"I thought I was doing the right thing. I was going to tell you the whole truth, eventually, I just didn't know... You know. When."
'And I'm supposed to believe that?'
"Yes! It's the whole truth this time. Can you not see why I didn't want to tell you sooner? You blacked out for half a day, champ."
'Stop calling me that! You've been keeping things from me since Day 1, and now I'm supposed to believe that I've been carrying you around my whole damn life without noticing? What kind of moron do you think I am?'
He was distracted from any answer he might have received when somebody began shaking him by the shoulders with a shout of "Danny!"
"What?!" he snapped, before meeting the panicked eyes of his mother.
She immediately looked relieved, but the bite in his voice also caused her to let go of him. "I- Sorry. You didn't say anything, I just... Do you understand what we're telling you?"
"No, somebody was distracting me."
"What... did he tell you? Did he know the whole time?"
Danny pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to quell the pounding in his skull. "It doesn't matter, I've had it with Phantom, and his lies, and—" Bright green eyes opened to blue mist, still floating in the air in front of him. "And I have especially had it with ghosts!"
He hopped off the table and took to the air, stopping just short of the Ops Center ceiling. "I'll be back once this is over, don't wait up." He didn't even turn back before he was gone.
Which was just so like him. He probably hadn't even noticed he'd left me sitting here like an idiot for more fun conversations with our parents, both of whom were looking at me like I was a dead man walking. Considering what a cheery mood he was in he probably wouldn't notice until he got back, either.
None of us said anything for a while. Eventually, I thought I should probably answer mom's question. Too many of those had been left hanging tonight. "About two weeks ago I realized."
Mom looked up at me. She had taken up a position leaning against a desk, arms tightly crossed with a frown. It's what she did when she was deep in thought, or right before she reanimated dinner. This was a case of the former.
She didn't say a thing, so I just kept going. The ball was in my court. "We had different memories. That's what tipped me off. I tried to tell him before tonight, too, but he just blacked out. I didn't... I wasn't sure what to do, after that."
She sighed. "Of course. The two halves always ignore each other, I guess it would try to preserve the illusion."
That had me confused. "What do you mean, 'always'? I mean, we aren't exactly... Normal, are we?"
"Not as normal as some, sure." I turned right to face Dad, who had sat down next to me. Without me noticing, somehow. "But Danno, everybody is built the same, more or less. Maybe you're about the only two who ever get to meet each other, but the principle is the same."
"...why do I feel like I'm missing something?"
"Jack, of course, he wouldn't know either!" Mom practically shouted it. She looked stunned by some kind of realization, and pretty soon she was on me, eyes boring into mine, hands gripping my shoulders. "Danny, sweetie, it's important that you believe me. This is going to sound a bit unbelievable."
Mom was right. It did sound unbelievable. And maybe just a little bit terrifying.
"...so what can we do?"
"Well, we're going to need both of you in..." Another vague, sweeping hand gesture. "You, before we can even think about surgical options."
"Whoa, brain surgery? Is that really necessary?"
"Yes! Without some way to stop the spread, the problem will just get worse and worse!" There was a fire in her eyes that I hadn't seen since she was looking at me on the other side of a gun. I won't lie, it had me wanting to run.
"Is... Will it be safe?"
She backed off again, suddenly avoiding my eyes. I hadn't thought that could have been worse. "If we do, there is still a chance of complications. At least a 95% chance of complete success. There is a chance, just a slight chance, that... Well, that you would effectively disappear."
Not what I had wanted to hear, but I suppose it made sense. "...and if you don't operate?"
"You will most likely survive. But Danny..."
It was just as well she didn't finish the sentence. I got the message. Dad's hand moved from my shoulder to rubbing my upper back, the same nervous tic he had during Danny's doctor appointments and parent-teacher meetings. "Back in college, we had a friend who went through the same injury. He hid it from us a lot longer than you, Danno. By the time we caught on, it was in the late stages. Ol' V-Man went out one day to try to get his other half to listen to reason, and, well." The hand returned to his lap. "We never did see him again. Him or his ghost."
"...I don't want that to happen to Danny, either." And damn it, I meant it. "What do you need me to do?"
