Danny sat dutifully in one of Tucker's uncomfortable attic chairs, letting Sam crouch over him and cleanse his wounds with alcohol. He winced every time a soaked cotton ball came into contact with his face. Each cotton pad she came away saturated with blood. Danny thought he looked like a mess in the lab – he didn't even want to think about how he looked now.
Tucker sat cross-legged on the pink sofa kitty-corner from Danny's chair. Now bloody and coated with dirt, Danny's comforter draped over the back of the couch next to him. Tucker opened a spiral-bound notebook, pen in hand.
"So… what do we know about Danny?"
Danny sucked air through his teeth as more alcohol stung his wounds. He couldn't help but lean away from the pain. "We know he's an idiot who can't even get carried right," he said, self-deprecating.
Tucker rolled his eyes. "C'mon, man, how can we help you if we don't figure out what's going on?"
"We know what's going on, right? I died in the Fenton portal," Danny said, nonchalant. The words came easily. It felt like he was talking about someone else.
Sam pulled the now-bloody cotton pad away from his face and stood up, irritated. "If you're actually dead, then can you act like it and stop wiggling so much?"
"Sorry."
Tucker threw his hands up with a huff. "You guys! Okay, whatever. I'll start." He looked down and began to write in the notebook. "We know that everything going on with Danny is because of that portal. Unless you were feeling ghostly before?"
"Negative," Danny said. "But I wasn't kidding, either. I died in there, right? I'll admit I don't exactly know what's going on now…" He gestured at his human body. "But maybe I, like, I don't know, possessed my own dead body?"
"Ignoring how insanely cool that would be from a goth perspective, I don't think so, Danny," Sam said, examining his face for spots she'd missed. "Otherwise, wouldn't everyone who dies just do that? Humans could basically live forever if you could just infinitely re-possess yourself. Why would you become a ghost while everyone else stays plain old dead?"
Danny hadn't thought of this. "So… that means that really was ectoplasm in the portal? You think that's why I could become a ghost after I died? It zapped me with ghost energy?"
Tucker nodded, continuing to write. "Could be. Or maybe because you died in that Ghost Zone, your spirit can live on."
"Maybe any human that enters a Ghost Zone ends up like a ghost," Sam added.
"The Ghost Zone," Danny corrected. "Uh, if my parents are right, there should be just one. Like an alternate dimension or something."
"Whatever happened, the portal is the reason. No doubt about that," Tucker said definitively, putting his pen down and looking at Danny. "We also know you're not really dead. But… you're not exactly alive, either. It seems to switch off when that ring of light surrounds you."
Danny frowned, annoyed. "You guys keep talking about these stupid rings! Can someone please explain what you're talking about?"
"It's this light that shows up, right around here," Tucker said, pointing at his own midriff. "It's white, which is kinda weird. Everything else that glows on you is green, like the portal."
"Or ectoplasm," Danny added, queasy just thinking about how much of that slime had come from his body today.
"It first showed up in the lab when you passed out the first time. The light grew, turning into these huge circles around you. And then they kind of moved across your body, and suddenly you were back to normal."
Danny touched his stomach. Besides the pain he'd felt all day, his torso felt normal. "You're saying this light comes out of me?Like, Alien or something?"
Tucker frowned and picked his pen back up, writing down more notes. "You know, it does kind of look like it comes out of you. You didn't see it when I was helping you to the mirror in the lab? It started to show up then."
The memory rushed back to him. A bright ring of cold white light had shimmered at his torso and made him gasp in fear. "You know, on any other day, that'd be the most memorable thing to happen to me."
Sam stepped back from Danny, satisfied with her first-aid job. She sat down on the pink shag rug, dropping her handful of bloody cotton pads on the hardwood floor. She placed the bottle of isopropyl alcohol and the spare cotton pads next to it. "You've thrown up nearly every time I've seen it happen, too."
Tucker nodded. "He vomited right when he woke up in the lab. That's when he changed from looking like a human back to a ghost."
"Awesome. So the next time I get the stomach flu, my mom and dad are going to freak out and turn the Fenton Ghost Exterminator on me."
"I thought you said that thing didn't work," Tucker pointed out.
"Well, sure, but they got the Fenton Portal to function! Who knows how long it'll be before they make something else that runs?" Danny groaned, the movement in his face stinging his wounds. "Out of all the Fenton inventions… why did the working one have to be the radioactive death trap? How am I ever gonna go home?"
Sam looked him up and down. "Well, you look normal now, right? So… what if you could learn to control it? How would your parents ever know?"
Danny paused. "Control it?"
"Sure, I mean, there have to be other ghosts, if the ectoplasm in the portal came from real ghosts, right? Do you think they're all running around, uncontrollably turning invisible all the time?"
Tucker smiled, an epiphany hitting him. He started talking faster, excited. "Dude, she's right! This is just like Empress She-Wolf! She could barely function when she first got mutated, but after her training, she wasn't just a master at swordplay… she learned to suppress her she-wolf form at will so that she could blend in with humans."
Danny's brow furrowed, confused. "Empress… who?"
Tucker threw his head back and groaned. "From Call of the Wild! C'mon man, I'm always talking about that comic."
Danny returned Tucker's groan, face palming, careful to avoid his nose. "Tucker, are you serious? I'm not about to take advice from some lame comic book."
"Hey! Hands off the face, I just cleaned those burns," Sam snapped. "Tucker, do you have any clothes he can borrow? There's no way he's not gonna get infected with those nasty gloves on."
