DISCLAIMER: I don't own Danny Phantom or Teen Titans. I don't own Star Wars either (you'll see why later).

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Chapter 13: Two Halves

Danny wasn't hurting anymore. He felt peaceful. Almost – dare he say it – blissful in fact. He hadn't felt this way in a long time, if ever. It couldn't last, he knew that. Peace like this never lasted.

And he was already awake. So why not just open his eyes and get it over with?

Reluctantly, Danny opened his eyes and saw the green sky above him.

Hang on…

Green?

Danny sat up abruptly, taking in his weird surroundings. He was in Amity Park's park, next to the fountain where Sam had wished that she'd never met Danny. Happy times…

He could see the rest of Amity Park. That looked normal. What didn't look normal was the sky, looking like an upside down version of Amity Park, except that it was ruined and seemed to be in the Ghost Zone. There were ledges and purple doors, but no ghosts.

Danny got up and walked over to the fountain, peering at his reflection. "Weird. What is going on?"

He touched the water, which was cool to his skin. "Last I remember is nothing but pain. And before that…" He frowned. "I was fighting the Puppet King and…Raven? Was that all a dream?

"…No. The pain was real enough; I can still feel it." He shivered. "Am I dead?"

"If you were dead we wouldn't be here," a new voice said, startling Danny.

"Who's that?" Danny whirled, looking for the speaker.

There was a soft laugh. "Look down. I'm you."

Unwillingly, remembering the last time somebody had told him that, Danny gazed at his reflection in the water. Except that it had white hair. And green eyes. And tanned skin…

And was sporting a cocky grin that Danny currently was not.

Danny yelped as his ghost half popped out of the water, sopping wet.

"Hey." Danny Phantom, now floating in a sitting position with crossed legs, continued to grin at Danny Fenton.

"W-wha?" Danny was at a loss for what to say. What does one say to one's other half when you actually meet them? Finally: "Who're you?"

He felt incredibly stupid after saying that. Seriously? "Who're you?" He must be demented!

Phantom just grinned wider, though. "I'm you. You're me. We're the same person."

This time Danny had a better reply. "Sorry if I'm having a hard time believing you. If you were really me and I'm meeting you now, why not beforehand?"

"Because we were too tightly bound together. Our thoughts were one, our feelings one, and our minds one. How am I supposed to do anything if we're one being? Our perspectives are exactly the same!" Phantom paused for effect. "Or rather…they were."

"What changed?" Danny asked skeptically.

"The fact that the Puppet King pulled me out of you and into a different body might have something to do with it."

"But what about before? With the Fenton Ghost Catcher this didn't happen at all!"

"That was specifically designed to separate ectoplasmic entities, or energy, from people."

"So? What's the difference?"

Phantom looked reluctant as he admitted, "I really don't know. Just ask the Titans when you wake up."

"Then I apologize if I don't believe you. I've already had one ghost tell me that he's me."

Phantom frowned. "Right. Him."

A sudden cold breeze whipped through the park, chilling Danny to his bones. Thunder flashed; Danny looked up to see his face in the clouds, smirking malevolently. The sight momentarily caused Danny to stop breathing.

"He's a sad excuse for a ghost." Phantom's presence right next to Danny made him jump a foot in the air. The white-haired teen kept talking. "He did nothing but wreak destruction."

Danny could think of nothing but remember what even the good ghosts he knew did. Dora had wreaked a ton of destruction (although maybe she was more ambivalent than good?), Wulf had, too, and so did Frostbite, even if unintentionally. Heck, even he wreaked destruction, although it was more because he was fighting another ghost. "Isn't that what ghosts normally do?"

Phantom smiled ruefully. "Let me clarify: He's a sad excuse for being our future self. Our ex-future self. We might destroy things on accident, but he did it for the fun of it." His voice hardened. "Nothing we do should ever be purely 'for the fun of it'."

Danny ignored the last bit. He was still a teenager, even though he'd stopped using his powers for fun…mostly… "How can you be so sure that he's our ex-future self?" Danny asked in a hushed voice. He shot him a suspicious look. "Are you really me?"

"I am. We're two halves of the same DNA structure. As for my certainty, I'm your ghost half." Phantom sounded like he'd left out a "Duh."

"So?" Danny still needed more proof that Phantom really was his ghost half. He might've looked exactly like him but looks didn't matter.

"I don't worry myself too much about fears like this because I'm the one supposed to have gone rogue. I don't feel like it now so I don't worry." Phantom shrugged casually. "You shouldn't either."

Danny raised his eyebrows incredulously. "I shouldn't worry about myself turning evil?"

"May the Force be with you," Phantom said mysteriously.

Danny blinked, stumped. "Huh?"

"You don't remember the reference? Think about Anakin Skywalker in relation to his son. Why didn't Luke turn evil?"