Mom finally looked me in the eye, fearful where I hoped I looked determined. "You're going to need to talk him down. If nothing else, just bring him home."
That, I could do. I took the stairs two at a time.
This was nice. Far away from his problems, high above the city, nobody trying to manipulate him... That was probably Danny's favorite part about ghost hunting. It wasn't like school or friends or family. There was a problem. The problem was solved when the ghost was dead.
Danny soared gracefully over the elm canopies of the streets before they dropped away revealing the river below him. The water twinkled by, lit dark orange with a thousand reflected lamps, and Elmerton picked up where the shoreline dropped off. He had no idea where exactly his ghost sense was leading him, but the target must have been moving.
Screams from the ground caught his attention, and he dived, the wind whipping at his hair and whistling in his ears. It had to be around here somewhere.
A group of teenagers ran out of a nearby alleyway, scattering across the roadway with no particular direction in mind. Danny smiled. That must be it. He landed softly on the pavement; stealth was hard when you glowed in the dark, but there was no sense giving the enemy any advantages.
Danny peeked carefully around the corner, and he could see why the teens had run. The ghost was massive, easily twice as tall as he was. It looked like some kind of dog, complete with a spiked collar and a flaming tail.
That wasn't too much of a problem. He'd faced bigger, and most of them saw him as soon as he saw them. This ghost was concentrating on the ground, sniffing here and there, seemingly looking for something (most likely, looking for people to terrorize). He just needed to make sure the first shot counted.
Three weeks had passed since the accident. Three weeks of dealing with Phantom and all the other ghosts invading his life, his town, and he was getting pretty tired of it.
No, not tired.
Angry.
He put all that anger into an ectoblast and fired. The dog yipped and turned on him in a moment, and in a second Danny found himself face-to-face with a pair of deep red eyes and fangs the size of his head. It hadn't done quite as much damage as he had hoped it would; to say the least, it was a bit frightening exactly how little it had been affected. "Uh... Nice doggy?"
It grabbed him in its teeth, tore down the street with him screaming, and flung him clean through a plate-glass window. Lacking the time to go intangible, it shattered into dozens of shards, which rained down on him as he crashed into a pile of tables and chairs.
"OK, not so nice doggy."
He stood on shaky legs, vision swimming, but clear enough to see the dog was about to charge in after him. His first instinct was to grab anything at hand and throw it at the dog, but one salt shaker and a coffee cup later the dog had barreled into him and slammed him into the front counter of what seemed to be a cafe.
Danny phased out from under the dog and flew up behind it. It was only about as tall as he was now. "Not so nice, size-changing doggy? Terrific, he can get into anything." A paw swiped inches from his face and he flew back with a yelp. "OK, let's get Rover away from people..."
Turning intangible to avoid a further assault of paws, Danny flew back through the window, before a splitting pain in his head made him lose his concentration; he tumbled onto the street.
His quarry was apparently more than willing to seize an opportunity, because with a crash it broke through the other window, showering Danny with glass just as he was getting back onto his feet. A quick leap to the side got him out of the way of the charge, and the ghost dog ran straight into a lamppost, dislodging it from its moorings and toppling it into the building behind it, where the bulb exploded into a flurry of sparks.
The dog scrambled for a moment, trying to get its bearings, while Danny did the same a few feet away. The cuts from the glass were doing wonders to distract him from the pain in his head, but not so much for his concentration. It took a few seconds to build up another ectoplasmic charge, sending it at the ghost hurtling toward him. It collapsed into a heap, but in a moment it was already staggering to its feet.
He didn't wait for it to recover. "Hey Fido, let's go for a walk!" Danny ran down the street, kicking the monstrous ghost back down on his way past. Sooner than he had been hoping for it was chasing him again; they were still in a fairly dense neighborhood, though if he had seen correctly from the air, they were close to the sparsely populated industrial park, on the other side of the train tracks. He was trying to recall if it was three blocks south or east when he found himself tackled to the ground in the middle of the intersection. The dog bit down hard on his midsection, and after giving him a short shake, threw him clear across the road and face-first into a parked SUV, leaving a sizable dent and pushing it up onto the curb in the process.
