Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Danny Phantom.
Note (8/28/2020): To "Shadow Ninja 287" omg yes! Exactly! I know it's been taking us a while to actually get there but that's a big part of what this story is about! It's about Valerie accepting Danny being half-ghost and hunting other ghosts for the right reasons; Sam and Tucker growing as people; Danny's parents accepting the consequences of their neglect up until now with their youngest child and taking responsibility for all their unethical ghost hunting by helping to protect Amity Park instead of picking fights with random ghosts; and finally, it's about showing how hard it's been for Dani living on her own ever since she escaped Vlad and also getting closure and some sort of acknowledgment from her 'father' too. Because I agree that he owes her that much.
P.S. And to "Dp-Marvel94" yeah, I wanted to share a bit more about Jazz since she's kinda been in the background while all this is going on since she doesn't have any character issues to fix. She did that going to Vlad in the first place to apologize and ask for help when Danny went missing, putting faith in a man she knew was dangerous and trusting that he does care about Danny despite their previous relationship.
Chapter 18: Who I Am VS Who I Want To Be
"Self awareness doesn't stop you from making mistakes, it allows you to learn from them." ~ Unknown
Danielle's POV
Since I had such a hard time shaking off those agent creeps its no surprise that I pretty much crashed as soon as I felt like it was safe again, at least for the time being. In fact, I was so worn out that I slept almost the entire day away in an abandoned train car on the edge of town and only mustered enough energy to wake up by the late afternoon. Still, even though I was still pretty tired I knew it was time to get moving again...
It's kinda sad how I'm actually glad I don't have many belongings to pack up. As you can imagine most of it is just the basics like a water bottle, sleeping bag, a jacket, clothes, money, food, a map so I could figure out how to reach Danny without overusing my powers by flying all the way there, and a couple other odd items in a red backpack I found with a broken zipper. The only reason I have any of those things is either because someone was kind enough to give it to me, or when I had to resort to taking what I needed to survive. But I REALLY hate stealing like this whenever I needed new clothes or food so to make sure I don't make a habit of it I only take as much as I need at any given time.
I always try to pay people back with the little money I've made helping with things like yard work since that's something even a thirteen-year-old can do without being asked too many questions. When I first started living on my own and couldn't think of any other way to get the help I needed to make it work, I was able to get most of the things I needed by overshadowing people and having them buy something for me and then dropping it off somewhere and forgetting about it so I could take it while no one was looking. That method didn't last long since I had to stop doing it when overshadowing people began taking up way too much energy to be worth it in the end and I realized how unfair it was for me to force others to take care of me against their will. It made me feel too much like Vlad and that thought made me sick to my stomach.
I also found out that one of the ways Vlad has been following my trail is because he could lock onto my ghost signature whenever I was caught disappearing on camera about to overshadow someone. That's when I started just taking things invisibly that wouldn't be missed and leaving money on the counter whenever I managed to make any because for one thing, it didn't take nearly as much time and energy to do so I was never on camera long enough to get caught, and I didn't have to drag anyone else into this mess I've made for myself just trying to get by on my own. I never expected it to be easy, but I also didn't think that staying under the radar like this would make it that much harder to try and figure out who I am besides just a half-ghost clone of Danny...
That's why the odd items in my backpack are mostly just small mementos of all the places I've been to because I wanted to hold on to those memories and experiences since they help me set myself apart from Danny even though he still means a lot to me. I can't change the fact that I'm still a clone of him and I've only existed for almost a year and a half now so I don't have over thirteen years of actual life experience under my belt like he does. Everything I've ever known up until now either came from Vlad teaching me those things himself or from his subconscious textbook info about Danny's life and what he likes in the back of my head. That's why for the past six months I've been trying really hard to figure out who I am and what I like that has nothing to do with him or Danny.
That's how I discovered that I really like drawing actually.
