Phanniemay Day 4 - Transformation

Half and Half

x - x - x

Danny Fenton hadn't been planning on dying that day.

He hadn't meant for anything to happen. Really. He hadn't meant to be in there at all.

He'd never taken them, or any friend, into the lab before. Danny wasn't supposed to be down here without explicit permission (which was more often than not given as 'mandatory permission,' as his mom liked to dub it, which meant he had to clean up some nasty ectoplasmic mess his dad had made.)

The Portal itself loomed on the far end of the room. Its yellow and black wasp patterned doors were secured, fixed to the wall with a thick metal rim.

"This is way cooler than you made it sound, Danny!" Sam exclaimed as he triggered the opening sequence on the main computer. There was the screeching sound of metal on metal as the doors wrenched apart. He wasn't worried about anyone hearing. He'd only felt secure about bringing them down here because his parents were at a conference ("A GHOST conference!" his dad would correct every time) and Jazz was still at school, tutoring for extra credit. Only Jazz wanted extra credit when she was already pulling straight A's.

"Wait till you see what it looks like when its turned on," he told her with a wry smile. He was glad they were enjoying this. Earlier, when describing it, he'd toned it down a lot. But if he was being honest with himself… the Fenton Portal, although non-functioning, was pretty freaking cool.

"I thought you said it didn't turn on?" Tucker ask, frowning at the screeching doors.

"Well, it tries. It's like when you start a car and the engine keeps turning over and over but never starts." He activated the startup sequence, and a creepy greenish glow appeared deep within the wide opening of the portal. It spun out and around from the center back wall, glowing eerily, casting long shadows across the lab. But once it reached a certain volume, the spiraling whirlpool seemed to weaken, and it shrunk back down to nothing. If he left it on indefinitely it would just repeat this process, like a gross ectoplasmic flower blooming and dying over and over again.

"Holy cow, that thing is sick," Sam said. The light of it turned her eyes from purple to toxic green.

"Yeah, Danny. Your parents might be a little nuts but this is one cool invention.. even if it doesn't work."

At that point Danny stopped the sequence, allowing the ectoplasm to spiral away and dwindle back to nothing. Later on he would marvel at his own stupidity in that moment. How he had stopped the sequence but he had not cut the power. "They're already back at the drawing board," Danny remarked. "Who knows? Maybe they'll get it someday." Unlikely.

"You ever been inside this thing?" Tucker asked, peering from the edge into the dark empty chamber.

"No," Danny admitted. "They always said it was too dangerous – ha, like having a functioning portal to a ghostly dimension in our basement is so much safer."

"Yeah.. I don't really follow their logic," Sam smirked. "But then again, myparents think the most dangerous thing a person can do is listen to heavy metal."

"You uh – you wanna check it out?" Tuck raised his eyebrows and nudged Danny in the ribs.

Danny's gut reaction was bad idea. "I don't know, Tuck. My parents would be really pissed if they found out. Besides, you can't go in without – "

"What's this?" Sam was rummaging through one of the tall cabinets. She held out a thin white jumpsuit, trimmed black, on a hanger. "Is this a jumpsuit?"

"Uh…"

"Your parents sure do have style," Tucker snickered into his hand.

"It's one of their ecto-protection jumpsuits. They're supposed to specially conduct ectoplasmic energy or something, to protect from small amounts of exposure. You know, so they could work inside it safely."

"But this doesn't look like Jack or Maddie's size," Sam observed, unzipping it to look inside the collar. "Hey, it says Danny right here on the tag!"

"Really?" Danny was surprised. He didn't know his parents had one made for him.

Tucker burst out laughing. "Oh man!" He wiped a fake tear from his eye. "Looks like your parents wanna shape you in their image! Can you imagine Danny running around Casper all trussed up like his parents?" he asked Sam.

Danny shuddered involuntarily. "Yeah.. never going to happen," he assured them. The mental picture made him want to gag.

"Danny," Sam said, suddenly shoving the jumpsuit into his arms. "You gotta put it on."

