Summary: This is the beginning of the new series I'm making based off of Good Charlotte's CD The Young and the Hopeless. They're not going to be a whole story; instead they're one-shots based on each of the songs. This one isn't the best, and I'm going to go back and edit it later, but I just feel like publishing it here on so I'll feel some sort of pressure to keep writing this. So if anyone has comments on how to revise it that would be greatly appreciated :) This chapter is the thoughts of Danny as he changed from human to ghost.

Disclaimer: Danny Phantom belongs to Butch Hartman. I don't own "A New Beginning."

A New Beginning

It was a Saturday afternoon. Danny's parents and his sister, Jazz, were out for a while and he was alone with his two best friends, Sam and Tucker. They were playing Doomed for a while in his basement, but they got bored and tired of it after a while.

"Man, this is wack. Who's the guy who keeps grabbing all the keys before us?" Tucker asked.

Danny scratched his head in frustration. "I don't know. He's really good. Hey, do you think he looks familiar?"

Sam leaned in closer and looked at the character on the monitor screen. "Hmm…he just looks like some out-of-shape, middle-aged man. Who do you know who fits that criteria?"

"Well…" Tucker pondered for a moment. "I'm stumped."

"You guys, couldn't you at least stop talking and start helping me here?" Danny grunted, desperately trying to gain control of his now frozen character.

"Ah, forget it. This is getting old anyway," Sam said.

"Alright then. What do you want to do?" Danny asked, shutting off his computer.

"How about…" Sam smiled evilly.

"Oh great, you're giving me that look—again." Danny slapped his forehead.

Tucker laughed. "Man, whenever she does that you always give in. Remember what happened last week with the backwash incident?"

Danny frowned. Never again am I sharing my soda with Sam, he thought.

Tucker, still laughing, continued. "And before, with the pants incident?"

Danny hit his forehead on the desk. The pants incident did not need to be repeated. It was bad enough Dash Baxter pansed him in front of the entire gym class—would if something worse happened? Like his pants fell down in front of his new crush, Paulina? He shuttered at the thought of it.

Tucker was still not done. "And then before, that time in health class—"

"Alright—I get it!" Danny shouted.

"Geez; didn't mean to get you angry or anything," Tucker commented.

"Well, you DID!" Danny buried his face in his arms, blushing madly and Tucker, and even Sam, were laughing.

"Seriously, though, you know what would be really cool?" Sam asked.

Danny lifted his head a little. "What?" he grunted.

Sam smiled. "I'll be right back. I've been dying to do this for weeks." She ran over to the closet, grabbed a spandex suit, and ran back over.

Danny frowned. "Oh, no. You are not going to make me wear that spandex and go into that stupid portal my parents built."

"Uh, actually I was going to go in, but hey, why don't you go in first? It's your house and all."

Danny stood and shook his head. "No. Absolutely not. Who knows what's in there?"

"I thought you said that it didn't work," Tucker said, walking over to the portal. "Looks pretty empty to me."

"Oh come on; it's not like we've got anything else better to do anyway." Sam handed Danny the spandex suit, and Danny hesitantly took it. "Come on—you gotta check it out."

Danny looked at the portal, looked at Sam, and then nodded. "You're right. Who knows what's on the other side of that portal?"

"Uh, didn't we just go through that there's nothing over there—that it doesn't work?" Tucker asked.

"I don't know…why not? But we better hurry; my parents will be home soon and they told me not to go near the portal." He put on the spandex suit and was about to walk into the portal, when Sam stopped him.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa…you can't walk in there with your dad's face on your chest." She ripped off the sticker. "Now go in."

Danny hesitantly walked into the strange portal. Nothing out of the ordinary seemed to be happening—just dark walls with chords and tubes all over; plugs here and there. He was just about to turn around, when his hand accidentally hit a green "ON" button.

And then it happened.

The shock ran through Danny's entire body, giving him an agonizing, excruciating pain wracking through him—inside and out. The shock made him feel like his entire body was on fire, getting worse and worse by the minute. As all of the deadly acids and chemicals that squirted out of the leaking tubes in the portal started seeping through his skin, Danny slowly started changing—his clothing colors were inverted, his hair turned white, his eyes glowing a phosphorescent green; his whole body was giving off a blinding glow. And when the chemicals reached into his bloodstream, that's when everything truly changed. Green ghostly chemicals mixed into his DNA, changing it completely. Changing him completely.

Sam and Tucker ran towards the portal, seeing their unconscious friend. They pulled him out and lied him down. A few minutes later, he woke up, and looked in the mirror. He could see that his hair was snow white, that his eyes were glowing green, that he looked completely different...Danny gasped.

I'm not me.

(AN: Thanks so much for reading! Next chapter is "The Anthem.")