Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom, unfortunately.
Chapter 2
"Ugh!" Danny groaned as he sat up in the middle of the lab. "What happened?"
All he remembered was being inside the portal and the doors closing. But then how did he get out? Danny tried to stand, but everything just seemed to spin. He put a hand to his forehead and moaned. He felt strange—colder. He looked down to the floor, but saw something wasn't right. The glove on his hand was white, instead of black. In fact, his entire outfit seemed to have switched colors so that majority of it was black.
"Huh?" He examined his entire outfit. "That's weird."
He walked up the stairs and out of the lab. He was going to just go up to his room, but then he passed the bathroom. Can't hurt to throw a little water on my face, he thought to himself.
He opened the door to the bathroom and flicked on the light. He turned towards the mirror and almost passed out again by what he saw. Danny Fenton didn't seem to be Danny Fenton any longer. His hair, instead of its usual black, was now snow white, and his once blue eyes were now electric green.
He stared at his reflection for a moment, not believing what he was seeing. He placed his hands on the sides of the sink, but then his arms turned invisible and fell through. Then he turned invisible altogether. Danny started to scream.
"What the heck happened to me?" he said, freaking out.
He seemed like he was about to hyperventilate, but then he took a few deep breaths. "Ok, ok," he said in a weak attempt to try to calm himself down. "It's all right. I'm just dreaming. All I have to do is wake myself up."
He slapped himself hard across the cheek. "Oww!" he yelled. "Ok, so I'm not dreaming," he gulped. "Now what am I going to do?"
He looked down at the sink for a moment, thinking. He couldn't tell his parents. They probably would think he was a ghost and just try to catch him. Jazz would think he was crazy.
"Tucker!" he said out loud. Tucker was his best friend. He would help him.
Danny stepped out of the bathroom, grabbed the phone lying on its cradle, and then returned to the bathroom sink he had been standing over. He began dialing in the well-known number to Tucker's house. After two rings someone picked up.
"Hello?" It was Tucker, but once Danny heard his voice he froze.
"Hello?" Tucker tried again.
"Tucker, it's Danny," he replied in a squeaky voice.
"Danny, what's wrong? You sound weird."
"I don't know if weird would begin to describe it," he replied as he took another glance of himself in the mirror.
"What?"
"Never mind, just—" Danny accidentally phased through the receiver and dropped it on the ground.
"Danny, you there?"
"Yeah, sorry. I…dropped the phone."
"What were you saying?" asked Tucker.
"Oh, right, um, meet me in the park, the west side, in fifteen minutes."
"The west side? But there's nothing over there."
"Just meet me there," Danny answered with a small sigh.
"Did you want me to bring Sam?"
"No!" Danny cried into the receiver, thinking of his other best friend. "She can never know."
"All right."
"Fifteen minutes."
Danny immediately hung up. Tucker was worried. If it was something he didn't even want Sam to hear, it couldn't be anything remotely good. He hung up the phone, grabbed his jacket, and made his way down to the park.
Danny walked out of the bathroom slowly, placing the phone on a nearby table. He began walking towards the door, but then he came to find out that he wasn't walking, but floating. His legs had disappeared and had been replaced by a dark gray mist. He screamed again.
"What happened to my legs?" he said staring down at his non-existent legs.
He urged himself to go forward and to his surprise he did exactly that. Danny didn't know what he was anymore. Was he a boy, a ghost, or what? He tried to fly up higher into the air, but he accidentally flew too high and hit the ceiling. He went pummeling to the ground and landed with a loud thump. His body glowed white for a second and two bright rings appeared around his middle. One traveled up his body and the other traveled down. Danny was so terrified he wasn't even able to scream; he had no idea what was happening to him as the top ring went up over his head. To his surprise the two rings had returned him to his normal appearance: black hair and blue eyes—and the lab suit went back to being mostly white. Danny looked at his hands; the gloves were white and they were solid.
Maybe I was just seeing things, he thought hopefully to himself. I must have.
"Jazz!" he called, but no answer came. "Jazz!" he tried once more, but then he vaguely remembered her saying that she was going out.
She probably already left.
He shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to take off the jumpsuit. He left it lying carelessly on the floor next to the front door and then left to go meet Tucker.
What am I going to tell Tucker, Danny thought to himself. I can't tell him that I was hallucinating that I had ghost powers. I'll just tell him it was just a joke. Yeah, just a practical joke. That'll work, he thought as he chuckled worriedly to himself.
Danny walked over to the door and opened it. The sun had gone away and it had begun to rain. Danny ran out the door and walked on towards the park. After a few steps he started to break into hysterical fits of laughter. He couldn't believe what he had thought. He kept blinking away the rain and his tears from laughing so hard. He closed his eyes, opened them, closed them, and opened them again...either it was his imagination or he was shrinking. Danny looked down to see that the bottom half of his body was invisible and he was sinking through the pavement. He grabbed a nearby lamppost and pulled himself up and out of the ground. Once again a white light flashed and the two rings appeared, and he turned back into the white-haired ghost he was before.