"What?"

"You gotta check out the inside of that portal! Think about it. This might be your only chance to take a look before your parents scrap it for parts, or break it more thoroughly." She pressed the suit against his chest more earnestly.

He took it uncertainly, glancing at Tuck who only shrugged in response. "I don't know, Sam."

"Come on, Danny. Aren't you curious?"

He gave the dark, cylindrical hole a sidelong glance. He thought about the fantastic ectoplasmic swirls generated by the powerful engines churning inside. Even now that it was dark, the empty portal seemed so ominous, so full of unknowable potential. He had to admit the Ghost Portal had his curiosity piqued. What would it mean for them if his parents actually did get it running one day? Maybe they'd take him there. They'd be pioneers to another dimension. He'd be a Neil Armstrong of sorts. Way cool. He tried to envision what an alternate plane of reality would look like. But the only image he could conjure was that swirling, swirling alien light.

"Uh… dude?"

Danny blinked, and pushed away Tucker's waving hand. "I am curious," he said belatedly.

"So come on!" Sam urged. "At least one of us should get to see it from the inside."

And that was how Danny found himself pulling the lightweight jumpsuit over his jeans, strapping on thick-soled black boots, clicking on the dark belt that controlled the ectoconductivity to the rest of the suit. "This is so wrong," he added, staring down at the image of his father's smiling face plastered on his chest.

"Allow me," Sam laughing, ripping off the accessory. "You cannot go traipsing around with that on your chest."

Tuck snickered as Danny sullenly pulled on the black gloves. "You're a real looker, Danny. Sam wait, did you bring your camera?"

"Oh shut it, Foley. And I do not want a – "

"Smile!"

Danny barely had time to locate the camera before it flashed right in his eyes, capturing him mid-zip next to the open portal. The polaroid slid out of the old-fashioned camera, the kind he'd never seen anyone use but Sam. Oh great, evidence.She'd better not leave the picture somewhere his parents would find it. Tucker bent over the photograph, laughing as it began to show up.

"You guys done?" Danny said dryly.

"Yeah yeah." Sam stowed her camera smugly. "Now go on!"

Danny turned to the yawning entrance, flexing his fingers in the unfamiliarly restrictive gloves. As he stepped boldly across the threshold the hairs on his neck stood on end. The air felt alive with electricity, the way the night air does when there's thunder overhead. That's the way the portal was; even when it was off there was a slight ectoplasmic current coming from the engines. Hence the necessity of the jumpsuit.

The rounded walls and floor were a matrix of tubes and cords weaving over and under each other, each performing functions more incomprehensible than the last. Say what you would about his parents, but there was no denying their aptitude for engineering. Danny stepped cautiously. Six massive engines hummed softly, placed in a vertical circle about fifteen feet into the portal. Just beyond the engines was a solid metal wall. A dead end. He approached them, thinking again of the bizzare whirlpool that usually began in the very middle of all these engines. Right about here, he thought, reaching one gloved hand forward slowly into the empty space as if he could touch that green spark. But of course it wasn't there. Everything was shadowed and dark.

"Find any ghosts?" Tucker's voice echoed strangely in the tunnel. Danny shot him a look over his shoulder that read: Very funny. Har har.

Then he turned his attention to the closest of the six evenly spaced engines, which was the one just beneath his feet. Bending down to examine it he noticed immediately that something was off. Even with the littered mess of cords and wires it was painfully evident that two of the cables had been crossed incorrectly. The power cable was plugged into the connectivity jack which was supposed to wire and sync this engine to the other five, while the proper connective cable was instead hooked into the power jack.

Normally he'd be embarrassed to admit this much an understanding of his parents questionable inventions… but this was elementary. His mother had shown him when they were building it. Leave it up to his dad to mix up the cables, just because they had matching plugs. He chuckled lightly, before the realization dawned on him.

Wait. Hold the phone. Did this mean…

Was this possibly the only thing keeping the Ghost Portal from functioning properly? Could it be as simple as that? With sudden eagerness he yanked the cables from their mismatched places and plugged them into their proper homes. All he could think was how excited his parents would be that Danny had fixed their most yearned after invention himself.

