On Sunday Danny woke up with a weird tingling in his hands. At first, he thought he'd slept weird, and they were simply asleep—passing the hell out for eight hours on a beanbag chair could do that—but as he wiggled hands and flexed his wrists in an attempt to restore the blood flow, he realized they weren't numb at all. The tingling didn't fade, despite his efforts. If anything, it began feeling warmer.
As Danny described what he was feeling to his friends, a thoughtful look crossed Tucker's face. "That kind of sounds like my ghost sense." Tucker held up one hand and wiggled his fingers. "Except it comes in a quick buzz and goes away almost immediately."
Sam shook her head. "I've not felt anything like that. Maybe it's not a ghost thing?"
"What else could it be?" Danny asked.
"After effects of a sugar coma?" Tucker suggested. "Maybe your system went into shock at Sam being rich."
Danny exhaled sharply through his nose. "Tucker, I hate to break it to you, buthow do you think my parents could afford to build the portal in our basement?"
Tucker's eyes widened, jaw going slack as his half-asleep brain began to process, nearly ten years late, how it was possible for two scientists with no day jobs to speak of to own a house, raise two kids, and spend years on R&D.
Danny huffed then turned to Sam, raising his eyebrows.
"It might be carpal tunnel," she suggested. "My grandma's had it before from bowling."
He frowned at his hands. He'd heard of carpal tunnel but didn't know anything about it, including what caused it. They'd played a game of bowling last night around 1am but, somehow, he didn't think that was enough.
"We could ask her," she offered. "She's definitely awake by now."
"Okay," Danny replied. He'd never met anyone in Sam's family and after all she went on about her parents, he didn't care to be introduced to them. For her grandmother, on the other hand, Sam had nothing but words of praise, pride, and affection. He'd been hoping he'd meet her this weekend, though a conversation about possible carpal tunnel was not how he saw it happening.
Tucker, still wrapped in the quilt he'd slept with like it was a shock blanket, let out an incoherent noise somewhere between a groan and a pterodactyl screech. "You're both rich! What the hell?!
"Well-off," Danny corrected. "I'm well-off. Sam's just freaking loaded period."
"I can't believe this. I feel. So betrayed."
"I can't believe you never figured Danny out," Sam retorted. "Where did you think his parents got all their materials and equipment? KMart?"
Tucker whined and pulled the blanket over his head.
"Yeah, okay," Sam muttered, pushing herself to her feet. "You stay here and process, Danny and I are going to find my grandma."
Apart from the entryway last night, the only part of Sam's house Danny had seen so far was the basement, and after the sudden reveal of the bowling alley down there, he wasn't certain he'd even seen the entire thing. But from what he had seen, he had a feeling Sam had played a part in the general design of the room they'd spent all last night in. It was stylish but not lavish, comfortable, modern, and dare he say it, practical in its amenities. Once they crested the stairs from the basement, that feeling vanished faster than a ghost into the Fenton thermos.
Sam had long complained that her parents were excessive and obsessed with image. He'd thought the entryway was so nice because it was simply her parent's way of showing off to visitors and the rest would be more down to earth. As she led him through the house, however, he realized that was not the case. The whole place just seemed to ooze wealth—and Danny knew all about oozing. Everything from the rugs to the furniture to the lamps screamed 'look at me, I'm fancy.' It was ridiculous. It was intimidating. If he so much as sneezed in here, it'd land on several thousand dollars' worth of stuff.
"This is…." Danny started to say but then trailed off. He honestly didn't have the right adjective for it.
"Tch, I know. But don't worry, the kitchen won't be as bad as you think."
Danny wasn't sure what to expect when they stepped into the kitchen. It was big and open, that was the first thing he noticed. The second were the appliances, all sleek and shiny, some with logos or names not even in English. The countertops probably cost more than his family's entire kitchen. Yet something about it struck him as homey. There was a simple table in there, too, which seemed an odd thing to have considering that they'd just passed a formal dining room on the way in.
Sitting at the table with a half-eaten sandwich on a plate and a scrapbook open in front of her was a petite older woman. Her white hair was pulled back in a ponytail atop her head and she wore a long brown cardigan over a yellow dress and white house slippers. A motorized wheelchair was parked directly beside the chair she sat in. She looked up, blinking dark blue eyes at him for a moment, and then a broad smile stretched across her face.
"Well, now, there you kids are!" she crowed. "I was beginning to wonder if I might have to hide the bodies before your parents got home."
"Good morning to you too, grandma," Sam greeted fondly. She crossed the room and gave her grandma a kiss on the forehead.
