The sudden return of gravity smacked Kwan against the floor, hitting his head hard on the command console. But gravity didn't only take hold of Kwan, it took hold of the entire Space Station. Once Danny pushed it completely through the portal it tipped over and began its free-fall.
Kwan had no idea if the Ghost Zone had a floor, but if it did, he'd be friends with it pretty soon. The rapid descent actually lifted him off the ground in a parody of microgravity and he barely had time to utter a prayer before the metal of the Space Station creaked ominously and the descent slowed. Kwan smacked into the floor a second time, missing the command console this time.
Over the radio he heard Danny grunt in effort. Kwan realized that the half-ghost was the sole reason for the continued existence of the Space Station. Sadly, the Space Station was built to float indefinitely into space. It had thrusters for emergency maneuvers, but was otherwise as immobile as a chunk of dirt.
With a gentle jolt Danny laid the man-made satellite on the ground. Kwan groaned as his body responded to the sudden return of gravity with a blinding headache, thanks to the blood rushing to his head. He felt weak and dizzy and his limbs were slow to respond. With the blood pounding in his ears he tried to get up, but it took him three tries to even lift his head. His teeth hurt, his ears hurt and it felt like someone had just pulled his wisdom teeth out, his jaw ached that much. He shook out his arms and legs before attempting another try. He failed again in getting up, although he got a lot further this time.
He just sunk back onto the ground when Danny floated through the wall, his helmet clutched under one arm. The ruptured oxygen tank had wounded him and Kwan saw green ectoplasm drip down the bio-suit. He hoped that the wound wasn't too severe. He had no idea how to treat a ghost, he had only trained on humans.
"Hey," croaked Danny. He sagged down next to Kwan and put the helmet onto the floor before joining Kwan in admiring the part of the Space Station they could now legitimately call 'ceiling'.
Kwan saw that Danny closed his green eyes and took long, deep breaths. He didn't know ghosts had to breathe, or maybe that was just Danny. The two rings appeared at Danny's waist and once again travelled up and down his body, taking the black bio-suit along in the transformation. Danny once again wore the NASA jumpsuit. Danny's pained face remained the same, however, and now his breathing had grown shuddering.
Once again Kwan attempted to get up. With shaking legs he managed to get up, using the command console as his crutch. He had to get medical supplies, both for himself and for Danny. The lack of oxygen had hurt Danny, although he hoped it was nothing pure oxygen couldn't cure. As for himself, all he needed was some exercise to strengthen his bones and muscles again and some time for the fluids in his body to get used to the gravity and stop floating towards his head. He hadn't been in space long enough for atrophy to set in, but he felt weak nonetheless as he tore the medical kit from its holder on the wall.
He lurched back towards Danny and fell to his knees next to him. He had to think long and hard before the memory where the oxygen mask was located inside the kit emerged. He shook his head to clear the muzzy thoughts from it, but that only worsened the headache. It felt like space sickness all over again, hopefully without the vomit this time.
He tapped Danny on the shoulder and handed him the oxygen mask and small tank of pure oxygen. Danny threw Kwan a grateful look as he strapped the mask to his face. His breaths came easier now, and within minutes had returned to normal. Kwan spent those minutes popping some painkillers, chewing them into pulp before swallowing. He hated to deplete their medical supplies, but there was no way he could function with the killer headache he sported, along with the myriad of problems the sudden return of gravity introduced.
He let his head fall back on the cold metal of the communication console. The adrenalin was starting to wear off and he felt the full extent of his aches and pains throbbing all over his body. He wanted to sleep for three days until the pain in his teeth and ears subsided, and he simply felt really, really tired.
The geek Danny, loser in high school and probably not popular in college was somehow Danny Phantom, had been the famous ghost kid for … a while now, his brains refused to do calculations right now. And now they were in the Ghost Zone, home of all the ghosts which haunted Amity Park and other cities all across the world.
And Danny Fenton was Danny Phantom. The man lying next to him, his blue eyes focused on the ceiling and taking deep, even breaths had just transported them from the cold emptiness of space into another dimension, by tearing the fabric of reality apart with his bare hands. The man who called his wife five times a week, who won every farting contest they had, the man who was afraid to have children was a world-famous superhero.
"What?" asked Danny as he lifted the oxygen mask from his face. His eyes focused on Kwan and Kwan realized that he had been staring at Danny.
"You're Danny Phantom," replied Kwan.
"Well, somebody had to be."
