Sometimes, they just don't tell you the whole truth, because there's more than one to tell. A different take on the story of Danny Phantom, from the beginning of the beginning.

A/N: Dyanna's music that plays, but is not mentioned, is actually Rain by Breaking Benjamin and other assorted songs from Breaking Benjamin's album We Are Not Alone. It's what I was listening to when I wrote that scene... :3

Damn I like that band...

Retaken
Episode One: Unavoidable Side-Effects

Episode Summary: "Dyanna and Danny Fenton are thirteen/fourteen year olds who are pretty average at first, until an accident causes them to receive ghost powers! The powers don't work at all well, always acting up, and the two are forced to deal with the side-effects... as well as come to terms with their hybrid status."

Unavoidable Side-Effects part 2
August 4th, 2004

Needless to say, when their parents came home, they just gave tight-lipped smiles and said that nothing at all exciting happened while they were out... the event not forgotten, far from it, but how the hell do you tell your parents you were floating, becoming invisible and glowing like the amazing human light bulbs?

Can't answer? Neither could the D.F.s.

But don't get me wrong, they were both thoroughly traumatized by the whole shebang; they just hid it in the dark recesses of their minds. Weird stuff happened all the time in their house, sure, but... never anything quite like that...

Tucker and Sam had gone home soon after and Danny had managed to get himself stuck in a wall, which had required some careful manoeuvring to stop their parents from noticing. Jazz was away at the library or something (the siblings hadn't bothered with learning the destination) so they didn't have to worry about her until much later... Jazz tended to linger when out of the house.

After the wall incident, Dyanna has dragged Danny into her room and told him to stay nearby. He couldn't be bothered with putting up a fight, so that was that and he was sitting in the room, doing some homework out of pure boredom.

The horror.

Of course, every time he'd get agitated, the pencil would go through his hand, but that was beside the point.

Dyanna had also put on some music to cover up the small strings of swearing and the beeps from one of her many little mechanical devices she had littered around her room. She was doing a bit of "testing", recording the event and hiding all the information on a flash drive she kept hidden on a necklace under her clothes.

He didn't pretend to understand her, but this actually made some sort of sense. Key word there; some.

The pencil fell through his hand for the hundredth time (or so it seemed), agitated, he stomped his foot. What was unexpected though, was that this caused his body to go intangible for long enough that he fell through his chair. He swore.

It hurt his pride even more when his sister laughed at his expense.

He swore again, then sat up, rubbing the back of his head, which had hit the floor only a moment after his backside. "These... symptoms... are really annoying," he grumbled.

Dyanna had her L-face on again, crouching on her computer chair, biting her fingernail absently. "I don't think they are symptoms." Ignoring the look she was getting she continued, "They can be controlled. Symptoms can't."

"I don't think this bloody counts as being able to control them," said Danny agitatedly as he held up his arm, which couldn't decide if it wanted to be visible or not, so it was ever so conveniently switching between the two every few seconds.

Dyanna rolled her eyes.

Danny was about to bite out a snarky remark, but his blue-eyed sister cut him off. "Haven't you noticed the difference between us," she said calmly.

"What," he blurted, taken aback.

She sighed, rubbing her shadowed eye. "Think, Danny. I'm not having as many slip ups as you. Why?"

"Because you're evil," he offered, grinning as she rolled her eyes again.

"Thank you for that input," she deadpanned. "No, I'm having less trouble because I'm in a calm environment right now. That's partially why I brought you in here, I had a theory and I couldn't be bothered to test it out myself, but you've done fine already."

Danny's eye twitched. His sister was really quite evil. There was a green tint over his vision but he barely noticed. He was annoyed at her calm deception. No, annoyed was too calm a word... more like, royally pissed.

She continued, paying close attention to the small spike in the air that told her he was close to transforming. "Your anger causes you to transform," she mused. "Your frustration, wanting to get away, the pencil fell out of your hand. Wanting to be out of there, wanting to disappear, embarrassment, makes you want to go invisible. Happiness or fear makes you want to fly, for joy or for fleeing. I've already worked all this out by observation."

He wanted to object, to tell her she was wrong, but he couldn't find the slightest flaw in her statement. He could practically feel the amused twinkle in her eye boring into his soul. His face flushed red slightly in embarrassment and anger merged together.