The first thing that happened was that the underlying electrical static in the air vanished. It was like when the rumbling AC unit is on so long you don't even hear it anymore, until it suddenly shuts off and there's this heavy, tangible silence. The air in the Fenton Portal became suddenly and ominously silent. Danny stood abruptly, desperately hoping he hadn't just broken it. That would be so typical.

And then, there was a faint click, and Danny Fenton died.

At least he felt like he was dying. It must have happened very quickly but to Danny it wasn't measurable in standard time.

A flash of green. There was enough time for his gaze to flit downward, finding the spot where he had seen that budding ectoplasmic flower bloom so many times before. There was enough time to realize that he was in that spot, just the spot where the whirlpool begins, where it was beginning now but this time inside of his chest. The pain started behind his heart and spread through his body with the ferocity of lightning. He was blinded as each and every one of his atoms was ignited and extinguished all at once, and he felt his body evaporating like steam in the blistering sunlight and he thought irrationally that he was the center of a supernova. He knew he was dying or dead and he stumbled forward through unearthly white light, unsure whether he was really moving at all.

And then there was a moment which was less of a moment and more of a millennium. Everything became still and Danny felt nothing. He was Nothing. Nothing was anything and he stayed there for what may as well been to the end of time.

Except it wasn't, and for some reason color came back to him. It was flashes of thick, toxic colors and a white too white to look at, until white gave way to green, and gave way to dull grey laboratory flourescents. All at once everything was pain again and the heat in every molecule had been replaced with ice. He looked up with great effort, surprised to find he had a head and a body, and saw to his even greater surprise that he had somehow exited the portal. A loud ringing drone hammered in his ears.

Tuck's mouth was moving, his hands clasped to his face in horror, but Danny didn't hear him speak. His own body pitched forward. He broke away from the pain like a glacier's edge, heavy as stone. He didn't see Sam lunge forward to catch him and never felt her touch, falling through her outstretched arms like he was made of mist.

But he was solid when he hit the floor, his head still humming like the inside of a church bell. He felt Tucker's hands rolling him onto his back, felt his fingers searching for a heartbeat on his neck. His friends conversed frantically over his still body and between their hunched figures Danny could see a solid wall of swirling green where the empty portal should have been.

And he probably imagined it, but he thought he saw a pair of yellow catlike eyes flash just beyond the portal wall as he lost consciousness.

A heavy thud shook him awake, and his eyes shot open fully when he saw a stranger leaning over him.

"It's okay, son, just breathe."

"Whaa..?" He tried to speak but found it impossibly difficult. He scanned the ambulance interior frantically, and when his eyes fell on Tucker and Sam at his right side his panic lessened by a few degrees.

"Danny, just relax, you're okay," Tucker was saying, but he and Sam exchanged a meaningful glance with one another.

"What the hell?" the EMT cursed quietly. Danny looked over as he inserted an IV into his arm, and saw several small pricks surrounding the spot. "Damn thing keeps falling out. I'm so sorry kid, I've had to reinsert it four times. I don't know how your arm keeps rejecting the thing the minute I turn my back…"

His vision went blurry and the world faded away again.

Danny dreamed of Nothing.

"There he is. How are you feeling Daniel?"

He blinked and saw a doctor standing next to his bed, copying data from the monitor onto his clipboard. The man was short and stout, with a comforting smile, but Danny did not feel comforted and he chose not to answer. He didn't even have to look for Sam and Tucker. They were sitting in chairs on either side of his bed, each with one hand on each of his arms.

"How do you think he's feeling?" Sam sneered.

"Don't worry Daniel," the doctor said warmly, ignoring Sam. "That was some accident you had, but your vitals are fine and there's no major damage. You're a very lucky kid. And your family will be here soon, which I'm sure will help you feel better."

Danny didn't miss the look of panic exchanged between Tucker and Sam at the mention of his family. What was that? A small surge of alarm ran through him.

