Author's Note: I own nothing.

5 Changing

When they got back on Sunday Dani approached her mom. Maddie was making dinner in the kitchen. She smiled at her daughter as she approached her.

"Hey mom."

"Hey sweetie! How are you feeling? Better after a bit of fun with your friends?" Dani nodded.

"Yeah. But I wanted to ask you something."

"Anything sweetie!" Maddie said stepping a bit closer to her daughter. Dani frowned.

"You're a black belt right?" Maddie nodded drying her hands on a kitchen towel.

"I am."

"Would you mind maybe showing me some moves? Maybe not lessons I know you and dad are way too busy for that." Maddie stepped over to Dani and pulled her into a hug.

"Dani sweetie I am never too busy for you! How about after school on Tuesdays?" Dani nodded grinning as she pulled away.

"Thanks mom, that's perfect." Dani hugged her mom again, but seemed to pull her hands away quickly. Maddie frowned as Dani hid her hands behind her back with a slightly forced grin. But one of her hands was still wrapped because of the burn on her hand. Maddie knew how self-conscious her daughter was and the permanent scar the injury would leave would be a blow to her already perilously fragile teen ego so she let the odd behavior slide without comment.

A month blurred by after the accident. Dani, Sam and Tanya desperately hid her new powers from everyone. They quickly learned that strong enough emotions would trigger her powers but it was unpredictable which power would manifest with which emotion. They also learned quickly to cover for her odd behavior and sudden disappearances when she accidentally fell through floors or went invisible and couldn't figure out how to get back to normal. In that month Dani's father installed a door on the portal but that didn't stop a few small ghosts from slipping through.

Glooby the Bunny slipped through a few times, just to follow Dani around. It was sweet but the few times her parents had seen it she'd had to intervene quickly so they didn't catch it and start experimenting on it. But she now had a pillow reserved for the bunny, under her bed where her parents wouldn't see it. But unfortunately for Dani the harmless bunny was not the only ghost who slipped through the portal. Several ghosts that Dani could only describe as Octopi had slipped through and tried to strangle Sam and Tanya. She'd managed to save them but her nerves were fraying fast. She frowned as she stepped through the halls of Casper High with Sam and Tanya.

"I'm thinking about telling them." Sam frowned.

"Really? Aren't they still making a bunch of ghost hunting weapons?" Dani sighed.

"I mean yeah, but what else am I supposed to do? If anyone finds out about my powers I immediately go from an invisible nerd to a straight up freak." She said as she walked through the snack machine next to the staff room. Sam frowned as Dani shivered back into view. It was odd seeing her vanish from view and sort of melt back into view. They were lucky the hallway was empty. Tanya shook her head.

"And if your ghost hunter parents don't take it well?" Dani sighed and rubbed her head as they headed towards the cafeteria. Of course none of them expected Sam's latest philanthropic endeavor, changing the school menu to be something healthier, Ultra-recyclo-vegetarian, to backfire so spectacularly and summon a ghost of a lunch lady who was beyond incensed that the menu had been altered for the first time in fifty years. Dani had never wished harder that she had control of her powers than when her transformation fizzled out and she was shoved aside. The now meat covered ghost snatched up Sam and took off. Dani didn't even have a chance to change back into Phantom.

Instead Lancer caught her and Tanya by the arm and dragged them off to his office, Paulina giggling behind them despite the dirt and grass in her hair. Lancer frowned as he pulled two files out of the desk and frowned.

"Miss Tanya Foley, higher than average grade point in everything but gym. Miss Danielle Fenton, thirty four dropped beakers in the last month alone, banned for life from handling anything fragile on school property. But mostly clean records from the both of you before today. So would one of you kindly explain to me why you both conspired to start the largest food fight in Casper High history!" He was shouting by the end of the sentence and Dani flinched. She hadn't quite realized how out of control her distraction was going to be. The fact that she'd also thrown the first turf-wich at Paulina who had been loudly complaining that Sam was interfering with her regular perfect diet was not going to get them anywhere. Lancer ranted at them for a few minutes before standing.

"I will deal out your punishment when I get back ladies." The minute Lancer was out of the room Dani hopped to her feet and stepped over to Lancer's monitor.

