Hello! Yesterday, ffn decided not to show that I had updated, even though I did, so if you missed me yesterday, check out the previous chapter. Thank you for the reviews!

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Solar

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"It's solar powered!" exclaimed Jack, proudly, happily, as he dropped a contraption consisting of nested, fused glass spheres on the kitchen table.

Danny cringed. He was glad his dad was happy, but he wasn't thrilled about this... whatever... being self-sustaining. Even now, with his parents knowing his secret, knowing that he was Phantom, and 'Danny-prooofing' everything, their inventions had a tendency to affect Danny strangely, and they often forgot about other friendly ghosts.

"That's great," said Danny, using the pretext of putting his cereal bowl in the sink to put some distance between himself and the machine. "What is it?"

Jack beamed. "It's the Fenton Ghost-Ghoster!"

Wow. Not only was that not a good name, it didn't sound like a good thing.

"Okay. So, uh, what does it do?"

"I'll show you!"

Danny's eyes went wide. "Wait, Dad, no-!"

It was like looking into the sun, but with his ghost sense.

His insides froze as his core went into overdrive, preparing itself to fight the threat. He couldn't breathe, and he only barely stopped himself from carrying through with his instinctive reaction.

(Which, incidentally, was to grab Jack, phase through the floor into the lab, push him and Maddie, who was still in the lab, into the Ghost Zone, manually trigger the house defenses and the citywide ecto-exodus alarm, come up, grab Jazz, run-)

Because he knew that the signal his core was getting (big, incredibly, impossibly powerful, scary, angry, hostile ghost nearby) was coming from the little device on the table (which was none of those things). He just had to tell Jack to turn it off. This was proving more difficult than it normally would be, however, because although he had stopped himself from having a massive freakout, he was having a hard time finding a middle ground between that and paralyzed.

Distantly, he could hear his dad talking, and someone coming up the stairs behind him.

"Jack!" said Maddie, "turn that off! We haven't tested it yet!"

"But, Maddie-"

"Off! We haven't even asked Danny to identify the sample ectosignatures yet, and- Is that the highest setting? Jack!"

Jack hunched his shoulder. "Okay, okay, I'm turning it off," he mumbled.

Abruptly freed from the pressure of the machine's artificial ectosignature, Danny collapsed. It was then that his currently human body helpfully informed him that zero degrees Celsius was way too cold for his currently human body, and that his currently human body would really like a heartbeat and some oxygen, thank you very much.

It did this by passing out.

He woke up to warmth and rows of tiny orange lights. He squinted up at them.

"Is- is this the ecto-powered tanning bed?" asked Danny finally.

"Yes," said Maddie, sheepishly from somewhere outside of Danny's field of vision.

"Okay," said Danny, choosing not to comment further because he was the one thawing in it like a Thanksgiving Turkey bought at the last minute. "And what was that?"

"Er," said Jack, "it's an ectosignature generator. We, er, I was hoping we could use it to scare off some of the smaller ghosts by using a scary ectosignature! But, uh..."

Danny sighed, and rubbed his face. His skin was still frigid. "You've got it turned up way too high," he said. "It was like firing a machine gun right next to my ear. And then-" He broke off. Jazz said to be honest about these things. "I think I had a panic attack or something. If I was thinking I would have gone ghost. Sorry about," he gestured, even though he knew they couldn't see him, "this."

"It's not your fault, sweetheart."

"if it's any consolation, I don't think it would have worked long term to keep ghosts away. It wouldn't have acted like a ghost, and other things can give off ectosignatures."

"Ah. That's probably true."

Danny shifted. "Hey, could I go finish thawing out in the sun, or something? This is really boring."