"Alright guys" Dalton, the smaller, lanky host announced over the intro music. "So today we have kind of a surprise."

"We had to keep this one a secret." the bearded host, Tony, said. "We can't get in trouble for this, can we?"

"Nah, it's probably fine. We checked with our lawyers and they said—"

"Well, hang on," Tony cut on. "Our lawyers said it was a bad idea, but then if we were going to have this episode, gave us some minor suggestions to keep us out of trouble. But our lawyers think every episode of this podcast is a bad idea, so that's not new."

Dalton choked on his drink and sputtered.

"Anyway, while my cohost is dying over there, let me take a second to introduce the glowing guy at the table that you all have probably noticed by now, Danny Phantom!"

Danny blinked, his eyes swiveling between the two cameras out in front of him. After a moment, he picked one and gave a shy wave to it. "Hello."

"Great to have you here, bud."

"Thanks for having me." He hoped his voice didn't betray the nerves that were still electrifying his senses.

"For anyone who lives under a rock," Tony continued, his hand gripping a sheet of paper that looked comically small under his thick fingers. "This is the ghost protector of Amity Park, Danny Phantom. Yes, he is a real ghost. No, the glowing is not a special effect. Am I correct in both of these statements?"

A light smile touched his lips, and he felt the tension begin to unravel in his shoulders. "Yes, that's correct."

"So Phantom, this is your first-ever public interview, correct?" Dalton asked, having recovered.

"Yeah."

"And you chose to come on our show, damn," Dalton said. "I gotta be honest, when we sent that feeler out to you, neither of us ever expected a response."

"Oh well, surprise?" Danny tried. "Happy to be of service?"

"So what made you change your mind about interviewing? Because up to this point, our impression of you was that you actively avoided the media."

"Well, let's not give ourselves too much credit," Tony said, adjusting his baseball cap. His voice was gruff, reminiscent of someone who had spent his college years partying a little too much. "We're just two assholes with a microphone and a camera."

"That's actually more why I was willing to do this," Danny said. "I'm not really into publicity, so I figured a podcast was a good middle ground."

"Well, you know it's not every day we get a ghost on our show. So we appreciate your appearance."

Dalton raised his bony hand and cut in, "Also, just wanted to say both to Danny and the audience, that from our understanding, there are ghost laws and customs that are separate from human customs. And we're obviously human, so if we cross any boundaries, just wanted to apologize in advance."

"Oh yeah, I don't know if you've seen this show before, but we're total morons."

Danny snickered. "It's fine, I'm still a pretty young ghost, and from hanging around Amity Park so much, I'm very familiar with human customs and whatnot."

Well, that and he also was human, but he wasn't about to let them in on that.

He relaxed more into his chair, and he was almost certain that somewhere at home once this episode aired, Jazz was going to have a conniption about his posture. Sam too, maybe, though Tucker would make a good case about increasing Danny's "relatability" to the audience, and then all would be forgiven.

Because bro code, and whatever.

"But yeah," he continued. "Ghosts have different customs. Like the obvious ones of not asking about death or—or Obsession. Those are very personal and most ghosts don't really appreciate people prying. Especially if the ghost is a bit…territorial, I guess? I mean, most ghosts are very chill. You guys in the human world only see an outlier of the more adventurous ones that cross over, but most ghosts in the Zone just like to keep to themselves. We're more private than humans, I guess is what I'm trying to say."

"That's super fucking interesting," Tony said. And from his expression, he wasn't putting on an act for the camera. Despite being the kind of dude who looked like he owned a garage full of loud motorcycles, the brightness in his eyes looked reminiscent of a child on Christmas morning.

"So are there cities in the—the Zone you called it?" Dalton asked, his sharp features fixed on Danny's every word.

"Ghost Zone, Zone, GZ, it's all the same."

"Right, so are there cities in the Zone like here on Earth? Or do they look different?"

"Yeah, where do all the ghosts live?" Tony asked.

This line of questioning shouldn't have surprised Danny as much as it did. Maybe Sam's idea of starting a blog about 'ghost stuff,' as she called it, wasn't such a bad idea after all.