Danny worked himself into a sitting position and lifted the oxygen mask from his face. He took a couple of quick breaths, as if to test the air, but then settled into a normal breathing rhythm as his body adjusted to breathing just 20% oxygen instead of 100%.
"How're you feeling?" asked Danny gently, his eyes roving over the opened painkiller bottle. Kwan shrugged.
"As if I just came back from a month long space mission. You?"
Danny looked at his injured hand. "Apart from this, far better than expected."
Kwan groaned as he reached towards a roll of gauze to help Danny bandage his hand, but a gentle "stop" from Danny made him sag back against the pleasant cool of the communication console.
"Being a half-ghost has some advantages," said Danny as he took a single band-aid from the medical kit. "I don't get space sickness and if I get hurt when I'm a ghost, the injuries are far less severe when I turn into a human."
Kwan frowned at that. How in the world did that work? Bruised tissue was bruised tissue, whether it was made of ectoplasm or human flesh. The same with sliced, burnt and cut-off tissue. Before he could ask Danny to elaborate the man closed the medical kit and stood up.
"Whoa," he said as he wobbled a bit. He lifted a hand to his head as if to steady it and shook it experimentally. "Head rush. Major head rush. I think I need to-"
Danny also sagged back against a console. Apparently he wasn't as immune as he liked to think, thought Kwan with an undertone of satisfaction. It had been annoying to see Danny take to microgravity like a fish to the water. But his frequent ghost-related flying would explain that, along with why he wasn't that bothered when he got stuck in a dead spot. There were no dead spots for him, he could fly.
"This is the Ghost Zone, right? As in, we're actually in the dimension where ghosts live," asked Kwan. Danny nodded slowly. He opened his mouth to say something but Kwan cut him off.
"Where are we? Inside the Ghost Zone, I mean. Is this a secure location?"
This time Kwan allowed Danny the time to answer. But from Danny's frown he could already tell he wasn't going to like the answer.
"I haven't really looked at our surroundings yet, but right now I don't know where we are. I've put the ISS on an empty floating island. I hope it isn't too damaged, but I couldn't hold on to it any longer. God, I'm so stupid!"
The outburst came out of nowhere and Kwan was a bit taken aback. He knew Danny had a temper, but he was pretty good at controlling it. But now Danny punched the nearest metal console and to Kwan's horror it dented.
"I should've seen the second satellite coming. Technus used to be easy to beat but since he's been working with Skulker he's learned a few tricks. Stupid, stupid, stupid!"
Each 'stupid' was punctuated by a fist hitting the metal and more dents sprung up.
"Hey, hey, calm down," interrupted Kwan. "I didn't see it either, and I was just sitting here, watching you fight. If anything, I should've been the one who minded our surroundings, not you! So please, stop hitting the console."
"No, ghosts are my responsibility," snapped Danny. To Kwan's dismay his blue eyes flashed into his ghostly green ones before receding back into blue. "I had an excellent view of everything around us, I could've - should've seen it. I was having too much fun destroying the satellite."
Kwan pushed himself off the floor and got up, wobbling only slightly. He extended one hand out to Danny, fighting the rush of blood to his head. He saw spots dance a complicated tango in front of his retina, but he refused to back down.
"Could have, should have, doesn't matter now. It happened and we should check our surroundings, see if there are twenty angry ghosts on the other side of the door. Come on."
"Knowing my luck, the Fright Knight is waiting on the other side of that door," muttered Danny, but he accepted Kwan's hand and got to his feet in a less-than-smooth motion. "Alright, I'll go outside and see what's going on. You stay here."
"No," said Kwan immediately and crossed his arms. "You've risked your life enough for one day, it's my turn now."
"But you don't have ghost powers," argued Danny. "You don't get to go outside and see if every ghost I've ever fought is waiting for us."
Kwan didn't deign to answer that one and headed towards Pirs, the nearest air-lock. He no longer needed to pressurize or depressurize it, so after some fiddling with the manual override he swung the door open, Danny's body moving with him like a shadow.
It wasn't Kwan's first look into the Ghost Zone, but it was his first with him smack-dab in the middle of it.
The first thing he noticed was that there was no horizon. It looked like he was back in space, only this time green bits floated about, along with doors as far as he could see. The doors were the only indication that this was a three-dimensional world and not a picture plastered across a screen. The doors bobbed about in an invisible current, with green strands of ectoplasm seemingly going against the current.