The old woman chuckled. "Good morning, bubeleh and…." Her eyes flicked to Danny over Sam's shoulder and she smiled. "You must be Danny."
Danny straightened up and he nodded. "Yes ma'am, Mrs. Manson."
"Oh, please, none of that. Mrs. Manson is my daughter in law. You can call me Ida. Or Ms. Ida if it makes you feel better. It's good to finally meet you. I was beginning to think Sam would never bring you boys around. Wait, where's the other one?" She craned her neck, as if she expected to see Tucker behind them.
"Having a mental breakdown in the basement," Sam replied casually.
"As you do."
"We were hoping you might be able to help Danny." Sam stepped aside and motioned him forward. "He might have carpal tunnel."
Ida cocked her head to the side. "Too many video games?"
Danny blinked. "That can cause carpal tunnel?"
She nodded. "I've heard about it happening in kids who play too many video games."
"But…I've never had a problem before?"
"Understandable. It can be caused by excessive repetitive motions. It's nothing to worry about," she assured him. "Do some exercises, take some Tylenol, and lay off the games for a bit and you should be fine. At worst, you might need a brace for a few days. The numbness should clear up."
Danny looked down at his tingling hands. "But they're not numb. They're tingling and kind of, uh, warm?"
"Both hands?" Ida sat up straighter, surprised. "Now that is unusual. Did you hit your head?"
"Not that I can remember." He looked at Sam for confirmation and she merely shook her head.
"Hmm. And it's not your whole arms?"
He shook his head.
"Strange…well at least we know it's not a heart attack. Bubeleh, get him some Tylenol and maybe a warm compress, see if that helps. You ought to consider the stretches, too, just in case. Tell your parents when you get home."
Danny nodded. "I will. Thanks, Ms. Ida."
"Of course, kiddo." She grinned. "You hungry? I figured Sam wouldn't have anything planned for lunch, so I ordered a sandwich platter for you kids. It's in the fridge. Danny, have a seat here and I'll show you those exercises."
Tucker wandered into the kitchen a few minutes later, having followed his sixth sense in their direction, while Ida was walking Danny through the last of three different exercises. He perked up at the sight of the sandwich platter sitting on the table and completely ignored everything else going on in favor of asking, "Are those for us?"
"Sure are!" Ida replied. "Help yourself. Oh, and before you start on that Mrs. Manson nonsense too, please, just Ida is fine."
"Okay," he said, stopping in front of the only side of the table without a chair, and held out his hand. "I'm Tucker."
Ida shook it with a cheerful, "I know! Sam's been tellin' me about you boys for years! I'm glad to finally meet you."
"Same. She says you rock."
"That I do. That I do. Oh, Danny, you can stop now, it's been long enough. You'll want to do each of those every few hours."
Danny let go of his hand and shook them both out. "Thanks, Ms. Ida."
Ida nodded. "You're very welcome. Well, I'll leave you kids to it!" She scooted her chair back and turned in her chair to face her wheelchair. Danny and Tucker immediately offered to help her, but Ida waved them off with a smile and a laugh. "Don't worry! I got myself out of this darn thing and I can get myself back into it!"
"She's good, don't worry," Sam reassured them, though her eyes tracked her grandma's movements carefully. "She bowls in that thing."
The boys stared in awe…and a small amount of fear. Ida laughed, dropping into her wheelchair. "I'd do a lot more, too, if Jeremy didn't worry so much. Later, kiddos!" she crowed and then cruised out of the room.
"I like her," Danny said as the sound of her wheelchair's motor faded.
Sam grinned. "She rocks."
"So did she help you with your hands?" Tucker asked.
"Eh, sort of. She said it's probably not carpal tunnel, but she showed me how to do some exercises to help with it anyway."
"And we know you didn't get hurt, so it probably is a ghost thing," Sam mused, folding her arms across her chest, and leaned back in her chair. "But then why don't either of us feel it?"
"Maybe you will and it's just happening to me first?" Danny suggested, glancing down at his hands. He curled and uncurled his fists, wiggled his fingers, then flexed them. The exercises hadn't helped. His wrists felt different but the tingling in his hands remained unchanged. If anything, they'd gotten hotter. It was weird.
Tucker's expression soured and he glared at the sandwich he was eating like it had insulted him.
"I hate to say it…but we need to consider the possibility…that whatever this is, it's not something good. Like a warning sign. A symptom." Sam swallowed and leaned forward, propping her folded hands on the table in front of her.