When he finally picked himself up, angry, red eyes met his own, and their owner roared at him like a creature twice its size despite its heavy panting. Danny's ears were left ringing, and he wasn't entirely sure if the warm liquid he was feeling on his lip was from a bloody nose or dog drool.
The monster was about to bite his head off, literally, but Danny blocked its mouth with his arms. A particularly hard bite elicited another scream of pain, and he reflexively sent an ectoblast right at the dog's chest. With the weight off of him, he scrambled back and onto his feet. "No, bad dog! The ghost kid is not a chew toy!" Adrenaline coursing through his system, Danny turned and picked up the SUV behind him with a grunt of effort, and threw it straight at his target. The dog tried to move away, but not quickly enough; the vehicle landed with a heavy crunch right on its mark.
Exhausted and annoyed, Danny cautiously shuffled over to the car, ectoblast primed and ready to fire. Ectoplasm was oozing out from under the steel, but he didn't think for a second he had seen the last of the monster. Finally, it dragged itself intangibly out from under the vehicle, now reduced the size of a normal mastiff, its forepaws trying to gain purchase on the slick asphalt. Strangely, it made no attempt to attack him.
Its head perked up suddenly a second later, sniffing the air curiously. Danny stayed his arm for a moment, examining it with confusion, but the dog had apparently decided whatever it had found was more important than him because it barked and tore off limping down the intersecting street.
Dumb ghosts. Whatever, it just made his job easier. He took off after it, and after a moment felt well enough to try flight; Danny finally overtook it just as it had crossed the train tracks, and landed a flying kick to its head just short of a security fence surrounding a brightly lit factory, the cyan standing in stark contrast to the orange night sky.
The dog fell whimpering. It didn't try to get back up, but just looked up at him in wide-eyed terror. Danny landed next to it with glee. "Finally! You didn't make this easy." He prepared for one a final attack, but a bright spotlight hit him straight in the face and he had to use his hand to shield his eyes from the glare.
An alarm began to sound and he could see a couple of security guards looking at him from their rooftop vantage points. "Hold up guys! I'm on your side, I'm just here to take care of your ghost problem." He wasn't sure if they heard him shouting over the klaxon, so he gave them a broad grin and a thumbs up.
Now there was only one problem left.
And it was a problem he knew how to solve.
Green fire licked off his fingertips.
We weren't far, now. I pulled Sam and Tucker away from The Sixth Sense with barely a word spoken, and an irritated Jazz had been dragged away from her numerical analysis homework to give us a lift. It turns out when she had the right motivation, she really drove like our parent's daughter.
"I think we're getting warmer. He's probably south of here."
"...which way is that?"
I sighed. "Turn right. Am I seriously the only one in our family who can navigate?"
"Sorry little brother, I've got a lot on my mind right now." She scowled at me before looking back at the road just in time to swerve around a pile of broken glass and a toppled street light. "I think we're getting close."
She was right, he was nearby. I could feel where he was, somewhere in the back of our mind. There was that tugging force between us, trying to pull his ghostly form back into our body, but this time it seemed my other half was putting in the effort to keep separated.
Danny was probably just blowing off some steam, right? Mom and Dad had warned me that he would probably react badly to being told he was one-half of the whole, being the more dominant personality. I tried not to take that too personally. After all, it meant that he probably didn't actually... hate me. Didn't it?
On the other hand, from the destruction the fighting had left in its wake, it looked like he was willing to go through a lot of trouble just to distract himself. Hopefully he would be willing to listen to Jazz, Sam, and Tucker, if not me. Hopefully we could get him to come home.
...hopefully, he wouldn't do anything we'd all regret.
Jazz had barely made the corner before Sam shouted from the backseat. "There he is! Look, the searchlights!" Her finger shot past my ear to point out a speck in the middle of a spotlight.
"Wait, isn't that Axion Labs?" Trust Tucker to know. "What the heck is Danny doing out here?"
I thought I could see a bright green flash, and a moment later Danny dropped to his knees "Ghost fighting, I hope. Come on, we've got to get him out of here before the police show up or something."
The car screeched to a stop just a few yards away from him, but he didn't even turn to look at us. I was the first out of the car and at his side in seconds.
