DISCLAIMER:

I, Impudent Miscegenation, of Fanfiction (dot net), do not own or have any affiliation with the creators of Danny Phantom. All rights respectfully go to Butch Hartman and Nickelodeon. I don't gain material profit from my works featured here, I write for my own amusement.

I OWN THE O.C.'s. IF THERE IS A GUEST O.C., THE OWNER OF SAID O.C. WILL BE MENTIONED.

I really get my inspiration from you guys and you lot are fantastic. I would have abandoned this multi-chapter fiction if it weren't for all of the reviews, follows, and favorites. Truly, you guys have helped me hunker down to see this through to the end. I've recently hit 40 reviews and that makes me so happy; speaking of which, the replies (as per the norm) are at the bottom! See you there!

Previously on Royally Screwed: Essentially, Danny was an idiot. Yeah, that's the chapter in a nutshell. Whilst playing the hero, he entered the realm of the Burning Sands. Granted, he lasted a lot longer than Frostbite thought he would, but he still ended up paying the price of his visit. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Our favorite Trio, accompanied by Wulf, made their way to the Burning Sands well enough. We learned a little about Ghost Speak, too! We also learned that Vlad is a dirty rotten cheater when it comes to his powers. He possesses the Amulet of the Risen Star (Sun), which enhances his powers 100 fold at least. And yet he lords his power over Danny as if he gained it all through experience. What a jerk. Back to the Trio, though. They made it safely to the Burning Sands and Ignis the Unburnt (The Queen of the Burning Sands) accepted the burden that is the Amulet of the Fallen Moon. But, it comes with a price. Assuming Danny survives the massive blow to his ice core, he now owes Ignis a favor. The real trouble doesn't really begin until they're ALMOST back to the Specter Speeder. Danny's melting. Quickly. His ice core couldn't take the heat and should probably stay out of the kitchen to be back in the freezer where it belongs. (see what I did there?) Anyway, when we last left our favorite characters, they were seconds away from the lab and potential safety. But are they too late? Let's find out!

Royally Screwed

Chapter 9: Precariousness and Physiology

Normally the sight of the lab was rather cold and uninviting, but in this moment it was a godsend. Sam slammed on the break, pulling the Speeder back from a fast pace to a screeching halt. Tucker was trying, in vain, to bring Danny back into consciousness. As soon as the halfa went limp and unresponsive, the melting process started going a good deal faster. Danny no longer had arms below his elbows.

"Sam, he's not waking up. Sam, what do we do? What do we do?!" Tucker was panicking badly. Well, his best friend since preschool was melting right in front of him. What else was he supposed to do? Sam, much more level-headed and rational, took a deep breath.

"I… Tucker, we don't… We're out of options. We need to tell his parents. They're ghost experts; they might know how to stop this. If they can't... " She trailed off and looked away from Danny's steadily melting form. It was horrible. Tucker took one more look at Danny in hesitation before nodding when the slimy, green substance crawled up to the other teen's left knee.

"Okay." With that, he sprinted upstairs at a pace that would make the jocks at Casper High look twice. Sam could hear his shouting from the basement. The quivering in his voice made it known that he was on the verge of tears. Sam forced herself to look back at Danny. She knelt down by his head.

"Danny… Please. Just hold on."

Thudding on the lab stairs alerted Sam to the presence of Tucker, accompanied by Jack and Maddie Fenton.

"Sam, what's wrong? Tucker said something about Da-Oh. Oh my god." Maddie interrupted herself when she saw the state her son was in. "H-How… What's going on?!" The woman exclaimed while her husband became uncharacteristically quiet. Jack was slack-jawed and wide-eyed as he took in the sight before him. Sam stood.

"Please, I don't know how to explain everything right now. We're running out of time. Danny is Phantom; he's half-ghost. It was the portal accident. His ice core is melting because of a place that we went into the Ghost Zone, please. Please you have to help. We don't know what to do." Maddie swallowed hard, obviously wildly confused and somewhat hurt. She only stayed in this state of shock for a second before pulling her hood down over her eyes and looking to her husband. Her demeanor changed from worried mother to collected scientist in an instant.

"Jack, I need you to listen very carefully; get the examination table and bring it to the Speeder. We need to move him without disturbing the semi-solid ectoplasm still on him." Jack snapped to attention and moved quickly, especially for a man his size. Maddie glanced to the teenagers.