"It really depends where in the Zone you are. I won't get too technical, but the GZ looks pretty different from Earth. It doesn't have the same physics as Earth does if that makes sense, so the way areas are formed is different than here. Ectoplasm influences a lot of it, I think. But to the question, most ghosts live in pocket dimensions in the Zone that are hidden behind doorways. But some more powerful ghosts have their own islands and societies that other ghosts can live on."

"So do you have your own island then?" Tony asked.

He thought for a moment, wondering how much detail he wanted to give out. Technically, Amity Park was considered his, but that was something he hadn't even admitted to Tucker and Sam. Though, at this point, they might have suspected that much. "No, I don't. But one of my good friends does. I have a cold core—it's how I control ice—and so does he, so that's how I met him."

"Is it a ghost we would know or…?" Dalton asked.

Danny shook his head. "No. He's come to Earth, but not in the last few hundred years I don't think. And he and his people are always really careful when they travel to the human world. They mostly stay out of sight I think. Something about disrupting the timestream? Though, I have my suspicions about a few Earth myths I think they're responsible for." Danny shrugged. "Anyway, they all live in a giant ice city in the GZ and it's really cool, I go there a lot."

"Hang on, an ice city?" Tony asked, his eyes so round they looked ready to spring out of his head. "Do you have any photos?"

"No!" Danny laughed. "Ghosts typically don't take photos of other people's territories. But it's just as cool as it sounds."

"Damn, that sounds really interesting," Dalton said. He glanced down at his paper, his narrow eyebrows pinching in. "So, okay. So ghosts and where you guys live are very different than how humans live. And it seems like some ghosts live by themselves in…pocket dimensions you said?"

"Yup."

Tony shook his head. "I'm not even going to try to understand that one."

"Right, pocket dimensions. And you don't have an island, so do you have a pocket dimension as well?"

"Aren't you considered powerful though?" Tony asked. "Like I don't know maybe I'm a dumbass human but why don't you have an island?"

Danny averted his gaze, running his hand through his hair. "I'm still pretty young for a ghost. I don't really need an island anyway, for how often I'm either in Amity Park or on other ghost's islands."

"Wait, young for a ghost? Do you mind us asking…?"

Dalton's unsaid question hung in the air, and Danny ducked his head in some vague attempt to hide his discomfort. "Uh, not that long, is all I can say."

"Alright, alright, you don't have to answer it," Tony said.

"So, we actually wanted to get into sort of the reason that we're assuming you agreed to be on our show, which is the rising tensions in Amity Park and the uptick in ghost attacks." Dalton turned to the camera, his professional demeanor fully engaged. "For those in the audience unaware, the federal government has recently placed sanctions on the city, and there's a mounting political divide, with the issues of ghosts becoming increasingly bipartisan in the last election cycle. And, as a ghost," Dalton said, addressing Danny. "I'm sure you have a lot to say."

"There seems to be a couple camps of people," Tony took over, though his expression was still far more relaxed. "There's some people who think you specifically are the reason for the uptick in ghosts, that you've claimed territory over Amity and they're here to fight you. Other people think that this is the ghosts launching war on humans in general, and I think in general there's just a lot of confusion and fear about what this all means for us."

Danny sat up a little straighter, his brain running through all the events of the last week. Admittedly, it was a lot. Far more than he could have anticipated. Protests had begun to grow violent, and Danny was sure that if there was even one more case of significant property damage in the downtown area, riots would ensue.

On one hand, there was the camp of people who felt that we needed to negotiate a truce with the ghosts. That humans had a long history of exorcising them and torturing them with ecto-weapons and blood blossoms, and that if the governments started giving them space on Earth, then things would be peaceful again.

On the other end of the spectrum were the people who felt enough was enough, the ghosts had to go. And they had to leave by any means necessary. They had done too much destruction, they didn't respect humans or their property, and they were flat out too dangerous to be allowed to roam around freely.

Of course, Danny was caught exactly in the middle of this in the worst way possible.

As a human, he was Danny Fenton. The loser idiot who everyone laughed at. As Phantom, he had more of a voice, but that voice didn't help if the federal government seemed entirely too eager on stripping away even a modicum of leniency they had previously given him to exist. Which that, for all intents and purposes, was almost nothing to begin with.

