Now. Let's see how the explanations go, shall we? Please enjoy.

Chapter 17: Ghost Stories

Danielle woke up the next morning finding herself under warm covers and staring at a ceiling of a bedroom. The bed she was on was quite comfortable in comparison to the stone cave floor she had slept on a few nights ago. It was dark, but it only took a minute after she woke up for her to realize that she must be in the Fenton's guest bedroom. However, it was different than the one in the Op Center she had once been in the night she had first met Danny.

This must be in Danny's new house. Danielle didn't quite remember entering it the night before, though. She had been so fatigued from the full day of ghost fighting and the use of her awesome new speed power that she could only recall being guided from the Fenton RV to the spare room by…one of the Fentons. She couldn't remember which one.

The female hybrid remained lying in the bed, observing her surroundings. The lights were out, but there was still enough light to depict the room she was in. It was rather big and spacious to be any standard-sized bedroom. The bed she was on was in a corner and under a very large screen that was on the wall instead of a window. This, Danielle found a bit odd. Up against the other walls was the regular furniture that anyone put in a bedroom. To the right of the bed was the door that lead out of the room. Danielle could see the reflection of herself laying under the covers of the bed and her head resting nicely on the pillow in a tall mirror that hung on the closed door.

The young clone rolled onto her back with her hands put behind her head. Staring up at the ceiling again, she started to think back on the multiple events that had happened in the last few days: The Guys in White attacking her before she met Wulf, which was scary at first in itself, encountering Valerie and learning that Danny and his peers had been missing for up to almost a month, both instances with Freakshow…Danielle scoffed in amusement in remembering the surprised look on his face when she revealed herself to save Danny.

Wait. The girl's mind backtracked and she remembered how the Fentons had seen her transformation as well. They may have been patient enough to hold off on asking about her powers yesterday, but now that things have calmed down for all of them, they would be wanting answers.

She was just starting to think of how she could possibly explain herself to them when she suddenly heard a knock on the door. The knock was a soft one but the unexpected sound startled her a bit and she quickly sat up in the bed, turning towards the door. She noticed a strip of light coming in from under it, indicating that someone had turned on a light outside the room. The door slowly creaked open, letting more of the outside light flood into the bedroom until Danny's head peeked inside.

Danielle let out the breath she didn't realize she was just holding. She had been so sure it would be one of Danny's parents or even his sister. "Ah, you're up." Danny said, with a smile before opening the door the rest of the way and stepping inside. The light from the hall streamed into the room and laid across the bed and cast onto the back wall.

Danny's human form had the average look of the every day, teenage boy with a red and white t-shirt, blue jeans, and red and white tennis shoes. His hair, like Danielle's, was black and his eyes were the same shade of blue.

Danielle looked over at the alarm clock on the desk, noticing that it was just passed seven thirty in the morning. On Saturday. "What are you doing up so early?" She asked him as he approached the bed.

"Just thought I'd see how you were doing." He responded truthfully and greeting his female clone with a smile. "Sleep well?"

After nodding with a returning grin, Danielle bent her legs up under the blanket she was still covered in and put her hands on top of her knees. "But I dare say you needed the break more than I did." She said.

"Oh, I don't know about that." Danny replied, sitting down on the edge and at the foot of the bed. "From what I understand, you've been through quite a bit yourself." After a short but thoughtful pause, Danny then added, "Thanks for coming and bailing me out of those jams by the way. I don't think I'd have even gotten home with everyone else safe if you hadn't been there."

Danielle shrugged and answered with something the ghost hero had said to her after he had saved her life two years ago. "That's what family's for, cuz."

Both of the ghost-hybrids giggled at the quote a bit before continuing to just talk and catch up on what they had both been up to before Danielle had decided to come to visit. Danielle just said how she had been going around fighting any criminal or spectral activity that Danny may have missed in other places of the world or wasn't able to attend to in time. And then she got to jump into the full story of her investigation with Wulf that led to Danny, after she found out from Valerie that he was missing. She also told of how she had figured out how to do her new speed power after splitting up into the three teams to help with the town's ghost problem.

Danny, in return, was able to explain in more detail and tell Valerie's story in his own words and from his own point of view. How after his loved ones had been abducted and he himself was led into a trap set by Freakshow until Danielle and Wulf came and saved him from the Blood Blossoms.