Sometimes I would end up staring at something for a long time and really like how it made me feel or how it looked and since I didn't have a phone or anything to hold onto that memory, I drew it on a scrap of paper I found or a napkin. Thankfully I have a notebook to actually draw in after this one time when I snuck into a school during recess to see if there was anything useful I could take from lost and found and I met this really nice girl named Sarah. She told me she was looking for her favorite pencil case since another kid in her class hid it somewhere as payback when she refused to draw them something so Sarah was hoping someone might have found it and put it in the lost and found.
I helped her look for it to avoid suspicion about why I was rummaging through the lost and found in the first place and we got to talking, then after we found the pencil case she showed me her notebook full of cute doodles and other sketches. As thanks for helping her find it she even gave me a few of her spare pens and pencils and an empty notebook of my own after Sarah told me it made her happy that I seemed really interested in learning how to draw too. After that, we spent the rest of recess together drawing pictures and laughing over the really silly ones until the bell rang and she had to go back to class...
She asked me what grade I was in and if we could hang out at recess again sometime but I had to lie and tell her I was just visiting so I couldn't stay. I'll never forget how disappointed she looked because honestly, I felt infinitely worse. And after Sarah left and I turned invisible to avoid getting caught by one of the teachers as they checked to make sure all their real students were present and accounted for, I remember clutching the notebook close to my chest and just curling up on the ground, sobbing.
I can't even begin to describe how desperately I wanted to stay; how much I wanted to go to school and make friends like a normal human girl. But I knew. I already knew deep down that it would be impossible for me to do that because I'm not even real. I'm just someone else's copy, a failed experiment, and a runaway lab rat. I don't have a home, a family, or even a name to call my own! Nothing about me is unique or normal at all. My birth was only a means to an end and as far Vlad and the rest of the world is concerned, there only is and will ever be one Danny Phantom...
Our names might be the same, but there are only four people who know I even exist, and that's Danny himself, Vlad, Sam, and Tucker. But to everyone else, I really might as well be nothing but a phantom, a twisted reflection in a mirror of everything Vlad wanted but he got stuck with me. Vlad doesn't want me as his daughter, he just wants to put me back in a cage to keep me out of his hair or to tear me apart molecule by molecule to study whatever's left of me so he can try again making the perfect half-ghost son...
That's why it's so ironic that the real Danny is the only person who really cares about me. He saw me as someone worth saving even though I lied and tricked him like Vlad wanted me to. I have no idea how Danny's friends feel about me since they were suspicious of me from the start, and they had every reason to be after I helped Vlad kidnap him. I hope they'll give me another chance since I helped them get out of being grounded for ditching school to save him but I'm not holding my breath. As long as I have my 'cousin' Danny, I don't need anyone else since we're family.
I may not have a father anymore, but I'll always have Danny and that's what kept me going. He'll help me find a place in the world. I just know it! Being a part of something and discovering myself is all I want in life anymore. I don't need Vlad, he doesn't want me anyway. All I need is to be given a chance to become someone new so I can be happy or just know that someone is there to watch my back because I'm tired of living alone and being on the run. I don't want to just survive. I want to prove to myself, Vlad, and the rest of the world that I'm not worthless and deserve a chance to live too.
That's why I'm still here, why I still exist...
...it's because I don't want to be just another 'Danny Phantom' anymore.
Tucker's POV
As someone who has known Danny the longest, I hate how it took me this long to see how much of a jerk I've been or how much I've been pulling back from sticking up for him like a best friend should when I didn't agree with his decisions. And when Danny first became half-ghost we just thought he had become a cool kid with powers or a superhero like you see in comic books. We were with him when Danny's powers went on the fritz as much as possible at school and when we were just hanging out, but I guess we never realized just how much they've changed him.
I mean, I've seen his eyes glow when he's mad or about to use his powers even without transforming too which should have been my first clue. But the fact that Danny has had a total meltdown that made his powers go so out of control that he hurt himself while in a lab, because of Sam and me -TWICE now I might add- I finally see what he's been telling us about those ghost powers being something he can't shut off. They're a part of him now just like all the bones in our bodies or our brains.
