Hey everybody!

Sorry about the slight delay, I had a friend over this weekend, and he hogged the computer. I just found time to check for spelling and grammar problems, and make sure everything in the story fit together right. So I'm posting now.

Welcome back Queen S of Randomness, Diamond Raider, fan-girls2.0, and Epona Harper. I'm VERY glad you guys found this. Thanks to Ummari and Fluff Ghost for reviewing yet again. Ummari, that's just the reaction I was going for, thanks for letting me know I got it. XD Also, I agree that Dani should be taller. I think she's probably actually normal sized anyway, and was drawn that way only to emphasize the age difference between her and an already drawn-too-small Danny. Just some weird artistic thing, I hope…

Shout-outs, done, on with the story.

Peace Out! (hope we find it again)

HiddenAuthor

Chapter 3 – Moves

Four frantic hours later, Maddie and Jazz came floating back into the Fenton home, basking in the afterglow of a successful shopping day. Behind them, Jack Danny and Dani trudged through the door, shaking under several hundred pounds of stuff. Barely managing to lug the vast loads of shop merchandise into the downstairs hall before collapsing under the weight, the three less-than-enthusiastic members of the family turned towards the shopaholics, panting from the effort. Jack turned towards his wife, confusion on his face.

"Okay, Maddie, we've got all the stuff Dani will need." Danny snorted as he leaned heavily against a door jam, panting.

"Ever." Dani managed to giggle despite the exhaustion, then collapsed against the small mountain of stuff. Jack recovered and continued.

"Now, where is she going to stay?" Maddie froze mid-glow.

"Oh. Right." The older woman paused and thought about it. "Well we don't have a guest bedroom. The lab won't work, it's too dangerous, the living room would be too cluttered, we eat in the kitchen, and Danny and Jazz's rooms aren't really big enough for two people all the time." Maddie brightened. "How about the attic?" The others stared.

"The attic?" Jazz asked incredulously. "You're kidding, right? That place is a pit!" Her mother just smiled.

"Oh, sure, it's a little messy now. But with a little work, it'll be perfect. The ceiling isn't too low, since we had to extend it when we installed the Op Center, and there's plenty of wiring. And there's a nice window, so there'll be sunlight." Danny sat up a bit, confused.

"But isn't the attic full of all sorts of-" Suddenly, he vanished. "Ah!" Danny quickly reappeared, looking slightly embarrassed. "Sorry. Slipped. I wanted to look and see if the attic was still full of old parts for your ghost stuff." Danny scratched his neck nervously. "It is. Heh heh. Um, Dani, there's lots of room, so it should work if we clean it up." Dani smiled.

"Cool. I'm gonna go check it out." Without a backward glance, the young girl ran up the stairs, Jazz trailing close behind to show her where the trap door was. Danny's parents looked at their son oddly.

"Uh, Danny?" Maddie said tentatively. "We know we missed a lot, not realizing you were Phantom, but…well, I know I would have noticed something if you were like this all the time." Catching her son's attention, she pressed on. "Today at the Nasty Burger, you hovered and made the table phase out. Then at the mall, you kept dropping the shopping bags. Now you're popping into the attic by accident." Maddie's eyes grew concerned. "What's going on, sweetie?" Danny coughed, and sat back against the same door frame.

"Uh, nothing really. Over the last week, I've been pulling in a lot more energy than usual. I'm just not used to controlling this much, so I'm slipping. I'll get used to it." Jack scratched his head, confused.

"But Danny, why are you pulling in more energy?" Maddie nodded, backing up his father. Danny just shrugged.

"I went to see Clockwork – that blue ghost from before," he elaborated, seeing their confusion. "He said that it's because of what I am. According to him, my ghost powers are from the ectoplasm bonded to my DNA. When I go into my ghost form, it tries to follow the instructions on the DNA to build my body with ectoplasm. It's just; right now my DNA is telling my ghost form to become more powerful. So it is, as fast as it can." Maddie and Jack just nodded, not entirely sure. "Look, it should stop soon. Clockwork said it would, and he's usually right." Maddie frowned, clearly not satisfied with the answer.

"Well your father and I will take some readings later to make sure you're not getting hurt, okay?" Seeing the panicked look on her son's face, Maddie quickly continued. "Don't worry, it won't hurt. We'd never hurt you, sweetie. We'll just test how much energy you have, and how much you use doing various things. But we will be using the lab this time; all of our equipment is down there." Danny just nodded mutely. With that momentarily settled, Danny and his parents quietly went up the stairs to the trap door. Jazz and Dani had left it open behind them, and the fold-out step ladder was sticking out into the hall. Jack looked at it critically.

"If she's going to live up there, we should probably give her a permanent stairway. Something more solid." Dani stuck her head through the ceiling, making Danny's parents jump.

"No way! This thing's cool! I'll have a lot of privacy, and when no one's looking, I can just phase up through the floor." Dani's face turned sour. "Of course, we'll have to clean this place up first." With that, the young ghost girl pulled her head back up, and after a brief laugh, Danny climbed the ladder into the spacious attic, his parents silently bringing up the rear.

