The Inevitable:
Author's Note: My first ever idea I had in the Danny Phantom fandom. I think I'm just sadistic. Reviews appreciated... and hopefully this isn't too confusing. Now off to rant about this on my deviantart (name of timydamonkey)...
For the past four years, he'd been treading on eggshells.
There'd been an accident. A stumble, the press of a button, a flash of light. A total DNA jumble. The creation of a halfa; a stable human-ghost hybrid.
Or so they thought.
Ectoplasm. The green substance ghosts were made up of, that their wounds oozed. Destructive ectoplasm, capable of blasting holes through buildings and harming other ghosts – damage to an extreme level.
Nobody else seemed to have realized that ectoplasm was damning to humans too.
In the human body, ectoplasm is a foreign substance, and so antibodies fight to destroy it. You cannot destroy a part of yourself, and ectoplasm is not easy to destroy. It locates an enemy and attacks back.
Danny knew something was wrong… but he hadn't expected that his immune system was being slowly destroyed. It was too late, now – he couldn't tell his parents. He had no reasonable excuse. He couldn't tell his friends – they'd worry too much. It was his problem.
He knew he was getting more tired, that staying in human form was more draining that anything else. He knew that it hurt, being human. But he had to keep up the cherade, the story of a happy, geeky boy that didn't really exist.
Danny was used to charades, by now.
Maybe, soon, he'd be unable to change back; just another one of the crowd – another ghost, albeit an infamous one. Would he ever be able to keep up a relationship with his family? He was sure it was a lost cause, that by being a ghost, he'd be damning himself to be hunted by his parents for the rest of his life. It would be fate's biggest tragedy, that.
But the knowledge that such a fate was not only inevitable, but also crawling closer, second by second, ready to ensnare him in its web? That was what stung the most.
But it didn't matter; he'd be alright. He always was.
Fin.