"I think…" Danny started, trying to be careful with how he worded his response. "I don't entirely blame people for their reactions. It's natural to be afraid of what you don't understand, and it's entirely reasonable to be afraid of what has been, at least in Amity Park, often destructive. Most ghosts stay in the Ghost Zone, so that doesn't really give humans a lot of opportunities to interact with the more friendly ones. And the friendly ghosts that do cross over usually just keep to themselves and observe the Earth for a bit before eventually finding an open portal and returning home."

"So why Amity specifically do the ghosts that aren't so nice attack? What is it about Amity that makes it a target?" Dalton asked.

Danny steepled his gloves against his chin. "There are a couple of older papers by the Fentons from back before they confirmed that ghosts existed. You know, I think most of their papers touching ghost behavior are wrong, and any ghost would agree with me. But the Fentons are actually usually right on the money when it comes to ectophysics and engineering and that sort of thing.

"So they used to study ambient ectoplasm in the air and the reason that they even moved to Amity Park after college was because based on measurements of air quality and particles found around the US, Amity Park consistently measured highest for ambient ectoplasm. So their theory was that rift between the dimension that the human world and Earth reside in, and the dimension that the Ghost Zone was in, they intersected in Amity."

"And their theories were true? Is that what you're saying?" Dalton asked.

"Yeah. They tested this through their ghost portal. If the portal activated, then that meant that there was actually an intersection at Amity Park. If it failed, then the dimensions weren't close enough. But even if they hadn't known this, there were already a good number of ghosts in Amity Park at that point, they were just mostly hidden. But there already had been portals and doorways popping in and out of Amity for centuries."

"Interesting," Dalton said. "And humans just didn't know this? So then what changed, was it the portal?"

Danny winced. He didn't want to throw himself or his parents under the bus, but he also didn't want to outright lie.

"I'm not really a hundred percent sure," he settled on. "I wasn't really ever in the Ghost Zone too much before then so…"

Tony, for all his meathead energy, caught on quickly. "Ah, so you were one of those hidden ghosts in the human world?"

"Something like that."

Like hell was he providing an exact date to his supposed death.

"But," he said. "I think that what happened, just based on talking to other ghosts, is the portal did kinda tell the other ghosts that yeah, the atmosphere to Earth is thinnest in this city. And so when it caught on, ghosts realized that if they wanted to go to Earth, they could head over to the section of the Zone that interacted with Earth on that invisible line, and even if it wasn't the Fenton portal specifically, some other doorway would eventually pop up that would lead them directly to Amity Park. So a lot of ghosts who wanted to blow off some steam without facing consequences or, yeah, had some sort of fulfillment that involved humans in some way, learned how to cross over really easily."

Tony sat back in his chair, putting his hand over his forehead. "Fuck dude, this is fascinating. I feel like I need another goddamn drink."

Dalton let out a spontaneous laugh. "Honestly, same."

"You're the smart one of us both, so you better be understanding this. Because I gotta say, I feel like I'm getting a solid twenty percent of what's being said right now."

"I can re-explain it after the show if you want," Danny offered.

"I think I got at least most of that," Dalton said. "Maybe not everything, but most of it."

"Yeah, it can be kind of strange if you don't have at least some experience in ectobiology or ectophysics."

"So do you?" Tony asked. "Sorry if this is too personal, but you seem to know a lot about the physics of it all for someone so young. I mean what are you, fifteen?"

He was sixteen, but Danny was going to ignore that.

"I have a mentor in the GZ who's literally an ancient deity," he decided on saying. It wasn't a complete lie. "He's taught me a lot."

"So before we go completely off the rails, I just want to pull back to the main topic and ask, what do you think the US government's response should be to the ghost problem?" Dalton said.

Danny took a deep breath. He'd been expecting this question, and he was prepared. "I can't speak for all ghosts. I'm just one of many. I'd say that ghosts have a lot more in common with humans than we have different. While there are some ghosts who more or less view the human world as their personal playground, banning us from being in the human world isn't going to prevent them from coming over. We're ghosts, we don't abide by human laws. We have our own power structure that's different than yours.

