Hello again! Thank you to everyone who reviewed, and snoopykid has made a good point. Who will find out Danny's secret first?
I want you guys to decide! While I have my own ideas of what should happen, I want to know who you think should find out Danny's secret. To vote, post a review or PM me with your vote.
Sophia the daughter of Nyx: I'm glad you like it so far.
Snoopykid: Thanks, and maybe she will. Just depends on if she gets the most votes
Potterheads2016: It means so much to me that you think that, I'm glad you're enjoying it so far. I'll try and keep it up to par
PhantomFanForever: It makes me really happy that you do, and I hope that it will live up to your expectations
Werewolf2994: Yes, no one knew his secret before he lost and regained his powers. If you have questions about loopholes that may have developed in the story, because Sam and Tucker didn't help him fight, just ask and I'll do my best to answer them.
Argus Drax: I know, isn't she?
Owlcat92: Danny was careful to make sure they didn't touch bare skin, which is one of the reasons why he only wears long clothes. And yes, the decrease in body temperature was over time and not just suddenly there, so for the most part in the beginning his friends and family wouldn't have attributed it to anything and just gotten used to the slow decrease in temperature. And his temperature dropped more after he gained his powers back, so since then he has been trying to avoid physical contact. Normally he is alert and able to avoid it casually, but during the assembly and the Ghostketeer meeting he wasn't expecting to be touched because Sam isn't exactly touchy-feely. When Dash beats Danny up, he typically just grabs Danny's shirt before hitting him, and the punches are too brief for him to register how cold Danny is. I hope this answers your question.
To whom it may concern: I do not own Danny Phantom, no matter how much I wish I did. I deal with it, so can you.
Also, I wanna thank DB-KT for pointing out an error in the format that made the transition of time near the end of the chapter a little confusing. It should be fixed now.
Enjoy the newest chapter!
Danny paused as his ghost sense went off, then glanced at his bedroom door. Or, more specifically, at where the living room would be at the bottom of the stairs on the other side of his door. In all likelihood, the group downstairs would never even notice that he left. Danny shift his stance, rising out of the perpetual slouch that was Danny Fenton's posture. He stood straight, feet braced and fists clenched. Instantly, a white ring formed around his chest and split in two, travelling up and down his body. When they dispersed, his t-shirt and jeans had been replaced with the black and white jumpsuit belonging to Danny Phantom, the stylized DP logo on his chest. He turned intangible and flew through the ceiling. When he emerged above the ops centre, Danny scanned his surroundings in search of the ghost he sensed. It was a powerful one, too strong to be the Box Ghost, or Klemper, or any of his other tedious enemies. But Skulker was still in the Fenton Thermos from their last encounter, and Danny hadn't seen Technus in weeks. So he flew in a circle, not bothering to turn invisible. If the ghost saw him, then Danny assumed it would attack him. Making it that much easier to find.
Danny's assumption was correct. A tall figure with blue skin and red eyes flew out of a nearby alley. Danny's hand glowed green and a warmth spread as the ectoplasm gathered. He fired off three quick blasts in succession, shifting only his arm in order to keep aim while his adversary dodged. At the last possible moment, Danny dropped from the sky to avoid being body slammed, then turned and shot up towards the ghost, fists forwards. They connected with its chest with a satisfying crunch, and as the ghost was shoved back Danny finally managed to get a good look at who it was.
Vlad Masters, aka Vlad Plasmius. Former mayor of Amity Park. Possibly former arch enemy, although Danny wasn't too sure of that. Yeah, he hadn't seen Vlad since the Disasteroid, but he doubted that counted as a demotion from arch enemy to average enemy. After all, he was attacking Danny now.
Danny fired another round of ecto-blasts as Vlad shot forwards again. This time Vlad threw up a shield and the ectoplasm fizzled harmlessly against it.
"Daniel, always so eager to lose a fight. I could still teach you, you know, if you let me," Vlad offered.
"Not in my worst nightmares," Danny sneered. He flew forwards and punched the shield. The solid pink ectoplasm shattered on impact and Vlad flew back to a safe distance.
"I'm not in the mood for this, Plasmius. Not today."
"I thought you were always in the mood for witty banter, little badger," Vlad grinned.
"I'm not today," Danny said. He shot forwards again, hands glowing green as he prepared to fire off another round of ecto-blasts.
But Vlad stopped him before he could. The older halfa met Danny's attack with two hard punches of his own, and a couple ecto-blasts thrown in for good measure. Danny cringed at the heat of the blasts and was blown back down to the street. He collided painfully with the pavement. Vlad split in two and the duplicate flew down to restrain Danny.
