Dressed in her new gaudy black and green outfit, Danny glared at Penelope Spectra who was busy conversing with her shapeshifting assistant Bertrand, currently taking his more recognisable humanoid form over his true, more globular appearance.
Looking back, Danny felt he should have suspected the ghosts who had experience with "body-building" from the beginning.
Bertrand was holding a mop and bucket with a disgusted expression on his face, obviously about to undertake the task of cleaning the whole place.
"I swear, some of our customers don't know how to keep their ectoplasm to themselves," he started to vent. "They're gonna contaminate our merchandise!"
"Now, now," Spectra retorted, "We don't want to be too picky on who we serve. The more ghosts who have them, the better."
As if to demonstrate, she turned to open a sliding door spanning the full length of the wall and beyond into the strange void. A row of lifeless humanoid forms were hanging inside, their mouths agape, empty eye sockets and all virtually indistinguishable from one another.
"Besides, you know how valuable the payment is."
She placed both of her hands on one of the husks, and Danny watched as her ectoplasmic energy visibly ran down her arms and onto the empty body, surrounding it with a bright glow.
So that was what this was really about. They were spreading their energy into those things so they could absorb the misery of young people by proxy through other ghosts.
The trend certainly matched up. Skulker was at the mall during the afternoon when teens were able to hang out there, and Ember straight-up went into his school. Not only were they out to torment him, but they were simultaneously upholding their end of the deal.
Danny narrowed his eyes as she took a step back to admire her long row of works in progress.
"Kicking back and making others do your dirty work won't help your looks, lady."
He recoiled and clapped his hand over his mouth when he realised he mistakenly said what he intended to be a thought out loud. Once he looked back, the two ghosts had disappeared. He'd already given himself away.
"You know," a voice coming from behind started, making him flinch, "they say humour is often used as a coping mechanism to hide one's insecurities."
Danny turned around to see Spectra now inches away from him, floating on her front with her hands on her chin and Bertrand hovering behind her. She raised an eyebrow and smirked.
"Want to talk about it?"
He shuffled to his feet to face them, trying to appear confident by puffing out his chest.
"I've come to stop your little scam operation!"
"Scam?" Spectra repeated with a look of mild offence on her face. "I'm running an honest service and providing everyone with what they want. I'm practically giving them away! All they have to do is mingle with the masses and give us a little pre-existing teenage despair in return."
"I'm not talking about that!" Danny snapped, clearly losing his patience. "I'm talking about this 'updated model' thing. That's a total bluff. You can't mass produce fake bodies that can get past ghost detectors! Even I can't do that!"
"We are working on it, though," Bertrand insisted. "It might take a while: months, years, maybe decades. But in the meantime, it gives everyone the incentive to keep coming back, replenishing their Vessels and giving us the payment we agreed on. If anything, it stops them from scamming us."
Replenishing? So the extra energy wasn't permanent?
"Why are you so desperate to stop me?" Spectra asked softly, tilting her head to the side, "Isn't this what you always wanted – to finally fit in with a group that's just like you?"
Danny was fuming. His wish to feel normal while simultaneously teetering on the brink of life and death was a constant, but trying to fulfil it with costumes and illusions like this was sheer mockery, not a solution.
"That's it! I'm going to end this once and for all!" He yelled.
"I don't think so!"
Bertrand transformed himself into the form of a giant medieval executioner and materialised a heavy axe in one hand. His large build made him able to wield it as if it was a wiffle bat.
He took a swing aimed directly at Danny's neck, but to his surprise, it was completely in vain. The boy had changed into his human form in the nick of time, and his ghostly axe passed straight through him. As the laws of nature were essentially reversed in the strange dimension, anything created in the Ghost Zone could be phased through by those in the living world with enough concentration.
Again and again, the shapeshifter lobbed his weapon around to no effect as Danny simply stood still with his arms folded. Dropping the axe to the floor with a loud thud, Bertrand looked worriedly towards Spectra as if to ask for help.
"Ugh! Must I do everything?" She said, rolling her eyes at her assistant and turned her attention to Danny. "You've only made yourself more vulnerable to me."
Proving her point, she used her powers to draw out and absorb the negative energy from the teen's now human body, making him collapse to the floor.
