Well, I hope these two chapters in two days makes up for the month hiatus. sorry about that. Did I mention I hate gcses? I've had this one as a half written draft for ages, so I thought I'd finally get around to finishing it. Enjoy!

If Danny had known he would die, he would have bothered to put on a clean t shirt that morning. As it was, he hadn't.

Jazz had lectured him for it, insisting he go and change, and he'd gone upstairs and sat on his bed for five minutes.

He didn't change the t shirt. Jazz didn't notice.

Breakfast was the same as usual, in that it was glowing. Jazz glared at their parents over the machinery on the table. Danny glared at his ectoplasmic eggs.

In the end, they managed to find a pack of bread that wasn't ectocontaminated and ate it with butter that wasn't quite as green as everything else in the fridge. As soon as they finished eating, Jazz shoved her chair in and announced she was going to the library. Danny stuck his tongue out at her as she slammed the door behind her.

"Your dad and I are going out later, Danny." Mom said. "Are you okay in the house for a couple of hours."

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

"You know the rules?"

"Yes, mom!" he sighed. "Don't touch anything glowing and don't mess around with anything I haven't seen before."

"And don't touch my fudge." Dad added. "That's important. I swear Jazz is taking it."

"That's me, Jack." Mom told him. "You're not the only one that gets hungry when we're working."

"It's you?" he gasped. "How dare you!"

Danny rolled his eyes. His parents didn't fight often, but when they did, it was about the stupidest things. Fudge? Really? He and Jazz always fought about serious issues. Like t shirts.

He spent most of the morning in his room playing doomed with Tucker, who was as terrible as ever. Well, he wasn't terrible, but compared to the guy they were playing against, – chaos – they were both amateurs. Around eleven, he went downstairs to try and forage for some sort of edible snack. He had no luck.

Ugh. He probably wasn't even hungry. He was just bored as hell. Maybe he could have a poke around the lab and see the latest stupid invention mom and dad had built. Last time, it was the Fenton ectosplifer. Danny wasn't sure what it did, but he was pretty sure ghosts didn't exist and it was therefore useless. Like everything else his parents built. Why couldn't they have a normal job? Tucker's mom was a nurse and his dad did something in an office in the city centre. Tuck hadn't been specific.

The lab was as freaky as ever. Danny wasn't sure that there was a single thing in here that wasn't glowing or beeping or making some kind of disconcerting noise. He shivered.

He picked up one of the machines on the lab worktable, turning it over in his hands. It was lighter than most of the stuff his parents made. Smaller too. He put it down again, moving on to the bigger and more exciting things further down.

He was halfway through examining a Fenton ectoblaster when he noticed the giant hole in the wall.

How the hell did he not notice that before?

His parents had been working on the 'Fenton portal' for months, but Danny and Jazz both agreed that nothing would ever come of it. The idea of a ghost realm was just too ridiculous. Despite their children's scepticism, mom and dad had persevered, and now they had this gaping hole to show for their work.

Danny risked a look inside, sticking his head in past the ugly yellow and black entrance and pulling on one of those stupid suits his parents insisted he wear in the lab.

There were wires snaking everywhere, and the walls were grimy and grey. Danny could see why it didn't work. After deciding it probably wasn't all that dangerous, he took a few steps into the portal with more trepidation than he'd admit to.

It was deeper than it looked from the outside and it went back at least a couple of metres.

"Danny?" he heard his mom shout.

"In the lab!" he yelled up.

Danny glanced down at his feet. There really were a lot of wires. Maybe he should get out of here. He knew his dad often left frayed wires lying around, and he didn't want to get a shock. He also didn't want to trip…

With a shout, Danny fell to the floor, the wires tangled at his feet. He tugged, but he was firmly knotted up in them. His hand groped around on the wall, searching for a handhold. He grasped onto something sticking out, and pulled, trying to get himself up. His hand pushed something, and he fell back.

Pain rippled through his body. It was agony. He vaguely heard someone screaming, and a call of his name. he heard nothing else.

When he woke, Danny registered a shape hovering over him.

"Danny, you're awake!" his dad beamed.

"Danny!" mom grinned. "How do you feel? You gave us quite a scare."

"What happened?" he muttered, holding his hand to his head. "I feel like I was hit by the RV."

"You had an accident." His mom explained, her expression carefully neutral. "With the portal. You got a shock."

"From the wires?"

She shook her head. "From the portal."

Danny gave a weak laugh. "The one that doesn't work?"

She didn't even crack a smile at his joke. "It does now." She told him. "Danny, you did something. We don't know what. You turned it on."

"I… what?"

"You must have hit something. Like I said, we're not sure. But the portal is working now. It's glowing green and everything."

"Mom,"

"Danny," her professional voice cracked, and he could hear the parent in her trickle through. "What were you thinking?" she exploded. "You die… you could have died in there! You know you're not meant to touch anything dangerous."

"I thought it didn't work." He protested.

"Danny." He stiffened as she enveloped him in a crushing hug. "I'm just glad you're ok. You are ok, sweetie? You don't feel weird?"

"No?"

"Nothing different?"