"As much fun as it may look like for me to be playing hero, I honestly am tired. I have…things I want to do with my afterlife. I'm here for Amity because it's my duty, but I don't like seeing people hurt, I don't like seeing buildings fall and walls being smashed, I don't like seeing people afraid. I want to be there to protect people, not to see everyone get hurt."

"Do you think peace is the best option?" Dalton said.

"At least a treaty, yes. Ghosts won't listen to humans. If humans tell ghosts they can't go somewhere or do something, they'll just laugh and do it anyway. But ghosts will listen to other ghosts, to a degree. There's always the rogue ghost who will do whatever they please, but most ghosts do sort of follow the chain of command in their own way."

"Alright, thank you for your insight."

"Yeah, dude, this was great," Tony agreed, popping open the lid to a beer his assistant handed him from off-screen.

"And you know, I think most people are just confused and scared, so having your voice in the mix will hopefully clear up a lot of misconceptions and fears that people have right now."

"Agreed, man. Like, I'll admit, I don't really know fuck all about ghosts. So having you here was really cool. Now that the more serious topics are out of the way, you mind if we get a little personal? I think the viewers would like to know more about you."

This was the part he had been dreading, but this was the part that both Sam and Tucker had been pushing him on. "Yeah, that's fine. I'll answer what I can."

Tony gave him a thumbs up.

"So we've compiled some common questions we got off the Google search engine, and we also mixed in questions of our own. If you don't want to answer any of these, you don't have to," Dalton explained, shuffling his papers on the table.

"Okay."

"The first question is a really common one. How much do ghosts remember from when they were alive?"

In Danny's case, it was everything, but he was obviously an anomaly. "It depends, I think, on the ghost. More powerful ghosts remember more, but the most powerful ghosts are typically what we call Zone-born, so they were never human to begin with."

"Wait a hot fucking second, what?" Tony asked, holding his beer-hand up.

"Yeah, ghosts can be created a couple of ways. Previously being human is the most common, but it's not the only way to become a ghost."

"So, forgive me for prying, but are you 'Zone-born' or were you a human?" Dalton asked.

"Human," Danny said.

"Okay, and do you remember a lot from your life?"

"Tony!" Dalton leaned over to smack his cohost on the arm.

"What?"

Danny grinned at the interaction. "No, it's fine. I know what I'm walking into. And…yeah, I do."

Dalton shot one last glare at his cohost before rolling his eyes and turning back to the paper. "So where did your outfit come from? And how much do you have the ability to change your clothing? Because from what we know, most ghosts don't really tend to deviate from their outfits, but there are times where ghosts alter their appearance. Like we know from photos at least, that your logo didn't pop up till about six months after your first appearance—or, first public appearance I should say—in Amity Park. So what's the deal with that?"

"Oh yeah, this is a good question," Danny said. He chewed on the bottom of his lip for a moment. "Yeah, clothing is kind of weird. It's all made of ectoplasm, so it's almost like it's a part of us. I mean, I can remove my clothes, but if it's not on my body then it will just dissolve, and I can will it back, and it'll appear the same as usual. My jumpsuit is…eh, I don't really know if I can get into it. But some ghosts have more control than others of what they look like."

"How much control do you have?" Dalton asked.

"Not much. The logo was sort of an accident. A friend did it and I didn't really know what was happening till it was already attached to my jumpsuit."

"You're kidding," Tony guffawed.

"Nope. It's cool though, we're best friends so once I realized what had happened, I was just excited. I don't know if that makes me sound lame," Danny blushed sheepishly, rubbing his neck with his hand.

"Nah, that's just cool."

"So the next question is one of mine," Tony said, gearing up as if he was about to present a project on ending world hunger.

Dalton just started snickering, bringing his baggy hoodie sleeve up to cover his mouth.

"Okay," Tony leaned in putting his hands on the table and looking into the main camera with almost too much intensity. "this has been haunting me for months. I need to know. Phantom, do you or do you not eat human food?"

Danny blinked. "Huh?"