Soon the conversation came around to the house in which Danielle was currently in, and that the Fentons were currently living. The bedroom had the screen instead of any window because, apparently, the house was actually underground. Had there been a window there, there wouldn't be anything interesting to see anyway and no light would be coming through it. The Fentons had built a secret home that was undetectable by any kind of scanners, especially ones made by The Guys in White. The giant screen acted as the bedroom window to the outside and showed camera views stationed above the ground for the sake of surveillance, making sure that no unwanted company was sneaking around, trying to find them. So far, not even the Guys in White were even suspecting their new location. It was also nice to get a view of the outside with it once in a while.

Danny was just showing the young clone how to work the screen when Tucker came into view of the open doorway to the lit hall. His cast shadow on the wall was what got their attention before they turned to see him there. "There you are, Danny." He said, looking at his friend. According to the clock, it was now almost nine. Everyone else was getting up now. "Your mom has breakfast ready for everyone downstairs."

"Okay, we'll be down in a minute." Danny responded to Tucker. When the techno-geek left, Danny looked over at Danielle with a rather concerned look. "So, are you ready?" he asked her.

"For…what?" Danielle questioned back, but she already had a feeling that she knew what he meant.

"I promised them an explanation about you Dani, and they've been waiting patiently for one for over twenty-four hours, now."

Danielle spun her legs over the edge of the bed and sat on the edge, staying silent for a moment. "Do we have to tell them everything?" She asked.

"I think we may have to." Danny admitted. The clone sighed, looking down at the floor before she felt her cousin put a hand on her shoulder. "But relax, okay?" He said with a small laugh. "I'm a bit nervous too, but it's not like this is a death trial for you or something."

Danielle smiled at him, seeing the point in what he was saying. This may not end up being as bad as she was thinking. Who knows? Maybe even though she was made by the enemy who had threatened the whole Fenton family as well as the whole world in the time of the Disasteroid, they would look passed that, the way Danny did. There was really only one way to know for sure.

The cloned subject and his female copy left the room together and Danny led the younger down to the kitchen, where his family and friends waited. The smell of freshly made French toast could be scented as the two made their way to the bottom of the stairs and through the front room to the kitchen.

As Danielle was guided through the house, she noticed that this new Fenton Works had the same basic layout as the old one. It was just a whole lot bigger and there were no windows. Just the big screens that showed different views of scenes that were going on above the surface. In addition, instead of a front door, there was some sort of teleportation chamber: Or as the clone-girl guessed.

Danielle asked about it, but Danny told her that he would give her a grand tour of the new house before the day was up, and as soon as his family was satisfied with the information they were about to receive.

Danny's whole family, as well as Sam and Tucker, were all helping Mrs. Fenton get the last few items on the table for breakfast by the time the two hybrids entered the kitchen. As they started to gather around the table, everyone was starting to give Danielle strange looks, as if there was something about her that they were suspicious of.

No one started questioning about her powers until everyone was served, including Danielle, and was starting to eat. Mrs. Fenton was the one who started the first question of how Danielle had gotten her powers. Danny took the liberty of starting this one off. "Well…mom, you first have to understand that she didn't get them from a ghost-portal accident, like Vlad and I did." He began as he poured homemade syrup on his French toast. "In fact it wasn't an accident at all."

Danny's peers looked at him in confusion and then at Danielle who had barely started picking at her own breakfast. "You mean you got your powers from a voluntary experiment?" Jazz asked, looking a bit worried. If people were running tests on subjects to see if they could obtain their own ghost-powers, people's lives were at stake and the chances of some of those people becoming as evil as Vlad were growing astronomically.

Luckily, that wasn't the case, to Jazz's relief. "Actually, you might say I was born with them." Danielle responded, a bit nervously.

"Born with them?" Sam exclaimed. Sounding very surprised and looking at the Fentons.

Danielle didn't answer right away but thankfully, Danny cut in to help her out. "She's a clone, Sam. My clone."

"What was that?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Say what?"

"A clone?"

Everyone started exclaiming all at once and in disbelief before Tucker put in, with his mouth full, and using his fork that had French toast stuck on the end, to point, "But she's a girl, and you're a…"

"I'm a faulty one." Danielle quickly clarified. When everyone just stared at her, she slowly went on. "I'm the result of an experimental attempt to make another Danny Phantom: Half-ghost DNA and all. …And…Vlad Plasmius was the conductor of it."

As expected, everyone gasped in hearing the feared name that was thought to have been forgotten. Danielle looked down with her anxiety growing as everyone started to mutter in astonishment.

