The first time Danny phased through something, Tucker and Sam were there to see it.
"What about the Nasty Burger?" Danny suggested.
He was laying on his bed, throwing a baseball up at the ceiling of his room and catching it again and again.
Tucker was half-listening as he smashed at the keys on Danny's keyboard and muttered something about power-ups and laser blasters.
"Are you playing an MMO on my computer?"
"Yes, now shh!"
Sam rolled her eyes from the old armchair Danny kept next to his pitiful library of books. "Library" means a small bookshelf with worn paperbacks and old textbooks. Sam leafed through one about space travel as she thought about where to eat for lunch.
As she did, her eyes strayed upward, again and again, to examine Danny as he sprawled out on his bed. When had he grown so fast? It had seemed like in the last month, Danny had shot up an extra three inches. She realized that his feet almost fell off the edge of his twin bed. More than that, he'd toned out, too. Maybe he'd been exercising and she just never noticed?
No, that was impossible. Sam had been noticing Danny since they were fourteen. This was definitely new.
"I guess Nasty Burger is a classic," she said, pulling herself out of her examination. "I'd imagine that only an extra-large fry could pull Tucker away from… whatever he's doing?"
There was a sharp smacking sound and Danny cried out in pain.
"Ow!"
Sam looked up from the book quickly.
"Danny? You okay?"
Danny was sitting up in bed now, holding a hand to his bleeding nose. His eyes were pinched shut as he tried to let the initial wave of pain pass before he could speak.
"My baseball," he said.
"Yeesh, dude, get better at catching next time," Tucker added, turning around in the swivel computer chair to face them.
"No, you don't understand-" Danny started, but when his eyes opened, they were bright green and glowing. He held up his right arm, but the hand that he'd been using to catch the ball had disappeared. Sam and Tucker gasped.
It wasn't like he suddenly had a stumped arm. Instead, it looked like his arm blurred at the edges, slowly disappearing into vapor, and his hand was just missing - like it was camouflage so well that they couldn't tell it was there anymore.
"What-?" they began.
Then, out of nowhere, Danny's entire body disappeared into nothing. All that was left was thin air and an empty bed with a baseball.
"Danny!?" they cried in unison.
From somewhere downstairs they heard Danny's screams of confused terror.
Tucker whipped the bedroom door open and Sam followed him closely as they thundered downstairs to find their friend.
"Are the Fentons home?" Sam cried.
"No, I don't think so, but if they are-"
"-we don't say anything," Sam finished.
They made it to the kitchen just in time to see Danny grasping the hanging light above the table with both hands, his feet pressed firmly to the ceiling. No longer in his jeans and t-shirt, Danny was wearing a black hazmat suit – the same one that he'd been wearing the night of the accident almost a month before. Except for the one-piece jumpsuit then had been white.
Danny shook violently, his glowing green eyes darting this way and that beneath a mop of snow-white hair that hung downwards toward the floor.
"What's happening to me!?" he screeched down at them. Sam and Tucker's eyes were both wide in shock, but they'd seen something like this before.
"Your hair!" Sam cried. "Your eyes! Just like when we found you that night!"
"My what?"
Danny caught his reflection in the microwave and could only just make out the white hair and his glowing eyes staring back at him.
In shock he let go of the ceiling light, suddenly initiating gravity once more. His body fell hard upon the linoleum kitchen floor and he let out a horrible 'oof' sound as the air left his lungs.
"Danny, you okay, man?" Tucker asked, bending down to help him up.
"No…" Danny groaned, rolling onto his side.
The doctors had said that his body was completely healed. The accident had been a month ago, so he'd had plenty of time to recover. But falling somehow brought that terrible ache in his chest back all at once.
"Tucker, his hair," Sam pointed.
"Is it s-still-?" Danny stammered.
"Yep. Still white," Tucker said. "Eyes are still green, too, if you were wondering. Nice jumpsuit."
Danny looked down at himself, his face the perfect picture of confusion and fright.
"This is insane," he told them. "I… fell through my bed. I fell through the floor!"
He wiped the blood from his nose. The baseball had fallen through his outstretched fingers, phasing right through his hand, and had smacked him in the face. Except now the blood came away green and slimy, sharply contrasting his white glove.
"What!?"
Sam and Tucker gasped again when they saw his outstretched hand.
"My blood is green," Danny said, monotone at first. "My… my blood is green!"
