Thanks to Peonywinx, stick_fight3, and SpartanCommander for reviewing.
Chapter Six: Of Ghost and Halfas
"Not telling," Dani said flatly, sitting cross legged on the cell bench, still in ghost form, and glaring at Brainiac Five.
"You are being unreasonable and childish!" Brainiac Five finally snapped. It had already been a half hour and Dani refused to answer any of his questions. Such as why she ran off, or why she was so desperate to go back to her time. If it was just she wanted to go back, she would have said it, but she wouldn't go for such a simple lie!
"I'll tell you if you promise to take me back!" Dani said.
"And make me obligated to even if you plan to destroy everything?" Brainiac Five asked. He had already done too much. He didn't want to be a liar on top of everything else.
"I'm not going to destroy anything!"
"Then why won't you tell us what's so important?!"
Dani glared and looked away. "It's none of your business."
Brainiac Five sighed, rubbing his temples. Headaches. Headaches he did not like. Though he suppose there had to be some down sides to getting his wish. "Fine, fine. We'll change subjects. Why did you hide your powers?"
"Because they don't exist anymore," she said flatly.
Brainiac Five paused at that. "What don't exist?"
"Ghosts."
Brainiac Five raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you claim they did?"
Dani sighed and looked at him. "Undo the bindings and I'll tell you."
Brainiac Five studied her a moment. Well, the cell was coated with the same material. He pulled out a small device and undid the bindings. Hopefully those energy blasts couldn't get her out.
Dani pushed away the ropes with a sigh, stretching her arms above her to work out the kinks. "Ghosts need ecto to be born," she explained, getting off the bed to stretch. She spent too many hours tied up. "This world doesn't have it anymore."
"How can you tell?"
"Because I am a halfa. I'm sensitive to ghostly things, but since I am not completely ghostly, I'm not so engulfed in it I don't notice it's absence. Major cities usually have tons of ghosts, usually in the underground part of bad parts of town because that's where a lot of dead bodies get dumped. Went by there and nothing. Even went to the cemeteries and not a drop was there no matter how I looked," Dani explained as she continued the round of stretching.
"I have never heard of an element called ecto."
Dani paused in a side stretch, looking at Brainy. "That's because it's probably been gone for hundreds of years by now," she said and continued again.
"...and how do you know that?"
Dani didn't speak for a minute, finishing the quick stretches before plopping down. She shrugged. "Because it has to be gone long enough to be lost in time."
Brainiac Five eyed her after that. "That's a lie.
"Yep. But I don't want to explain my theory without knowing more facts," Dani muttered and the white rings appeared around her waist and traveling up and down her body, returning her hair to it's usual black and eyes to blue.
"....that is how you...transform?" He asked. He almost said turn human, but that'd imply she'd been a ghost.
Dani nodded.
"Like Ferro Lad," Brainiac Five muttered. Just two rings instead of one. "He turned into iron."
Dani laughed. "Apparently it's a common thing for activating an element in the blood or something."
"Activating?" Brainiac Five asked. "How you register as a breathing human now, but weren't thirty seconds ago?"
"....this thing has monitors for my status?"
"Yes." It had been quite alarming. If she hadn't been shouting and glaring at the time, he might have thought her dead. All the lines had been flat except for a faint brain activity.
"Then, yeah, it would be. Ghost self is dead as a door nail."
"Such a state....it can't be possible," Brainiac Five said, frowning. How could one continually die and live again.
"Ah, but it is. And it takes a certain set of circumstance to be possible," Dani said, grinning widely.
"...explain."
Dani held up a finger. "First, one must take into consideration the nature of ecto. Ecto is an element that reacts to the mental energy. Namely, the human mind," she said, tapping the side of her head. "It is pulled into a strong mental energy and constructs a form around it."
"Then it would have formed around the minds of those in the past and such things would not have been lost in time," Brainiac Five contested.
