Karen Manson is a normal girl…but everything changes on her fourteenth birthday. Contains OC's and Season 3 spoilers. Rated for cursing and violence later on. Read and review, constructive criticism is appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom. I never have, I never will. Get over it.

Notes: This chapter, and probably the rest of the fic after it, contains a lot of spoilers from Season 3, which isn't scheduled to begin airing in the U.S. until June 2007 (why, Nickelodeon, why?!), so if you live in the U.S. and/or haven't seen any episodes from Season 3, don't read this, because it'll give away too much.

Chapter Seven: The...Sliiight Mishap

Mom held true to her word: it was just after four in the afternoon when she started her story, and didn't stop talking until it was almost midnight, by which time we had gone through four bags of instant popcorn and five bottles of water.

She told me everything about 'Danny Phantom,' from the first time he stepped into the Fenton Portal, to the time Ember McLain put him under a love spell (I had teased her excessively at that story), to the second time he stepped into the Fenton Portal and received the white 'D' on his costume, to the incident with the Reality Gauntlet, to when the plant ghost Undergrowth put Mom under his control, and, finally, to when Danny and every single ghost in the Ghost Zone made the Earth intangible to save it from a giant asteroid made entirely of ectoranium. She accompanied her story with some visual aids, such as sketches of logo designs for the front of his jumpsuit, the Goth's Guide to Mythology that Danny had used to get Pandora's Box back from the Box Ghost, and a brochure of Washington, D.C., where there was a picture of the Danny Phantom Memorial Statue placed just outside of the Capital building.

I would sometimes ask questions or make some comments as Mom was telling me all about her adventures as Danny's sidekick, but mostly, I remained at rapt attention, silent in shock, awe, and admiration, for her, for all the citizens of Amity Park, and, most of all, for Danny. The fact that all those people, and especially him, went through what they did and still survived in one piece amazed me. About the middle of her tale, a thought came to the back of my mind, and had come full circle by the time she was finished: I'm descended from greatness.

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I couldn't sleep that night, despite the fact that I was completely wiped out. The images of a lunch lady who could turn into a giant meat monster, a jerky older Danny with green skin, red eyes, and fire for hair, and a ghost with the horns of a ram and a body that resembled a blanket of stars kept pouring into my mind. All of the ghosts Mom had spoken of sounded like characters from a fairy tale: evil, mystical beings that would eventually be slain by the brave knight (Danny), who would then wed the beautiful princess (Mom, obviously). But instead of a big sword, a bigger shield, and strong armor, Danny had had various sort-of-natural powers to defeat the evil enemies: the Ghost Ray, the Ghostly Wail, freezing powers...

Could I do any of that? I thought. Could I face that kind of enemy and just be able to defeat it with a flick of my wrist or a really strong glare? I don't even know if I have any 'ghost powers.' Even if I did, I—

Suddenly, I remembered my disappearing arm all those months ago, and the week before, when I had gone through Mom's bedroom door just by thinking about it. Was that a ghost power? Mom had said something about Danny doing that—she had called it intangibility. My heart started pounding in excitement. I have a ghost power! I wanted to scream in delight, but didn't in fear of waking up Mom. Hmm... I wondered; what else can I do? I mulled over what Mom had called Danny's "basic powers": flight, intangibility, and invisibility. She had said that in the beginning, he could only do that stuff when he changed into his ghostly form. Well, I reasoned, if Danny could find his powers when he was in ghost form, maybe I need to get into ghost form to find my own.

I sat up in my bed, wide awake now. I turned on the light on my bedside table and got up. I'll need a costume, I decided, and I went over to my closet. It only took me a few seconds to find the white turtleneck, the fitted black sweatpants with a white stripe down each leg, and the old pair of combat boots (which I had borrowed from Mom a few years back and never returned) that I was looking for.

I changed out of my pajamas and slipped on the shirt, pants, and boots, which I laced over the bottoms of my pants. I walked over to the full length mirror that was built into my closet door and stared at my reflection. Not bad, I thought. I took my layered black hair out of its ponytail, let it fall to the middle of my chest, and tousled it around a little. Not bad at all.

I gazed at myself again. If I was right, and I was able to change, then my shirt and the stripes down my pants would turn black, my hair, pants, and boots would all turn white, and my light blue eyes would turn a brilliant green. If I was wrong, at least the combo made a cute outfit if I took the pants out of the boots.

I got into a fighting stance, closed my eyes, and willed myself, Change! I looked in the mirror to see if anything had happened. No dice. OK, I thought, let's try this again. One, two, three, change! Nothing felt different. Change! I thought. Change! Change! You can do it, girl, change!

I don't know how long I kept it up: it was probably only five minutes, but it felt like an hour. I sat down on my bed in indignation. "Ugh," I muttered under my breath, "why can't I do it?" Then I thought of Mom's story just a few hours before. Didn't she say that Danny had a battle cry? I stood up again. No harm in trying it, I convinced myself, and I shouted into the air, "I'm going ghost!"

I heard something like a flash coming from below me. I looked down and saw a black ring forming around my waist. Before I could react, the ring split in two and started to move. One went up, going above my head, and the other went down, vanishing into the floor. It finished as quickly as it had started. I stood in shock for a minute, then smiled. "I did it!" I cried, "I really did it! I—WAAH!!" I looked into the mirror and let out a sharp, loud scream of surprise.

My hair, pants and boots had turned a puke green, and my shirt and the pant stripes had turned an almost neon blue. And though I could see perfectly fine, the irises of my eyes had turned white, and the should-have-been whites had turned pitch black.

Change back change back change back change back change back! I thought in a panic. I focused on changing back to normal as hard as I could, but when I checked in the mirror I still looked like a Picasso-Van Gogh crossbreed. Shit!

