The Infinite Realms were a strange place. There was as much of a concept of an end as there was of gravity - that is to say, there was none at all. Yes, there was a location called the Far Frozen that was considered to be the most distant and remote of all the known populated regions, but truthfully it is only seen as distant because of the especially reclusive nature of the inhabitants. No one, except perhaps the most ancient of spirits, truly knew if there was an end to the place humans call the Ghost Zone.
Phantom reminded himself of this whenever he felt alone. Of course he felt that way; his world was an infinite place. It was only natural that most of his fourteen years had been spent completely by his lonesome.
It didn't help much, but it was something, at least.
Sometimes, Phantom's thoughts lingered on the Human World. He had heard of it only in the whispers of the Infinite Realms themselves as they spoke to him, their child. The Realms told him of a round planet where gravity was a constant, pulling towards the center of the massive spheroid and tethering almost everything close to the ground. They told him of a place with wildly diverse creatures living in constantly close proximity to each other. Best of all, they told their child of the concept of watching the sky, where humans would gather with their favorite other humans and simply observe their beautiful, color-changing sky.
Phantom wanted to visit. He longed to go there, to see something other than swirling green 'sky' and floating purple doors. He was beginning to suspect that the Human World might be his obsession…
No. That wasn't possible. Phantom was just that: a phantom, a ghost without a name or an obsession, little more than a bundle of icy power that grew and changed in a way that imitated humans. He didn't know what his place was in spectral society, but he knew it must be low. He didn't even have a name or a single ally, so he couldn't be much higher than a servant class.
Even so, he found that the idea of the Human World enticed him.
With that taken into consideration, he was understandably elated when the whispers of his parent urged him to a specific location. The Realms gently guided him to place that was even more empty than his usual place of residence, without any islands or doors for a significant distance. The whole time, the Realms muttered about Fate and happiness. Phantom quietly questioned the sudden change from his routine - or rather, lack thereof - but it was something interesting. Who was he to protest that?
He considered reevaluating his trust in the Infinite Realms when the ectoplasm around him began to swirl and his core exploded into agony.
The quiet little specter unleashed a scream worthy of a banshee, his green eyes wide and his white hair on end. Everything was warm, hot, too hot he was BURNING HE WAS-
He was crashing to a cold metal floor - what? - and his entire frame shuddered with fear and pain. He took in air with gasping, desperate breaths, hands clutching at his searing sides. Why did this hurt so much? Why wasn't he cold?
After what might have been two minutes or two hours, Phantom caught his breath and his trembling ceased. It took his another long moment to realize that he was breathing because he needed to, rather than for a sense of comfort. This… what was this?
His parent wasn't answering. Why weren't they answering?
Calm. He needed to be calm, and figure out what had happened. Phantom took a slow breath to settle his stomach and opened his eyes.
Phantom looked around warily. This certainly wasn't a place he knew; he had never been somewhere with metal walls, floor, and ceiling before, let alone with all of these strange machines. Upon spotting what looked like a half-finished weapon of some sort, Phantom released a squeak of fear.
With a start, he realized something was terribly wrong. His voice, what little he had heard of it, didn't sound quite right. Experimentally, he decided to speak.
"H-hello? Is anyone here?"
Oh, so that was the change! His voice wasn't echoing anymore, which struck him as odd. The ghost boy waited a moment for any sort of response, and upon receiving none, shakily stood and began to explore.
Sure, he was still pretty sore and couldn't hear his parent for the first time in his entire existence, but he was a kid. He was naturally curious. Besides, this metal room had gravity - honest to ghost gravity - so maybe he had finally been guided to a natural portal?
Or, perhaps, based on the empty, sparking maw of steel behind him, it wasn't exactly natural.
Phantom made his way to one of the metal tables of papers, staying as far from the incomplete weapon as he could. As he shuffled through the papers (most of which detailed ratios of ectoplasm and electricity and lines upon lines of code), he caught a glimpse of his face in the table's reflective surface.
He let out a cry of shock. What had happened to him!?
His hair was still a snowy white, and his eyes were still green, but not a single part of his body was glowing as it should have been. His usually tanned skin, highly unusual for a ghost, was much paler than before, and seemed to have reddish undertones rather than the normal green of ectoplasm. The most shocking thing, however, was the fact that his generous spattering of bright green freckles was gone!
Wait, no, they were just brown now. But the green glowy-ness was gone!