But that was just the backdrop. Danny had put the International Space Station down on a floating island. One module hovered over the edge, but the island was longer than it was wide, about three hundred foot across. The edge of the island was about two hundred and fifty feet from where Kwan was standing.
Thankfully no ghosts waited for them, so Kwan carefully stepped onto the purple grass. It crunched underneath his feet like real grass and suddenly Kwan wondered how any plant life could grow here. There was no sun, no rain, only ectoplasm. Which meant that the grass was made out of ectoplasm too, somehow mimicking Earth grass. Or maybe Earth grass mimicked Ghost Zone grass, the link between both worlds was still the subject of much speculation and research.
"Unreal," breathed Kwan. He took some more wobbly steps and was nearly brained by a door. It floated past him with inches to spare and Kwan instinctively ducked. The purple door was oblivious to the astronaut-turned-ghost-zone-naut and calmly drifted onwards on its invisible current.
Danny walked up to Kwan and stood next to him, hands clasped on his back.
"Welcome to the Ghost Zone. Usually I'd give you a tour, but I have no clue where we are, to be honest. But at least we're safe from Technus."
Kwan half-turned towards Danny. "But don't most of Phantom's - your enemies live here?"
"Yep," answered Danny cheerfully. "Which is why we have to find a safe spot as fast as possible."
Without waiting for an answer Danny called upon those rings of light again to transform him into the famous ghost boy - man. He was definitely a man. Kwan remembered Danny Phantom as a slim ghost, forever locked into battle with various threats to the city (and himself). All these years later he had grown up.
Danny stripped out of the bio-suit and hung it alongside the Orlan spacesuits inside the Pirs module.
He was still slim, but he filled out the hazmat suit in a way the young Phantom had not. And apparently his suit grew along with him, because he wore the identical one to when he was young, logo and all. Could ghosts even change clothes?
While all this flitted through Kwan's mind Danny pushed off and flew in a small circle around the island. He looked around in all directions, stopping here and there and lifting a hand above his eyes as if that could help him see through the green swirls of ectoplasm obscuring part of the scenery like green fog. Maybe he could, Kwan had no idea. At one spot Danny stayed a long time, his ghost tail bobbing back and forth. It had to be weird to have no legs anymore, mused Kwan.
Finally Danny floated down to eye level, but kept off the grass. He shook his head with a look of regret. "Sorry, can't say that I recognize any part of the Ghost Zone. I thought that over there," Danny pointed at the spot where he had hovered for a long time, "might be the Swirling Vortex of Infinite Pain in the distance, but it's going the wrong way."
"Alright," said Kwan with a nod. He was trained for impossible situations like this, he could handle it. First things first: they had to take stock of what they had.
"Alright," said Kwan again. He pointed at himself first. "Let's be honest, I'm not doing too well. I'm dizzy, weak and it'll take me at least two days, maybe three before I'm relatively back to normal. How are you holding up?"
"Brutal honesty?" asked Danny rhetorically. He too pointed at himself. "I'll need a day to recover, although my ghost form is pretty unaffected, save for some pain in my ears. The moment I turn back into a human I need to rest, though. And I don't think I'll be able to transform back immediately."
Kwan cocked his head at Danny. It was a first for him to converse with a floating person and it was disconcerting. "How much energy does transforming take?"
"Not much. 'Human' is the standard, in a manner of speaking, so when my ghost form is exhausted I turn back, whether I want to or not. It's the more complicated ghost powers which drain my energy."
With a sigh Kwan pointed at the ground. "I don't mean to be rude, but could you come down? My neck is starting to hurt and I've already got a headache."
With a sheepish grin Danny lowered himself to the ground, turning his ghost tail back into proper legs and feet again before touching down. Kwan was dying to know how he did that, how he did all of those amazing things, but now was not the time. Come to think of amazing things…
"Thanks. I guess one of the 'complicated ghost powers' is tearing a hole between the Ghost Zone and Earth. And you can't do that right now, or you'll pass out."
Danny tapped the ground with one white boot while clasping his hands behind his back again, not quite looking Kwan in the eyes.
"Well, no, but… it's technical. Bottom line is, I can't."