"Kids, once we have Danny moved, I need you to get on some gloves from the crate over there and start collecting that lost ectoplasm. Use the suction tubing we have set up on that table." She directed them while gesturing to show them where to find what she needed. The two immediately jumped to get gloves while Jack slammed the metal examination table against the Speeder and looked nervously at his wife. Maddie nodded to her husband.

"Set him down, do it gently. Mind his head and only pick him up by the center. Extremities are high risk with the rate at which he's…" She didn't finish and Jack didn't need her to. Already he was at work making sure that his son was set on the table in one piece-or as close to "one piece" he could get with how fluid the teenager had become. Soon enough, Danny was flat on the table in an anatomical position. Maddie took the handle on the table and began pushing him to a very large containment cube in the lab.

"We need to get him in the stasis chamber. From there, we can control the environment around him to slow and stop the ectoplasmic destabilization." She told Jack as Sam and Tucker began the process of trying to clean up the ectoplasm in the Speeder. The chamber was opened and Maddie wheeled her son inside. She closed the door behind her and pressed the intercom beside the door.

"The kids mentioned an ice core; it's likely that we'll get a positive response if we drop the temperature. Start at negative 18 degrees and we'll drop as needed." Maddie told her husband, who was at the controls.

"On it, baby!" He affirmed before twisting a dial and pressing a few buttons on the control panel.

Immediately, Maddie felt the cube's toasty 20 degrees drop considerably.* Her adrenaline and quick heart rate prevented her from truly feeling any bite, however. She eyed her son for any type of response. Nothing happened; there was no slowing of the melting, nor was he regaining any consciousness.

"Drop it to negative 28!" Jack nodded and turned the dial again. When the temperature moved down more, Maddie looked and found that the disintegration was slowing. But it hadn't stopped yet. She was now shivering from the freezing cold but she wasn't ready to leave her son's side.

"Negative 40!" She ordered and was greeted with an even more bitter cold. She began to shiver uncontrollably. The melting further slowed but it still wasn't slow enough. Maddie had reached her threshold and was forced out of the chamber. She'd need to put on additional clothing to go in again without getting hypothermia.

"Another ten degrees, Jack!" She stared at the limp body on the table, fear creeping into her heart. It looked, however, as though the melting had stopped.

"... Take it down another five degrees to be safe. Let's get on some protective gear." The woman directed while going over to the crate where she'd gestured Sam and Tucker find gloves. Inside were a variety of clothing articles; including several insulated HAZMAT suits. Maddie was able to be dressed within seconds of setting her eye on the suit. When she was completely dressed, she assisted her husband. Intent on going back into the cube where their son was, they brought in an array of medical equipment to take readings on his state.

After what seemed like too long to the woman, they were back in the chamber, where Danny was still unconscious but showing no adverse reaction to the cold temperature. In fact, his cheeks were flushed with color, as if he were experiencing a high fever. Jack cleared his throat and looked at his wife.

"What do we have?" He asked and Maddie took a breath before closely examining their son, beginning with standard observation.

"Tissue disintegration has ceased. No signs of regeneration as of yet… Total breakdown of the left brachial region and inferior. Partial breakdown of the right brachial; total breakdown of the antebrachial. Cutoff is semi-solid ectoplasm, a distinct lack of human anatomy can be observed superficially." Tentatively, Maddie pressed her hand down onto her son's chest and was relieved to feel his solid rib-cage. She continued downward and lightly pressed against his stomach. " … Abdominopelvic cavity seemingly stable and no signs of degeneration. Internal organs and skeletal structure intact." She was able to report with approval. She moved her eyes down to what remained of Danny's legs. "Total breakdown of tissue inferior to left mid-femoral, total breakdown inferior of the right tibial." The woman trembled at the thought that this was her son. She swallowed her emotions down and began attaching monitors onto the unconscious boy.

"No outward signs of distress. Heart rate currently… 48 bpm. … No indicators that this is an abnormal resting rate. Respiration at 7 breaths per minute; oxygen levels stable at 97 percent." She was taken out of her reverie by a soft tapping on the glass. Sam and Tucker stood by, brandishing the beakers of ectoplasm they'd collected from the Speeder (and possibly the lab floor). Maddie gave them a thumbs-up before turning to Jack.