And then something odd happened. He became weightless, like that moment as you just come over the crest of a rollercoaster. Butterflies shot through his chest and he thought maybe he was about to pass out again, but then he actually began to rise. He was actually weightless. However, he only rose about an inch before Tucker and Sam's hands shot out to his chest and pressed him back down to the bed. Danny looked at them in a panic but they had their eyes trained on the doctor, who hadn't noticed anything. His friends both shared the same look they got in class whenever they were passing notes, that 'he didn't see anything, right?' look. So Danny had to wonder: how many times had this happened while he was out of it?

"Those are some dedicated friends you've got there," the doctor noted, still not looking up from his clipboard. "Threw a huge fit when we wouldn't let them back initially. We had to make a special exception." He shot an amused look at the two teens.

Tucker and Sam wouldn't abandon his side even when his family arrived, not even to let them hug him.

"He's still in shock," Tucker offered, blocking Jazz from touching Danny.

"I knew our numbers were correct," his mom was saying. "And I told you to triple-check that wiring, Jack!"

"I thought I had," he said sheepishly.

On the drive home, Danny disappeared completely at the waist and had fallen halfway through the seat before Tucker and Sam frantically pulled him back out.

Later that night his parents finally left his side, leaving him to rest in bed. They shot warning looks at his friends, who'd still refused to go home. Danny knew they didn't blame them, but it didn't help that they'd been the ones to frantically call his parents away from their conference, the ones who had been there when it happened.

"What happened to me?" Danny whispered, the second his parents had closed the door.

Tucker threw his arms up defiantly. "Dude, we were gonna ask you the same thing! You scared the hell out of us!"

"We thought you died, Danny!"

"Yeah, so did I," he muttered. He thought of the nothingness and shuddered. He thought about the pain and shook his head to clear it. There was no way he'd felt that much pain only hours ago and he felt none now. What hadhappened?

"No," Sam said slowly. "I mean when you fell out of the portal… Danny, you literally looked like a ghost."

"What do you mean?" he asked, as his arm disappeared and fell through the bed.

"I mean that!" she exclaimed, wrenching him upright. "You fell through my arms," she said quietly. "You didn't have a heartbeat. I thought.."

"Dude," Tucker said bluntly, folding his arms. "You looked like a photonegative copy of yourself. Your suit was all different, your eyes were glowing – it wasfreaky, Danny."

"What?" He practically fell out of bed trying to get to the mirror on the wall. But he just saw his normal black hair, his regular blue irises.

"But when you blacked out you changed back," Tucker added, appearing behind Danny in the mirror. "There was this ring of light.. it just kinda passed over you and you looked like you again. Like nothing had ever happened."

"We thought we were hallucinating," Sam said. "Exposure to the ectoplasmic rays or whatever. But then in the ambulance your arm kept disappearing and in the hospital – "

She was interrupted by the need to help Tucker yank Danny down from the ceiling.

"Guys," he said, as nonchalantly as he could possibly manage. "Could I be… Am I dead?"

His friends stared at each other before responding in rare unison. "We don't know."

The Fentons kept their son out of school for a week following The Accident. The doctor had been right, and there wasn't any major damage (as far as Danny's parents knew) but they insisted on keeping him home. Mom kept remarking on how pale he looked, and she would fret over his temperature every time he shivered, and she would rest her fingers on her cheek worriedly when he jumped at the slightest noise. Dad chocked it up to shock, and would clout Danny with a confident hand and assure him he'd feel fine in no time.

Danny was quiet through all of this. He let them go on assuming that shock was the only issue at hand. It was easier than coming clean about the real issue.

The first day after the hospital was the hardest. He woke up in the morning underneath his bed. That's not normal, he thought to himself, little worms of unease wriggling in his stomach as he struggled out of the piles of dirty clothes broken, forgotten model rockets.