"Great!" he said, looking around, hoping that no one saw him.
Not a soul was present. He started running down the street, but then running eventually turned into flying.
"I have to get higher or turn invisible or do something!"
He tried to concentrate really hard. Suddenly, he felt himself lift higher into the air until he was way above the buildings.
"This is kinda cool," Danny said a little shakily as he flew through the air, faster and faster.
He looked down towards the ground for the park and spotted it, but he began to pass over it.
"How the heck do I stop!" he yelled loudly, but a second later he came to a sudden halt in midair.
"That works," he muttered unsteadily as he tried to keep his balance in the air. He turned around and then began to fly lower to the ground, but the closer he got the faster he seemed to go.
"Uh oh!" Danny said as he crashed into a tree and tumbled through the branches and on to the ground.
Danny laid on the ground for a few minutes in a sort of daze. "Gonna have to work on that."
"Danny! Danny, is that you?" Tucker's voice rang through the wooded park.
Danny's heart dropped. He didn't know if he could let Tucker see him, but he had to. "T…Tucker," Danny managed to squeak out.
"Where are you?" Tucker called.
Danny could just make out Tucker's red hat and glasses. "Look lower," he said, still lying on the ground.
Tucker made his way through the trees, until he met Danny. "Danny?" he asked with an astonished look on his face.
"Yeah," Danny sighed.
"Why are you lying on the ground?"
"Because I fell from the sky," he responded slightly calm.
"And how do you suppose you got up there?" Tucker asked sarcastically.
"I flew."
"Right."
"I did!" Danny retorted. "Isn't the way I look proof enough?"
"What are you talking about?" Tucker asked slightly confused.
"What am I talking about? My hair is white, my eyes are radioactive green, and—" Danny immediately cut himself off when he saw his visible, normal hands. "Hey, I'm back again."
"Uhh, Danny are you feeling ok? You're acting really weird."
"Yeah, I'm fi—"
"Tucker!" Sam's voice traveled through the woods.
"Sam," Danny turned to Tucker and glared at him. "You promised!"
"Tell her that. She wouldn't leave me alone until I told her where I was going. You do know she was over at my house when you called?"
"Tucker!" her voice came again.
She was really close and Danny was beginning to sweat. All of a sudden he felt a cold blast of air and saw a white flash of light form around him. Tucker stared at Danny with wide eyes.
"Oh…my…God!"
Danny held out his hand to Tucker to help him off the ground. "Tucker, help me up."
Tucker just continued to stare. His mouth hung open slightly and then he said, "What are you?"
"It's me, Danny! I'll tell you everything later, but we have to get out of here." He continued to hold his hand out.
Tucker looked at the outstretched arm and then back at the direction Sam's voice had been coming from. He turned back to Danny and helped him up off the ground. The both of them began running through the woods in the opposite direction of Sam. They had only been running for a few minutes before they had finally lost her. The pair had emerged into the back of a warehouse where a bunch of shipping crates stood.
"That was a close one!" Danny said, trying to catch his breath.
Tucker was still staring at him in utter shock. "What happened?" he whispered in a sort of daze. "What are you?"
Danny furrowed his eyebrows in frustration. "Now, don't think I'm crazy or anything, but I think I'm a—I'maghost," he blurted the last part out quickly--too quickly for Tucker to understand.
"A what?" he asked, confused.
"A ghost, I'm a ghost! Satisfied now!" he screamed in frustration.
"A ghost?" Tucker said, disbelieving.
Danny nodded his head in response.
"Just because your hair is stark white and your eyes are glowing green, as freaky as that is, it doesn't mean that you're a ghost."
"You're right," Danny said. "I'm only half ghost. How else would I be able to return to my human form?"
"Uhh, Danny, I think you've had a) way too much sugar or b) not enough sleep," said Tucker, still not ready to believe him. "You must have gone through a lot to get that costume together. It looks almost real."
"It's not a costume! It is real!" Danny screamed. "To be honest, I thought the same thing as you. But that was until I started doing weird things."
Tucker's mouth dropped. "You mean like that?" he said as he pointed at Danny's body. Danny had been leaning against a stack of crates and had slowly begun to sink into it. His head was now the only visible part of him.
"Oh, darn it! Why me?" Danny moaned as he struggled to get back up.
"This is really freaky," Tucker said, stating the obvious.
"You have to help me!" pleaded Danny as he ran up (or glided up again) to him and grabbed his collar.
Tucker now totally believed his friend's story. "How am I supposed to help you?"
"I don't know, but you have too! I don't know what I'm going to do!" he said starting to get hysterical.