There was a small body on the ground. Its glow was faint. Danny... He reached out for it, and it dissolved under his touch. We both just watched as the ectoplasm fizzled as it oozed through the pebbles on the side of the road and into the grass, the glowing lost among the blades and the harsh blue lights.
"Danny, what happened?" He looked like he'd been through hell and back. His suit was covered in scratches and scuffs, and he still hadn't looked at me. "Hey! Are you OK?"
I grabbed him by the shoulder, and I honestly think that was the first time he noticed I was next to him. He looked pretty... Out of it. "It was just a puppy. The whole time."
"Hey, come on champ, we saw the damage on the way here. You were just doing what you thought was right."
"What the hell would you know about 'right'?"
"Danny, look, I don't know how to tell you this, but..."
He glared at me; he was moving from distant back to annoyed, so there was no time to hesitate. I'd have to just start talking and hope I knew what to say when I got there. Since, you know, that worked out so well last time. "I'm your right brain."
That got his attention. "...what?"
"Look, I can't explain this as well as mom and dad can, but... The two halves of our brain are supposed to operate in sync. That accident, kinda threw a wrench into the works. Besides everything else, we got disconnected, somehow." I chuckled a bit and sat down next to him. For his part other-Danny was just staring at me with wide green eyes. "So here we are. Half our brain has gone ghost, and even when you're walking around on your own like that, you're actually cooped up in here with me." I tapped the left side of our head for emphasis. I wonder if he felt that...?
"You... Aren't joking, are you?"
"'Fraid not champ. But listen, it's not the end of the world. I mean, nothing has changed that much, has it?" I'll admit it, that was a stab in the dark. I was really hoping he'd just go with it, and maybe it could be true. "We're just going to have to take care of—"
Distant sirens started intruding on the facility's alarm, still blaring in the background. "Listen, we can figure it all out when we get home. Come on."
I thought I heard a mumbled "OK", and that was it. Thankfully, in ghost-mode, it was easy enough pull him up, but Sam's help was necessary to get him into the car. I think we made it two blocks before he passed out from exhaustion.
"You only did what you had to do. It was a ghost, and nothing good ever comes from ghosts."
Danny turned to glare at the figure, but predictably, its smoky form moved as quickly as he did, remaining just in the corner of his vision. "Shut up. It was just a puppy."
"Oh, really? So it had a pulse? A life of its own? A family to go home to? No, it was a ghost, plain and simple. Maybe the Other One is polluting your mind, confusing your perceptions. Tell me, do you even still think you are human?"
"Of course I am! Stop talking to me!" He turned away from it now, not that it had any more effect.
The figure just snickered at his futile attempt. The faintest sliver of a silver smile cracked the shadowy face. "How would you even know? Danny?"
He shut his eyes and sat down on the cold stone floor of... Wherever this was. "Stop it!"
"Danny!"
Somebody was shaking him gently. When he opened his eyes, he saw confused, concerned blue eyes looking back at him. The room was dark aside from the streetlights coming through the window, but it was clearly his bedroom. "Phantom?"
He saw himself relax. "Yeah. Sorry to wake you up, it felt like you were having a nightmare."
Danny sat up as Phantom backed away, taking a seat on the far edge of the bed. "I guess I must have been. Thanks."
"No problem." Phantom seemed more interested in picking at the threads of the duvet than looking at him. Danny felt like he should say something, but he wasn't even sure where to start.
After a moment, he decided to just start talking and hope he knew where to go when he got there. "Listen, about earlier..."
"It's fine, champ. Dad said he and mom kind of thought something like this might happen."
"...how could they possibly have seen any of this coming?"
Phantom finally turned to him with a small smile. "I guess the same thing happened to a friend of theirs back in college. He actually hid it from them much better, so I guess what we did wasn't so bad."
"I don't know, I'm... That ghost I killed. It was just a puppy acting out, in the end."
"Try not to think about it too much. You only did what you had to do."
That made Danny shudder, for some reason. "No. No, I didn't. There are a million ways that could have gone better if I hadn't been so... Blind. If we're going to keep doing this, I want to find a way to just catch ghosts so we can deal with them peacefully."
Phantom gave a noncommittal hum of agreement. "I guess we can talk to our parents about that in the morning."
"...what time is it even?"