It was a Tuesday, and Tucker and Sam had gone to school. Unfortunately for Danny, his parents worked from home. He holed himself up in his bedroom but he couldn't stop them from checking in on him. And every time they did he cowered as far under his blankets as he could go without pulling them over his head, terrified some body part or another would disappear in front of his parents. That was not something he cared to see the consequences of.

His mom and dad would whisper worriedly from the doorway, and try vainly to coax him from his bed. No wonder they thought he was suffering severe shock.

The worst part came early that first morning when his parents crept in quietly, offering a plate of pancakes.

"Danny," Mom began, "I know you've been through a terrible shock but we need to talk."

"Yeah, okay." Warily, he sat up in bed, pretending not to notice his dad pushing the pancakes his way. He couldn't accept the plate without fear of it falling through his outstretched arm.

Dad looked at Mom with a slight frown, as if unsure where to begin. So Mom began. "I know you probably wanted to explore the portal because it seemed exciting, and fun."

"Bunk that, it's not exciting. It's the most exciting thing we've ever created!"

"Jack, you're not helping," Maddie scolded. Dad's expression fell. It was obvious that his elation over the fact that the portal was working was overshadowing everything else right now. "The portal is not something to be taken lightly, Danny," his mom said seriously. "Especially now that it's functional. The Ghost Portal is like a window that will let us see into another zone of existence, which is amazing, but we don't know everything about it yet. We don't know if they'll be able to look back at us from the other side. Ghost are dangerous, terrible creatures." She spat out the word 'ghosts' like it was a vicious curse, and Danny cringed against his pillows. "They are to be feared, and respected."

"Respect? I'll give them respect. I'll give it to them when they're a smoking pile of ectoplasmic remains."

Mom sighed patiently. "Not that kind of respect, Jack. I mean we respect them because they're powerful. We respect ghosts the way we respect cobras. Or black widow spiders."

"Um, why are you guys telling me all this?" Danny interrupted faintly. All the blood had drained from his face and sweeping nausea was welling up in his chest like bile.

"Because we want you to be safe, son," Dad said, clapping him on the shoulder. Danny flinched, half expecting it to sail on straight through his body. He heaved a breath of relief when it didn't, and thought maybe he was cracking at the seams. "Ghosts will tear you limb from limb if they get the chance, so we don't want you doing anything stupid like that again." Danny scarcely had the presence of mind to arrange his facial features into something that felt apologetic. "But don't worry," Dad added, leaning in close to Danny as if he were sharing a deep and reassuring secret. "If we ever catch one whiff of a ghost in this house we'll tear it apart molecule by molecule!"

"And study the pieces, of course," Mom added cheerily. She must have noted the look of abject terror on Danny's face, because Mom went on with an extra touch of warmth to her voice. "Don't worry, honey. You're always safe with us around."

Things would be a lot less complicated right now if he could truly believe that.

Twenty-four hours ago he would have believed in in a heartbeat. But now? He felt like the the man in the Telltale Heart story, except instead of the incessant beating of the heart his parents might hear how his didn't. As they left he pushed the pancakes aside and felt that the walls were slowly crumbling down and suffocating him.

When he went to brush his teeth in the bathroom around noon, he leaned in to examine his reflection. Was anything different? Am I still me? As he stared into his own wide blue eyes his pupils dilated into tiny pinpricks. What the… He leaned in closer, his cheek toughing the cold surface. His irises flashed green and he was momentarily blinded, and he nearly swallowed his toothbrush as he blinked away the inverted bright spots.

Tucker and Sam arrived less than thirty minutes after the end of sixth period. The three of them sat in a circle on Danny's bed. Tuck on the left, like usual. Sam on her stomach at the edge of the bed, like usual. Yep, just a regular, usual Tuesday afternoon…

"Guys, I can't be a ghost," Danny managed after a long silence. "I've been checking my pulse all day. I'm breathing. I have a heartbeat… I don't get it. Besides, if I was dead I'm pretty sure the hospital would have noticed. So what is wrong with me?" If only there was a WebMD page for creepy ghost symptoms.