"Dumb it down for me," demanded Kwan. He had to know why that avenue of plans was barred off, or else he could never think up new things. In space, he knew all about the Space Station, about which button did what, about the communication protocols and how to shower in micro gravity. But here he had to completely rely on Danny's knowledge. It was no doubt vast, thanks to Danny's years as a ghost-fighting… ghost, but this revelation had put a strain on Kwan's trust in Danny. If he had kept that a secret, what else did he have hidden in the fists behind his back? He had only shown one fist and Kwan feared the moment Danny opened the other one.
"Getting into the Ghost Zone is easy. It's getting out that's harder. It requires the same amount of power, but I have no control over where we end up. I'm only half-ghost, I can't sense the ley-lines like full ghosts can."
Kwan raised his eyebrows. Ley-lines? An idea struck him.
"What if you tear a hole in the same spot as we went in? We could repair the damaged modules and get the station back out there, before it suffers any more damage. Or before we suffer any damage."
Danny's agitation was written all over his face and he began to float again, though not as high this time. He paced with his feet dangling over the purple grass. "I wish it was that simple. But I'm sorry, by now that spot is gone. Like I said, it's technical, but we have to get to a safe spot first before I can explain. Trust me on this."
Danny held the other fist tight against his back and Kwan didn't like it. But if Danny refused to talk, he could hardly bully him into spilling his green guts. He had done that enough in high school.
"Help," said Kwan suddenly. "We should call for help."
He turned around and began to head inside, but Danny's "we can't" made him stop.
"Why can't we call for help?" Kwan demanded, whirling back around.
"We don't have the equipment to filter out the spectral noise. All they'll hear is a bunch of ghosts going 'whooo-ooo' ." Danny wriggled his fingers above his head to mimic a scary ghost noise. In his hollow voice it was scarier than it should be.
"Can we build something to filter it out?"
"I've never learned how, and we don't have the necessary equipment. You need some ectoplasm-negating material, and that's in very short supply inside the ghost zone."
"Can we take the station with us?" Kwan switched tracks. If they couldn't call for help, they'd have to move towards any help. The ISS was safe where it was now, but they couldn't just abandon it. They'd never find it back in this dimension and a smart ghost could quickly turn it into a weapon. He wasn't going to risk leaving it behind for even a second, but as it was right now, they couldn't move it.
"Right now, no. I'm too weak." Kwan could appreciate Danny's honesty, but it was a bummer. "Maybe in two to three days I'm strong enough to lift it, but even then I won't be able to move it very far. But…"
Danny stopped talking and fired a blast at the ground. The purple grass blackened and brown dirt spread out.
"We can move the island," said Danny. If I carve off enough, I think it'll be manageable if we use the ecto-converter. And build a propulsion system."
"Well, there's plenty of fuel around," said Kwan with a smile. His smile fell when he realized the second condition. "But we don't have any materials to build a propulsion system with. Unless you want to scavenge the thrusters from the ISS."
Danny stopped floating and settled back onto the ground with a firm 'thump'. "That's not what I had in mind. See all those doors?" He didn't wait for confirmation, because the moment anyone entered the ghost zone, there were three things which drew attention: green ectoplasm, black void and purple, purple doors.
"They lead to… what did Tuck call them again… pocket dimensions. Each one contains a universe of its own. Some doors lead to ghost lairs, some to the past, present or future. Although I've also ended up in space once, and back in the ghost zone too. If we need parts, we can nick them from those dimensions."
"But we can't tell what's behind what door, right?"
Danny shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. But steer clear of the red ones. And the ones marked with an eye."
"An eye?" asked Kwan. What did an eye have to do with danger?
"The Observers have marked that door, so it's best to keep out of it altogether. They usually have their reasons."
Kwan let the remark about the Observers drop. They had to get a move on, and standing around discussing Ghost Zone ghosts all day wasn't going to help them. He was very curious, but it all had to wait.
"We should take a nap first," suggested Kwan. His body wholeheartedly agreed with him, even if Danny visibly disagreed. But then the half-ghost sighed.
"You're probably right. I feel like I just flew halfway across the continent. Trust me, that takes a lot out of you. I'll keep the first watch."
Kwan firmly shook his head. "No. We're going to need your… abilities if a ghost wants to take the station. You sleep first, I'll wake you in, how long should each of us sleep? Three hours?"
"Sounds like more hours of uninterrupted sleep than I usually get," replied Danny, but he didn't disagree with Kwan's reasoning. He walked inside the airlock and held the door open for Kwan.
"It's better if no ghost spots a human standing outside. Humans aren't exactly common in the ghost zone."
"Good idea. I'll wake you if a ghost decides to sniff around here and see why a space-faring object lies on a floating island in the Ghost Zone."