When the chatter calmed down, Danny took the time to explain that three years ago, there was a time where Vlad was using surveillance technology to spy on him for research references in making the perfect clone to have as his own son. After several, failed attempts to make the perfect half-ghost duplicate, Vlad had discovered that he needed a proper mid-morph DNA sample from Danny in order to complete the primary clone he had been working on for months.

Danielle then took her turn in telling the story of how Vlad had sent her to assist in the capturing of Danny so attaining such a sample would be possible. To help lure the ghostly teenager into a trap, Danielle had snuck to Danny's house, claiming to be his third cousin once removed. She also put in the fact that she had been the one who delivered the blow that had knocked him out so Vlad could take him back to his research facility in Colorado.

"He was trying to get a clone to have as a son?" Jazz repeated, sounding skeptical after Danielle had relayed this information, and completely ignoring the fact that the ghost powered girl was once working for Vlad.

"Okay, that's a little insane." Sam added, also dwelling on the absurdity of the villain.

"A seriously crazed up fruit loop as I phrased him to be." Danny responded.

"Oh, did you?" Mr. Fenton said, and taking a bit of his French toast. "And how did he react to that?"

Danny looked quite amused when he responded to this. "He basically blew up at me and tried to prove how he couldn't be crazy because he was so clever in how he became so wealthy so fast with the use of his ghost-powers."

Everyone got a few additional laughs from this, which lightened the tension for Danielle a bit before she and the boy she was made from continued with their story with how Danielle had snuck in when Vlad was showing the clone he was working on to Danny. Also, how he had gone through perhaps hundreds of failures that had devolved into ectoplasm because they were so unstable.

Vlad had never even told her about the other clones. But it was frightening when she was starting to see all of them dissolving into nothing but green puddles of goop, knowing that she might do the same at any minute. And Vlad was doing nothing to stop it. When she had confronted the half-ghost villain about her concerns, he had tried to cover himself by saying that he wasn't talking about her when he said that the other clones were all nothing but mistakes and told her that Danny's DNA sample was to help keep her from melting like all the other clones did. That she was his greatest creation and not the lifeless body that looked exactly like the original Danny. Later though, she talked to Danny and he proclaimed otherwise, that Vlad was just using her for his dirty work and that he had no intention of saving her from a fate she was dreading.

However, Danielle just called Vlad's captured subject a liar. Getting the proper genetic material proved difficult anyway because Danny's resistance against it was so powerful. Vlad tried several torturing methods before he came up with the option of getting Danielle to overshadow the boy and force him to transform so Vlad could get the sample. But the ghost powered girl had seen one of the other clones try the exact same thing only a moment before and Danny had resisted that successfully as well, resulting in the destruction of the clone. Danielle was afraid the same thing would happen to her. Even though she was certainly stronger than any of the other clones, she had already been getting unstable from using her ghost-powers to do other things and she had never tried overshadowing before.

As Danielle was explaining this, the memories started to become unbearable. She grasped her head between her hands as if trying to block out the memories. Danny noticed this and then finished off the story of how Danielle released him from the containment chamber he was being held in and helped him to fight off Vlad and destroy the good clone he had worked so long and so hard on. Danielle still remembered the murderous look Vlad had given her after that had happened. He wanted to rip both of the Phantoms apart after what they had done to his greatest work.

Danny and his female clone completed their tale and everyone had finished with their breakfast. There was a moment of silence in which everyone was either looking at Danielle in amazement or just looking down at their now empty plates as if trying to fully grasp what they had just heard.

"Well…" Jack finally spoke up. "That's quite a story." He got up from the table and casually took his plate over to the sink to rinse it off.

"And you were planning on telling us this, When?" Jazz asked her little brother, almost accusingly, as other people started to clear their own spots on the table.

Danny looked rather nervously at Danielle. "I'll take it from here." He whispered to her.

The little cousin of his looked down guiltily, hoping this didn't mean that he was in trouble because of her being so mysterious. "I'll be in the guest room, then." She said quietly and left the table to go back upstairs.

As soon as she was out of sight, as well as sure to be out of earshot, Danny turned back to his peers to answer his sister's question. "She wanted to keep herself a secret just as I did before the Disasteroid." He finally said. "She may be my clone, but she's still able to think for herself, unlike all those other clones Vlad made."

Danny's mother then responded, sounding compassionate rather than accusing. "And that's why you considered her a cousin, even though she had been working for someone as evil as that?"

Danny nodded. "And there's something else about that I've been wanting to bring up." He said. And his family and friends looked at him with undivided attention to what he was about to say.