Tucker gestured his hand indecisively. "The portal must have done something to you when you activated it."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Sam interjected loudly. "This is all my fault, Danny. I should have never told you to go in there."

Danny shook his head fervently. "No it's not. I'm the one who put on the suit; nobody forced me to go in there. Besides, I'm the idiot who plugged it in and got it running while I was inside. And now by all accounts I'm slowly turning into a ghost, and as soon as my parents find out they're going to grind me into paste and examine it with a magnifying glass."

"Woah woah woah," Tucker said, "whatever this is, they don't have to find out. It'll be fine. Maybe it'll go away on its own. Or stabilize, or something."

Metastasize, more like, Danny thought darkly. He didn't repeat the thought aloud.

Tucker and Sam stayed all evening. Eventually they convinced him to venture downstairs for dinner, which to him sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. It was an awkward affair to say the least. Mom and Dad wouldn't quit staring at him every time he so much as coughed. Jazz glared at Tucker and Sam blatantly.

"Will you cut it out, Jazz?" Danny snapped as Jazz passed the plate of garlic bread to Tucker rather roughly. "The accident wasn't their fault, okay? It was mine."

Jazz only hit him with her patented "poor thing" look, which was one part sympathy and three parts righteous condescension.

Danny bristled. This 'victimize and pity Danny' thing was getting really old really fast. "Give it a rest!"

"Danny – "

He jumped violently when a gentle hand came to rest tentatively on his. Reflexively he snatched his arm away, and bit his lip as he glanced down at his arm behind, tucked partially under the tablecloth and invisible beyond the elbow. His fork was clattering on the floor.

So was that it? Was he going to keep disappearing every time he felt any strong emotion? That was great. Just swell. Would he just keep disappearing until he was totally gone?

Everyone was staring at him in concern. He stared back blankly, not seeing any of them as he concentrated on trying to make his arm reappear. Did he even have control over that? Suddenly it went from asleep to fuzzy, and it felt like warm water washed down through it, and when he glanced again his arm was back. No matter how many times it happened he just couldn't get used to the alien sensation.

The chair screeched against the tile as he shoved it out and stood. He couldn't stand being stared at any longer. He felt like a freakshow on display. And they didn't even know what a freak he'd become yet. "I'm not hungry. I'm going to bed," he announced, retreating from the room before his family or friends could protest.

He didn't feel tired but soon sleep had buried him. Steadily, the way snow collects into drifts the size of houses. The way frogs are boiled alive and still caught by surprise. That night he was buried alive.

The first dream began as a memory and ended as a nightmare.

Danny was five.

Sprinting down a hallway. Laughing.

Gotta hide, gotta hide.

Loud, heavy footsteps behind him. Gonna getcha, little ghost!

Dad's voice bellowed down the hall. A dragon roar. Danny cackled with laughter. Stumbled down the basement steps into the lab.

Can't catch me, ghost hunter! He dove under the work bench. Peeked out as Dad reached the lab. Can't hide from me, evil specter! Gonna find ya.. I'm gonna getcha.. Danny bit back a laugh as Dad flipped over tables, tossed aside weapons and tools, threw into the air papers and more papers.

Then his face was in front of Danny's.

Found you, ghost.

Dragging Danny out from under the bench. Laughing all the way. Oh no, don't dissect me! he begged through his laughter. Noo! Dad still dragging him by the leg, dragging him back to the work table – no, no, no! His laughter died as Dad strapped his wrists down. Long green shadows morphed his face into something terrible. Dad no – Raising a massive scalpel, almost comically huge, like a machete – Dad, no! NO!

The dream twisted and changed, and everything was sucked away from Danny as if he'd been hurtled into space. Desperately he felt around for himself and did not find it. There was nothing, and he felt nothing.

He blinked, saw his room, but then was back in the nothing like he'd been slingshot around the sun.

He blinked again. Existence blinked around him.

He wrenched his eyes open, gasping, clutching his heart. Winter had settled in his chest. He couldn't breath. His eyes closed and he slipped downhill into the ether, before splashing back out of it again, tangling his limbs in his blankets and falling out of his bed onto the floor.

