that hardly changes things. The Red Hunter is cocky and overconfident and a real pain. When Danny isn't faking the hunter personality, he's kind of cute, but when he is... he's one of the biggest threats to her existence. She's tried telling him and those two that hang around him that she didn't mean to destroy FentonWorks, but they don't believe her. As a ghost, she has the motive.
So yeah, Valerie hates the Red Hunter. Even though she knows it's mostly her fault they are enemies to begin with.
"Can't we just... work together until we're free from this thing?" She's pleading, and raises her arm to indicate the cuffs.
He looks like he's holding back a snarl. "Fine."
She's honestly not sure how she managed to get herself into this situation, but when she pushes herself to her feet and looks up, there's another her there.
"Geist?"
"Gray." The ghost nods, and seems as unsure about the situation as the human Valerie.
Valerie looks down on her very human hands. She closes her eyes. She can't feel any unworldly power pumping through her veins anymore.
"This is... great." Gray smiles. "Now I'll have time to hang out with the A-listers, and do homework, while you're out fighting ghosts."
Geist agrees. "And we can finally ask Danny out on a date."
Gray blushes, and is glad that her dark skin tone hides the blood rushing to her cheeks. "But he's a loser."
"But he is kind of cute. An interested."
"But he's not A-list."
"So don't let them see you." Geist shrugs. "Can't be that hard."
It doesn't work out. As easy as it is for a ghost to "not be seen", Valerie Gray can't turn invisible. She doesn't dump Fenton over it, but it damages her reputation. She's beginning to suspect all of her A-list "friends" would drop her like a hot potato if she wasn't rich. Just another reason to not tell them about her accident.
The ghost fighting doesn't work either. Her ghost side alone is too angry at the world, at her circumstances, to fight properly. She doesn't hold back, even when the fight is over. She's reckless and she's overprotective. They fuse back together before the week is over.
On the other end, Danny doesn't dump Val for her own safety.
Danny has never been afraid of his friends getting involved. By living in Amity Park, they're already in danger. They might as well be in a position where they can defend themselves. He takes her to his parents' rebuilt lab, shows her how to use an ecto-gun.
He notices how every single ghost detector goes off, but claims that his parents haven't worked out all the kinks in them yet. That as brilliant as Jack and Maddie Fenton are, they often forget what they're working on or abandon projects half-finished.
She doesn't know if he suspects her or not.
The ghost has the entire town under some sort of sleep spell, and she doesn't know what to do. She can't defeat Nocturne on her own.
Danny dreams of floating in space, but she manages to wake him up.
When she jumps out of his dream she's greeted by the business end of a blaster.
"Calm down, Danny. I'm not gonna hurt you." She raises her hands in surrender.
"No, you won't." He gets the words out through clenched teeth. "Because I won't let you."
"Because I won't try to," she corrects him.
"Yeah, right. Like I'm gonna buy that one. My parents have taught me everything they know. All ghosts are evil, and lie."
"Yeah, your parents are kind of wrong about that. And everything."
He doesn't seem convinced. If anything, he looks insulted.
"Listen, it's not like we've never worked together before. You were willing to help me against the Ghost King. What has changed since then?"
"You tried to kill my dad!" Danny's eyes narrowed.
"That wasn't me! That was all Plasmius."
"Why would the Wisconsin Ghost try to waste my dad?"
"I really can't say."
"Then why should I trust you?" The ecto-gun doesn't waver.
"Because if you don't, your friends are ghost food."
They are almost civil, even though Danny still sees things in a rather black-and-white way.
That changes when Valerie's clone comes to her for help. Valerie and Danny save Wally together, but more is revealed than Valerie would have wanted.
"So, half-ghosts?" Danny sits on his hoverboard, floating above Amity Park.
Valerie flies up to join him. He doesn't pull out any of his many, many guns.
"You knew about this." The accusation doesn't hold any anger. Danny seems, if anything, to be tired to his bones.
"I knew." She realises it wasn't a question, but she responds anyway. "It's a secret."
"Why!?" The anger is back. "I almost..."
There are too many ways to finish that sentence.
"But you didn't."
"If I had know, this wouldn't have been an issue."
"Maybe." She shrugs. "But can you imagine if the Guys in White knew?"
His expression makes it really obvious that he can, and that he doesn't like the implications of that.
"If it's a secret, Wally can hide as a human when he needs to."
"I guess." Danny exhales the words. "I'm gonna head home. Think about things. Bye, ghost girl."
Danny is sitting alone at the edge of a hill, waiting for Valerie Gray to join him on their date.
Valerie Geist joins him instead.
She gathers courage from how he doesn't shoot her on sight, and let's the familiar rings of light wash over her body.