A/N: YES! I reached 100 reviews yesterday :) Thank you thank you thank you, I love you all!

Well, the title says it all... no action in this chapter. I debated myself if I should combine this chapter with the next one, because it isn't very long and not much is happening, but I decided not to. It would get too long then, and have too many jumps in it. So you can see this as a filler before things start happening again in the next chapter :)
Christine: I couldn't answer your review, your email address was wrong... but thanks for the review anyway!

Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom.

Talk

Danny sat on a table in the middle of his parent's lab, his feet dangling and his hands clutching the edge of the cold metal tabletop. His mother had ordered him to take off his shirt so she could wrap bandages around his chest and arms and he winced every now and then when she pulled them tightly. She hadn't said a word since they had gotten home and had ushered everybody out of the lab, including Jack, who kept bombarding Danny with questions after he had recovered from the initial shock.

When she was finished, she took a chair and sat down on it backwards, facing him, a stern expression on her face. He looked back at her nervously, but managed to refrain from rubbing the back of his neck.

"I'm so mad at you," she said finally, her anger at him winning for the moment.

Danny looked at the ground. "I'm sorry," he muttered.

He seemed to shrink somewhat, his shoulders shagging. But she was too angry now to feel sorry for him.

"You're sorry. I'm sorry. I hunted you! I shot at my own son! What if we had killed you! How do you think that would have made us feel! You should have told us!"

"I didn't dare, alright! You were always talking about dissecting ghosts, taking them apart molecule by molecule! I was scared!"

He had a pained expression on his face. She sighed exasperated, wondering where he got the idea that they would do that to him, their own son. Then she suddenly felt guilty. He hadn't trusted them enough to come to them with this, he had had to bear this burden all by himself. She had failed him, deserted him. No wonder he looked so old.

"Danny you are our son," she said, a little gentler, "We would never do that to you. We love you. What you're doing is so dangerous. I'm afraid to lose you."

He straightened a little and looked up at her for the first time, his expression unreadable, but his eyes suddenly suspiciously moist and he rubbed them quickly. She wondered if that was what he had wanted to hear all that time, that they accepted him the way he was, that they loved him. But she had thought he knew that all along, she had thought that they didn't have to tell him that explicitly. He glanced around the lab, at the mess they had left it in earlier, the clutter on the desk, his eyes finally resting on the closed doors of the ghost portal.

"Yes, well that's another reason I didn't want to tell you," he said, "You would have wanted me to stop hunting ghosts and I can't do that. The town was run over when I wasn't here. I need to protect you guys."

"So you play the hero." Maddie got angry again and she tried to suppress it.

"Somebody has to!"

He almost yelled and his eyes turned green for a moment. She almost backed away from him and he must have seen her flinch, because he quickly closed his eyes and took a deep breath to calm himself. She realized his powers showed even when he wasn't a ghost and wondered how much control he had. Several dials on the ghost equipment in the lab had spiked when his eyes turned green and she had felt the chill coming from him.

She remembered that had seen his eyes turn green before, but she had always dismissed that as a trick of the light. Now that she looked at him she didn't understand how she could have missed the aura of power that seemed to be emanating from him, in fact, how had anyone missed it, kids at school, the teachers... they must all really not be paying attention to him at all. And he was bullied all the time, how did he stand it? How did he not retaliate, how did he let his tormentors just push him around?

She decided to try something else as the conversation was leading nowhere.

"It was the accident with the portal, wasn't it, back when you started high school," she said to him, "That's when you started acting strange... I thought it was just you going through a phase... I feel like such a idiot, not noticing something was wrong with my own son."

She was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry Danny. I didn't mean to yell at you. Is... is this why Vlad kidnapped you? You said something about him wanting you as his son... How did he know?"

Danny got up and started pacing the lab, avoiding her eyes. He looked like a caged animal, she thought. He was mumbling to himself, but she couldn't make out what he was saying.

"Danny," she said, but she got no response.

She grabbed his arm and he stopped, quickly closing his eyes. For a moment she thought she saw them glowing red and she wondered what that could mean.

"Mom," he said tensely, "I really need to walk."

Ice cold fear rose up in her and she let go of him. He started moving again, carefully measuring his steps, walking to the far end and back again and she watched him. She caught some movement at the bottom of the stairs and noticed that the others were silently standing there, huddling together. Sam's eyes were wide with worry as she watched Danny move and Maddie felt a pang of jealousy as she realized Sam knew more about her son than she did. Jazz still looked bewildered at her brother's transformation and was biting her lip. Tucker was taking comfort by fumbling with his PDA, which he had in quiet mode for a change. Even Jack managed to keep quiet.

Finally Danny stopped pacing and sat down on the table again.

"Vlad is a half ghost too," he said, "remember back in college when you built the proto portal and he got the ecto acne? That's when he got his ghost powers. Vlad is the Wisconsin ghost."

Maddie slowly got up, trying to process the information she just heard. Behind her Jack let out a small cry which ended in an 'Hrmpf' as someone - probably Jazz - elbowed him. She felt a rage build inside of her, a cold fury that required immediate action and she looked around the lab. She stepped to the desk, picked up a random piece of equipment and threw it against the wall, screaming. They all looked at her in shock. She felt a little better though and she walked to the wall to see what it was she had destroyed. It was the Ghost Gabber. She started to laugh.

"No wonder all our equipment went off around you, hahaha, everything pointed at you being a ghost, hahaha, I can't believe we just ignored that, because you couldn't be a ghost."

She stopped laughing and turned to him, suddenly worried.