Desperately he kept his eyes open, feeling a numb inward tug trying to lasso him back. It felt like he'd flip inside out if he let the pull take him. But suddenly it bubbled up, like a geyser of void spilling into his chest, and beneath his twitching hand his chest flashed white.

It was so cold, and as he watched the light trickled down across his torso, bleeding onto his arms. He'd seen this light before.

Flash, unearthly light. And then he'd died, except it turned out he hadn't.

So cold. Maybe he was at last dying from whatever the accident had done to him.

Well, maybe he would let it happen.

Dying hadn't been so bad, after all the pain had gone.

So he closed his eyes, and the dark swept up around him, before flashing into a blinding light through his eyelids. Semidetached, Danny wondered whether this time it really was the proverbial light in the tunnel. So he looked, determined not to miss it, and saw that he was very much still in his room, still on his floor, and the light he'd seen it was still the fluorescent light – it was coming from him. And quite as suddenly as it had appeared, it flared out, licking at the walls and the nightstand, casting deathly shadows. He watched in disassociated wonder as it split and spread across his body, leaving him tingly and numb where it passed. When it was over it flickered away like dying lightning and left Danny in the semi-darkness, slumping back against his bed. He stared at his white gloves in shock, where moments before there had been warm skin.

But… how? Was he still dreaming after all?

His blue pajamas were also gone, having been replaced by a dark jumpsuit. White boots. White belt. Tucker's voice echoed in his mind, like it had through the empty portal. Find any ghosts? Maybe he had after all. You looked like a photonegative copy of yourself. Danny tugged the fingers on his left glove and pulled it off. It lingered for a moment in his hand before evaporating like mist.

Driven by morbid curiosity he stood, moving toward the light switch. He didn't want to see, but knew it was important that he saw.

Artificial yellow light flooded the room, and when he slowly turned to the mirror on the wall he was greeted by the face of a stranger. A stranger radiating with dim white light. Snow white hair, and glowing green eyes.

There was no doubt about it now.

He was a ghost.

As he tried to swallow this, someone knocked on his door. "Danny?" he heard Jazz say quietly.

His heart dropped out of his chest. "Uh, don't come in!" he squeaked in a panic, utterly astonished to find that his voice still worked.

"Danny, are you okay? I heard a banging noise… Could I please come in?"

"No! Go away!" he snapped, backing away against the far wall. What was he supposed to do NOW? Oh hi Jazz, sorry, I've actually just died you see so this isn't really a good time. The realization washed over him afresh. He was dead.He was a ghost. He had just become the very thing which his parents hated most in the entire world. The irony of it threatened to strangle him. And he wasdead - !

It hit him hard. A world of loss, a life gone, and he made a despairing choking sound as a crippling wave of longing hit him, a desperate crushing wish to be alive again. To be human.

And just like that, the miracle happened. The ring of blue-white light came back, Danny's eyes widened in disbelief as he felt the now-familiar cold surround him again. But this time, instead of flooding him with the cold it sapped it away, leaving a wake of warmth crashing down behind it. The blood rushing back into his whole body.

The experience was so completely disarming that he slid down the wall and collapsed to the floor.

At this point Jazz opened the door and found him there, clutching his arms around his knees, hyperventilating like he'd run several marathons. She gasped and rushed forward, half-carrying him back to his bed. He assured her it was only a nightmare but it didn't erase the look from her face. He wanted to be angry with her for finding him like that but it was difficult to be mad at Jazz when she cared about him so openly.

Danny laid awake for the rest of the night, focusing on the steady beating of his heart and trying to believe that he was still alive. He was staring at the dark ceiling, watching with curiosity as it occasionally flashed green. Sometime around four in the morning it occurred to him that flashes of green light were coming from his own eyes.

The next morning over breakfast his parents babbled about ghosts, as per usual, and Danny fought the overwhelming urge to run for cover.

As expected, Tucker and Sam were at his house the minute school let out. When they came into his room, Danny was again staring at his ceiling.