"Everyone kept warning him and comparing him to his father." Danny stopped. "Are you saying I'm Luke?"

"Your mindset is the same." Phantom scratched his neck, pulling the collar of his jumpsuit away.

"But I wasn't stupidly cocky like Anakin either!" Danny objected, thinking about his self in the timeline when he had turned evil. He definitely hadn't been cocky then…

"No," Phantom admitted, frowning. "I guess the Star Wars metaphor was a bad one then."

Danny rolled his eyes.

"Okay. I got something else. What about our ghostly wail?" Phantom had a glint in his eyes.

"What about it?"

"You didn't gasp in fright and run away when you first used it." Phantom folded his arms, cocking an eyebrow.

"That was different," Danny protested.

"How different from the ecto-electricity power you have now?" Phantom challenged.

Danny didn't really have an answer to that. He tried something else. "With the ghostly wail it meant things were changing. He hadn't gotten it until he was way older. I thought of it like that then."

"What about now?"

Danny swallowed. "I started giving it more thought, especially after he came back. I wouldn't have developed it if I wasn't going to turn into him. Now I've got something else that he has."

Phantom sighed loudly. "Did you ever think that maybe you're developing these powers because you're getting stronger? That we're getting stronger?"

Danny looked at him blankly. "Huh?"

"Obviously not. Think: Vlad didn't have all his powers when he first became half-ghost. He got 'em as he grew in strength. He didn't worry about becoming evil."

"That's because he was already a twisted fruit loop."

"Point taken. But my point is: you guys already share so many powers."

"Why are you referring to me as 'you' if we're the same person?" Danny asked.

"It's less confusing," Phantom said. "But you're avoiding the point.

"We both have ecto-rays"—he shot one into the green sky—"invisibility, intangibility, flight, etc." He used each power as he mentioned it. "Then comes duplication"—two Phantoms appeared—"and my favorite one: electricity!" Phantom conjured a ball of electricity and threw it. It hit the fountain, making the statue explode.

Danny had taken a step back at this. "But his electricity doesn't take away ghost powers!"

"And neither will ours with time and practice," Phantom assured him.

"And what about my—our telekinesis and teleportation abilities? Or our ice powers?"

"Every ghost has a different core. Vlad's is heat; which is why his rays are pink and our future self had a heat core. Why his ecto-beams were green and Vlad's pink I have no idea but I digress."

Now Phantom smiled broadly. "Our other ectoplasmic powers are because our strength is growing. We're strong, Danny. Vlad knew that, which was why he acted like that so many months ago. That was why he pushed us—pushed you to lose your ghost powers, or me."

"But that doesn't change the fact that I'm scared," Danny whispered.

"Anybody would be scared in your position. The important thing is to not let that fear overwhelm you."

That sounded familiar to Danny. "What do you mean?"

For the first time Phantom looked exasperated. "You know what I'm talking about. Remember, don't let fear control you." He started manipulating green electricity, shocking Danny. "If you don't, control will come naturally." He smirked. "It's in your genes."

Danny frowned at the reference, knowing that his ghost half, which was made up of ectoplasm, was bonded to his DNA, making it a part of his genes even though it hadn't been there when he was born. He knew that he was half ghost; he just didn't like to be reminded of it, instead preferring to think of himself as a human with special powers.

As Danny was thinking this, the place he was in suddenly seemed to warp. Colors were becoming fainter and he could no longer see Phantom as clearly.

"It's time to wake up, Danny," Phantom said, smiling. "It's been nice talking to you."

"What do you mean?" Danny tried to hold on to the world he was in. "You're not disappearing, are you?"

Phantom laughed. "Oh, come on! I'm you, remember? I can't just disappear! I'm a part of you; everything that I think and feel is you. You won't notice that I'm not talking to you."

"Then why are we able to talk now?" The world behind Danny was turning black. Soon it was just him and Phantom standing there in what seemed to be infinite darkness. Only Phantom's ghostly glow provided any light.

"Because I had to be reincorporated in your DNA after the Puppet King took it out of you," Phantom said. "That's why it was so painful. You were reliving what happened in the portal."

"Then what was that place we were in?"

Phantom smiled broadly. "Your mind, of course. Unique, isn't it? But then, so are we.

"Don't worry if you don't see or hear me. This was a one-time thing. It's going to go back to how it was before." Phantom was becoming faint.

Danny was immobilized, unable to move from his spot. His eyes were flashing all over the place and he was unable to tell what was up or down. There was complete silence for a moment until Phantom's voice echoed one last time.

"Oh yeah. One more thing: Try not to be surprised if something new happens, okay?"

With that, Danny shouted out loud as he found himself falling. Falling into what seemed like a vortex of darkness.

A vortex of darkness that was overcome by the sound of maniacal laughter.