Phantom wobbled over to an office chair and sat heavily upon it, putting a white-gloved hand to his head. He noted with some relief that his clothes, at least, hadn't changed. He was still wearing loose black cargo pants and a white t-shirt with a black hoodie, along with white gloves and boots. Simple and comfortable. He would probably be much more stressed right now if he was in some ridiculous skintight suit or something.
Allowing himself another moment to process this, he decided it would be stupid to ignore what seemed to be the reality. He was a human now.
But how? Had he somehow been brought to life? No, that didn't make sense. Ghosts weren't actually dead, they were just a different kind of life form that occasionally accepted the memories and personalities of dead humans. Phantom had always been alive, technically, so maybe changing species was some sort of messed up side affect to the unnatural portal?
He really wished he could hear the Infinite Realms right now. They might have some definite answers.
Either way, Phantom couldn't just sit here and wait for something to happen. He had to find a way home, he had to…
Why did he need to go back? Hadn't he wanted to come to the human world for years? Other than the silence from the Realms, there was nothing really pulling him to go home. Flames, he didn't even have a real lair to return to.
Why not hang out in the human world, as a human, for a while?
Making up his mind, Phantom strode up the stairs to a non-purple door with an excited smile on his face. Silent as the grave, he eased the door open and slipped into the room beyond. It looked like some sort of eating and food-making room, which he suspected there was a word for. The boy hesitated, snatched a round red fruit from a bowl of similar fruits, and scurried into the next room.
Unfortunately, this room was occupied.
Phantom froze, staring in terror at the orange-haired human girl. She stared back for a moment, before dropping her book and screaming.
"MOOOOOOOOOOM! THERE'S A STRANGER IN THE LIVING ROOM!"
Phantom cringed and clapped his hands over his ears at the sound, dropping the fruit in the process. "Clockwork, is everything here so loud?" He complained, retreating back into the room with the food. The human girl (though he supposed that, as a human himself, he should stop thinking of her as 'human girl') chased him, snatching up the heavy book, seemingly as a potential weapon.
"Stop right there," She called out, "Tell me why you're here!"
Phantom looked at her incredulously. "I-I'm not even sure how I got here in the f-first place!" With that, he rushed back through the door and into the metal room.
"Not the lab, that's not safe!" Came a new voice, one that sounded like an adult woman.
A lab? As in, a laboratory? That made sense to him.
Unfortunately for Phantom, his foot slipped on one of the stairs, and the poor kid was sent tumbling head over boots to the hard floor. Again.
At least he wasn't suddenly a different species this time.
The girl and another human - a woman, who Phantom assumed was the one who spoke a moment ago - caught up to him. The woman gasped when she saw him.
"Oh, no," she breathed, "You're just a child! You aren't hurt, are you?"
Phantom sat up and scooted backwards away from them a couple inches. "No, I'm okay, I think. I was just frightened, and I don't exactly know how I got here? I just… woke up in this room."
The woman and the girl (her daughter, maybe?) each raised an eyebrow at that. The woman was the first to respond, "You woke up here? What do you remember from before that?"
"Nothing much," he said with a shrug, which was the truth, considering nothing much had happened since he was very young. Besides, if Phantom could get them to feel sorry for him, he might not need to worry about finding a place to stay while he was in the Human World.
Yes, this was a brilliant idea! Phantom patted himself on the back. Mentally, of course.
"You mean," the girl's incredulous voice broke Phantom out of his thoughts, "You can't remember anything before waking up in our lab?"
"Bits and pieces, is all. I remember that I was alone, I think? And I remember sleeping in a place where there was a lot of green and the ground was hard, and I remember being cold. That's pretty much it." Phantom conveniently 'forgot' to mention the ghosts. That probably wouldn't have gone over well.
The humans exchanged a look that Phantom couldn't interpret, and then the woman sat down on the cold floor in front of him. The girl glanced at him one more time before she trudged back up the stairs. Phantom watched after her until the door closed behind her, then directed his attention back to the woman.
She shifted uncomfortably before she smiled at him gently. "My name is Maddie, Maddie Fenton. That was my daughter, Jazz. Do you remember your name?"
"Uh," Phantom answered intelligently, "I think I'm called Phantom? I don't know if I have a first and last name, I'm just called that."
"How old are you?"
"Fourteen?"
"Jazz is sixteen, you two aren't so far apart in age."
"That's cool, I guess."
