Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom. A majority of the characters in the story are owned by Nickelodeon.
Super Group
Chapter 1: All Eyes On Me
Amity Park: Home of Danny Phantom
It was the sign one could find on a handful of billboards posted throughout the city of Amity Park, featuring an image of Danny Phantom, the city's local teenage superhero. Usually at least until one gets destroyed by the occasional ghost attacks. Unfortunately for the billboard, this was one of those times. A thunderous soundwave blasted out the the back of the billboard, sending pieces of Danny Phantom's face into the street as a burly ghost dressed in red flannel and a spectral drum set floating around him flew through the opening.
Right behind him was the ghost boy himself, Danny Phantom, giving chase and looking down at the remains of the billboard with his face on it.
"Seriously?!" Danny shouted to the ghost, his pride wounded. "Would it have killed you to just phase through that?!"
"Little too late for that!" the drummer responded.
"Right, ghost," Danny reminded himself.
Danny fired ghost rays at the drummer as the chase continued, eventually piercing his bass drum, causing his flight to skid to a halt.
"Not cool, man!" the drummer said before playing a wicked drum solo. At the final crash of the cymbals, a massive soundwave was released. Danny was able to resist it, but the wave was strong enough to shatter the windows of a nearby building.
Danny looked in the direction of the sound of breaking glass and saw below a woman with a baby carriage, shrieking as the glass fell her way. With no time to waste, Danny flew down to ground level to grab hold of the woman and the carriage to change each of them intangible. The broken glass hit the ground, harmlessly passing through each of them.
With the woman and baby out of harm's way, Danny solidified them again and asked the woman, "Are you alright?"
"I was just saved by Danny Phantom?" the woman, apparently an admirer, swooned and began to faint.
"No, no, no," Danny said, catching the woman, "please don't faint in the broken glass."
Danny held the woman up and pushed her along the way. Danny flew back into the air to find the ghost he was chasing, but he was nowhere in sight. Giving a frustrated sigh, he touched back to the ground again into the nearest alley.
A black jumpsuit clad ghostly hero dived into the alley, but after a bright flash, a perfectly normal looking teenage boy in a T-shirt and blue jeans stepped out. With the ghost no longer in sight, there didn't seem much a point for Danny Phantom to be around any longer, so he decided to finish the day as plain ol' Danny Fenton.
Not long after he changed back, Danny spotted his friend Tucker Foley arriving on his scooter. Skidding to a halt like an action movie star, Tucker leaped off and pointed out a Fenton Thermos like a loaded weapon in all directions.
"Did I miss anything?" Tucker said, scanning the area.
"The ghost got away," Danny said.
"Seriously?" Tucker asked, disappointed. "I've been practicing my action hero skid for weeks and the instant I show it off-"
"Someone was in danger and I couldn't let them get hurt," Danny explained.
Tucker kicked a nearby rock and asked Danny, "You think it was a mistake breaking up the team? Like, would we have gotten that ghost with all of us?"
"The team's not broken up," Danny corrected. "Sam and Paulina wanted to do something on their own, we decided we were gonna hang out together after, and a ghost just happened to get in the way of that."
"'Sam and Paulina,'" Tucker said, the words sounding almost foreign to him. "Still sounds weird to say."
"She's been with us for a week now, Tuck," Danny said, "it should at least feel normal to you by now. I kinda wonder what they've been doing."
"Probably their hair," Tucker snickered. "Can you imagine Paulina giving Sam these cute little braids and Sam giving Paulina-" Tucker stopped when he noticed Danny's face, not the least bit amused by Tucker's attempt at joking. "Oh, right, liquid hair thing. Sorry."
Elsewhere, at a park on the other side of town, Sam Manson and Paulina Sanchez were enjoying a quiet afternoon together. The two former rivals had been enjoying each others company over the last week, with Sam finding time away from the boys surprisingly refreshing.
It was much different for Paulina. Previously the most popular girl in Casper High School, she lost many admirers after a situation where she humiliated star athelete Dash Baxter. But in the end, she couldn't be happier to be with a group who she can trust her deepest secret with.
The two were seated on opposite sides of a park bench, Sam holding a collection of flash cards. "Okay, you ready?" Sam said to Paulina.
"Mmm-hmm," Paulina nodded.
Sam drew her first flash card, revealing a squat looking ghost clad in pink striped pajamas.
"Klemper, has freezing breath, is obsessed with friendship," Paulina recited from memory.
"Good," Sam said, flipping to the next card to reveal a ghost with large horns and a body made of stars.
"Nocturne, is powered by people's dreams, has an army of sleepwalkers," Paulina said.
"Great," Sam said, flipping her next card to show some sort of werewolf in a green track suit.
"Wulf, has claws that can tear into the Ghost Zone and our world, speaks Esperanto," Paulina said.
"Aaand..." Sam said hinting her answer was not complete.