"I need to purify the ectoplasm and purge it from any microbes it may have collected. Get a blood pressure reading and try to get a core body temperature. If there's any changes in his condition, for better or worse, call me." She told him, and Jack bobbed his head. As Maddie turned to leave, Jack took her by the shoulder.

"We're gonna get through this, Mads. He's gonna get through this." He mumbled tenderly in her ear and Maddie was reminded exactly why she loved Jack so much. She bobbed her head and Jack released her.

Once freed from the confines of the cube, Maddie took down the hood and goggles of the protective outer suit. She turned her focus to Sam and Tucker, carefully taking one of the beakers from Tucker's trembling hands.

"Good job, you two. Now, I need to make sure the ectoplasm is clean before we try and reintroduce it to Danny's body. The last thing we need is for him to experience some sort of bacterial infection. Carefully, follow me." The woman told the two teenagers while walking over to a complicated-looking rig on one of the tables in the laboratory. The large beakers full of ectoplasm, totalling 4 (but one was only less than half full), were set on the table. Maddie looked at the beakers and began muttering to herself.

"Total ectoplasm loss approximately 6 liters." She closed her eyes to calm herself but… That was a rather big number. Maddie immediately began to purify the ectoplasm in an attempt to refocus herself and center her emotions. She slowly poured one of the beaker's contents into her ectoplasm-purification rig. So caught up in what she was doing, Maddie nearly forgot about the two minors waiting for her orders until she heard Tucker's quivering voice.

"Is… Is that a lot? 6 liters… is that a lot for someone to lose?" He peeped nervously and Maddie could have hit herself. She shouldn't make these kids worry, unintentionally or not. Still, Tucker had asked a question.

"Well, to put it to you this way, Tucker, the human body has about 5 liters of blood in the body, give or take depending on the person-"

"He lost a liter of blood he doesn't even have?!" The teen all but screeched in panic and Maddie was quick to assuage his fear by placing a finger over her lips and shaking her head. Sam looked worried as well, and was biting her lower lip ferociously. Maddie felt guilty and made a note to be more comforting.

"Tucker, relax, ectoplasm isn't the equivalent to blood-especially not when it's ectoplasm coming from a destabilizing ectoplasmic entity." Her son. "Ectoplasm is a lot more complex. It can take a number of different formations." She explained and remembered the terminology that the teens had used. Half-Ghost. Pondering for a few seconds, Maddie continued. "I'm not sure about this but I would speculate that in… Danny's case, the ectoplasm found in his ghost half is formed into a ghostly model of his human half. I would wager that the ectoplasm had molded itself into a replica of human anatomy. This means that the 6 liters that he lost was not only blood but also bone, muscle, and other tissues." She swallowed the lump growing in her throat and removed the new beaker filled with the purified ectoplasm. There was a bit less of it than before, but the glow was significantly brighter. She then began the process of dumping the second of the four beakers into the rig before continuing her train of thought.

"When a ghost destabilizes, the ectoplasm within them reverts to its natural, unaltered state. Which is, as the name suggests, a plasma."

"Well, why does a ghost destabilize?" Sam asked hesitantly. If not for the circumstances, Maddie would have been overjoyed by the kids taking such interest in ghostly physiology. As it were, the woman simply shook her head.

"Any number of factors, really. But it all comes back to what's called a ghostly core. Now, I'm sure you know something about cores, since you mentioned Danny has one of ice… But a ghost's core is something of an enigma. We do know that a ghost's energy is pulled from their core and that their cores can be exhausted by expending a certain amount of that energy. It would stand to reason that if the ghost continued to use energy from their core that it would cause destabilization. You mentioned, however, that Danny experienced this after going to a place in the Ghost Zone. If we go on the theory that his ice core expends cold energy to cool itself if exposed to higher temperatures, then I would assume that he experienced core exhaustion and destabilization by staying in a warm place for much longer than his ghost form could take." Sam frowned.

"But… I don't understand why Danny could melt like this in human form. If his ghost half is destabilizing, why would that transfer to his human half?" Maddie had to admit that the girl was sharp-witted and quick. That question had been on her mind as well, but she only had hypotheses as to why such had happened. Hell, she only had hypotheses for anything that pertained to her son who, up until about 25 minutes ago, was a normal, teenage human boy. Maddie kept an eye on the ectoplasm as it was cleansed, trying to find a way to answer Sam's question when she still wasn't too sure on the answer's reliability.