He struggled against the hold and would have broken free, if Vlad hadn't split into another duplicate to restrain him further. Danny finally quit struggling, but chuckled inwardly at the fact that Vlad had to use two of himself to hold back a boy younger than half his age. And Vlad always boasted in his twenty years extra experience.
"I'm not here to fight you, Daniel," Vlad frowned.
"Then what do you want, Vlad?" Danny asked, eyeing the threatening pink glow on Vlad's hand while concentrating on his ice powers.
"Your help."
Danny paused, the ice that was spreading from his feet melting as he lost concentration.
"My help?"
"Yes, Daniel, your help."
"Things didn't end well the last time you asked for my help," Danny narrowed his eyes, and the ice once again slowly spread from his feet, circling those of Vlad's duplicates. No way was he going to fall for one of the fruitloop's tricks. Or take the chance that it wasn't one.
"There's something going on, in the Ghost Zone. Something I can't handle. Something even you can't handle," Vlad hissed.
"Why should I believe you?"
"You haven't noticed? The decrease in ghost activity? The ghosts that have gone missing? Surely you didn't think they had just decided to stop attacking, did you?"
"Of course not," Danny spat. But he had, honestly. While he knew there were a few ghosts that would still be after him, he thought that most of them had decided he was at least okay. But there's no way he would tell Vlad that.
"Well, they've been disappearing. I haven't seen my minions in days. I would go myself to investigate, but the minute I set foot in the Ghost Zone your… friends cast me out. I'm afraid you will have to go in for me," Vlad said, slowly floating closer throughout his spiel.
"And I should just trust you, Vlad Plasmius, on your word alone? It wouldn't be the first time you've tried to trick me into doing something."
"And succeeded, too. Because I know you, Daniel. You can't stand the idea of someone getting hurt when you could have stopped it. So, if I'm telling the truth and you don't go look for yourself, you will be wracked with guilt because you did nothing. If I'm lying and you don't go, then I guess there's no problem. But are you, Danny Phantom, willing to take that risk?" Vlad taunted.
"I just might be," Danny lied. In an instant, the ice that had been forming around the feet of Vlad's duplicates shot up around their legs. Danny twisted sharply, ripping free of their grasp, and shot each with a very powerful ecto-blast. The duplicates collided with the wall behind them and Danny spun around to face Vlad, but he was gone. He turned back to the duplicates in time to see them grinning at Danny as they flew away.
Danny flew after them, but they had enough of a head start that by the time he cleared the buildings, they were gone. The halfa groaned in frustration and flew back to Fentonworks. He phased through his bedroom wall and collapsed on his bed, reverting back to his human form. Despite having been gone for the almost an hour, Danny could hear that the Ghostketeers were still downstairs. Wanting a distraction from Vlad's disturbing revelation, he decided to listen in.
He rolled out of bed and opened his bedroom door, sliding down to sit against the frame while eaves dropping on the unsuspecting group below.
"So when do we get to see the lab?" Tucker asked.
"In a few days. We want you to learn how to operate our less volatile weapons before we show you the big guns," Maddie replied. Danny chuckled at his dad's inclusion of the word "literally" after Maddie spoke.
"Will we ever get to go into the Ghost Zone?" Paulina asked.
"We could go right now!" Jack's voice was laced with excitement, but became a disappointed groan when Maddie negated his claim.
"We will go once we believe you're able to handle yourselves against a low level ghost. We won't go deep enough in the first couple of times so that we won't encounter any stronger ghosts."
"Then we'll get to meet Phantom!" Dash cheered.
"Oh, that reminds me, Jack! Have you finished work on the new invention?" Danny didn't like the mischievous lilt in his mother's voice.
"Almost done, Maddie. All I need is a sample, since our old ones keep disappearing."
Danny's face, if possible considering how pale his skin already was, blanched. The only samples that continuously disappeared from his parent's lab were his own, because, after any encounters with his ghost hunting parents, Danny made sure to remove any ectoplasmic residue that they may have gotten their hands on. And if they needed it for a new invention, that wouldn't be good news for Phantom at all. Danny listened for several more minutes, hoping to hear more about this invention, but nothing interesting occurred. In fact, everyone started to leave.
When he heard the sound of Sam's heavy combat boots on the stairs, and Tucker's lighter sneakers, Danny leapt up from his spot in the doorway and quickly closed it before sliding into the chair at his desk. He powered up his computer and opened Doom.
"Hey, Danny," there was a light knock on his bedroom door and Sam pushed it open.
"Yeah?" Danny swivelled around to face them, acting as if he had just been busy playing the computer game.
"Just wanted to say that the meeting is done. Tuck and I are heading home," Sam said.
Danny nodded, and reached out to shut off his computer. Completely oblivious to Tucker's raised eyebrow and questioning look at the fact that Danny hadn't saved the game. Danny always saved the game. One week, during a new update when the game had been bugged and the save button didn't work, Danny had left his computer on the entire time and played non-stop to finish the new levels so he wouldn't have to worry about the consequences of not saving.