Or at least, it would be spacious after they cleared all of the junk out. The attic ran the entire length and width of the house, but the extensive supports for the op center broke it into three separate spaces, with thick beams in the center of the room, and additional supports running toward the outer walls at 120 degree angles. There was already a drop ceiling with fluorescent lights and the floor was tiled, but the walls were unfinished. Dani took a moment to gesture at the walls and shoot Jack a questioning glance. The older man just shrugged.

"We needed lights up here to see and had to cover a lot of exposed wires, and the floor had to be water proof to keep ectoplasm from leaking through, but we didn't need finished walls." Jack's face brightened. "But don't worry, Dani! If we work together, we can have this place looking great in no time. First, we'll have to get all of this stuff down into the parts shed." Jack frowned. "Now we just have to figure out how to get it to fit…"

Grinning at the hunter's pack-rat habits, the rest of the family started picking up the small parts and dropping them into black garbage bags. Except for two or three explosions from still-active parts, the next two hours past quickly and quietly. When they finally settled down for a break, they had cleared all of the junk out of the two other rooms and packed everything into a small pile of garbage bags beside the trap door. Jack looked around at the bags with a contented smile.

"Well, that's that. Now we just have to get this stuff to the garage." Danny hiccupped. He vanished. So did the bags of trash. A second later he reappeared, grinning.

"That was so cool! An accident, but still cool!" The young ghost turned to his confused family, slightly red. "The, uh, trash is in the shed. Mission accomplished." Maddie and Jack smiled back hesitantly.

"Those powers are really handy Danny." Jack said. "We still have time, so if you're up to it, we should get down to the lab and see what makes you tick." Danny gulped, slightly pale.

"Uh…okay, but nothing that electrocutes me, right?" His parent's eyebrows creased for a moment, then Jack looked back up.

"Nope! Well, I don't think so. If you feel anything, feel free to let us know!" And with that, the older, enthusiastic hunter bounded down the folding ladder and downstairs to the lab. Maddie watched him go, then turned back to her very nervous son.

"Don't worry sweetie. Your father and I would never do anything to hurt you. We want to help. Even if we weren't your parents, it would be the least we could do after all the trouble we caused." Frowning slightly, Maddie headed down after her husband, dead set on making sure nothing he planned to use would shock, burn, or explode. Both parents gone, Danny turned towards the girls for support. Jazz smiled over.

"I'm sure it's fine, Danny. Like they said, they'd never intentionally hurt you –"

"Now." Dani cut in. Jazz shot the younger girl a glare.

"Thanks, Dani, that's really helpful." The older girl turned back to her brother. "I know they seem to be taking it well, Danny. Their just not done getting their heads around all of this yet. Give them some time." Jazz smiled. "And letting them test you couldn't hurt." Danny rolled his eyes and phased down through the floor.

"Yes it could." The hybrid mumbled to himself as he descended into the lab. Both of his parents were standing next to the test table they'd used on him when they thought he was crazy. It looked basically the same, so he tentatively laid back on the cold metal surface and waited for instructions. Knowing how dangerous some of this stuff was, he wasn't even going to transform into his ghost half without their say so. At a nearby terminal, Jack and Maddie started pushing buttons. A large flat-ended machine pulled out from the wall and rode over to the table on a track. Jack carefully aimed the device at his son while Maddie calibrated on the computer.

"Um, what's that?" Danny was more than a little nervous, especially after green energy started crackling visibly under the formerly opaque surface. Jack smiled down at him.

"This thing will give us a full body scan, measure energy, concentration, and flow. Of course, it'll work even better now that we can test it on an actual body instead of a puddle of goop like we planned." Beaming in excitement, Jack jogged over to the terminal with his wife.

"Test it?" Danny asked over a loud whirring. Jack called back enthusiasticly.

"Sure son! Couldn't test it wouthout a ghost." Danny groaned.

"You mean you guys haven't caught a ghost since you built this thing?" He asked incredulously. Both parents frowned.

"No Danny, we haven't run into any ghosts. All of the ones we have seen were caught by, well, you." With that, Maddie flipped a large switch and Danny was bathed in green light. The hybrid cringed reflexively, but slowly relaxed when nothing painful happened. Readings filled the screen in front of his parents, and their terminal beeped. His parents poured over the readings for a while, then looked up.

"Well son, it looks like your human body holds a reasonable amount of ecto-energy, and that energy seems to flow better than in a human who is just possessed. Whatever happened to you, it altered your human body on top of giving you a ghost form. Your body seems to be able to handle the flow of energy much better than normal." Danny leaned up from the table and nervously looked across the room.

"Uh, guys? There's something I've wanted to know for a long time now, and if that thing has the answer, I'd like you to tell me. Am…" He hesitated, then took a deep breath and asked. "Am I human?" Both of his parents looked at each other in surprise, then back at their son, who was now staring aimlessly at the ceiling and shivering slightly.

"Of course you're human, Danny." Maddie replied. Jack nodded, smiling.

"Yeah, you've just picked up some cool extras!" Danny flinched slightly, and Maddie glared at her husband. "But underneath, you're still just a regular person." Jack finished quickly. Danny sighed.

