Seems like people are liking Halfa Wes's design. That makes me happy to hear. XD Well, let's jump into chapter 3, shall we?
Wes was snickering.
Luckily, nobody had brought up the fact that he was the first one at the table, even though Danny did shoot him a knowing smirk. That was bad enough. And yet, the second he saw the guy's parents, he knew he wasn't going to be the one who was embarrassed.
The Fentons came downstairs in their jumpsuits. It was ten in the morning, and they were already dressed like they planned to handle raw uranium or something. Based on what Danny had said about not eating anything from the fridge, it was hardly reassuring. Still, it wasn't just their appearances that were rather silly.
"Look, Mads! It's Danny's new friend!" exclaimed Mr. Fenton, one arm wrapped around his wife and the other raised in the air in his excitement.
"Ohhh, I'm so happy for him!" Mrs. Fenton cooed, leaning towards Wes. "It's been so long since he's spent time with someone besides Sam and Tucker! I thought he was never going to find any new friends!"
"Guuuys," Danny whined, hiding his face in his hands. "Can we not do this now?"
Wes had to fight the urge to chuckle, even as the Fentons threatened to smother him. It was obviously more torturous for their son than it was for him. "I dunno. Tell me more about how hard it is for him to make friends." He grinned when Danny groaned.
"Talking about Danny-boy's poor social life can wait until after breakfast," Mr. Fenton barked happily, and oh my god, he was wearing an apron over his jumpsuit. "First, what does everyone say to some Fenton toast? Fenton eggs? I'm pretty sure we have bacon in the pantry!"
"You know what?" Danny piped up. "We've, uh, kinda got plans, and wecaneatsomethingonthewaybyyyyyyyye!" He grabbed Wes by the wrist, pulling him across the house and through the front door. Once he was sure he was safe, he groaned again, wiping one hand down his face.
Wes tugged his arm out of Danny's grasp, pulling a face. Then, he smirked smugly. "Nice folks you got there."
"More like mortifying," the smaller teen moaned. "Let's just get some burgers or something and we can get going."
"Burgers? For breakfast?" asked Wes.
"Are you really complaining? Come on, I know you're hungry." Danny tilted his head in the direction of Nasty Burger, his footsteps following not long after. And he wasn't wrong; Wes was rather hungry. When was the last time he'd had anything to eat? Probably lunch the day before. Now that burgers had come up, he realized he was famished.
Soon, the two had made it to Casper High's most popular food joint, picking out a booth near the door. "Order whatever you want," said Danny, "and order lots of it. You're gonna need the calories."
"Really?" Wes guffawed, glancing across the menu. "You think you can afford to feed a career jock?"
"Hey, did you not see the lab?" Danny snorted. "We aren't exactly rich, but we definitely aren't poor either. I think I can handle a twenty dollar tab."
And handle it he did, the pair rising from their seats about thirty minutes later. Danny beckoned Wes out the door. "Time to get going. You up for a bit of a walk?"
"I'm always up for a walk," Wes replied. "But, uh. Where are we going?"
"Somewhere someone won't accidentally stumble across us," Danny told him. "And hopefully we won't be bothered by ghosts, either."
That place turned out to be a small wooded area on the outskirts of Amity Park. Danny hadn't been kidding. With the location being out of the way from the main part of the city, the chances of somebody passing by were rather low, as were the chances that a ghost would find it a worthwhile haunt. Even if someone did show up, they had quite a bit of cover, too. "Wow... How did you find a place like this?"
"I did a lot of flying around when I was new, looking for good places to get used to my powers without worrying about someone seeing me," Danny answered him with a shrug. "I found this place a couple months after I became a ghost, and decided to do some training here. And nobody has spotted me here yet, so I figure this is as good a place as any to train you, too."
Wes blinked at him, mildly surprised. "Huh, I didn't expect you to put so much thought into it. Now if only you applied yourself that much at school."
"Oh, can it," Danny grumped, transitioning into his ghost form. "Now give me your hand."
"I... Huh?" the redhead asked intelligently.
"Your hand," Danny repeated, beckoning with his own for Wes to take it. "The easiest power to slip up with is intangibility, so that's what we're working on first. And I want you to know what it feels like before we start."
"I found out what it felt like when I face planted on your stupid dresser," Wes grumbled.
"Just take my freaking hand," Phantom snapped. Wes rolled his eyes, before finally grasping it.
He was met with an odd tingling sensation, almost a buzz, starting at his fingertips. The feeling crept past his wrist and up his arm, blossoming across his face and chest before migrating down his torso and to the tips of his toes. He yelped as his feet suddenly sunk into the earth below, but he was prevented from plummeting with Danny hovering a few inches above the ground, Wes's hand firmly in his grip.
And then he was getting pulled up, a wash of jitters quickly running through his body as he was let go, dropping the couple inches to the ground. He was solid once more. "...Woah."
"So how did that feel?" Danny asked him, choosing not to comment on the less than graceful sound he'd made.
"...Kinda... tingly," Wes replied, shaking out the last of the buzzing at his fingertips. "Not bad, but... a little weird."
Phantom nodded, having expected such an answer. "Right. If you ever want to phase through something on purpose, call on that feeling. If you start to feel that and aren't interested in falling through the floor, then tamp it down before it really develops."
"...Just like that?" Wes questioned him. "You made it sound like this... this huge, awful thing before, but now it's like you're saying it's the easiest thing ever!"
"Woah, who said anything about easy?" Danny scoffed, crossing his arms. "You can't fly yet, so that means that you gotta know how to go partially intangible so you don't end up underground every time you do it. It takes a lot of fine control, you know. There's a reason it was one of the last powers I mastered."
"Well, why don't you teach me how to fly first, then?" demanded Wes.