"Karen?" I heard Mom say outside my door. Double shit! "Karen, are you alright in there?"

"I'm fine!" I replied, a little too quickly. "I'm fine, fine, perfectly fine, relax, just go back to sleep, I'm sorry I woke you up." I moved to lock my door as I was talking, but the doorknob turned before I could reach it.

"Karen," Mom said, more annoyed this time, "Karen, what is going--" She stared at me in my botched up change mode. She stood in silence for a moment, taking in my appearance. "Uh..." she said after a minute.

"Look," I said quickly, "I have a perfectly legitimate explanation for...this. You see, I was thinking about Danny, and..."

"You tried to see if you could change into ghostly form," Mom finished my sentence for me. I nodded meekly. We stood in silence for a minute; then, I heard a muffled chuckle.

I glared at Mom. "No..." I said as the chuckles increased. "Don't you dare!" Mom burst out into hysterical laughter. She was laughing so hard that she had to grip onto my dresser to keep from falling on the floor.

"It isn't funny!" I screamed, but she didn't reply for her laughing so hard. "Be nice to your daughter!" I glared for a second, then turned my head and looked in the mirror. I looked at my grass-green hair and my zebra-like eyes. "I..." I started to say, "I guess it is a bit absurd, isn't it?" I was starting to chuckle in spite of myself. "I mean, look at me!" I was trying not to full-on laugh but wasn't succeeding. "I look ridiculous!" That was when I lost it. I burst out laughing, staring at my messed-up effort to go ghost. "Ridiculous!" I tried to say, but I couldn't get the words out. After what seemed an eternity, Mom and I stopped laughing. "OK!" I said, "time to become me again!"

It only took a second to change back to normal. The black ring sprouted up again, and, just like before, it split in half and went in separate directions. This time, though, when I looked in the mirror my reflection was normal again. I let out a sigh of relief, closed the closet door, went over to my bed, and flopped down on it.

Mom walked toward me and stood over my exhausted form. "Move over," she commanded, and I scooted over so she could sit next to me. As soon as she sat down, she said to me, "I have a proposition for you."

I looked over at the clock. "Mom, it's one-thirty in the morning, how about making the proposition tomorrow?"

"Hear me out."

I sighed. "Fine, what's the proposition?"

"I want to train you."

"Say what?"

Mom's eyes become focused on me. "You want to get ghost powers, right?" she asked, obviously as a rhetorical question.

"Uh..." I said hesitatingly, "right?"

"And you want to not look like a bad painting every time you try to change form."

"Obviously."

"So, you'll need someone to train you," Mom pressed on, "someone who knows the process of gaining control over powers that are hard to control."

"You're fully human!"

"Well, I was around Danny long enough to know about this stuff, wasn't I?" She continued when I didn't reply. "I'm the perfect person to train you. I know what powers you may get, I know what your potential may be..."

"You don't know anything about my potential!" I shouted, "I'm not one of Danny's clones, you know!"

"Yeah, but I have an idea of what you'll be able to do, and I can help you with that! Don't you see?"

"Not really," I replied truthfully.

Mom sighed. "Karen, I want to train you in whatever ghost powers you may get so that you won't lose control someday and really hurt someone."

I stared at her. "You're not going to shut up until I accept, are you?"

"Nope."

I let out an exasperated groan. "Fine, I'll let you train me," I said, "but I won't have you telling me what powers I'm going to get, because they may not be the same as the ones Danny had."

Mom smiled. "Deal." She kissed me on the forehead and stood up. "Good night, honey."

"Good night," I replied, pulling the covers over me and turning off my bedside light.

As Mom walked out of the room, she turned to me and said, "Get some rest. You're going to need it." She closed the door before I could reply.

I sat in bed for a minute. "You're going to need it?" I turned Mom's words over in my head. Good God, what have I gotten myself into?

After-Chapter Commentary, Part Two!

So yes, here is Chapter Seven, or Chapter Eight, or part two of Chapter Six/Seven, whatever you want to call it. I originally started out writing this chapter and the last one together, but I felt like there was too much going on in one chapter and that the two concepts of sluggish Karen and trying-to-change Karen didn't really connect. And in all honesty, the second part (aka this chapter) wasn't finished when I updated the first, so I had a chance to complete it. As I stated before, it may not have been a wise choice, but oh well.

This whole chapter came out completely differently from what I was going to write. Originally, Karen was going to master the changing part right away and look slightly cooler than Danny did (I'll describe her ghostly form in the next chapter). The idea of the whole blue-and-green mix-up didn't occur to me until I was writing my first draft on paper, when Karen was saying that her eyes should change from blue to green. As I was writing that bit, I thought, What if she completely messed up the outfit? Such was the birth of Karen's little changing mishap, and of Sam offering to train Karen (which also didn't occur to me until my rough draft).

I apologize to you all for failing to update all this time, but as I stated in the last chapter, I was stuck on one idea and it was only recently that I realized it couldn't work. On the bright side, thanks to all those long months of brainstorming and confusion, I now have various ideas plotted out for the rest of the fic. I have basically the entire epilogue written in my head (NO, I'm not saying anything about it), and I've got other tidbits for chapters to come.

By the way, I have received two reviews on Chapter Six, and one of them was me pretending to be a reviewer to see if the system was working. I'm not sure whether it's that my story isn't worth reviewing, or if people just don't like to review anymore, but either way this fic has very few reviews. I want reviews. Therefore, I have a new policy (or possibly a form of blackmail...): if I don't get reviews for a chapter (positive or otherwise), I will withhold future chapters. I made an exception this time, but next time, no reviews, no updates. Just wanted to let you all know.

Wow, this bit is really long, I'll stop talking now. Hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and review!

-climbs back into the Fan Fiction bomb shelter, where she is still camped out-