"Please understand that I only have so much to go on, Sam. Until just minutes ago, a human-ghost hybrid only ever existed in the fevered dreams of more radical ghost researchers. Jack and I had never even really considered the possibility that a hybrid could exist without immediately becoming too unstable to survive. Ectoplasm and human tissues don't mix under normal circumstances for a great variety of different reasons like pH balance, corrosiveness, and the general difference in temperature." Maddie admitted, taking the second beaker out from under the rig and replacing it with a clean one. She contemplated her next statement while starting with the third beaker. They were over halfway done, now.

"But, if I had to wager a guess… I would say that, even while in human form, Danny still has ectoplasm in his system. He has to have some kind of connection to his ghost half while in human form, otherwise there would be no possible way for him to be… Phantom." Maddie cleared her throat before she continued. "This connection can be as minute as ectoplasmic residue in his blood or there could be alterations throughout his system down to a molecular level. Regardless, the answer to your question lies in the connection between his halves. Without one half, there is no other. Which is why when his ghost form was destabilizing, it's likely that his human half experienced some side effects as well. I don't know how strong the connection is, so I don't know the extent of damage to his ghost half. If the connection is minute, then it's safe to say that his ghost form is inaccessible with how destabilized his human form has become. But if the connection is strong, then his ghost form could be only slightly more destabilized than what we see in his human half. The point being, I'm not sure how long he'll have to stay in human form to prevent damage to either halves of him." Maddie concluded her thought as she moved the third beaker with the rest and replaced it with a clean one to begin cleansing the last beaker of ectoplasm.

Sam and Tucker had gone quiet. Maddie spared a glance at Jack and Danny in the cube. Danny showed no signs that he was any different, which Maddie should have expected-she'd told Jack to alert her to changes, after all. Jack, speaking of which, seemed to be finished taking Danny's vitals and was now coming his thickly-gloved fingers through the boy's black hair. Maddie wasn't aware if the man was saying anything or not, but she assumed that, even if he was, it was a one-sided conversation that she wasn't meant to hear.

"Do you think he's gonna be okay?" Sam asked, her voice clear but quiet. Maddie glanced at the clean beakers of ectoplasm and then back at her son.

"... I don't know, Sam." She answered just as quietly.

*Since this takes place in a laboratory setting, all of the temperatures are listed in degrees celsius. For those of you who want to know the temperatures started at 68F and then dropped to -0.4F continuing down in sequence to -18.4F, -40F, -58F, and Maddie took it down to -67 just to be on the safe side. So close to 70 degrees below zero (in fahrenheit) is where they stopped as far as dropping the temperature goes. Yeah, it was definitely a good idea that they had the protective gear on.

I left you guys with a cliff-hanger. Why? Because I'm a deranged maniac. I hope you guys enjoyed this! If you guys have questions about any of Maddie's theories (and/or my headcanons), let me know!

Kimera20: I know, right? Tucker definitely called it when he said that his best friend was thicker than soup. Now he's turning INTO soup. And Ignis certainly will take advantage of her favor, but I wonder if she'll ask that favor of a kid or a king. Ooooh. Spine-tingling, I know. And Vlad is a HUGE hypocrite. He'll use anything to artificially enhance himself, then make others feel bad about their lack of power. It's rude, really. But would ya look at what Danny has done all by himself? (other than get melted) That boy has good reason to be proud!

Voldemort: I HAVE had pineapple pizza and I HATED it. I stand by what I said; pineapple does not go on pizza. (This is all in good fun, and I'm also a really picky eater. I only like cheese or bacon pizza, to be honest.)

messedupmoon: He doesn't think things through and he's stubborn af. I think he thought of this as a challenge that he failed at miserably.

Turkeyhead987: I really appreciate you giving the story a try! I know that there are a lot of the King AU stories out there but I wanted to try my hand at it. Glad to know that taking my time is doing right by you and the story. There's a lot of ground I want/need to cover by the time we get to Danny actually deciding whether to be a monarch or not. On the topic of him accidentally killing himself before 18, I wholeheartedly agree. He's something, isn't he? It's a miracle he's survived this long, I tell ya. Thank you so much for your review! If you ever have any constructive critiques/suggestions for me, I'm always open to a PM!

Keep on Reading and Reviewing!
Stay fabtatulistic!

~IM