Tucker stopped mid-chew and glanced at her. "What do you mean?" he asked around a mouthful of sandwich.
"I mean—" she stopped, mashing her lips together, and glanced around furtively, as if expecting there to be someone around to overhear. She leaned closer to them and dropped her voice to a murmur. "We have no idea what the portal did to us. We think we know, but do we? Really?"
Danny glanced at Tucker, where he saw his own uncertainty mirrored. Sam was right. The long and short of it was, literally anything could have happened in that portal. Never even mind the effects of the ectoplasm, electricity, and whatever other energies had swirled around in there, they had been at the epicenter of a singularity. The fabric of reality had torn around them, through them. Life, death, eternity, entropy, and things he didn't know and couldn't name, all of it in that place and that time, with them. Who could even begin to theorize what had happened in there?
"For all we know," Sam went on, "we've been on borrowed time."
Danny shook his head slowly. "I don't know. But it—it…I don't know how to explain it, but I don't…I don't think… It's been three months. If it was gonna kill us, I think it would've already happened. Or we would've seen signs of it before now." He looked between his friends. "We've been getting stronger, not weaker. Maybe this—" he held up his hands and gave them a slight shake for emphasis "—is just a reaction to something changing in my body."
"Ghost puberty," Tucker whispered.
Danny paused, hands flopping onto the table, and glowered at Tucker. "I cannot believe you just made me hear those words."
The tension broke. Tucker cackled. Sam relaxed, shaking her head, and picked up the sandwich platter. "Okay. If that's the direction this conversation's going, we're going back to the basement." And without another word, she turned intangible and dropped through the floor.
The boys made eye contact then they both burst out laughing and, after a few seconds, followed in her wake.
At the sudden use of his powers, the tingling in Danny's hands kicked into overdrive and the heat swelled, as if something had ignited beneath the skin. He became solid the instant he cleared the floor and ceiling and landed as quickly as he could.
"Ow!" he hissed, shaking his hands to dispel the unpleasant sensation. "Okay. This is definitely a ghost thing. My powers made it worse."
Sam, who had set the sandwich platter on the counter amongst the remainder of the food from last night, whirled around on the spot. "Does it hurt?"
"It's like my bones are trying to vibrate and holding my hands over an open flame at the same time."
Tucker's hands came out of nowhere, encircling Danny's, and he carefully, but firmly, turned them from side to side. "I don't see anything. What about ice? Sam, can you get some ice?"
Sam grabbed a plastic cup and shoved it under the ice dispenser in the soda machine. Danny pulled his hands out of Tucker's grip and gave them another shake, hissing. The contact hadn't hurt, exactly, but the sensation was quickly growing unbearable, and he needed something, anything, to alleviate it. Not that shaking was helping anything. He glared down at his hands and tried to think, to feel past the burning and the tingling. When it came to his ghost powers, it was about feeling, sensation, and will.
He reached for the cold place deep inside, the source of everything he could do, felt the thrum of it like a second little heart, but didn't call it forward. He could feel…something…through his shoulders…his arms…he could feel….
"Here," said Sam, holding out the cup.
Danny reached for it—
Green exploded from his outstretched hand and collided with the cup. Sam screeched, whipping her hand back, and the cup fell to the ground in a pile of ash. Danny yelped, yanking his smoking hand up in front of his face, and gawked at it. Tucker started yelling but Danny didn't process a single word of it.
That—
He'd just—
That light had—
Like an ectogun—
From his hand—
He whipped his head up to meet the alarmed and slightly manic gazes of his friends. "Did I just get a new ghost power?!"
"Did you just get a new ghost power!?"
"Dude, dude, do it again!"
"Whoa whoa whoa hold it—Danny Fenton I swear to god if you set my house on fire I will end you!"
After assuring Ida that the screaming had just them being dumb, and no one was actually hurt, the three halfas beat a hasty retreat from Sam's house. Danny suggested they use the park to practice but it was vetoed by Tucker who knew best exactly how intense the speculation surrounding last Friday's incident still was. Anything new would spark a frenzy.
Instead, they headed for the old train yard on the edge of town. Nothing but condemned buildings and old warehouses out there. Sketchy, but not as bad as parts of Elmerton. According to Sam, it was sometimes used as a hangout for the 'troubled crowd', but it was doubtful any of them would be there on a Sunday at noon. And if they were, they'd be too high or hungover to make much sense of three ghost kids, never mind get anyone to believe them about it.