He's also right about how power-mad I went when Desiree gave me ghost powers too. The only difference is it's like that part of me was never me, or I guess it kinda was since it was feeding off my own feelings of jealousy and made me act uncharacteristically rude and confrontational with Danny. But it's not like I felt weaker or strange because of it, it's more like I lost my inhibitions or maybe that's what it's like to feel possessed in the movies while fully aware of your actions but it feels so right even though it's not that you don't really care.
That's why I get where Danny's coming from worrying about Valerie since her battle suit is a bit like that too, it gives her this rush of energy we normally don't experience since we don't have ghost powers but in a way...maybe still they are. Once things calm down I'm really tempted to see if Valerie would be willing to let me test a few theories, maybe take a look at the suit's mainframe to see if I could notice any patterns to how it all works. Then again, maybe that's my techno-geekiness talking...
Anyways, when I was enjoying having ghost powers, unlike Danny I didn't have to worry about hiding from my parents for my own safety to make sure they didn't shoot me. I didn't have to make sure ghosts didn't attack my friends or family 24 hours a day with an active portal right under my bedroom down in the basement. Since there were no real drawbacks for me all I was seeing was the fun part of it and how cool having ghost powers could be just like Sam.
Neither of us saw how hard it's been for Danny to deal with apart from what we actually saw or when we helped him during a fight. Dealing with normal puberty is one thing, but having ghost powers changing your body on top of that? Yeah, I can't even imagine what that's like for him. That's why when we talked to him last night, I tried really hard to be understanding but I also didn't want to skirt around the fact that things were really tense between us and Valerie. Then again, I mostly mean Sam since I'm pretty much over the whole she-was-gunning-for-Danny thing since Valerie hasn't been avoiding Danny, she's actually been trying to get to know the real him now that she knows the full story behind how she met his ghost half and that his hero thing was never just an act.
Sure, he wasn't very good at it at first but Danny got much better over time and we helped when we could. Still I hate to admit that the appeal of ghost hunting got old for Sam and me pretty quick and when Danny even suggested he could handle it on his own we didn't question it and eagerly took him up on that. We never realized how stressful it was getting to do it on his own or how much it hurt when we started coming up with excuses not to go out on patrol or made at him when he didn't have enough time to hang out with us.
I realize how selfish we were about all that.
Danny was working his butt off to keep us safe and let us hang back while he did all the work...and then we accused him of not trying hard enough? I dunno, ever since he decided to trust Vlad over the two of us I genuinely couldn't figure out why at first until it hit me like a ton of bricks that we haven't given him any reason to rely on us. When the going got tough, Sam and I just ditched him which looking back is super unfair... and we've been holding him back too.
After we talked it all out once he was officially declared not a missing person anymore I really thought all three of us had come to terms with him leaving Amity Park. But last night when Sam got all needy again since she couldn't bear the thought of him actually going away anymore that she lost her cool and I was forced to deal with it until Danny ducked out and all that drama happened on his end. To be completely honest though I think Sam was probably just jealous that Valerie has been getting all his attention lately because of the whole battle suit thing. And I'll admit I was a bit jealous too, but at least I'm trying to respect Danny's reason behind helping her get it working again.
He trusts Vlad a lot now, but as far as actually protecting this town I agree with Danny that Valerie is the safer choice since she has a personal investment in this town. She actually has people in it she wants to keep safe, like her dad and her friend Star. But any new ghost hunters Vlad hires or trains to do the same job won't be doing it because they care that much about other people, they're going to do it because they're being paid to it. Then there's the fact that Danny's parents have been put on probation so now even if they wanted to help out, their hands are tied because they're working for Vlad too to show Danny they're serious about proving that they've changed and never want to hurt him again.
That's why I'm not going to do that anymore, and if it means I need to distance myself from Sam and Valerie for a while then I'm ok with that. There has to be something I can do for Danny that doesn't involve breaking up a catfight between two girls that used to or still might have a crush on him. I just needed to figure that out for myself. And obviously I'll still be there for Sam if she really needs me, same goes for Valerie, but I refuse to be the scapegoat or the third wheel anymore. It's time for me to step up my game and show Danny that I haven't forgotten why we're best friends and that I've still got his back too.