"No? mom, what are you getting at?"

She smiled. "nothing. Nothing. You get some more sleep. We're going to run a few tests to make sure you really are alright, then we'll call your sister. She's going to kill us."

Danny forgot his mom's questioning in lieu of discovering he was a ghost. He had come up the stairs, glad to finally get away from his parent's attention and into his own bed, when he had doubled over in pain. When the pain stopped, he was glowing.

He had rushed to the bathroom mirror and had taken in his ivory hair and toxic eyes with terror. He had blinked, then the pain was back and he was himself again. Black hair. Blue eyes. The same freckles he had always hated.

He exhaled in relief.

Then it happened again.

Three weeks later

He was flying happily through the air after capturing a ghost in an alley behind the nasty burger, and now he was craving a double cheeseburger and fries. This new ghost hunting gig made him hungry as hell.

He was just about to turn back, when he heard a scream from a couple of streets down. Great. His burger could wait.

This ghost wasn't very different from most of the ones he had had to deal with before. He'd only seen a couple of humanoid ones, and this was one of the weird octopus things. Danny hadn't quite come up with a name for them yet. The only difference was this one was huge.

It had to be at least ten feet tall, if not more. Danny wasn't the best judge of height.

He transformed quickly, shuddering as the cold rings washed over him. He still couldn't get use to that. He powered up one of his ectoblasts and jumped into the fight, hoping he could stay in the air this time.

It was about five minutes into being slammed against walls by the ectopus (hey that was good) tentacles that his parents arrived.

As far as Danny was aware, they had yet to see a ghost. They certainly hadn't seen him (he'd made sure of it) and this was pretty much the first public fight he'd had. They must have heard the screams while on one of their nightly patrols.

This wasn't good. What if they recognised him!

No he was being stupid. He looked totally different in this form, and even he had trouble connecting his two forms in his own mind. They wouldn't be able to tell.

His mom leapt out and immediately began firing her gun. Danny flinched and dodged as a stray ectoblast came hurtling towards him. His movement made his mom turn to look at him, and her eyes widened. Danny felt himself flinch and duck away from the gaze, quickly turning invisible and weaving out of the fight. He managed to capture the tentacle ghost thing with one of the weird thermoses that his parents made and he definitely hadn't stolen, then he got out of there as quick as humanly (ghostly?) possible.

He slunk back into the house that evening, dreading the confrontation with his parents. He was sure his mom had recognised him, and she would almost certainly have told his dad. Would they say anything to him? Would they accept him, or would they try and… god, would they capture him? Do what they always threatened to do to ghosts?

Danny had grown up with stories of evil monsters getting their comeuppance; what if his parents did the same to him?

He tiptoed inside, taking care to wipe his shoes on the mat and take them off. He placed his bag carefully on the kitchen table instead of flinging it onto the sofa as he usually did. He was being so careful that he didn't notice his parents come into the room.

"Danny." Said mom. Danny jumped, whirling round and feeling like a deer caught in the bright headlights of a deer hunting truck.

"Hi, mom."

"We need to talk."

When adults said 'we need to talk', Danny knew it meant something serious was going on. He had only heard it from his own parents a couple of times in his life, the most notable being the time he accidentally broke his own leg with an ectoblaster and got ectoradiation poisoning at the same time. After that, mom and dad decided he needed to learn about lab safety. It wasn't a fun week.

This time, he knew it was much more serious. This could be life or death. Half death, he supposed. He still wasn't sure exactly what it was.

"We saw you today." Mom continued. Her voice was low, but not dangerously so. "in the fight. We know it was you. That ghost."

Danny opened his mouth to deny it, but closed it again soon after. He knew there was no point.

"How?" he asked instead.

Mom laughed, dry and humourless. She cleared her throat and dad stepped in.

"Remember when you had that lab accident?" he started.

"Yeah."

Dad sighed. "we told you that you had a shock, but it was more than that. we came down and saw you in the portal, and god, Danny you were screaming and we thought you were dying. Then you came out… and,"

"You were a ghost." Mom finished. "You had the white hair, and the inverted suit, and we thought you were dead. Then you changed back, and we decided not to tell you. We were still trying to figure out what it was, and I was panicked, and - "

"We both were." Dad interjected. "We had no idea what to do, so we did nothing. We tried to forget it ever happened."

"Except apparently, you found out about it on your own. How long have you been fighting ghosts Danny? It's dangerous! You've already gotten hurt. You could get killed for real!"

Danny moved to hug his mom as she got closer and closer to tears. His dad, who was already sniffling, joined them, wrapping his arms around the two and embracing his family.

"Sorry." Danny murmured, not sure if they heard him.

"There's no need to be sorry." His mom ground out. "Honey, we're going to figure this out, but we're going to do this together. All of us."

Danny laughed and hugged her tighter. "Thanks mom."

When Jazz came into the lab later on and found the three of them giggling over an ectogun, she was understandably confused, and signed them all up with a therapy session with Dr. Jazz. None of them enjoyed that. not even Jazz herself.

Then, to make matters worse, she made Danny change his shirt again.