"All right, all right! First of all, let go of my shirt and calm down." Danny let go of his collar. "Second of all, stop floating! You're creeping me out."
Danny looked down at his legs, but this time they were visible, and he just seemed to be hovering off the ground. "Sorry," he said as he landed.
"This is so weird," Tucker said, "but so cool!"
"Cool! You call being a half-ghost, freak of nature who can fly, turn invisible, and walk through things cool!"
"Yeah," Tucker responded sounding as if he thought Danny were crazy.
"Then why don't you switch places with me?" he growled.
Tucker shook his head. "No can do. I have enough going for me already. Besides, I don't need ghost powers to make me cool. I've already got enough of that," he said, pretending to slick back his hair.
Danny rolled his glowing green eyes. "Whatever you say, Tuck."
They sat there for a minute in silence. Then Tucker all of a sudden blurted out, "So, what else can you do?"
"I don't know. I'm still trying to figure this out myself," Danny responded anxiously.
"Let's see. We know you can phase through things, hover—"
"Fly," Danny said interrupting Tucker.
"What?"
"I can fly," he responded wearily.
"Are you serious?"
"Would I joke at a time like this?"
"I don't know. A time like this has never happened before."
Danny slapped his own face in utter disbelief of Tucker.
"I'm sorry, but this is just—" Tucker paused.
"I know," Danny said.
Tucker had taken a seat on the box next to Danny and was looking at him intently, a question obviously on his lips.
Danny growled at Tucker, beginning to get a little annoyed by him. "What is it?" he asked.
"I was just wondering why don't you want to tell Sam," Tucker asked his now ghostly friend, "I mean, we've been friends, for like, forever."
"I don't know," Danny sighed softly, "I guess I just don't want her to think I'm a freak."
"Hello!" Tucker replied as he waved his hands in the air wildly. "She's a Goth! She likes things that are strange and unusual!"
"You're right," he answered him with another sigh, "but I don't want to tell her just yet. Telling you was hard enough."
"Yeah, why is that?" said Tucker with a frown on his face.
"Why is what?" asked Danny confused.
"Why did you think Sam would freak out, but not me?"
Danny just shrugged in answer. "I honestly have no idea, Tuck."
Tucker still continued to frown at him, but then his frown deepened; Danny looked like he was getting paler and paler by the moment.
"Look, I know this must be kinda hard on you, but maybe this is just a temporary thing. I think you should just go home and take it easy," Tucker replied trying to comfort his friend.
"Yeah, I guess you're right. Maybe I'll just go to sleep and hope this nightmare ends."
"Uhh, Danny, it's not even lunch time. You just woke up."
"I know, but I'm just really tired." Danny wearily put a hand to his forehead. "And maybe I'll just sit here a minute." He slunk down to the ground and leaned up against a crate.
"You all right?" asked Tucker concerned. "You look beat."
"I'll be fine. All of this has just taken a lot out of me."
"Come on. Let's get you home," Tucker said as he grabbed hold of one of Danny's arms and pulled him up into a standing position.
"And how do you expect us to do this? I'm pretty sure it's not normal to see a glowing guy with white hair and green eyes in a hazmat walking down the street."
"What? Your parents do it every day—well, all except for the white hair and green eyes thing."
"Tucker," Danny hissed, getting irritated at his jokes.
"All right, all right! I'm sorry. So, how did you get to the park?" asked Tucker.
"I flew half of the way and the other half I wasn't glowing."
"You'll just have to turn back to normal again," he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, which it pretty much was.
"Tucker, if it was that easy I would have done it by now."
"You have to concentrate."
"I can't," Danny moaned. "I can barely stand."
"You have to at least try, Danny. It's the only way," replied Tucker, trying to sympathize with his friend.
"All right, I'll try." Danny clenched his fists together and concentrated as hard as he could, but it didn't take much until there was suddenly a flash of light and he returned back to normal.
Danny looked at his normal body in surprise. "That was easy."
"See. I told you, you could do it," Tucker said as they both started to walk back to the main street, Danny leaning on him for support. "Let's get you home, buddy."
The trip back to his house took twice as long because of Danny's inability to walk on his own, but they eventually made it there. They just felt lucky that Danny didn't accidentally turn back into his ghost form on the way there. Tucker opened the door, expecting Danny's parents or least Jazz to be there.
"No one's home," Danny answered before Tucker said anything. "Just help me up to my room."
Tucker had to practically pick Danny up to get him up the stairs, but lucky for him Danny was pretty light. He supposed it had mostly to do with him being half ghost now. Once they had gotten up the stairs, Tucker took him to his room and put him on his bed.
Danny laid his head on a pillow and opened his eyes half way. "Tuck, I—" he started, but he passed out.
Tucker walked out of the room and closed the door silently, leaving Danny to get some sleep.
All right! There's chapter two! And remember R&R, but if you're already reading this partI'm guessing you've read the story... so just review!