"Listen! Okay," he broke character, grinning. "Wait, where's the technical producer. Joe! Pull up the images in question."

"Oh my god, is this an intervention?"

"Yes, this is a fucking intervention!" Tony slammed his hand on the counter. "This has been haunting Reddit for months and I will not rest until this is solved! Okay, Phantom, look at the monitor. Here you see a picture of you in a tree eating fucking fries. And then over on the left, is a picture of you drinking a Red Bull. Not sponsored, by the way. So what the hell, man?"

Danny facepalmed, the last of any tension left in his body melting away at the pure absurdity of this situation. "I'm sorry, this has been haunting Reddit for how long? Do people actually care about this?"

"Oh god, now you've set him off."

Sure enough, when Danny looked up, he saw Tony in a various state between disbelief and sputtering faux-rage. "Do people care? Phantom, this is one of the internet's greatest mysteries! The magnum opus of conspiracy theorists everywhere!"

"Ancients."

"Just answer the fucking question! Do you eat human food? Follow up, how do you eat human food?"

Danny looked back at the monitor. "I—"

"Oh wait," the podcast's producer called from behind his desk. "Hang on, Rebecca found another one."

"Rebecca was hiding this from me!" Tony all but screeched. "Rebecca, how could you?"

Danny watched as a third image was added to the monitor, this time of himself lounging in a tree in the park munching on a bag of potato chips.

"Welp," Danny said, gesturing to the screen. "I think you have your answer. Yes, I can eat human food. I think most ghosts can eat human food. Ghost food tastes better to us though, but what can I say? Fries are really good whether or not they have ectoplasm in them."

"So what if you took your fries and dipped them in some sort of ectoplasm sauce? Would they taste better?"

"What does ectoplasm even taste like?" Dalton asked.

"It tastes acidic, like lime." Danny drummed his finger on the table in silence before deciding that yes, he did want to unleash chaos on the internet. "You know, sometimes I like to take my tater tots and just. You know. Heat them up, dip them in a bowl of pure ectoplasm. Ranch two."

"Fucking hell," Dalton wheezed.

"What can I say? I'm a growing teenage boy."

"Alright, alright." Dalton composed himself. "This next one is one I found in a comment section, and it reads: have you ever gotten stuck while phasing through an object? And if so, did it hurt?"

Tony beamed."Ooh, that's a good one."

"Oh yeah, too many times," Danny confessed with a concerning amount of ease. "You know how like when you bite down on your finger really hard, your survival instinct prevents you from actually biting through your skin or anything? It's sort of like that for ghosts. We can get stuck in objects, but whatever part of us is inside the object will remain intangible on instinct, even if the rest of our body turns tangible again. So no, it doesn't hurt. It's just really fucking embarrassing."

"This next one was one of the most searched questions. Well, it's actually two questions. The first is, hey Phantom, are you single? And if so, is it gay if he's dead?"

"Wait, what?" Tony said, snatching the paper from Dalton's hand. "Did you really put that in there?"

"Of course, I put that in there! It was a popular Google question. Tony, this is all about giving the teenagers online what they want."

"Oh my god." Tony broke out into a fit of laughter. "Man, Phantom, I—haha, oh my god."

Danny put his glove over his mouth to hide his grin. "I'm sorry, what the fuck?"

"You heard me."

Danny buried his face in his hands.

"Wait…" Through Tony's laughter, Danny heard him lean in close. "Oh no way, Dalton! Look, he blushes green."

"Aw, that is adorable."

Danny groaned and smacked his head on the table. Even still, he couldn't hide the smile that had now completely overtaken his face.

"Look, and his freckles are glowing too."

"Stop!" Danny protested.

"Danny, come on, you can tell us if you have a secret ghost girlfriend. Oh, is it that rocker chick?" Tony said, poking his shoulder.

"Or ghost boyfriend. We don't discriminate."

"All ghost love is equal on our set."

"I don't have a secret ghost girlfriend or boyfriend," Danny said into the table. "I am very single, thank you. Besides, I'm a ghost." He lifted his head finally and stared into a camera, though he was sure his face was blazing green. "There's your answer, internet. I hope this was worth your efforts."