"Aaand..." Paulina said, digging up any information she might have missed. Her eyes lit up as she added, "Oh, and he's a good guy ghost!"
"Someone's been doing her homework!" Sam praised.
"Actually, this has kinda been eating into my math time," Paulina admitted.
The joy was cut short by the sound of a dramatic synthesized chord that wouldn't sound out of place on a progressive rock album. "What the heck was that?" Sam said, knuckling her ear to soothe its ringing.
"Oh, oh!" Paulina said, excitedly pointing to a ghost with a green mohawk and carrying what appeared to be a keytar flying low to the ground. "Ember McLain's keyboardist, also plays bass guitar, and his existence may or may not be based on Ember's presence!" She looked to Sam for approval.
"Paulina, this isn't a test!" Sam said, stunned this had to be reminded. "This is an actual ghost!"
"Oh, right!" Paulina said.
Paulina removed her backpack, an item she had been making a habit of wearing for just this kind of occasion, and placed it on the ground, unzipping it. What happened next would be considered strange and unusual to anyone who didn't know just what her secret was.
Paulina's entire body liquified, becoming an amorphous blob of water that her still solid clothing surrounded. She dove into the backpack and, after the backpack rustled around for a few seconds, the amorphous blob leaped out onto the ground. The puddle snaked quickly through the grass, finding its way to the ghost keytarist.
The ghost was terrorizing park goers left and right, the righteous chords sending soundwaves that blew up picnics and scared birds out of every tree in sight. Amidst the chaos, the ghost wasn't aware of a puddle of water that had suddenly propelled itself into the air.
The puddle took on a human shape and resolidified into Paulina, now sporting a form fitting sleeveless black outfit and a domino mask across her eyes. Her hair, no longer hidden by the knit cap she wore, flowed freely, revealing normal hair growing from the scalp that became a collected glob of water at around mid-length. No longer the average teenage girl, this version of Paulina, known as Downpour to her friends, came down on the ghost, blasting powerful streams of water from her arms and sending the ghost to the ground.
Paulina landed on the ground in a perfect three point stance, then rose back up and shifted her arms into watery tendrils, staring down her newly damp foe.
"Alright, music ghost bad guy thing," Paulina said, not having mastered the art of spontaneously nicknaming her foes like Danny had. "Get ready for a first class beatdown from-"
"Water Wendy?"
Paulina's attention instantly shifted to where the voice calling that awful nickname came from. It was from a boy roughly her age and a male friend pointing at her. Her powers completely exposed to them. Her eyes instantly filled with dread.
"That's totally Water Wendy!"
Another voice came out, this time from an older man behind the ghost. It wasn't long before every person at the park had noticed Paulina, now frozen in terror at all the people pointing out her presence.
"That's so awesome!"
"She's gonna kick that ghost's butt!"
"Those arms are wild!"
Hearing that, Paulina looked down at her arms, realizing they were still these liquid tendrils. She shook them back to a solid state. She tucked them close to her body in some vain attempt to hide them, even if they did look normal. But all the voices continued.
"Can you believe this is happening?"
"Who is she?"
"Is that really her hair?"
Her hair! Her hair totally exposed in the open, Paulina did everything she could to hide her semi-aquatic hair in her arms. Nothing seemed to work, and the crowd was left watching hyperventilating teenaged super girl fiddling around with her hair for no reason.
For Paulina, it just seemed like more and more people were coming in to see the action, and all of them wouldn't stop talking. All of their voices to her just seemed to turn into noise. She couldn't understand anything they were saying. Were they judging her for her ghost fighting? Did they think she was some kind of menace? Were they calling her a freak? Were they frightened of her?
As all this was happening, Sam arrived within the crowd to see how Paulina was doing. What she saw was truly heartbreaking. Paulina was having a full-on panic attack at all the people looking at her, hooting and hollering for a fight, while the ghost she was supposed to be battling looked more confused than anything.
"Oh no," Sam quietly said to herself. She tried to break through the crowd and called out, "Everything's fine! You're doing great!" It didn't seem to have any effect.
Paulina just couldn't take it anymore! She bolted to the nearest opening she could find and fled the scene, leaving the ghost behind and the crowd wondering what had just happened.
Sam tried calling Paulina back. "Pauli- I mean, Downpo- I mean, Water Wendy!" She shuddered in disgust as the name left her mouth. "Oh, wow, that name is so bad."
Author's Commentary: So this is one of the most recent ideas for a story I've had. I wanted to write a story between Double Clique and what would be the story after this, mostly to build up Danny and Paulina as some kind of formidable team, but I didn't have any idea what it would be about. When I wrote about Paulina having a panic attack after being exposed from her fight with the ghost rat at the mall, the idea came to me. Make Paulina terrified of being exposed for all to see, then write a story of her overcoming that fear. I really hope it turns out well enough.