The two fell into an awkward silence. Phantom fiddled with the aglet of his hoodie's drawstrings, nervously chewing on the end as he had many times before. Maddie reached over, slowly and carefully, and tugged the string from his mouth.
Phantom started in surprise and confusion. "Wh-what?"
"You shouldn't do that, it'll damage your teeth… Phantom." Maddie said his name with a bit of distaste, not seeming to like the word very much.
"I could come up with a new name," The ghost boy offered, "If you really dislike Phantom so much."
Maddie blinked in surprise, seemingly shocked by his perception and willingness to abandon one of the few things he knew about himself. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I don't think Phantom was meant as a compliment anyway." He admitted.
"I'll help, if you don't mind." Maddie stood and offered Phantom a hand, helping him to his feet. She then led him up the stairs (how many times was he going to climb these?) to the food room. The girl, Jazz, was sitting at the table with a plate of sliced red fruit and some sort of brownish paste, which she handed to Phantom upon seeing him.
"Thanks," Phantom said uncertainly, eyeing the mysterious, fragrant substance as he sat down at the table. He elected to stick with the fruit, reasoning that it was more trustworthy, "So, I need a new name? I can treat Phantom as my last name, but… What sort of name would I even use?"
"Well," Jazz said with a sigh, "Mom wants to keep you here and care for you until we can find you a real home. Since she's obviously compensating for the inability to have a second child, we might as well give you the name she planned for my brother."
"Jasmine Fenton! That was completely out of line." Maddie said firmly. Phantom noticed the hurt in her expression and tone, and decided not to push it.
"Alright, let's not do that. Next idea?" He asked, with a subject change that was about as smooth as gravel.
Maddie bit her lip as Jazz shrugged and began willfully ignoring the ghost boy. The woman soon spoke up, "I don't know about you, but you strike me as a Danny. You know, short for Daniel?"
Phantom considered it for a long moment, nibbling on a slice of the red fruit (which was a bit too sweet for his tastes, but still pretty good). Then he nodded to himself, trying the name out, "Danny Phantom… I like that! Thank you."
"Of course, dear… Are you allergic to peanuts?"
Huh?
"What are peanuts?" He questioned tentatively, raising an eyebrow and tilting his head slightly.
Maddie and Jazz both stared at him for a long moment, then Jazz burst out laughing. Maddie reached across the table to point to the strange paste on his plate. "This is peanut butter, it's a spread made of peanuts. Peanuts are a nut, which is a kind of plant product. While I'm at it, these here are apple slices. Apples are-"
"A type of fruit that grows on trees?" Phantom - Danny - guessed. Apples looked pretty similar to the purple Oya fruits that grew on some islands in the Infinite Realms, even if they tasted nothing alike.
Maddie nodded with a smile, "That's right. Do you know if you're allergic to anything, or if you have any medical conditions? I wouldn't be surprised, with hair like yours…"
"My hair?" Danny repeated, reaching up to pull his long bangs in front of his face where he could see them better. "Is white hair bad?"
With a light laugh, Maddie relaxed back into her chair. "Not necessarily, my husband's hair is going white already. But it's very unusual for someone as young as you to have any white hair at all, let alone a full head of completely pure white. In most cases, a child with completely white hair would also have red or very pale gray eyes, while yours are an extraordinarily bright green. I'm worried that it might be because of a medical issue."
"I… I don't know? I don't remember having any problems, but that doesn't mean much." Danny murmured. This was starting to become tiring. When he decided to stay in the human world, he wasn't expecting to be this confused and stressed out.
Maddie seemed to notice something was up, and stood from her chair. "Are you tired? Come here, you can stay in the guest bedroom. I'll talk with my husband, Jack, when he gets home from Vlad's, and we'll figure something out for the long run."
"I… Okay." Danny agreed, silently wondering what she meant by that. Did that mean they were going to make him work in order to stay there? He couldn't see any faults in that logic.
Without another word, Danny followed Maddie up another flight of stairs - what was it with humans and stairs? - and into a rather plain room. The walls were a soft blue, and there was a bed, a desk, a set of drawers, and a full-length mirror. Danny thanked the kind woman and promptly flopped face-first onto the bed, ignoring the soft laughter that followed.
Danny almost didn't hear her bid him good night; he was too busy falling asleep.
Ah, yes, the typical reverse-situation AU. Phantom is an adorable smol and he deserves to be protected.
Word Count: 2759
Thanks for reading and please have a nice day/evening!