Kwan closed the hatch behind him and followed Danny into the other modules of the ship. Danny was still Phantom, and it looked like he intended to stay that way. Kwan wondered how much control Danny had over the whole process. Could he change whenever he wanted to, or did he have to do something first to change from human into a real ghost. Did he die every time he changed?
Danny interrupted his thoughts as he spoke while he floated upwards to take their sleeping bags down from the wall-turned-ceiling. "We should be alright for a little while. The ISS is hardly the weirdest thing you can find inside the Ghost Zone."
Kwan made an inquiring noise as he took the offered sleeping bag from Danny.
"Real life objects from all kinds of time periods tend to gravitate towards the Ghost Zone. I've seen fridges, some kind of futuristic hovercraft, one of those old spearheads made from stone and an entire wooden airplane straight out of 1900-something. One 'deserted' space station should go unnoticed, at least for a little while."
Danny laid his sleeping bag out on the least-covered part of the floor, with Kwan's bag acting as a mattress. There were still bumps and ridges on the floor, but it was the most comfortable place they could find. Danny crawled inside his sleeping bag, not even bothering to undress. Could he even undress out of that hazmat suit?
"Three hours, right?" confirmed Danny one more time, but Kwan saw that even now his eyes started to close.
"Yeah," replied Kwan. He regretfully walked away from the Place of Sleep, something which his eyes told him he was going to need very soon. He turned around at an odd sound. The two rings of light which had brought the remarkable secret of Phantom into his life appeared again and changed Danny from his otherworldly appearance back to the black-haired man Kwan knew. He didn't know if that was a good or bad sign.
With Danny resting he used the spare time to gather up the materials they needed on their trip to make a propulsion system. A hand held computer, definitely. Some screwdrivers in case they needed to liberate any technology. And of course the basics of food, water and first-aid. Maybe a spare set of clothes.
After finding two bags they could use he gathered the materials in there, selected a few supplies from the first-aid kit and packed the whole thing as tight as possible.
After he had done that he had time to think. But he needed to keep himself busy to stop himself falling asleep, so he put the batches of ectoplasm away and tidied up the laboratory. And to think that a week ago they were worried they were going to run out of ectoplasm! Now they were in a whole dimension where everything was made of the stuff.
And geeky, scrawny Danny was Phantom. That truth kept pulling the chair out from underneath his descending body. By now he could conclude it was no trick and no lie. Somehow Danny had turned into a half-ghost in their freshman year and had defended Amity Park against countless ghost attacks. He'd even saved the world! Well, him and about a million other ghosts, but it was he who came up with the whole idea of turning the Earth intangible.
Kwan remembered laying tubes all over Amity Park and its surrounding cities. He'd worked tirelessly, using his strong body to help wherever he could. He barely slept during those tiring days, but he still remembered watching the broadcast, live from the North Pole. He had watched as Phantom's jet crashed into the mountain and at that moment he was sure he was going to die. But then the white-haired ghost flew out of the portal, leading a massive ghost group.
And then it had all gone tingly when the entire world around him turned blue. Out of pure curiosity he had walked through the nearest wall, but was back in front of the television as he watched the Disasteroid shoot through the Earth, on its way to who knows where. He had cheered along with the entire world. The live broadcast shut off when Phantom descended onto the ice of the North Pole, grinning the widest grin he could.
That Phantom was the same boy who was now sleeping soundly (and snoring slightly) as he recovered from his ordeal of getting the ISS inside the Ghost Zone and safely onto an island.
As an astronaut he could handle stress and surprises very well. When Danny transformed he had been bowled over for a second, but then he quickly adapted to the situation. But with this forced downtime his mind had time to catch up to the thoughts his subconscious had already been serving him.
He had bullied world-famous Danny Phantom in high school. How had Danny kept it a secret for so long? Kwan had never even suspected a thing. True, Phantom had been sighted a lot around the school, but so had other ghosts. Phantom could disappear without a trace and appeared to grow from a small boy into an adult man. The ghost experts had put that down to the power he held, which matured along with him. Other ghosts sometimes changed their forms, albeit they did it at once, while Phantom did it gradually.
All these and other theories Kwan had read when he had been a 'phan', as Paulina had put it. He had grown over his hero worship when he enrolled in the NASA training program, but Phantom was something of a childhood hero to him.
And didn't the saying go: never meet your heroes?