"How're you feeling?" Tucker asked. His friends both gazed down at him uncertainly.

"Half dead," Danny said, emotionlessly, refusing to meet their eyes.

"That's not funny, Danny," Sam snapped.

"No, I really feel half dead. I think I might actually be only half alive." He knew they wouldn't believe him until he showed them. How could they? It was insane. Psychotic. Maybe he was in a mental ward already, strapped into a strait jacket. "Just… Just watch." He slid off the bed reluctantly. He'd been doing this over and over and over and over again, all day long. Just to make sure he wasn'tcrazy. To make sure he could still become human again just as easily as he could become a ghost.

He dropped his gaze as the bright ring of light sprouted from his chest. He didn't want to see his friends' expressions as they watched. It came quite easily now. All Danny had to do was focus on the creeping little void somewhere in the back of his mind, like a leaky faucet. Heh, a leaky faucet of death. His inner monologue was starting to sound like one of the poems from Sam's goth poetry slam thing, what with all the death he'd been through these past few days.

He laughed hollowly at his ironic and twisted fate as the light left behind that tingling numb sensation and his dark jumpsuit. That glove he removed the first time was there. Shiny and new. No matter how many times he rid himself of it, it always came back just the same.

When it was over he forced himself to raise two glowing eyes to Sam and Tucker. He didn't know what he expected to see on their faces. Maybe screams. Fear. Rejection. Horror. Part of him wanted them to run away, to confirm his own suspicion that he'd become a monster. He knew somehow that when they did run away he wouldn't be seeing them again, and he was prepared for that. He'd been preparing for it all day.

But they did none of those things

Instead, they broke out into identical, broad smiles.

Tucker spoke first, spluttered through his words. "Man. That is… SO. COOL."

"I knew we didn't hallucinate that!" Sam said triumphantly.

Danny gaped. Did they not understand how serious this was?

Sam's smile fell a little. "You can change back though.. right?"

"Of course he can," Tucker assured her confidently. "Just like before, in the lab. Right?"

Danny frowned. "Yeah. I can." He triggered the transformation again and welcomed the warmth spreading back through his limbs as he became human again.

Tucker and Sam let out low whistles.

"This is serious, you guys!" Did they not get that he was kind of half dead? Half here and half there, half alive and half corpse. Half gone.

Tucker only shrugged it off. "Yeah it's serious, but it's also wicked awesome."

"This is not awesome," Danny fumed. "I'm like, half ghost!"

"I think that's pretty cool," Sam disagreed. It was so unusual for the two of them to be on the same side of an argument against Danny. And now, of all times!

"No, it really isn't. My parents are GHOST HUNTERS, you guys. Emphasis on the hunt part."

"They don't have to find out," Tucker said quickly. "They haven't realized it so far, right?"

"This can stay a secret," Sam piped, "between the three of us. We can handle this."

"I don't know how I could possibly keep this a secret."

"Well you control it, don't you?"

"Yeah, kind of… More than I could at first."

"Maybe it will keep getting easier."

"Maybe," Danny agreed, giving her a withering look. "It's not as easy as it sounds."

"You idiot, we'll help you," Tucker insisted. "We got this Danny. We got this in the bag. You don't need to worry so much."

"Right," Sam agreed. "I don't exactly know what 'this' is… but we got this." She offered Danny one of her rarer smiles, full and warm, and the tide of doubt inside him ebbed ever so slightly. He didn't know what 'this' was either, but knowing Tuck and Sam where here to carry him through it made it all seem far less daunting. He smiled back.

"Just one thing," Tucker interjected with a solemn tone, popping in between them unceremoniously.

"What?" Danny snapped, worried by the seriousness in his voice.

Tucker sized him up and then grinned like an idiot. "We're gonna need you to show us that trick again. Because damn is that cool!"

Danny transformed, and as he did he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, a chaotic mess of brilliant lights. Emerging from the cold light were radiant green eyes that he was beginning to recognize as his own.