"11:59, or... Make that 12:00. I guess that makes this another midnight chat, huh?"
"I guess so." Danny shifted a bit so he was sitting up against the headboard. After a moment, he found what he had meant to ask from the start. "I can't really remember it, very clearly. What were mom and dad trying to tell me before I..."
The other teen filled in the gap. "Flipped out?" The tone was playful, but that really was about the best way to describe it.
"...Yeah."
"I... Don't really know how to explain it. They said something about a corpo-something in the brain going all freaky from the ghost energy, and uh... Screw it, I'll let mom explain."
The room shimmered and fizzled, and Danny felt like he was falling. The only way he knew that he hadn't really moved at all was the fact that Phantom stayed static in his field of vision. When the fog lifted and he had "landed", they were back in the ops center. Phantom walked wordlessly over to the scanner and hopped back onto the table, and soon after their mom and dad appeared out of thin air.
"The human brain is an incredibly complex organ, just like the human body is an incredibly complex system." Mom was in scientist-mode, pacing in front of the ghost teen. She couldn't see him watching them, although... If this was Phantom's memory, that would make sense. When this happened, he had already flown off minutes ago. "Advanced lifeforms such as ourselves follow a bilateral symmetry, with organs like the kidneys and lungs operating in tandem to keep the body running. That includes the brain."
She stopped pacing in front of the monitor hooked up to the scanner, spinning it around to reveal the results. "Two hemispheres, left and right, collectively control the body. Unlike the lungs or kidneys, the nervous system is far too complex for each to operate completely independently, so they communicate over a layer called the corpus callosum, this slightly dark part between the two. Technically they are still independent minds, but as long as the two sides communicate and keep in perfect sync, they'll never be aware of the existence of the other."
"So... What does this have to do with us?" Phantom asked, finally.
"Well, if we overlay the ectoplasmic scan on this one..." She hit a few keys and the image changed slightly; now the right side was glowing brightly, but it got rapidly darker toward the left. Danny saw Phantom shifting to get a better view. "The accident left quite a mark. If you look carefully, you can see there was damage to that junction, the corpus callosum, and it appears the right hemisphere was... Technically, 'killed', but the portal seems to have infused it with enough ghostly energy to keep it going."
She tapped the side of the scan glowing brightest. "And that would be the 'you' in this picture."
"...so wait, what's up with all the green spots on the other side? Or, in Danny's brain? His side of our brain, that is." Man, did Phantom ever ramble. "Or whatever."
"That's the problem. The ectoplasmic right brain is trying to repair the damage. From the growth rates, it looks like about two weeks ago it healed the damage to the junction point, and from there..." The room went black, and the voices faded.
"I guess the ghostly tissue kind of started invading your brain. It sees the living tissue as 'damage', so... Uh, sorry about that, by the way," Phantom added awkwardly. "They... Want to try surgery to fix it tomorrow."
Danny was too stunned to talk. It was several minutes before he had collected himself enough to open his eyes, let alone say anything, and by then Phantom had gone back to nervously picking at a loose thread on the sheets. Tomorrow's problems could be fixed tomorrow. Right now, it was time for a long overdue conversation.
"...so you've really been with me the whole time?"
The ghostly teen just frowned at him. "I tell you we're getting brain surgery, and you're still hung up on that part?"
"No, no, I..." He chuckled, and the other's frown deepened. "Sorry, if I've been ignoring you. Can we start over?" He took off his right glove and held out a glowing hand with a lopsided grin. "Danny Fenton."
After just a moment's hesitation, the smile was returned, and Phantom clasped his hand. "Hey, me too."
That, Danny decided, was the perfect place to start.
Author's Note:
Here is the partially rewritten Chapter 20, to replace the somewhat lackluster original. Just in time for the 3 April "Dannyversary", too. A thousand thanks to TheFullCatastrophe and BuzzyBumbleBee13 for their patience in picking apart the revised drafts, and to Invader Johnny for early feedback. From thanks to apologies, sorry to MsMcClue, who I think had a slight panic when I took the chapter down before the rewrite was ready to go live.
More generally, thanks are in order to all the readers and reviewers of Disconnected. You all make me want to be a better writer, and I appreciate that deeply.
And seriously. Go hug your pets.