"Why would you ask something like that, son?" Maddie asked, concerned. Danny shrugged.

"Ever since the accident, I've been called different things. 'Ghost child,' 'halfa,' 'ghost boy,' 'freak,'" he finished bitterly. "I've never answered back really, because I don't know what I am. Am I a ghost who kept his human body, or am I a human that got a ghost form crazy-glued onto him? Am I neither of those things? Both?" Danny turned desperately to his parents, confused and terrified. "What am I?" Both of his parents frowned, and walked from the terminal over to the table and sat down on the edge.

"Danny. Your father and I are scientists. We know a lot of things, but we don't know everything. You are probably the most unique person in the entire world. But even if your father and I don't know exactly how you do what you do, we do know what you are. You're our son. You're a person. And you're every bit as human as you were before you could fly." With that, Maddie gave her son a quick hug, and both of the older Fentons stepped back from the table, smiling sadly. Danny looked up at them, finally looking calm again, and absently wiped his face.

"Thanks guys. If you say I'm human, I believe you." Leaning back with a quiet sniffle, he turned towards his parents with a smile. "Okay, let's keep going." Nodding, his parents went back over to the computer.

"Alright, now change into your, er, ghost form. Slowly." Jack called out, the machine once again whirring to life. Concentrating, Danny slowly shifted between forms, giving them as much time to collect data as he could. A few seconds later, he was finished, and the machine shut off. His parents read the computer screen.

"This is going to take weeks to study. I've never seen anything like it. Energy started flashing in a single cell, and converted it. The change spread from there in a sort of ripple effect, each change triggering the next in the surrounding cells." Maddie continued reading the information. "Your ghost form seems to be exceptionally stable. Probably because it has something concrete telling it what shape and form it's supposed to have. Regular ghosts don't have that, they have to consciously maintain their forms, and they're more easily disrupted. So it looks like some of your human traits blend over into your ghost form, making it more resilient." Danny looked up, confused.

"I don't understand. Aren't ghosts tougher than humans?" Jack looked over at his son.

"Of course not, Danny. Humans have some edges over ghosts. We're more stable, and even if we're easier to hurt, we're harder to destroy. It looks like your ghost side is tougher because you're still human." Maddie frowned then, reading on.

"And it looks like you're going to stay unique, son. According to these readings, the ectoplasm you were hit with in the accident bonded to your DNA. You already said as much, but these micro-images prove it. However, they hit it in just the right way to attach without damaging it. Your own biochemistry and the settings of the portal would have had to match up just so." His mother shook her head.

"The odds of it happening again are very long. Most of the time, I'm pretty sure you'd just be infused with inert energy, and it would bleed out over time instead of becoming part of you. The few times that a bond would form, odds are strongly against it being a good thing. Most of the time, it would either kill you or cause some horrible genetic disease, like Vlad's ecto-acne. Until we finally cured it last year, he had to watch for signs of recurrence his entire life, and he was barred from donating blood because it would cause a breakout in whoever received it." Danny had long since gone pale at the mention of death and horrible disease.

"Umm, mom? I don't have some sort of disease, right?" Jack looked up and shook his head.

"Nope, son, we checked where the ecto-energy hit, and it didn't do any damage. You're very lucky." He frowned slightly. "And it looks like we won't be able to develop any technology from the accident. Too dangerous." Maddie looked over at her son.

"Danny, your father and I are so sorry that you were exposed to these risks. We never should have let you and Jazz near the portal until it was up and running safely. You'd think after Vlad's accident we'd have known better." She came over and put a hand on her son's arm. "Even if everything turned out alright, it wasn't right to take that kind of risk." Danny looked up at his mother's stricken face and smiled softly.

"Don't worry about it mom. Like you said, everthing turned out for the best." His mother nodded quietly.

"Well, your father and I have a lot of data to work with, so we'll stop for now. We've learned a lot already about what you can do, but it will take weeks to actually understand how and why you can do it." Maddie got back up and helped Danny to his feet. "You go have fun with Dani and Jazz. Your father and I will analyze your transformation data first to see if we can find a way to help your…cousin."

Smiling at the thought of Dani being stabilized, Danny jogged back upstairs and into the attic. Jazz and Dani had already brought most of the shopping bags up and had filled one of the other rooms with her bedroom stuff. Hearing him approach, Jazz looked up from a crouched position and stopped putting the bed frame together.

"Well it's about time. I'm almost done with the bed, want to go put the dresser together?" Danny looked around.

"This should make a nice bedroom, but what's Dani going to do about the walls?" At this, Dani phased up through the floor, holding another shopping bag.

"Well, the walls along the edge of the house are already covered with plywood, so I'll probably just get some paint and give them some color. As for the support beams, I think I'll put up fabric between them to make a sort of tent wall. It'll be cool." Grinning, Dani put down the rest of her stuff and helped Danny with the dresser.

Several hours later, two tired teens left the newest addition to the family sleeping contentedly in her new room, and went downstairs. Tomorrow they were going to the park.