"Ok, ok, I'll stop torturing you now," she sniggered, giving a rather fangy grin. "I know I'm going to have trouble with invisibility and intangibility at school, keep a close eye out for your vision going green, it's a sure sign your eyes are glowing." He blinked, realising this applied to right now, and closed his eyes and tried to calm down.

"So you figured out anything else in that scheming little mind of yours," he asked casually, waiting until he felt that there was no longer any green glow to his eyes before opening them.

"Um... try not to get to mad, pay attention in class so you don't go intangible or invisible when someone's looking, I'll be doing the same aaand..." she bit her lip. "I have a theory... but I need to run some tests before I can tell you." She glanced out the window. "Jazz should be home soon..."

Danny took the hint, grabbing his homework and opening the door to leave, but was paused when he heard a quiet two words uttered from her. She sounded so haunted as she said it... "Be careful... I hope I'm wrong."

He closed the door quietly, looking down.

If she was actually hoping to be wrong, he could be certain he really wasn't going to like it.

I had been lying through my teeth. I was barely managing to act calm at all! My mind is a jumbled mess, half-thoughts and trains of thought all over the place, crashing or derailing with alarming frequency. It's a miracle I can think straight at all!

Jazz is always trying to 'help' me. But I'm stubborn, I guess... I know I can't be helped.

My theory... our parents had drilled it into us from before we could even talk properly. 'What powers do all ghosts have?' they'd ask.

"Intangibility, Invisibility and Flight," I muttered under my breath bitterly, my eyes glowing red as I stared out the window. The sky never looked more alluring... I'd had those small moments of freedom down in the lab. Floating. Weightless. But in complete control.

It was amazing.

I glanced at my computer. There was only one way I could prove my theory.

Only one way.

When the explosion sounded, everyone in the house came running to Dyanna's room. Sure, she had things exploding in there all the time, but nothing with that kind of repercussion power.

The door swinging open to find everything coated in a thin layer of ashy dust. She had her hand hidden under her shirt, pretending to rub her ribs, but Danny could clearly see that it was there because it had been hurt in the blast.

Coughing into her arm she grinned sheepishly. "Um... don't mix ectoplasm with a strong electric charge?"

Their mom made sure she was fine, and insisted on seeing her arm, but she blatantly refused. Unhappy, but having no choice but to wither under her daughter's stubbornness, she left the room along with Jack. Jazz hung in the door and Danny just raised an eyebrow.

Waiting until she heard the sound of their parents go downstairs to the basement, Dyanna letting out a small whimper of pain as she brought out her hand from under her shirt. It was covered in red blotches and black, grey and red dust. "I need to go wash this," she mumbled. "Excuse me. Enjoy the hyperactive glee of our parents."

Not a moment after she said that, there was shouts of, "THE PORTAL'S WORKING!" from the basement. Both Danny and Jazz looked downstairs when they head this, but when they looked back into Dyanna's room she was already gone.

Danny looked down the hall to see her, partially invisible, cradling her hand as she trudged towards the bathroom, looking rather distracted or horrified, or maybe both. You could never tell.

If only he knew how right he was. All her worries and suspicions confirmed, she was definitely both of those things.

Running the cold water over her hand, she was thoroughly disturbed with the way her burns were healing before her eyes, the red fading back to her usual pale skin colour.

She dried her hands, the fact they were shaking slightly not escaping her notice.

White rings giving off a red glow formed around her waist as she distractedly was thinking of her ghostly experience just a while ago, the fact she'd been floating, the eyes, the glow... it was all so surreal...

She noticed the chill spread up her form as the rings quickly changed her, she didn't see the glow because she'd closed her eyes, which only meant she'd been even more surprised when she looked in the mirror to see those unearthly red eyes glowing back at her.

Fighting back the urge to shiver, she took a deep breath and held it. Looking away from those red eyes, into the basin instead, she felt even more disturbed as her other senses picked up now that one was inactive... Curious, she closed her eyes, her hearing and sense of touch picking up even further. She could hear four heartbeats... the electrical hum of everything in the building. She hissed softly at the sharp noise in her ears, something that was undeniably irksome. Four sets of people breathing; voices; She could hear the excited, if rather distorted, voices of her parents downstairs.

She opened her eyes again and breathed out, all too aware of the fact she'd held her breath for nearly five minutes. Her senses, thankfully, returned to almost normal levels. Looking outside she frowned, it was getting dark.

