A/N: Hello again, friendly people! Here is the much-anticipated chapter 2 and a cookie for RainbowSerenity for her good review and clairvoyance. I feel as though a word of explanation is in order to account for the amazingly original concept for this story. I suffer from acute perfectionism, so I want to explore the characters in something like this first before trying anything else. I thank all of my reviewers for their comments and encouragement. They make me all smiley. :-D On with the show!
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Danny Fenton woke up on a hard, flat surface and a glaring light in his eyes. He squinted against it and rolled over, realizing after a moment that he was on the floor. There were many gadgets scattered about and a couple counters on either side of him. He was frightened for a second before realizing he was in the lab. But why would he be in the lab?
The instant after he asked the question, the entire accident poured itself into his memory, accompanied by a rather sharp headache. He sat up and saw the recently activated portal in front of him. It swirled with neon green and streaks of white, and it looked to Danny as though it was a field of pure energy. He realized numbly that it must be ghost energy, and that he was the one who had fixed it. He stared in amazement, watching the colors sizzle and swirl into one another inside the portal, but it quickly aggravated his headache and he looked away. He moved his limbs slowly, testing for injuries or breaks, finding everything in working order. He stood and brushed himself off, an almost unnecessary action as his suit was quite slick. His eyes tingled a bit, and the shock of hair falling over his face looked different. He hoped he hadn't burned off his eyebrows again, but he headed for the bathroom anyway to make sure.
In the bathroom, he discovered that his black hair was pure, snow white and that his eyes had gone from blue to a striking glowing green. Oddly enough, the colors on his suit had also been inverted. He tried to lean on the sink for a closer look at himself, but his hand fell through the counter and he nearly lost his balance. He yelled in surprise and jerked his hand away. It came away invisible up to the elbow but faded back in after several seconds. Danny blinked and rubbed his temples, knowing it was a dream, it had to be a dream, his parents were both crackpots and things like this just didn't happen to kids like him. He opened his eyes and his hair was still white and his green eyes still glowed. He flexed his hand and rested it on the counter. It stayed there. He imagined it becoming transparent and immaterial, then tried to flex muscles that would do that sort of thing, and his hand fell through the counter again. He grinned. "Ah-Hah!" After some practice, he could grab cleaner out of the cabinet beneath the sink and bring it out through the top counter. He wondered if there was anything else he could do.
Acting on a hunch and the stereotypes of every mutant movie he'd ever seen, he tried flying. Feeling slightly foolish, he jumped experimentally but fell normally back to earth, although he had definitely felt something. He gave it another shot, putting too much effort into it and bumping lightly against the ceiling. Grinning like an idiot, he looked at himself in the mirror and did the backstroke, giggling slightly. He righted himself against the wall, then decided to take on a more artistic perspective and flipped upside down. He tried to make a footprint on the ceiling, but the suit was too new to leave anything noticeable. He turned himself horizontally and tried to move, initially with a swimming motion. He found that, like the transparency and takeoff, it could only be done with his mind, which he found to be more convenient than physical effort anyway. He darted about the bathroom, deciding after colliding with the tiled wall one time too many that this sort of exercise was best carried out in a more open space. He reached for the doorknob and was on the verge of opening it when he heard a horrible sound.
"Danny! We're home, sweetie!" Danny dropped clear out of the air and landed on his face with an audible "whumpf."
He stood and began to panic. He remembered his parents many gizmos designed to catch, confine, kill, and just do generally nasty things to ghosts. It occurred to him that some or all of these might actually work if tested on the proper subject. Suddenly, he didn't want ghost powers. He didn't want to be a scientific freak or curiosity, and he wanted very much to be plain old Danny again, with black hair and nice blue eyes. He saw a flash of light and heard a zapping sound, but dismissed it impatiently as a trick of the light or his parents in the lab. He rather liked his old hair and eyes. He didn't want to be an albino; he didn't think girls liked albinos very much, and with green eyes Dash might taunt him as a leprechaun. An albino leprechaun. The thought struck him as extremely funny despite his circumstances, and he laughed.
He choked quickly when his sister opened the door. "Oops! Sorry about that, Danny. I didn't know you were in here." She shut the door again and he heard her walking off, expecting her to return at any moment and ask why he had white hair, why his eyes were green, and where he had gotten that stupid-looking jumpsuit. But her footsteps receded harmlessly down the hall. He looked at himself in the mirror again. He was regular Danny Fenton. He even had his regular clothes on. He breathed a sigh of relief, then grabbed the door open and ran into his room before anything else could happen.
He wondered what on earth he was supposed to do. He didn't want his parents to find out, first and foremost. He didn't know what they'd do to him, and he wasn't in the mood to find out. That left Sam and Tucker. Sam was pretty good at thinking rationally, and both struck him as trustworthy. He went to pick up the phone but thought better of it and logged onto an instant messenger instead. Tucker was online.
"hey tucker" he typed. There was a pause, then a pleasant bleep as Tucker's reply popped up.
"hi. wassup?"
"I gtc you and Sam tomorrow early at school. can u come?"
"sure. what's this about? study for another test?"
"not quite. something came up. can't use the phone bc of privacy. can u call sam?"
"np. c u tomorrow."
"ok. bye"
"leaving already?"
"got to deal with something. can't talk now. tomorrow"
"I'll tell sam"
"thanks. bye"
"bye" Danny logged off. He did have to go; he wanted to practice some more with his powers before facing his parents. He didn't want body parts phasing in and out of visibility when they were watching. After more experimenting, he discovered how to change himself into and out of his alter ego and discovered that he could still exercise his powers in normal- Danny-mode, but they were more difficult to control. He was in the middle of making his bed intangible when he heard his mother's voice from downstairs.
"Goodnight, Danny, and don't stay up too late."
"Goodnight son! Before you turn in though, come on down and take a look at the portal. It works now!"
"Aw, gee Dad, I'm already in bed." Technically, it wasn't a lie. He was standing up to his waist in mattress.
"Well... I guess you can see it in the morning. Good night!"
"'Night!" He worried for a moment that they'd connect him to the machine's spontaneous activation, which reminded him that he also had to worry about his homework. He figured that homework could wait. He wanted to stay up and practice a little more...
Danny worked long into the night. Phasing in and out, transforming from Danny Fenton to his new self and then back again. He worked on his piloting skills, and he was eventually able to navigate with a fair amount of accuracy, even if his precision was far from perfect. He loved exercising his new talents, and it was around four in the morning when he dropped off to sleep, exhausted.
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Thanks for reading, folks! The gnomes made me write a shorter chapter... The gnomes, the gnomes I tell you! Actually, there's a good reason for why the writing's good and the chapters are going to be shorter. I'll add a little note about it at the end of this story. If you're interested, take a look, if not, well then, don't look at it (duh). I'll give you all a penny for your thoughts if you want to review. Of course it will be a more of a conceptual penny, like the experience of getting a penny but without the actual penny involved. You wouldn't understand. It's a Zen thing. Anyway, check back soon for the final chapter!