But he just shut the game off without doing anything.
"Okay. I'll see you guys tomorrow," Danny rose from his chair, stretching like he'd been sitting there, unmoving, the whole time.
"See you tomorrow," Tucker and Sam both replied, waving and leaving his room. Danny stood there, in the middle of his bedroom, for several minutes before raising a hand. A harmless blob of ectoplasm shot out from his palm, pushing the door closed, and he fired another at his light switch, then dropped backwards onto his bed. He stared at his ceiling, fretting over the 'new invention' his mother had mentioned. Danny glanced at his clock, and realized that he had been laying there for almost two hours. The rest of his family had to be in bed by now.
Danny closed his eyes for a moment, then phased through his bed and descended into the lab below.
Danny stared up at the cloudy sky. It had looked like it was going to rain all day, but thankfully it hadn't. He was lying in a tree in the park. Or technically floating slightly above it. As Danny Phantom, he didn't usually set foot (or leg, or back) on the ground unless he was forced down during a fight. He closed his eyes for a moment, but instead of seeing dark he saw the inside of Mr. Lancer's classroom where the vice-principal was giving a lesson on poetry.
Sending a duplicate to class while he skipped school wasn't something Danny did often, and for good reason. There were a number of situations in which the duplicate could end up disappearing, and to keep the duplicate active for a long amount of time required lots of energy, which meant he couldn't exactly be patrolling Amity Park for ghosts while doing this. That meant that, if a ghost did attack Danny now, the real Danny, then the duplicate would disappear. But today, he needed to think. And being at school he would be too distracted.
Danny sat up and swung his legs over the side of the branch, then pulled a blue sheet of paper from his pocket. It unfolded multiple times to show blueprints for his dad's latest invention, but so far Danny could only discern that this weapon appeared to be a gun. His father had a habit of never putting notes down in his blueprints, claiming instead that he would remember everything. And he always did, a fact which infuriated the halfa. Now he had absolutely no idea what the weapon did. Even worse, since his parents had so far not yet mentioned the invention in front of either him or Jazz, then it would be suspicious if he asked about it specifically.
Yesterday Danny had asked if they were working on anything new, and Jack had proceeded into a long rant about how they were upgrading the Specter Speeder to accommodate the Ghostketeers during their future trips to the Ghost Zone.
Frustrated and worried, he analyzed the blueprints once again. The weapon was fairly large, a little bigger than the Fenton Foamers. It had two barrels, the large one being square, and the small one below it triangular shaped. It had dual triggers, no doubt one for each barrel, and a large canister attached to the back. But what Danny couldn't figure out was whether this canister was for ammo, a net, or him.
He assumed it wasn't a net, since his parents already had a gun that shot those. Although they couldn't exactly find it at the moment, seeing as Danny had turned it intangible and place it in the walls last week after they nearly caught him in it.
The only way Danny would be able to find out what this new gun did, would be to find and test it himself. With any luck, that would be before his parents decided to test it on him, an experience he wasn't willing to go through just yet. Danny returned the blueprints to his pocket and clasped his hands together, dropping his elbows onto his knees and lowering his head so that his snow white hair fell over his eyes. He had other, slightly more pressing matters to think about.
Vlad, and the Ghost Zone.
It had only been a day since his greatest enemy had revealed that he needed Danny's help, something that he was hard pressed to believe. But Vlad had even acknowledged, if momentarily and very subtly, that Danny was stronger than him. Something that he never thought the other halfa would do. That meant that he could have been telling truth, that whatever was making the ghosts disappear or keep them from attacking was serious.
But it could also be a trap.
Danny scowled, running a hand through his hair. Vlad was right, he couldn't run the risk of him telling the truth. He had to go into the Ghost Zone. Of course, that didn't mean he would have to investigate the way that Vlad was expecting him too. He wouldn't just fly as far as he could go and see what happened. He would go straight to Clockwork, and maybe Frostbite too. If anyone knew what was going on, it would be them. He decided that he would go tonight, as soon as he got the opportunity, and headed back to school, where his duplicate was raising his hand and asking Mr. Lancer to be excused.
So yeah, there wasn't a lot of action, and it didn't even turn into a real fight, but hey, guess what? Next chapter is the Ghost Zone! I think. It all depends on what I write leading up to it.
I'm so happy you guys are liking it so far. I'll try to keep updating it every couple of days, but I've started my first year of university, so it may take me a while to get used to adjusting the work load and everything. After all, I am writing this instead of reading my psych textbook. Probably not a good thing, but it'll get done.
Anyways, don't forget to vote on who you would like to find out Danny's secret first!