Dyanna absently wondered what it would be like up there.

Shaking her thoughts off with a sharp jerk of the head, she growled under her breath. No! No way! You're staying down here. On the ground. Where people belong.

But aren't I always going on about how we should be reaching for the stars?

Growling at her own mind, she looked up at the sky longingly. Just a little look... just a few minutes... no one'd notice... no one'd care... no one'd know...

And without another thought on the matter, she floated into the air, intangibly shooting up into the sky.

Looking down absently, she noted how her house looked different from the sky.

A wide, goofy grin spread across her features as she fully realised what she was doing. She was FLYING! As in, FLOATING. In the AIR. Above her HOUSE!

She let out a small, giddy, laugh, doing a backwards loop.

It was like not being tied down by gravity at all, like being able to sever all her ties to the ground. To be free. Flying further into the sky she did something crazy; whether it was the adrenalin or curiosity didn't matter. It was a crazy, reckless thing to do.

She let go of the feeling, and plummeted head-first towards the ground, not even bothering to go invisible as she fell like a giant, glowing dart.

And, just at the last moment, she pulled up, shooting off into the star-lit sky once again.

Laughing with a joy she'd never felt before, she did another loop, lounging back on the thin air, feeling the air currents around her.

Never before had she felt so free.

Part ghost or not, this was something that was worth the world.

Danny had trouble trying to get to sleep that night, and when sleep finally managed to overcome him, he woke up to find himself lying on the ceiling instead of his bed, following the realisation, he panicked, remembering gravity was meant to go the other way, and crashed, falling onto the floor right next to his bed.

Sure, because he couldn't land on the cushiony mattress could he? Was that really too much to ask for?

Picking himself up from the ground he groggily managed to remember that falling from one's ceiling to the floor should probably have hurt more than it did, but he wasn't going to be complaining. Not when the alternative was a lot of nicks and bruises. Broken bones was probably pushing it, but you never know.

How many people wake up on their ceiling? I mean, really. It's not like there's been many instances of such things happening, if any.

Well what do you know, now you're even more of a freak, Danny mused, rolling his eyes, rubbing his sore bruised head. Looking out the window he let out a long groan—it wasn't even proper daylight yet! He then got a cunning grin on his face, grabbing his cellphone.

"If I'm up this early," he muttered, dialling a number, "You're up too, Tuck." He blinked. "Huh, looks like Dan's rubbing off on me."

'Whaaaaat,' came the groggy voice of Tucker at the other end.

"Hi," Danny chirped, grinning. "If I'm up, you're up!"

'Danny? What are you doing up THIS EARLY!' there was a pause for a moan. 'It's not even DAYLIGHT yet...'

"Uh... I fell out of bed. Pretty majorly. I'll explain later. Bye!"

Tucker was obviously going to tell Danny exactly what he thought on that matter, but Danny hung up on him.

And promptly burst out in a fit of barely suppressed giggles—though he would swear on his life ever afterwards that it was just "muffled chuckling". A curious head poked around his doorway and she simply stated. "That was mean." And before Danny could object, she smiled slightly with her eyes closed, flashing a peace sign. "Well Done."

Danny's eye twitched as his sister laughed at him, making a swift retreat.

He then swore loudly as his whole body went invisible, Dyanna laughing even louder.

Shortly after Dyanna's escape she had simply sat down on her computer chair, motionless. Dead, lifeless almost in the way she sat there blankly staring at the wall.

But inside her, in her mind, everything was buzzing with activity. Thoughts buzzing left, right and center, running about like headless chickens.

This wasn't unusual.

It was just the way she was built.

She didn't know how long she sat there, didn't care. She was somehow a ghost, or at least partly.

Did that mean she was dead?

And if her parents were to be believed... evil?

She shuddered at the thought, unwillingly going invisible. Despite what her brother and friends quipped, being truly evil was something she couldn't do. She hated the thought.

To end the life of another's being, for one... killing fictional beings was ok, but the death of an actual person? Even an animal at her hands... made her more afraid than anything else in the world, even her own death.

Not that the latter seemed very important now, seeing as she was... well...

She sighed, before she, irritated in the realisation, noticed she wasn't able to stop being invisible. Swearing lightly, a simple muttering of, 'bloody hell,' she crossed her arms in a huff, her vision going red. "Smashing," she said sarcastically, swinging a foot backwards and forth.