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Later on, Tucker had returned to City Hall and Sam was taken back to her parents. Both of the teenagers were greeted warmly by their parents who had been worried sick for them since Freakshow had taken them captive.

Danny had returned only the day before, but by now, it was all over the news. There had also been some rumors about a second Danny Phantom on the streets of Amity Park. Both the ghost-hybrids got a laugh out of this in hearing all of the different theories people were coming up with.

They were able to clear up the rumors after a ghost-attack from Undergrowth: a giant, plant ghost made completely of thick vines, having powerful arms and the head of an eagle with spiky armor and a green cape. He had no feet, but roots that helped him to spring from the ground and invade a large part of the town with his infestation of dangerous and ghostly plants.

Both the Phantoms had incredibly close calls in trying to uproot the giant weed of a ghost who was simply able to grow back every time they cut off any part of him. "Okay, I'm starting to get fed up with this thorn in my side." Danny said to his younger cousin. That's when they both got an idea.

Using Danielle's new super-speed power, that she had come to call her Plazma Rocket, she started zooming in a circle around Undergrowth, picking up a wind that evolved into a tornado that trapped him. Then Danny shot his Phantom Phreeze into the hurricane, making a snowstorm that froze the giant weed stiff. Danielle continued to increase the velocity of the tornado as Danny then sent jagged ice shards interlaced with his plasma ray into the sub-zero twister, which cut Undergrowth down to nothing more than a sprout. Before he could regenerate, he was sucked into the Fenton Thermos.

As soon as the battle had ended, Danielle was so exhausted from using so much power at once. Danny had to catch her as she fell at least fifty feet from the air. The Plasma Rocket was still new to her and she still needed to learn to regulate her power the way Danny did with his Ghostly Wail.

Lance Thunder, a news reporter that Danny now knew on a first name basis, had confronted Danielle by the time she was able to stand on her own again. Luckily, she hadn't lost too much energy and didn't change back to her human form like she had last night. Danny came to her rescue when she was being hesitant from the unexpected attention. "Sorry, Lance." Danny said with a laugh and putting a supporting arm around his clone partner. "My cousin here is still a bit shy when it comes to publicity."

"Ah." Lance nodded in understanding before turning back to the girl ghost. "And yet a real powerhouse when it comes to ghost-fighting." He said, sounding impressed with Danielle's display of power despite her timidity. Danielle couldn't stop herself from blushing at the comment and gave a side-look to Danny who winked reassuringly at her.

It was Lance Thunder who later interviewed them both for the full story of Danny's mysterious disappearance and his most gratifying return.

Later that day, Danny was able to give the tour of the Fenton's new place of residence that he had promised to Danielle. To her surprised disbelief, she learned that this underground house was actually located only a hundred feet below the floor of the old Fenton Works lab. "And the Guys in White don't even suspect?" Danielle asked when she learned this little fact.

"Nope." Danny responded looking proud. "We saw on cameras that they broke into the old Fenton Works and searched the lab, but there's no entrance there, so they didn't even think that we were right under their noses."

"Or mine." Danielle said in remembering how she had searched the lab herself for any clues as to where Danny had gone when he had disappeared from Amity Park. "But then, where does that teleporter thing lead to?" She asked, indicating the clear, circular chamber that was in the place of the front door.

"Anywhere we want." When Danielle asked him to clarify, he took her inside the transparent chamber that was big enough for the whole family to fit in at once if needed. Once they were both inside, a digital map of Amity Park came out in front of them. Then six screens projected out of different places of the map, showing camera views of various locations: Some of which, the clone hybrid recognized.

"Pick one and just touch it." Danny encouraged. "Preferably one that doesn't have many people around." Danielle looked at the screens and saw that the one with the park was full of picnickers, now that it was safe of ghost attacks there. City Hall was also busy with people who wanted to see Mayor Foley in person, since his return from his adventure with the Fentons and Sam. One of the screens also showed a view of the football field of Casper High School, and the other screens were places of the city that Danielle couldn't quite identify.

She touched a screen that had a camera-view of an empty alleyway. There were computerized beeping noises of recognition and just as Danielle blinked, she suddenly found herself in the place of the indicated screen she just touched. "Whoa." Danielle said, looking around frantically, completely taken aback from the sudden change in surroundings.

"Welcome to the alley that's just behind Tucker's house." Danny said, holding his hands out as if in presentation.