"Think you can get into the school security system? We need to find Sam." She asked and Tanya nodded pulling out her PDA and hooking it up to the computer and quickly accessing what they needed. Dani transformed and grabbed Tanya's arm and they phased through the floor, uncaring that when Lancer found them gone they were going to be in a world of trouble.

Dani didn't have much luck fighting the Lunch Lady but she managed to get both Sam and Tanya out of there and away from the school. She hadn't ever spent this much time using her powers so she hadn't expected to pass out mid air, luckily for all of them they were more hovering than flying at that point. They landed hard and Dani flickered back to herself, out cold on the asphalt. It didn't take Sam and Tanya long to figure out that there was no force on heaven or Earth that would wake the sleeping teen right now so Tanya helped Sam pick her up in a piggy back and they carried her back to her house.

They had to breathe a sigh of relief at the oblivious idiots that were Dani's parents as Sam carefully deposited her on her bed. She was still out cold. He sighed as Tanya pulled out her PDA.

"Looking up another way to get me kidnapped by ghosts?" Sam bit out. Tanya had been the one who blurted out who had changed the menu. But she just rolled her eyes at him.

"I wanna see if I can figure out who she was. I mean ghosts are dead people right?" Sam shrugged.

"I have no idea." There seemed to be an unspoken truce here while Dani lay unconscious on the bed between them. The menu didn't matter when their friend might be dying all over again. About an hour later Tanya let out a noise of triumph.

"I think I found her." Sam stepped over to her and looked at the PDA over her shoulder. She'd pulled up an obituary, it was about ten years old. Tanya began to read off the information there. " 'The family of Patricia Keyton is sad to announce that she has passed away. She experienced heart failure on the way to work at Casper High where she had been a cafeteria worker for almost forty years.' " She scrolled to the photo. The outfit was the same, a pink dress with a white apron and pink hairnet. This woman though lacked the ghosts green skin and red eyes. Tanya shook her head as she went back to reading. " 'Though she leaves behind no children she is survived by her sister Paula, and her love and care for the children of Casper High.' So it looks like she was the one who built the menu you changed. It was the only legacy she left behind."

Sam frowned. That did set a twinge of guilt through him but the menu had been a bit outdated. He sighed.

"Let's just not talk about it until Dani wakes up ok?" They lapsed back into silence and Sam returned to the desk chair, watching the bed like a hawk. Dani didn't stir for another few hours. The sun was beginning to set by that point and Sam was starting to panic when she finally jolted awake. Tanya turned it into a joke, tricking Dani into thinking she'd been out for four days.

"That's not funny Tanya!" Their argument devolved into both of them slamming their way out of the room. Dani sighed rubbing her head and standing, wobbling slightly. Before she could make it all the way down to the kitchen her dad spotted her on the stairs.

"Dani! Your friends said you had overworked yourself a bit today so I thought I'd make you some dinner. Your mom's working down in the lab and Jazz is out at the library." He held up a large plate of pancakes and bacon. "Breakfast for dinner, your favorite!" She grinned at him and made it down the stairs and into the kitchen.

It was nice to sit and eat with her father, even while he babbled on about his latest invention the Fenton-weasel, a sort of ghostly vacuum. It was supposed to syphon off ghost energy, or maybe trap them entirely. Even Jack wasn't entirely sure. But the thought of what his reaction might be when he found out about her powers put her off her dinner a bit. The thought of him using his inventions on her made her slightly nauseous. She excused herself quickly and went up to her room to do what little homework she could manage with her mind buzzing with night mare images of Sam ripped apart by a ghost while she was getting detention from Lancer and her parents relishing experimenting on her as Dani Phantom. She shook her head, thoughts like that were going to rob her of what little sleep she was going to get tonight.

Her parents had never even seen Dani Phantom. There was no reason to think they would shoot first. They still hadn't really seen any ghost. She'd managed to convince them that Glooby the bunny was a trick of the light. As if summoned the tiny ghost phased through her sheets and she grinned lightly.

"Hey buddy." It chirped at her and she set down her pencil and curled up on the bed, the bunny safely tucked out of sight in her arms. So what if she'd have to wake up early to wash off the ectoplasm at least she was sure the bunny wasn't going to be a threat.