"Very worth it. Now please turn to the monitor," Tony said. "We have a very important question here today."

"I'm scared."

A few pictures of Danny filled the screen, all in various stages of flight. Danny studied the photos for a second, his face screwing in increasing concentration as he tried to figure out what exactly he was supposed to be looking at. Finally, he gave up, turning to look up at Tony. "Sorry, what's wrong with these?"

"Your legs!" Tony exclaimed, pointing to the photos.

Danny quirked a brow, his eyes flickering between the screen and Tony's vivid expression. "Yes? What about them?"

"Where the fuck did they go, Phantom?"

Danny wracked his brain trying to remember a time when he'd ever mentioned his ghostly tail to the public before and came up blank.

This was probably about due then. "My spectral tail? It's just imaging of my legs morphed together. It's like…I don't know, it just happens when I'm flying a lot. It's not really something I do on purpose."

"So what if you need to land? Does your tail just like…I don't know, re-form legs?"

"I think so?" Danny paused. "Wait, you know what, I've never actually thought about this before. Huh…I think it's just an unconscious thing I do. If I don't really need my legs for something, then my body replaces them with something better suited to the task?"

Tony shook his head. "If there's any ectobiologists out here, get on this. I need answers, stat."

"Sorry."

"Okay, so this next one is a bit weird, but do you have bones?" Dalton asked.

Danny blinked. "I do, yes."

"You're saying that as if other ghosts don't."

"Some ghosts don't. Some do."

They didn't need to know that Danny's bone structure was more detailed than any other ghosts, like Frostbite, who also had bones. They didn't need to know that Phantom also had tendons, ligaments, muscles, nerves, etc.

No, just the basics.

"Why do you have them when others don't? Does it have to do with ghosts who were human versus those who weren't, or is it something else?"

"I actually have no idea why some ghosts have bones and others don't. Sorry." That wasn't even a lie. Possibly the first complete truth he'd told all interview.

"Alright, now I want to get sort of serious for this last one." Dalton rolled his pastel hoodie sleeves up. "You don't need to answer it if it's too much, but I know you have not revealed what your human identity was back before you were a ghost, but do you think you ever would? Or is that one of those things that ghosts keep a secret?"

Well, this wasn't nearly as offensive of a question as it could have been. And if Danny were being honest, he had half-expected something like this.

Of course, he'd told the production team before they'd even started that on no uncertain terms was he going to show off his powers or talk about his death, but this was just enough removed from that topic to be passable in his eyes.

"There's sort of two questions in there," he noted. "To the less personal point, I do know some ghost's human identities, either on accident or because they told me." He recalled Sidney's identity, and Ember's. "But I think a lot of ghosts, especially older ones, are so far removed from their human identities that there's really no point in bringing them up. Of course, everyone's human identity plays a key role in how we end up as a ghost, but after so long as a ghost, sometimes those memories just sorta fade to the back, you know?

"But for me, I don't know what I'll do in the future. As of right now, I have no plans on revealing who I was to the world. I really just want my privacy, and I also…well, I want to respect my living relatives too, who more or less doesn't know I exist…" Danny's voice trailed off. Before he could think of any reasons to ask the producer to cut that line from the podcast in post-production, he took a deep breath and plowed on.

"But I don't know, maybe someday I'll be ready to tell everyone."

To his surprise, a heavy hand slapped his shoulder, and Danny jumped in the air before realizing that it was just Tony's hand gripping him in support.

"Well, we support your decision here. Whenever you're ready is cool with us."

Warmth settled in his chest, and he felt a shy smile grace his lips. He didn't expect a stranger's support to touch him, but oddly enough, Tony was incredibly reassuring.

"Thanks."

"Alright everyone," Dalton said, addressing the camera. "We're going to jump to an ad break to thank today's sponsors. When we come back, we have some clips from various fights from Phantom back when he first began appearing in Amity Park till now that we're going to break down and analyze with the man himself. So stick around! We'll be right back."


I will fully admit that this fic turned into a way for me to sort of take a break from the heavy, serious angst I've been writing. It was very chill. Idk if it's any good quality wise, but you know it was a fun write.

Thanks for reading!