A swerve, a crash. Oops, Danny sure hoped the homeowners whose house he'd just barrelled through had insurance. Cracks appeared on the wall behind him where he'd crashed and white rings split from his waist.

"Now, whelp, you are mine." Skulker pointed his blaster right between the now human ghost boy's eyes, robotic finger pulling down on the trigger. Only to be knocked off his aim, quite literally, by Jazz Fenton, who brandished her own smoking blaster. Skulker's shot went up, far from his target, taking out a support beam on its way.

The chunk of ceiling above Danny caved in burying him in rubble. The flash of blue light from the Fenton thermos was the last thing he recognised before Danny's vision was obscured by the avalanche of brick and tiles pounding against his skull.

• • •

He wasn't quite sure where he had ended up, stars were splattered across the navy blue ceiling, occasional green swirls interjecting themselves between the constellations, but other than the odd sky, the room was rather plain. Danny pushed himself up off the soft carpeted floor, glancing around at the turquoise walls and most notably, the white haired figure sat cross legged opposite him.

"Um…" Danny wasn't quite sure how to approach this situation, but before he could actually say anything, neon green eyes, shining like headlights, opened up, calmly surveying him.

"Hello there," said Phantom, a soft smile spreading across his uncannily inhuman face, small fangs becoming visible as his lips stretched.

"Uh, hi?" Danny responded, dumbstruck - this was him, yet at the same time it wasn't.

Phantom got to his feet and outstretched a white gloved hand. "Nice to meet you," he said, a humorous glimmer in his eyes.

Fenton took the offered hand, shaking it slightly, the cold energy from the ghost against his warm skin feeling both alien and comforting at the same time.

"Am I dead?" The question slipped out of Danny's mouth, just for Phantom to bark out a laugh.

"Nah, not fully at least - just unconscious. Remember the whole being hit on the head thing?"

Oh, yeah. Memories of his grueling fight with Skulker flooded back and Danny winced. Skulker had been trying out some brute force weapons, all of which had probably given him several bruises each.

"So, where is this?" he asked at last, gesturing around them to the spacious room.

Phantom shrugged. "Not sure to be honest. Probably some manifestation of the unconscious mind or some sort of other psychology mumbo-jumbo."

Danny needed to sit down. This was getting mentally exhausting very quickly. As if the room could sense his feelings, a plush couch, identical to the one in his home, materialised behind him, catching him as he fell backwards into it.

"And if this is all in my head, who are you?" Danny enquired, crossing his legs on the seat.

Phantom sat back down on the floor, sitting cross legged like a mirror. "I guess I'm you, or part of you? A mental manifestation of your ghost half? Or maybe because the core can act like a brain, I'm an embodiment of your core? Hell if I know. I just know that I need to stop listening to Jazz so much."

"Maybe we're parts that fuse together to create a whole?" Danny suggested.

Phantom picked at his lip. "Maybe? But that sounds like something from a cartoon."

"Remind me to never talk to Jazz about this," Danny muttered, and Phantom chuckled "same".

Seconds of silence followed, in which Danny felt an eerie sense that he shouldn't be able to talk to himself like this. It was far different from his experience with the ghost catcher, with each half seeming almost like a whole in their own right as opposed to the exaggerated fragments of personality the ghost catcher had created.

"Why do you look different to how I, we look as a ghost?" Danny asked.

Phantom glanced at him confused, before shrugging for the second time in their conversation. "Maybe our human half balances it out. Why? How do I look?"

Danny hesitated, then said, "ghostly."

"Wow, how profound," deadpanned Phantom. "Do I have all our brain cells?"

"Hey! Let's be honest, there's hardly any brain cells between us."

"Harsh, but okay."

"You kinda have fangs, and you're really pale, like green pale," Fenton finally explained.

Phantom paled even further, going from greenish to sheet white. "I don't have pointed ears, do I?" He turned his head.

Fenton's breath hitched. He did. Phantom noticed this reaction almost instantly. "Crud! I do, don't I?"

Danny nodded. "But that might just be normal for ghosts?" he tried to reassure himself. "We should probably talk to Jazz about that."

That was something that Danny would sooner eat Dash's underpants again than talk about, but the lingering fear even after the largely useless reassurance convinced both halves that it would be for the best.

Fenton scrambled to change the topic from him. "Y'know, you look like an elf."

Phantom accepted the change in tone gratefully. "Oh God, not like Vlad and…"

Great, they were back on him. "Wait, he's an elf?" Phantom snorted.

Well, this was certainly an improvement, maybe they wouldn't have to talk to Jazz after all. The image of Dan Phantom in a bright red and green Christmas elf costume, complete with bells, passed through both their minds and they quickly dissolved into a fit of giggles.

"Hey, maybe pointy ears aren't that bad after all? You can be a...uh, what else has pointy ears?" Fenton asked.

Phantom gave shrug number three. "It'll probably come to us in the shower or the middle of an exam."

They both snorted.

Fenton suddenly became quiet. "Hey, do I look different to my usual human form?"

Phantom hummed, his eyes sweeping up and down Fenton. "A bit, I guess. Your eyes are more of a pure blue, and you feel different - too warm. It's weird, y'know."

"Yeah," Fenton leaned back, eyes unfocused, staring at the sky as he thought. "I kinda thought you'd be some kind of eldritch monster or something, y'know, like if I ever met Phantom as a separate person. This is a relief - knowing that Phantom's just me, as a ghost."

Phantom didn't even bother responding - he was Danny as a ghost.

The two sat and watched the sky, stars travelling across the sky as the hours went by. Portals and wisps of ectoplasm, the exact same colour as Phantom's, and that of the portal and the zone itself, glowed, stronger and brighter, just as much a part of Danny's internal world as anything else.

And as time continued, the sky seemed to brighten, almost insignificantly at first, gaining an orange hue to it, the stars somehow remaining despite this. The views of the duo became closer, until virtually indistinguishable from each other as the sun breached the edge of the ceiling. The sun became a lamplight as Danny came to his senses, blinking the shining spots out of his eyes.

"Danny! You're awake!" Jazz cried, hurling herself at him in a hug before yelling for her parents to come.

He was home.