It also happened to be where the Circus Gothica would be pitching their tents next spring, an event, Sam reminded them, they still had tickets for. Danny remembered that. She'd been so excited that the self-styled "alternative circus" had chosen Amity Park as one of the stops on its tour. Most of the cool tours tended to pass over Amity Park in favor of Chicago, Springfield, or even Indianapolis as their stopping points in the region. She'd bought tickets for them the day they went on sale.
Danny kept his hands pressed to his middle as they flew invisibly over the city. The tingling and burning had stopped not long after that blast had gone off, but he still wasn't sure what he'd done to trigger it and definitely didn't want to accidentally blast a hole in someone's roof. Or worse. So he kept his palms firmly against his own body until they found an old factory building with one side scorched from a fire long ago that had left it condemned. A plethora of warning and keep out signs littered the exterior though a quick look about the inside revealed exactly how well heeded they were.
That is to say, not at all.
Graffiti marked almost every inch of the walls a human could safely access. The floor was littered with dirt, old cigarette packs, blunts, beer bottles and cans, and a whole hodgepodge of who-knew-what. From the looks of one corner, someone had even squatted in there not too long ago. But at present it was empty and that was good enough for the halfas.
"Code names only," Tucker muttered. "Just in case."
"Agreed," Danny replied. "We need to be doing that anyway."
Sam (Wraith, he told himself) nodded in agreement then turned to him. "Alright, Phantom. Show us."
Phantom inhaled through his nose and pulled his hands away from his body and held them out in front of himself, palms up. "I'll try."
It was only too easy to call it forth again. Like it wanted out. The heat swelled and his hands began to glow a very familiar shade of green. Bright and toxic, the color of pure ectoplasmic energy. The same color he saw staring back at him when he looked at his ghost form in the mirror. It cast an eerie glow across the room, his friends, and his features. It made them seem even more otherworldly, something he hadn't thought possible.
"Whoa," Wraith and Specter breathed in unison.
"What's it feel like?" the latter asked, quiet but eager.
Like most ghostly sensations, this new one was difficult to put to words. To describe the energy he felt as 'heat' would be adequate for an outside inquirer, perhaps, but wildly insufficient for them. He had to think.
"Like…what you'd think touching the surface of the portal would feel like," he finally settled on. "Or like fire, if you could feel it without being burned. It's like it's alive a-and look, see? It's moving. It's not just light, it's energy."
Wraith reached out and tested the air just above his hands with her fingers. "Does it hurt?" she asked. Phantom shook his head. She dared to dip her fingers closer to his hand and drew back with a surprised hiss.
"Did it hurt?" he asked.
She made a face. "It was hot."
"So, it could hurt others but not you," Specter deduced. "So far anyway."
"Yeah," Phantom agreed, scanning the room for a suitable target. He spotted a small pyramid of beer cans someone had left behind, aimed his right hand at it, and willed the energy outwards. The energy obeyed without an ounce of resistance, springing forth from his hand in a solid beam. He let out a surprised yell and jerked his hand back, cutting it off. The construct of cans stood unscathed but the ground two feet in front of it was freshly blackened and smoking.
"Sick," Specter hissed. "Do it again."
Phantom glanced at the beer cans then down at his hands and slowly a smirk began to stretch across his face. He straightened up, floating into the air, and thrust his hand forward. A quiet grunt escaped his chest, nearly drowned out by the blast of energy bursting from his palm. He swung his other hand forward, slightly lower than the first, and it too fired a blast without resistance. His first managed to knock the topmost can flying and the second went hurtling straight through the center, scattering the cans every which way.
Wraith let out a loud whoop, floating up beside him to clap him on the shoulder. "Nice shot!" Specter agreed from somewhere behind them.
Phantom drew his arms back and he exhaled in a loud, pleased burst. "Oh yeah." He turned to face his friends with a dangerous grin. "You guys know what this means? We can kiss my parent's ecto-guns goodbye. I'm the ecto-weapon now!"
"Not so fast there, hotshot," Wraith retorted and shoved at his shoulder. "You're gonna need a whole lot of practice before you're a danger to anything but yourself."
"Hey," he retorted, "I hit the cans."
Specter let out a loud, exaggerated cough around the words: "Third try."
"Wow."
"Hear that, ghosts?" Wraith raised her voice. "He hit some beer cans at 5 meters. Better watch out!"
Phantom rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay. I'll do better then." He cast a look around the room for another target, spotted a cinder block near one of the walls, and fired at it.
He missed, of course.
But that was where it began.