Danny removed his hand from his face and looked down at it. She was right – dirt, dried blood, and ectoplasm caked the entire palm.
Tucker closed the notebook and set it aside to stand up. "Sure. Let me go get 'em from my room. And Danny? Insult Call of the Wild one more time and you can find some other attic to haunt." He shot Danny a fake scowl.
"Of course, I didn't mean to be so prejudiced against geek culture. Please forgive me."
Tucker flipped Danny off with an eye roll and a laugh as he descended the stairs, leaving their sight.
Danny let out a laugh as soon as Tucker was gone. He knew Sam would agree with him, Tucker was being completely ridiculous. "Bringing comics into this, can you believe him?"
Sam cocked an eyebrow. "Uh, yeah, actually. You're telling me you have a better idea?"
"Well, no, but come on! 'She-wolf form?'"
"Right, 'cause that's nothing like having a ghost form."
"It's completely different! It's not like…" Danny faltered. Was it actually different?
If someone told him a story about a kid going into a radioactive machine and coming out with the ability to fly and turn invisible, he'd dismiss it as fantasy. But wasn't that exactly what was happening to him now? What made him different from Peter Parker, except instead of being bitten by a radioactive spider, he'd gotten zapped by the Fenton Portal?
"Um…" Danny started again, looking down at his hands, then back up at Sam, bashful at his sudden change of opinion. "How exactly did those heroes start to control their powers?"
Sam's expression softened. "I don't know about superheroes, but Terminatra was a human who got her consciousness uploaded into a cyborg. Her creators abandoned her, so she had to figure out everything on her own. Her abilities appeared at random, like sometimes she'd just be in her lair, and her fingers would transform into plasma rays."
Danny nodded, thinking about how his hand had started glowing in the lab when he'd raised it to the mirror.
"Eventually, using her abilities became second nature to her, like walking. But she first had to figure them out by focusing on how they made her feel when they appeared. Like she said the plasma rays, for example, felt like electricity surging in her fingertips. So she just tried to conjure the same feeling, over and over, until she got it."
Danny laughed. "Just like studying for Lancer's class. You've gotta keep grinding until you've got it down."
Sam beamed at her friend. "Exactly."
Danny looked down at his stomach, trying to ignore all the red and green stains on the white uniform. "So… I guess I'll walk myself through it. The only time I actually saw those transformation rings was in the lab with Tucker. It was… freezing, and it prickled. I've felt the same thing a few other times, like when I first woke up outside the portal and in the school hallways. It's the same feeling as being in the portal, but about a thousand times less painful."
Sam frowned, looking away. "So it does hurt?"
"Yeah, definitely. Not bad though. I mean, if I felt it this morning, I would tell you it's one of the worst feelings out there, but I've kinda got some more perspective on pain now." Danny laughed at the absurdity. He felt like he'd gained a decade of life experience in just a few hours.
Sam chuckled too, but still wouldn't meet his eyes.
Danny, focusing, continued. "The worst part is the nausea. It feels like you've got ice-cold stomach acid rising up your throat, but… down to your feet, too. It's kind of hard to explain, I've never felt anything else like it."
Danny stood up slowly. Sam looked up at him.
He strained, trying to force the initial feeling. "It feels like pure energy gathering, building until it has nowhere else to go but-"
A cold burst of energy appeared out of nowhere at his waist. A bright light encircled him. His breathing became ragged and irregular as he struggled to hold onto the unstable feeling, staying tense to avoid letting it fizzle out.
Sam stood up and backed away, staring at the bright light with awe. "Oh my god, Danny!"
"And then it kind of…" He released some of the tension he was holding, allowing the ring to separate and travel freely. They snaked up and down his body automatically once he released them, stinging his body with freezing prickles. He clamped a hand over his mouth, determined not to vomit this time.
Stomach acid stung his throat – he forced it back down with a disgusting gulp. He let out the breath he didn't know he was holding in and collapsed back into the purple armchair.
Danny held up a hand in front of his face, noting the different jumpsuit and the glowing aura.
He dropped his arm and looked up at Sam with an exhausted smile, but his focus quickly shifted to the reflection in the window behind her. The unnerving glow of his inhuman eyes stared back at him.
A.N.: Hey, guys! Early chapter this week – I'll be out of town tomorrow (I'm going hiking all day with a few friends) and the peeps on the DP Discord thought an earlier upload is better than a later one. Wanna come hang out with us? You can join at discord (period) gg (slash) f4HvzMT ! I'm Ozone in there, I'd love to get to know you!
Some notes on the plot – canon has some conflicting ideas about Danny's opinion of superheroes. Danny clearly liked comics at some point, as Jack points out in S1E04 "Attack of the Killer Garage Sale" that Danny has a ton of old comic books lying around. But in S2E19/20, "Reality Trip," Danny barely seems to know any superhero lore at all (including Empress She-Wolf), and actually goes out of his way to make fun of comic book nerds. I figured he used to like comic books when he was little, so he has a ton laying around, but eventually grew out of it.
Also, we never learned the plot of Terminatra in S2E01 "Memory Blank," soooo technically she could have the origin story Sam just mentioned. Right? :)
Lastly, I've got the rest of the story officially planned out, there will be 28 chapters total. I swear to you there's no way this fic gets abandoned, I'm sticking with it to the end!
Shout-outs: A HUGE thank you to Dp-Marvel94, LeonidasDP, and The Keeper of the Worlds for their thoughtful reviews! Thank you to Golden Kobold, BlazeOona, LoveKaiza, and GYNsna1191514 for the follows, and LaylanaxD and transmetaljohn for the faves!