The baffled clone looked down at her feet. There was no reception pad. But that's where Danny explained that there indeed was one that the two were standing on. Danny's parents were able to copy their son's ability to turn both invisible and intangible and make it so no one could see or even feel the tube-like chambers that transported them to the underground house. The emergency Op Center was now stored beneath the floor of the new lab. During emergencies where they would have to use the Fenton Blimp or the Jet, it had it's own teleportation feature that transported it to the roof of the old Fenton Works.

If too many spectators occupied any of the locations they had placed the invisible transportation chambers in, they could always use a different one that was less crowded around. The Fentons and Sam and Tucker were the only ones who knew the exact locations of these pads. Even if other people did know, they still couldn't work them because it included a voice recognition key that only the Fentons had.

"And soon you'll get one too." Danny finished off after demonstrating the voice key and transporting both himself and Danielle back down to the house.

Danielle looked at him confused after they both stepped out of the tube-like chamber. Danny ran his fingers through his dark hair as if edgy about clarifying his statement. "Um. My parents and I have been talking and…since you didn't seem to have anywhere else to go that you had planned, we were thinking that you might...be willing to…well…"

"You mean…" Danielle interrupted when Danny was stuttering. "Live here? With you?" She just couldn't hide the surprise in her voice at what she was hearing.

"If it's what you want, Danielle." Said Mrs. Fenton, who had just come in from the kitchen, followed by her husband and daughter. "It's just a suggestion, really. But we thought you didn't deserve anything less after proving yourself several times over."

Danielle just didn't know how to respond to this. She didn't think that when Danny was giving her the tour of the house, he would be having her getting familiar with her own new place of residence. This was the last thing she expected to be coming up. Vlad could and would never have given anything of the sort, despite being her creator. And here his archenemy's family was, offering her the thing that she thought she would never have again, if she ever really had it at all. A home. A family:

Which, to Danny's delight, she gladly accepted.

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Jack and Madeline Fenton walked through the upstairs hall of the underground house on Sunday night, checking in all the bedrooms of the children and wishing them goodnight. Despite the trouble they had all gone through during the multiple weeks with Freakshow, they had a decent weekend. Things were back to normal, aside from having a new resident of their house, which they didn't mind at all.

Mr. and Mrs. Fenton reached Danielle's room that they had picked out for her and opened the door as quietly as they could to peak inside. She was already sound asleep on the bed from spending a full day with Danny and Jazz. Though the fifteen-year-old girl still seemed to feel a bit awkward and out of place in her new surroundings, the Fentons were confident that once she adapted, things would be fine.

Mrs. Fenton quietly walked in the bedroom to Danielle's bedside. She smiled adoringly down at the young girl and gently stroked her hair for a second before pulling the blanket over her shoulders, tucking her in. Then Danny's mother tiptoed back out into the hall. Before closing the door, however, she and her husband took one last peak inside the bedroom.

"You know, for an evil experiment, she's a rather pretty little thing. Isn't she?" Maddie commented to her husband, almost in a whisper as to not wake the girl. Jack nodded in agreement before Maddie closed the door with a gently snap. "It's still hard to believe Vlad Plasmius would be capable of creating such a wonderful girl that's so dedicated to helping our own son out. Not to mention all the rest of us."

"Yeah. The only good thing Vladie seemed to be able to bring to our family." Jack remarked, though more to himself.

Maddie looked back at her husband who seemed to have a gloomy expression on his face now, and knew what he was thinking.

Vlad had been an old friend of Jack's in college and believed him to be a good man until he realized that he had been the evil, Wisconsin ghost that had tried to do away with him and his son, the ghost boy who constantly stood in his way. Even though no one had seen or heard anything of Vlad in two years, Jack still felt disappointed sometimes and even a bit hurt in knowing that his best friend had betrayed him.

As his mind was pondering these thoughts, Maddie put a comforting hand on his shoulder and smiled at him in understanding before planting a kiss on his cheek. This cheered Jack up a bit and he smiled back down at his wife. Then they both proceeded down the hall to the master bedroom, where they would be sleeping more peacefully than they had all in weeks.

Thanks to their newly adopted niece.

Okay. So what do you think? I was thinking of ending it here where Danielle becomes a Fenton, but there was this one part with the Guys in White that I was really thinking of doing and that I already have been planning.

I know this chapter's not as action-packed as the last one was, but now Danielle has a home and family of her own. However, the story isn't over yet, as I've mentioned before. The next chapter will be Danielle's first day of school with Danny and how she's getting used to her new lifestyle. And she's going to have a few encounters with some bullies Danny use to have to deal with all the time.