"Because you're not going to fly on accident," Danny countered. Then he paused. "...But I guess learning to hover wouldn't hurt, at least until you get the hang of partial intangibility."
"...Is that hard too?"
"Actually, that's pretty easy," the Halfa hummed in reply.
"Then why not start with that?!" Wes exclaimed.
"Hey, I haven't exactly taught anyone how to use their ghost powers before!" Danny huffed defensively. "It's not like I have lessons planned out."
Wes chuffed, crossing his arms and frowning. "So, tell me how to do it."
"Right, right. Can you go ghost for me? This'll be easier to learn in your ghost form than your human one." The redhead nodded, concentrating for a few seconds before changing with the characteristic flash of light. "Great. Now stop tethering yourself."
"Stop... excuse me?" Wes parroted, squinting in confusion.
"You feel lighter like this, don't you?" Danny asked. After thinking about it for a second, Wes nodded. "That's because ghosts are usually lighter than humans. So floating comes pretty naturally. But right now, your feet are touching the ground because you feel like they have to. Just let yourself be light."
"But won't I float away?" asked Wes.
"You won't, I promise," said Danny, chuckling. "Every ghost has their own natural hovering height, but it's never more than a few feet." To demonstrate, Danny lifted off of the ground, looking casual as you please, settling at roughly a foot and a half up with a slight bend to his knees. "I don't go higher than this unless I actually try to. It won't be any different for you."
Wes pursed his lips, frowning slightly. But he did as he was asked, willing himself to stop resisting the light pull. Sure enough, his feet left the ground, and his arms waved in frantic circles as he struggled not to lose his balance and do a somersault. But he was in the air. "Woah!"
"See? You're getting it!" Danny praised him.
The redhead grinned, his eyes glimmering chartreuse even as he tipped sideways. "Yeah! Yeah, I am!"
"Okay, balance yourself out," Phantom instructed, fighting a smirk at the sight of Wes slowly rotating and giggling to himself. With some difficulty, the young Halfa corrected his posture, occasionally wiggling as he tried to maintain it. "Now remember what it felt like when I made you intangible. Try to bring that feeling out. If you're doing it right, you'll sort of blur at the edges."
"Okay. Okay okay okay," Wes chanted, shaking himself out as he reigned in his giddiness. He recalled that tingling, the sensation of it as it had coursed through him. After a moment of concentration, it blossomed in his chest, spreading through his extremities before mellowing to a low hum. He looked down at himself, taking note of his now indistinct features. "Am I doing it?"
Suddenly, a small rock hurtled straight through his stomach. Wes shuddered as it left a brief rippling feeling, before settling back down a split second later. "Yep, you're doing it," Danny chirped.
"Did you... Did you just throw a rock at me?!" Wes spluttered.
"Nope," the Halfa replied, his mischievous grin not even remotely masking the blatant lie. Wes scowled at him. "Now we know you can do it on command. The hard part will be forcing yourself not to do it on accident. I told you how to avoid it, but that's something you're going to have to work out yourself."
Wes huffed, but he understood. Control would only come with practice, after all. He let himself return to corporeality, spinning in the air so that he was looking at Danny upside down, as if he was laying on his back. "So what're you going to teach me next?"
"Nothing," Danny said simply. "We're done for the day."
"Whaaat?" whined Wes. "But we barely started!"
"You're still hurt," Phantom reminded him. "And even if you weren't, you just became a ghost yesterday. Too much more and you'll be exhausted. And your dad will probably worry if you're gone too long, anyway. So we'll pick things back up tomorrow. Same time, same place." He drifted to the ground, changing back into Fenton as he did so. "I do want you to practice phasing in and out when you can, though. The sooner you get the hang of that, the better off you'll be."
Wes nodded, begrudgingly landing before changing back as well. He pulled at the collar of his jersey, taking a peek at his scab. Aside from some rather angry-looking redness at the edges, it seemed to be healing rather nicely. "You know, you would think getting impaled would hurt a lot worse."
"Supernatural resilience. One of the many, many perks to being half ghost," Danny said, in a dry tone that gave the impression that he could have been being sarcastic. Wes genuinely couldn't tell. "You know how to get home on your own, right? Or do you need me to take you there?"
"I can get home from here just fine," Wes replied. "But... thanks."
Danny waved off the gratitude. "Hey, give me your number, would you? We're gonna want to stay in touch." The redhead complied, albeit somewhat reluctantly. He just hoped the A-Listers never found out he was swapping numbers with Fenton, of all people. He would never hear the end of it.
"So. Same time tomorrow, right?" Wes clarified.
"Same time tomorrow. Keep practicing when you get home, but I seriously can't stress this enough. Don't overdo it. Even if it doesn't hurt much now, you still had a hole through you yesterday."
"I know, I know," Wes sighed, exasperated. He walked past Danny, heading back towards Amity Park. "I'm not gonna open myself back up, alright?"
Danny waited a short while before going ghost again, opting to sail overhead to keep an eye on Wes. Based on his prior experience with the guy, he wouldn't put it past the jock to hide how hurt he was just to learn more about ghosts. As Danny passed by, he noticed that Wes seemed to at least be walking normally. So it wasn't a front, then. That was good.
Satisfied with the knowledge that Wes was going to be fine, Danny flew home. He had someone he needed to talk to.
So one thing I know is that this story will largely involve Wes learning about his new ghost powers, probably with a chapter dedicated to each. But I promise it won't all be the standard stuff, or that he'll be exactly the same as Danny! I also hope to mix in some character development chapters wherever I can fit them in. There are only so many powers a ghost can have, after all.
Well, I hope y'all are enjoying this so far, and stay tuned for the next chapter!