"You are still alive aren't you?"

Danny blinked at her. "Eh, I guess so. I have a heart beat, I'm breathing and I bleed when I get cut so..." He looked at the floor again. It seemed to be his favorite place to look at. "I'm not sure I'm entirely human though."

Maddie sighed and glanced at the others again, who were peering around the corner. Danny didn't seem to notice it, he had his back to them.

"Is that what you call yourself? A half ghost?" she asked him. Danny nodded. "Can you ... tell me about it?"

He shook his head, but then nodded again.

"We wanted to check out the portal. I thought it'd be cool to look inside of it and I put on one of those hazemat suits for protection, you know, the white one with the black gloves. When I walked in there I accidentally pushed a button and the thing came to life with me in it. I thought I was going to die, it hurt so bad. But I didn't, I just passed out and when I woke up I was like this."

The two rings appeared around his waist, one traveling upward, the other down, changing him into his alter ego. Immediately she felt the temperature of the lab drop a few degrees.

"You see, the colors of the hazemat suit were inverted, my hair turned white and my eyes green. But other than that I'm the same."

His voice sounded hollow, now, having a distinct echo to it. He grinned.

"Of course, all sorts of weird powers came with it. I had the hardest time controlling them in the beginning."

Maddie examined him, still not quite used to the fact that she was looking at her own son. His suit had been torn and ripped an hour earlier, but now it was perfect again, fitting him tightly. He held up his hand and a small green ectoball formed, floating just above it. He formed another and another and started juggling them. She cleared her throat and Danny let the balls disappear and looked at her expectantly and a bit nervous.

"What.. what else can you do," she asked, still mortified by the fact that her son was now a ghost, but also curious.

He grinned. "Oh, you know, the basics, fly, go invisible, pass through things and.. um.. well, other stuff."

"Like shooting ecto rays?"

He pointed his index finger at the Ghost Gabber that was still laying on the floor and let out a small, green beam. It hit the device in the middle and it burst into flames.

"I've wanted to do that for ages," he muttered and she smiled involuntarily.

"So that's how you fired that empty ecto gun at that ghost that came through the portal?"

He looked at her in alarm.

"It was empty? I didn't know that...," his voice trailed away and his eyes glazed over as he seemed lost in some memory.

"So, that's it?" she asked him, trying to get his attention back again.

"N-no, I can make a shield and...I can make a shield," he ended lamely.

There was something he wasn't telling her and now she was determined to find out what it was. It must be a habit, she thought, trying to keep everything to himself, because he thought she couldn't handle it. She wished he would stop doing that, taking on the world on his shoulders.

"What about Vlad? Can he do the same things as you? Does he have all your powers?"

"No, I have...Yes," he said bitterly, "Only he has twenty years of experience on me. And he can multiply himself. He can beat me anytime."

He definitely had some power Vlad didn't have. She glanced at Sam, who was still standing there and had a frown on her face and Tucker, who was now looking uncomfortable. They knew what it was and it must be pretty bad too. Something...destructive.

"You still seem different when you are like this," she said, changing the subject.

He shrugged and relaxed somewhat, having left the dangerous grounds they were walking on.

"Comes with the job. Like I said, I'm not two different people." The two rings appeared again and he changed back. "See. Still the same."

He was still the same, she saw that now. Phantom's confidence was Danny's confidence, their playfulness was the same, Phantom's cocky smile changed into a smirk on Danny's face. It was just a matter of appearance.

"You told me Vlad controlled you with some wrist bands..."

Danny started shaking his head and gripped the edge of the table tightly, his knuckles turning white.

"I don't wanna talk about that."

"You're going to have to some day."

He was silent, not looking at her. She remembered how he had taken off when they were talking about the wristbands in the park, when he was Phantom. Just when she thought he wasn't going to say anything anymore he spoke.

"They were tuned in to my ectoplasmic signature. I could only go ghost when he allowed it, among other things."

Maddie didn't want to know what the other things were, but she asked anyway.

"What other things," she whispered.

"Vlad shocked him," came Sam's voice from the stairs.

Danny glared at her. She came into the lab, followed by the others, walked to the table Danny was sitting on and sat down beside him. He clearly didn't want her talking about it, but he didn't try to stop her either.

Maddie turned to Sam. "You knew about this, didn't you, you and Tucker."

Sam nodded. "Tucker remembered today, Danny got through to him. And Jazz, she knew too. We helped him. In fact, I was there when Vlad captured Danny."

She looked nervously at Danny, whose face was now totally blank and quickly told the events from that night, six months ago.

"Wait a minute," Maddie said, "Vlad owned those demons? What are they doing in Amity Park now? Are they after you again?"

Danny shrugged and winced at the movement.

"I don't know," he said tiredly, "I don't know where Vlad got them from, I never dared to ask."

"What happened to Vlad? How did you get away?," Maddie asked.

"I collapsed his house on him. He's dead."

"You can knock down a house that size?" Jack got excited, "That's awesome!"

Maddie shook her head. "They didn't find him in the debris. You said he's a half ghost too, he must have escaped."

Again, a silence fell over the lab. Nobody seemed to know what to say. Danny was leaning against Sam, studying the floor again, Tucker was staring at one of the computers in the lab that was still on, the colorful lines of the screen saver swirling. Jack was fidgeting, obviously full of questions, but not knowing where to start and Jazz was just standing there. Danny looked up.

"Pizza boy is here," and as he said that, the doorbell rang.

"That's freaky," Tucker muttered, "But handy."