Dani shook her head. "Not so. Because when it's in a human shell, the mental energy doesn't leave. Now, sometimes ecto would react around psychics and sometimes real things or beings can morph from that, but that's a rare thing. No, usually the mental energy has to be dead. And something must be anchoring it to our world to keep them from moving on. Thus..."
"....the reason they say ghosts form with regrets?" He did know several basic facts about ghosts in just his research of Earth and old movies of Bouncing Boy's.
"Precisely! Or, more specifically, an obsession. Something in their life that the person clings to so their mental energy, they're spirit anchors itself long enough in this world to gather ecto. Now, sometimes a ghost isn't always made. There has to be enough ecto in the area. Now...how ecto is made? That I don't know. All I know it's drawn to the dead because of the mental energy released. So the more who died in a place, the more ecto that forms. Especially if deaths are really bad where regrets and obsessions with revenge occur," Dani explained, gesturing around the cell. "Why there's always some in a city."
"So ecto energy reacts to mental energy...that is particularly emotional?"
"Yes. Stronger the obsession, the stronger the being made. Sometimes it's a small regret, which is how small, ghosts with no real names form. The more regret, the more they can obsess over something, the stronger and more sentient they become. And, of course, there are times where a ghost forms from psychic energy. Usually making 'spirits' of a certain aspect. Like there's a Ghost of Halloween. Because there was such a wide belief of such a thing, enough psychic energy was made that formed him. And he's a real pain to fight. And I believe it's the same for Clockwork, but Clockwork is a bit hard to tell," Dani said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully.
"And Clockwork is...?"
"The Ghost of Time, but I've explained that to Bouncing Boy. Anyway, the important thing to keep in mind with ghosts, why there aren't a lot more around even in the past, is because the more ghosts in an area, the more ecto energy. And the more ecto energy, the increased likelihood of a portal forming. Therefore, you can never hear legends of a lot of ghosts in one place because if there's enough to confirm their existence, they get pulled into a portal. Just like that," Dani said with a snap and then spread her arms wide. "And they end up in the Ghost Zone."
"Ghost...Zone?"
"It's a parallel world to ours. Or it was in my time. It's made of ecto. Maybe that's where ecto comes from and it leaks through or maybe it's made of ecto that was here and went there. No one quit knows because portals are hard to make. Only two....well, three since one was made by a two person team, have made a portal. One by Vlad Masters and the other by Jack and Maddie Fenton. And Vlad Masters wasn't interested in studying where ecto came from too much and the Fentons were more into the hunting and studying of actual ghosts," she said with another shrug. "Following?"
Brainiac Five nodded. The Ghost Zone sounded similar to the Phantom Zone. Beings that weren't quite there, and sometimes could make whispers in this world, but far stronger in their connection. From how she explained things, if he accepted the existence of ecto energy, he supposed it was....possible.
"Go on," he prompted.
Dani nodded. "Well, we got the ghost stuff established. Now, a halfa. That is a different creature," she said, a wide grin spreading across her face. "You see, what makes a ghost and a halfa different is...the human never dies. The human body lives and the soul is still attached. But it takes a certain set of circumstance to make it. That is where the portal is essential."
"The portal? The ones Masters and the Fentons made?"
"Yes. You see, to make a portal takes an unseemly amount of ecto energy. Tons and tons all compressed in one area. More than a natural portal. Those only lasts moments, but a stable....oh, boy, it's off the charts. Now, imagine this. Imagine....someone being in a portal gateway when it activates?" She asked, the wide grin on her face, voice lowered.
Brainiac Five pondered this. "The energy surge....one would think it'd kill a person."