"Ooh, I'm tasting a lot of anxiety," she observed with glee, "Even when the situation isn't all about you, you always find a way to make it taxing on yourself, huh? Well...I suppose you should feel a little responsible."
"W-what are you t-talking about?!" Danny stammered as he tried to resist the draining process. Spectra continued to taunt him.
"If you'd only given me your DNA at the hospital to keep my body young and beautiful forever, I wouldn't have to do this. You could have prevented any future suffering of your fellow teenagers if you hadn't been such a selfish brat!"
He knew this was all part of her mind games, that there was no way she'd simply give up on her nature just because her body was flawless, but she was still expertly managing to push his buttons. He couldn't let Spectra make the town's current impression of him as a hostile freak reflect back on him and become his own. He couldn't. He wouldn't.
All the pain and mental turmoil he'd gone through thanks to her suddenly bubbled to the surface and channelled itself directly into his hands. To Spectra's shock, Danny – still in human form – managed to push himself up and raise one, firing a ghost ray straight at her head. Her effort to successfully dodge it made her lose focus on rendering Danny incapacitated, letting him regain enough strength to unsteadily rise to his feet.
Her eyes glowed with anger and gritted her pointed teeth into a vicious snarl. The attempt to damage her perfect visage sent her off the deep end. She sped towards him with the intent to tackle the teen and claw his face off.
"I've been passing myself as a human since before you were born!" Spectra hissed.
"That's not making you sound any younger, you hag!"
Danny shot out another ghost ray from his fist, this time aimed directly at her stomach, knocking her backwards and slamming her against the counter.
"Looking like you're a living person with ghost powers is one thing, but being one is another!" the young hero said with regained confidence, shaking the warmth from the ray away from his hand.
Bertrand shrank back to his regular stature and ran over to help his now dazed work partner. While the two were distracted, Danny changed back into a ghost, unlocked the door and flew outside, grinning as he did so.
It wasn't long before Spectra and Bertrand followed suit and made their way out of the door as well and began searching around frantically for the not-long-escaped ghost boy.
"Alright, let's-" Spectra paused when she finally spotted Danny, who was now hovering beside the Speeder piloted by his friends.
"Now!" Danny commanded. Sam and Tucker activated a cannon mounted to the top of the ship and fired a blast of lightning straight at the two ghosts.
They immediately flew out of the way, but the unprotected entrance to the store directly behind them blew up in a glorious explosion, vaporising all the contents inside. Spectra and Bertrand stared horrified at the spot where their base of operations once floated.
"Hey! Do you have any idea how long it took to put that together?!" Bertrand shouted. "Abandoned lairs aren't easy to come by, y'know!"
"No need to worry about that," the young hero said as Sam tossed him a Fenton Thermos out of her door, "'cause you're not gonna be setting up shop again anytime soon!"
Danny activated the trap and sucked the two spirits in, finally ridding himself of the source of all of his problems that week.
The team regrouped in Danny's bedroom, mostly so Danny had an excuse to lie down. Changing back and forth so much had worn him out.
"Well, this should stop any more disguises being made. How long are you gonna keep them in there?" Sam asked, gesturing to the filled-up thermos he was still holding.
"I'd say about a week, two weeks tops," Danny replied, tapping the lid. "Should be enough time for their energy to wear out on those vessel-things."
"Who knows? They might end up begging to stay in there if all those ghosts figure out that they were lying," Jazz said.
Danny responded with an introspective nod. "All those ghosts". There was that one worry that wouldn't quite go away. Even if they couldn't get replacements any more, there were still a ton of them out there who had disguises. Without that false promise of a ghost detection invulnerability upgrade being destroyed along with the store, he really hoped they'd all lose interest in them, making them a passing fad. In case they did however, he would need to deal with the threats as they came, just as he'd told his sister before.
"What are you going to do about the bad rep?" Tucker questioned. "Paulina's got the school covered, but what about the rest of the town?"
"I'm not gonna stop kicking ghost butt," Danny smiled, crossing his arms behind his head. "Next time I do, that'll remind everybody what side Danny Phantom's on."
Despite learning not to trust his eyes so much in the worst possible way, the young hero found that he could finally relax after the harrowing ordeal. Like his friends said; no matter what new tricks his enemies pull, he'll always find a way to fight back in the end.