The day Danny Fenton died was a sad day for all. Well, only really for the people that knew of his existence, which wasn't really that many in the general scheme of things, but a quick post on social media gained many comments on 'how tragic it was' or how 'he was such a good kid' 'you didn't even know him, Janet.'
Casper high had a memorial assembly where Dash Baxter did a good job of pretending that he hadn't been beating up the kid for the entire time they were in high school.
Unsurprisingly, Danny's two actual friends and his sister weren't at school for a while, which everyone understood. When they came back, they slipped about the halls of Casper, ignoring all the stares and talking only to each other.
No one wanted to confront them.
The day Danny Phantom died was confusing for everyone. He was a ghost, surely he couldn't die again?
Apparently he could.
Most of the town was witness to Phantom's demise and it was a harrowing event.
The horrible thing was, it wasn't even a dangerous ghost that did it.
It was the fucking box ghost.
No one knew exactly why Phantom couldn't beat the ghost who usually couldn't get five feet away from the Fenton portal before being sucked up in a thermos. No one knew exactly how Danny Phantom had ended up free falling from fifty feet up in the sky with no powers. No one knew how he ended up crashing into the hard tarmac below. Everyone knew why he didn't get up again.
The town held a huge funeral honouring their fallen hero, while the Fentons mourned their dead son in private without knowing the two were connected.
Ghosts stopped coming through the portal soon, either out of respect, or out of fear. Amity park was generally calm except for the odd ectopuss sticking its head out of the portal to creep around.
The atmosphere was tense for a few months before it all started to calm down again and people began to get used to the day being uninterrupted by ghosts.
That was until the haunting started.
It was subtle at first – you wouldn't know it was happening unless you were there.
The old abandoned house near the school was the first to have the new ghost's treatment. It had apparently decided to take up temporary residence there while it figured out what to do with itself, and people suddenly started avoiding it even more than they already did.
Next was the school itself. Students having an English lesson swore the temperature dropped ten degrees when the door creaked open and Mr Lancer, in the middle of giving a lecture on the importance of symbolism in Macbeth, jumped out of his skin.
The ghost had a sense of humour too, brandishing a dagger at the teacher while repeating Macbeths speech in the spookiest voice it could possibly do. After getting over his shock, Mr Lancer spent the rest of the lesson giving the ghost notes on its performance. It promised to practice and do better next time.
The nasty burger employees got a shock when all the condiments disappeared and then promptly fell on top of their heads. Later, people eating there had to endure their burgers being lobbed around the room.
Eventually, nearly everywhere in the town had been victim to the mischievous ghost's pranks and terrible sense of humour.
A couple of weeks after it first started, the ghost reached the Fenton's.
Maddie and Jack Fenton were trying their best to cook food for their daughter and them. They were, predictably, failing and their casserole ended up bright green. They had just picked up the phone to order pizza when the lights went out.
This was rather confusing as Jack had replaced all the bulbs in the kitchen just the other day when he had accidently blown them all up. He came to the obvious conclusion of, "Ghost!"
"Jack," Maddie sighed, her eyes tired. "There's no ghost. They don't come anymore."
The tablecloth flapped under them and Jazz shivered despite it being July.
The windows rattled.
Maddie, suddenly alert and not looking nearly so sure of herself, jumped. Jazz frowned.
They all whipped round as the window clattered again and frosted over. The Fentons watched. Through the frosted window, writing appeared, as if being written with a finger.
One singular word that struck fear into their hearts was spelled out.
Y e e t.
"Yeet?" Maddie asked. "What on earth does yeet mean?"
"I have no idea." Jack said. "Perhaps it's some kind of code? Or a secret ghost language?"
Jazz, who, despite being a teenager, was sadly out of touch with the language used by them, had nothing to input.
In the end they called Tucker Foley, someone Jazz felt could probably help them.
"Yeet." He mused. "Very interesting."
"Do you know what it is?" Maddie asked eagerly.
"Well," Tucker started, "Yeet is a term meaning 'to throw' but is mostly used by gen z kids as a meme. Honestly. I use it loads but I have no clue what the hell it means."
"So you cant help?"
Tucker examined the window more closely and promptly turned an interesting shade of purple.
"I know that writing." He said. "That's his writing."
"You mean…"
"Danny. Yeah."
"But… what…?" Jazz stuttered. "Is he… alive?"
The window, which everyone had been ignoring for a while, suddenly frosted over again, causing everyone to jump.
E h, y.
"Danny!" Maddie screamed, shocked out of her mind.
U h… m?
"Daniel Fenton, what the hell is going on?" Jazz questioned, her face stern and eyes glistening with tears.
"That can't be Danny." Jack murmured. "Danny is dead. Which blob of ectoplasm is doing that?"
Y e a h… t.
"What?" Tucker said.
t?
"Uh… obviously."
h!
And something phased through the window.
It was blue skinned and black haired with glowing green eyes. It was smirking.
"Danny?" Maddie gasped. "You're a ghost?"
"Well… that's kind of what happens when people die." He shrugged.
"No. No its not." She frowned. "Most people just pass on peacefully. It's only people with something connecting them to this world that become ghosts. They need an obsession."
"Yeah, again, about that."
Tucker's eyes, seeing Danny's resigned glance down at his feet… tail… whatever, widened.
"No way." He breathed. "You're actually gonna…"
"Yeah. Now that I'm… you know, actually dead, it's probably time for them to know."
"Can you still transform?" Tucker asked, fiddling with his PDA.
"I can actually. It looks a little different – much more like him than I would like… but yeah.
"Excuse me," Jack put in, "What are you on about?"
Danny grimaced and braced himself. The rings, so familiar to the younger people in the room, appeared around his waist and made their way up his body, changing him.
Danny Phantom stood before them a few seconds later, changed, but still recognisable.
"Well shit." Jack said. "We're all idiots."
"Pretty much." Dany agreed with a shrug. "Sorry for the whole… lying for four years thing. And the whole dying all the way thing."
"You know Sam's going to kill you again, right?" Tucker reminded him.
"Shit." Danny muttered. "Didn't think of that. Well, it's probably time for me to go, huh? See you guys later I guess?"
Sam did indeed swear vengeance later on when Tucker told her, and it took him and all of the Fentons to stop her from storming the ghost zone until she found Danny to kill him even more.
This was meant to be a really angsty serious fic, but it's impossible to write angst, so it turned into this.