"One would think, but no. In reality, the surge is just, JUST low enough....that it doesn't kill the person. Oh, it supposedly hurts like your very form is being torn to shreds, but it's not quite enough to kill. It is enough, however, to loosen the soul's anchor in the body and provides an...out of body experience," Dani explained, waving a hand above her head to demonstrate. "For only a moment and in that moment, ecto energy LATCHES onto the mental energy because of the sheer AMOUNT there is that it'd react to the thoughts of a fly, that for a human, a ghost instantly forms around it. Then.....the pain stops. And then SLAM," she shouted clapping her hands together. "The mental energy is anchored back into the body and it dragged that ecto energy back with it, fusing it with the human DNA. Thus, a halfa is made. Then all it takes is the mental thought of 'change' and you're a ghost and then another thought and you're human since the ecto is responsive to mental thoughts," she said and shrugged. "And since halfas do not have a purely obsessive mindset like normal ghosts, it's easy for us to control."
Now that....that was interesting. With accepting how ecto worked, he supposed it was possible for it to work like that. "It would be highly unstable, I'd imagine, since ecto is more connected with the mental."
"Oh, extremely. The DNA is ready to fall apart, honestly, but it doesn't quite," Dani agreed with a nod.
".....why do you say it supposedly hurts in a portal. You have experienced it, if you're a halfa."
"You'd think, but I'm special. There's three true halfas to ever exist. Danny, my cousin. He's the son of the Fentons. The other is Vlad Masters, who worked with them and got hit years before. He went through the process more drawn out because he'd gotten the ecto into his body, but didn't quite die get close enough to death. It formed what was called 'ecto-acne' and it was slowly killing him. When he almost died, all that ecto stored within his body that was pretty much all the energy from the prototype portal was activated and he recovered," she explained and then put a hand on her chest. "I was born this way."
"Such DNA....it can't possibly reproduce."
"Not a daughter. Though it might reproduce. No one's tried it. I am...well, I suppose cousin is misleading, but it's less awkward then the donor of my DNA," Dani said, thoughtfully rubbing her chin.
"Donor of your DNA? But if you are not offspring," Brainiac Five paused. "A clone?"
"Bingo!" Dani declared. "Clone of one Danny Fenton. An imperfect clone. Still don't know how I ended up a girl."
Brainiac Five's frown grew. "A clone is highly unstable if one isn't careful for stable DNA. How is it possible to make something like you in that time, if what you say is true, and you wouldn't just collapse?"
"Almost did. For almost a year I was literally melting," Dani said, laying back on the back. "I actually did. Turned into a pile of goo for a few seconds. Luckily, Danny hit me with some ecto booster thing and when I 'died' then, I basically went through the affects of the halfa activation and became a true and stable halfa. So no more melty problem," Dani said with a cheerful chirp.
"And you survived the melting before that how exactly?" Brainiac Five asked.
"Not sure, but my theory is because I was the only 'intelligent' clone. The rest of them were really stupid. If they didn't have emotions, they could be called drones with how low it was. Because ecto reacts to mental energy, because I was smart enough to think 'don't die' and had enough intelligence to keep it up, I didn't melt right away. Basically, I willed it," Dani explained with a shrug.
Brainiac Five pondered this for a minute, studying the girl in the cell. "Can you prove ecto exists?"
"Get a syringe and take a blood sample from my ghost form. Ghosts are made of ecto, so ghost form is made of ecto too," Dani answered. "Making you some ecto rope or something would make it too hard to work with. Oh, and you wouldn't want to leave it in anything that's not air tight for longer than three hours or it evaporates."
"That sounded rehearsed," Brainiac Five commented.
"I'm a clone. The first month of my life, my arm was practically half needle instead of half ghost with how many samples were taken. And it didn't stop then. I imagine you can get Saturn Girl to play with it a bit. I'd suggest she think of something mundane at it. Like...bottle caps. Nothing pointy or boxes. Boxes are annoying," Dani said in a casual tone.
Brainiac Five hesitated a moment. "Very well," he said. "I'll be back shortly for a sample."
"Bring food! I'm hungry," Dani called after him, watching him leave. She sighed, frowning at the ceiling. "I need to get out," she murmured and put a hand on her stomach. She knew the scar was still there. It'd always be there. She winced and let out a hiss as she felt a burning sensation from it.
"Guess I was that way too long," she muttered, clenching a fist in her shirt. "I need to work faster..."