They scoured the warehouse and eventually beyond, seeking objects of all shapes and sizes for Phantom to use for target practice. And, boy, did they find an assortment. By the time they were done scavenging, they had a small pile of cans and bottles, two empty crates, a stack of wooden pallets, some drum barrels, a long metal beam, and a large door that had probably once belonged to a semi-truck. (The truck, however, was nowhere to be found.)
At first, Phantom stuck to blasting things off the drum barrels, though he hit the barrel as often as he hit the actual target, and it would go flying across the room. Specter saw it happen all of two times before he planted himself on the ground ten feet from Phantom, spread his arms wide, and told him to shoot him. For science. Phantom, of course, obliged. A blast directly to his torso sent Specter literally hurtling through the air. He collapsed in a heap some distance away and stayed there for a few moments of shocked silence. Then he slowly propped himself up on his elbows and gawked at him.
"Dude, what the hell?"
"Are you okay?" Wraith called.
"Yeah, actually, which is weird because you just blasted me across the room." Specter lifted into the air, righting himself, and floated towards them.
"What'd it feel like?" Phantom asked.
Specter cocked his head, considering. "It's hard to describe. I could feel the force behind it and I definitely felt the impact from landing…but it didn't hurt like it should've."
Wraith and Phantom stared at him. "It didn't?" they replied in unison.
Specter glanced between them and shook his head. "It wasn't comfortable but…I mean, something like that should've felt at least as bad as a hit from Dash, right?"
"Worse," said Wraith.
"More like a dodgeball to the gut but that's about it."
Phantom furrowed his brow. That didn't make sense. From what he knew of anatomy and physics, a hit like that, enough to physically launch him across the room, should've left him dazed and reeling at an absolute minimum.
Wraith's lips twisted thoughtfully, and her eyes flicked between the boys for a few moments. Then, nodding to herself, she said, "Shoot me next."
"What?!" Danny yelped.
"Shoot me next," she repeated. "I wanna feel for myself." When he didn't immediately comply, she put one hand on her hip. "Danny, you can't be the only ghost who can shoot lasers. I'm gonna get hit by one sooner or later. Shoot me."
Phantom stared at her in mild horror. He'd known on some level that this ability couldn't be unique to him, but he had not yet fully processed the implications of someone he may have to fight one day effectively having ecto-guns in their hands. They were definitely going to get shot at and they were definitely going to get hit, no matter how good at dodging they got. He looked down at his hands and had to suppress a shudder. He'd had this power for less than a day and a weak blast had sent Tucker flying the length of a school bus. What would he be capable of with time and training? What would a ghost ten times his age be capable of?
He licked his lips and nodded. "Okay. Get, uh, get ready."
Wraith stood about where Specter had before and braced her feet against the floor, fists clenched at her sides. She took a slow, deep breath, then gave him a curt nod. "Do it."
Three seconds later, Wraith was lying on her back across the room. After a moment, she raised her head, blinked, and let out a quiet, "Huh."
His friends, Phantom decided, were insane.
"He's right," she said, picking herself off the floor. "I've had cramps worse than that."
It took him a moment to realize he was shaking his head. "B-but…that doesn't make sense. I've gotten hurt! Remember that princess dragon lady a few weeks ago? I got a concussion after she threw me into the wall—and it definitely hurt!"
"I'd say there's a big difference between a little laser to the gut and getting smacked into the wall during a fight with a dragon," Specter mused.
"Not to mention that would've probably killed you if you were a human," Wraith pointed out, drifting over to them.
Danny stared, nonplussed. She was right, of course. They'd known for a while that they were more robust than they'd been before and the incident with the dragon had shown that their healing capabilities were supernatural….
"It has to be something to do with our bodies when we're like this." Wraith gestured to herself, indicating her ghost form. "Because I stubbed my toe the other day and it hurt like hell. And I still feel cramps when I get them around my period."
Specter clapped his hands over his ears, earning him a sharp kick in the ribs from Wraith. He yelped but then lowered his hands and stared at her foot. "That didn't hurt." He sounded amazed.
"But you felt it."
"The impact but no pain," he confirmed with a nod.
"This is freaky," Danny said bluntly.
"The last twenty-four hours have been freaky, man. I don't know about you, but finding out we don't feel pain as easily when we're ghosts doesn't quite have the same impact after seeing you shoot ghost ray beams out of your hands."
Wraith nodded and folded her arms. "He has a point."
Danny inclined his head in acknowledgement but then frowned down at his upturned hands. What other sorts of secrets were their bodies still hiding from them?