"Danny, calm down," Sam said, grabbing his wrist. "Don't freak, we'll figure this out!"
"Am I dead?" Danny suddenly asked them. "Did I die upstairs?"
"No!" Tucker cried. "No, you didn't, you're fine!"
"This is not fine, Tucker!" Danny waved the green ooze in his best friend's face once more. "This is the furthest thing from-"
But he stopped.
"It's just like ectoplasm," he told them.
"Ecto-what-now?" Tucker frowned.
"You know? All that weird, green goo my parents constantly use in their experiments and inventions? That's what this is like!"
"I thought ectoplasm was like… ghost residue?" Sam asked.
They all sat there for a moment afterward.
"You're not saying," Tucker said, "that you are like… a ghost, or something, are you?"
"He's not dead!" Sam added. "You are not a ghost, Danny, because you are not dead!"
"How do you explain this, then!?"
Danny reached up to show them the green blood again, but when he did his hand disappeared – there was nothing but his forearm and thin air.
"Whoa!" they all cried at once.
"Oh my god," Tucker blinked. "You're dead."
"He's not dead!"
"Guys," Danny said slowly. "I think I… hold on."
They watched as he roughly got to his feet, his right hand still missing, and then he was concentrating hard. As he did his hand returned and there was a shared moment of relief. Then, slowly, his jumpsuit began to fade away and was replaced by a t-shirt and jeans. His gloves and hazmat boots were replaced with sneakers and bare hands – hands that were still visible.
Finally, Danny's eyes and hair returned to their proper colors of blue and black, and his blood was red again.
He looked alive again.
"H-how did you do that?" Sam asked.
"I… don't know. I just kinda… willed it."
"What do you mean?"
"When my hand disappeared I could still feel it, you know? It felt so much colder than the rest of me, so I just… I dunno I imagined sending warmth back to it. It came back."
"And the rest of you?" Tucker asked.
Danny pressed a hand to his chest. It felt less empty. Less… quiet.
"I'm not sure."
Tucker and Sam stared at their friend with incredulity that they'd never experienced before.
"Dude," Tucker whispered, "this is seriously messed up."
"Danny, I don't think you're dead," Sam said.
Danny and Tucker looked at her.
"I think that you're half-dead."
The three of them stood frozen in the kitchen, unable to speak as they considered this. Then the front door to the house crashed open, and they all jumped.
"Hey, kids!" Mrs. Fenton cried happily. "We're back from the science symposium at the museum!"
"I can't believe they represented us in their exhibit!" Mr. Fenton grinned.
"Technically," Jazz hissed trailing into the house behind them, "they represented the Fenton legacy as the wrong way to conduct science regarding the supernatural or fake. As in, you shouldn't."
"Ghosts are science!" Jack Fenton boomed over them all. "I'll challenge those two-bit know it all's to try and tell me otherwise."
"They did! When they kicked us out!"
"Now, Jasmine, be kind to your father," Maddie Fenton urged. "He's only showing his passion for our work!"
Jazz let out a horrible "ugh" sound and disappeared upstairs to go to her room. The door slammed behind her and they all winced.
"How's your Saturday so far, kids?"
"Mom, we're not kids we're-"
"About to graduate high school and join the ghost hunting business!" Jack Fenton grinned at them all. Sam and Tucker shook their heads, but Danny had gone white after the mention of ghosts.
"Aw, look at him, too stunned to speak," Jack said.
Maddie rolled her eyes. "Jack, don't put pressure on him. Let him fall in love with ghost hunting the way that we did!"
"Through terror and the desperate need to flay those ectoplasmic suckers alive?"
"Exactly!" She smiled and then looked pensive. "Except ghosts aren't really alive anymore..."
Danny swallowed thickly and looked faint.
"Honey?" Maddie suddenly looked concerned. "Are you feeling alright? Should we call Dr. Helsing?"
"No," Danny assured her. "Please don't. I'm fine I just…"
"He's hungry!" Sam yelled too loudly. "We were just talking about how we wanted to go to Nasty Burger for lunch, right?"
Tucker immediately jumped forward. "You got that right! We'll be heading off now," he said, pulling Danny and Sam along behind him.
"Well, you kids have fun," Maddie called after them as they sprinted down the porch steps and down the sidewalk. "And try to eat a vegetable while you're there!"
"I swear," Jack said, "Those kids get weirder every single year."