"Bye mom, bye dad, Danny... Jazz," shouted Dyanna, now properly and fully in the right phase of light, as she raced out of the house, scooting around Jazz who was just about to head downstairs.

"What's up with her," asked Jack, looking around the corner holding some kind of Fenton weapon.

Jazz rolled her eyes. "Gee, I wonder," she said sarcastically.

Speeding down the sidewalk, fast enough to feel as if flying, ran Dyanna, in the almost complete opposite direction from Casper High.

Dyanna quickly pulled out her phone while she was out of sight of her house and swiftly dialled in a number she knew as well as her own name. Holding the device to her ear, she waited for them to pick up.

'Hello,' asked a voice from the other end of the line

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry I didn't call you yesterday," said Dyanna in a rush.

There was a chuckle, 'I think I'll be fine, Dan.'

"My parents finished the ghost portal yesterday," said Dyanna. "It malfunctioned and now... I have to show you something. Can't talk in case of a bugged line," Dyanna blandly tacked on at the end. She never did trust cell phones.

He couldn't actually tell if she was being serious or not. 'Uuum... ok? Meet at the usual place?'

"Yeah," she confirmed. "See you soon."

'Ok. Bye.'

He hung up, Dyanna quickly following suit.

The wind whipped her hair up, calming her nerves. She wished she could be up in it again, in the calm serenity that was the sky. Her eyes flashed open. No. Focus.

Thinking like that will cause your powers to act up, she scolded.

She slowed down, turning a corner, her foot going intangible briefly, causing her to trip... and crash right into somebody tall, lanky and tanned.

Blinking at the person who she knocked over, she grinned widely, "Adolph!"

"Ow," he commented. "Can you get off?"

Her grin grew sheepish as she rolled off him, getting to her feet and holding a hand out to help him up. Looking at her hand oddly, he took it and got to his feet. Straightening up, Adolph rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head, the light making his maroon-dyed, black-streaked hair sparkle slightly.

"Look where you're going much," he teased, an amused glint in his hazel eyes.

This was swiftly rewarded with a sharp punch to his shoulder. "Ow! Ok, I asked for that one," he winced. "So what was this thing you needed to talk about?"

"Not here," said Dyanna, looking around briefly. "Too many people. And it's kinda weird." She inclined her head towards the old abandoned office building off to their left with her head. "Walk and talk."

Adolph shrugged. "Fine with me," he said, tucking his hands into his faded dark red jean pockets.

Walking down the sunbathed streets, they looked like polar opposites. Dyanna's dark shadowed eyes and pale pallor, Adolph's tan, her vibrant blue eyes, his dark hazel ones. Even their clothes had sharp differences; the most prominent being the fact hers were mostly blue and his were mostly red... And yet, they were the best of friends. Opposites attract, a strange, yet true, fact.

"So, you know my parents are ghost hunters," she began listing off facts. "You know they were building a ghost portal. And you know that it malfunctioned. And you know that odd things happen when you mix ectoplasm with electrical surges..."

Adolph simply nodded, knowing that giving a verbal response would probably cut her off from whatever she was trying to say.

They slipped into the building, one of their old favourite haunts (since no one could be bothered taking the building down). No one ever found them there, oddly enough. "Well, it all happened when the parents finished the portal," she explained, arms wide, crouching on top of a fallen support bar.

Seeing she was waiting for him to sit, Adolph quickly complied before she lost the nerve to tell him whatever it was she was getting at. Nodding to herself slightly, she continues on, "So they called us down to the lab, showed us the portal, explained how it worked and yadda, yadda, yah..."

Dyanna took a deep breath, continuing on, almost taking no room to slip in a breath inside her squished sentences. "They turned it on and it didn't work, so they left the house in a sulk. I wanted to know what was wrong, and I went into the portal chamber." She either ignored or didn't notice her friend's raised eyebrow. "So in I went, and I poked around, had a look, but nothing was obviously wrong..."

Her voice had gotten a little detached now. "And then Danny accidently pressed the on button... and, well, it turned on with me in it. I didn't get teleported, thankfully, but I did get zapped. With ectoplasm and electricity." She stood up, "And when I came out, I looked like this..."

She called up the transformation rings quickly, making them rush up and down her person before there could be a negative reaction.

And all of a sudden it wasn't Dyanna the girl who was standing before him, but Dyanna the ghost.