Danny's eyes snapped wide open as he jolted upright in bed, pins and needles spreading throughout all his limbs. The feeling made him squint his eyes shut and rub his arms. He opened them a second later, looking at his surroundings.

He was lying in a white bed with steel railings. Large flashing monitors were set against one wall of the large room he was in. There were rods placed in the ceiling for curtains. His bed wasn't closed off against the outside world and neither were any of the others. He wasn't hooked up to anything, which defied popular belief regarding hospitals.

Or was he in a hospital? He could see the ocean through the windows and the rest of Jump City. It would seem that the Titans had a mini-hospital themselves, which made sense. No regular hospital would be able to accommodate Beast Boy, Starfire, or Cyborg.

Still rubbing away the pins and needles feeling that his limbs persisted to have, Danny noticed something else that he hadn't before. In a bed directly opposite him lay Starfire, who was sleeping with her feet on the pillow and her hand hanging off the opposite end. Beast Boy was sleeping in yet another bed next to Starfire, but in what looked to be an even more uncomfortable position than Starfire. His head was hanging off the bed, as was his right arm. The rest of his body was on the bed, albeit in a precarious position.

Wondering slightly about Starfire's and Beast Boy's presence (and their unusual sleeping positions), Danny looked to see if there was a clock in the room. As he was doing this, he heard the sound of automatic doors sliding open.

"Glad to see you're awake," Cyborg said, stopping to stand by Danny's bed. "You slept through the whole night and most of the morning."

"When was I out?"

"Yesterday around…" Cyborg checked his arm for something Danny couldn't see. "…five. Do you remember anything?"

Danny rested his forehead in his hand, looking ahead as he tried to jog his memory. For some reason, the image of a familiar white-haired ghost in a weird place that looked a lot like Amity Park popped up in his head. That didn't seem relevant so Danny continued to try and remember.

It hit him then: Blinding pain that had ripped through his entire body and rendered him senseless. Before that had been the Puppet King.

Danny remembered. What he couldn't figure out was why it felt like he had a gap in his head where something important had been. It was something that had to do with…he couldn't remember. Frustrated, Danny gave up on that subject.

"I remember," he said, looking up at Cyborg. "But there's still a lot I don't understand."

"We were kinda hoping you could also fill in a couple of the blanks for us," Cyborg admitted. "But you probably have more questions than us anyway. I'll just go get Robin and Raven. They were in the middle of something when I left to check up on you." Cyborg seemed irritated at something, although Danny didn't probe. If it was important Cyborg would most likely bring it up eventually. If not, there was no need to pry.

As Cyborg left the mini-hospital, Danny was looking at Starfire and Beast Boy, wondering whether he should wake them up or just leave them. He was saved from making this decision when Cyborg returned five seconds later with the two other Titans in tow.

"They were done with their discussion," Cyborg explained, seeing Danny's raised eyebrow. "I met them in the hallway."

"Are you feeling all right?" Raven asked, standing on the opposite end of the bed than the other two boys.

Danny considered that. The tingling was gone; his head was clear; and nothing else hurt. "Yeah. I feel fine."

"Vitals are good," Cyborg commented, giving Danny a slight shock. He turned his head to see Cyborg at one of the monitors and looking at a body scan with millions of numbers next to it.

They were joined by Beast Boy and Starfire. Beast Boy was rubbing his eyes and popping his back, grimacing slightly. Starfire looked just slightly teary-eyed from a recent yawn.

"Are you feeling all right, Danny?" she promptly inquired, echoing Raven.

"Fine," Danny replied. "But I'm gonna ask, why were you guys sleeping in here?"

"We were worried," Starfire said. "We did not want you left alone during the long night. Beast Boy and I did the volunteering to stay the night. The others went to do some discussing about the…issues." She also seemed slightly irritated; Danny could see that this time it was aimed at Robin, who looked to be in a foul mood, even though he was trying to hide it.

But still, Danny was touched. That two of his new "allies" had wanted to stay with him while he recuperated was beyond nice. He would have been safe alone but they still wanted to stay with him.

He smiled at them, feeling a little heat warm his face. "Thanks. You really didn't have to do that. I would've been fine."

"That was debatable," Cyborg said, showing Danny a paper with a bunch of high-tech language that he couldn't understand. "We couldn't get a decent check-up of you at first because something kept interfering with the readings. The energy shorted out twice before I managed to make sure you'd be all right. And even then it was necessary to keep an eye on you to be sure it wouldn't happen again."

"Do you know why that was?" Raven asked.

Danny shrugged. "I honestly have no clue since I only have half the picture at the moment. Maybe you guys could explain a bit more about this Puppet King of yours and I'll have a better idea."

"You guys weren't working in cahoots?" Robin broke in, sounding as if this thought had been running through his head for positively ages.

Danny blinked, shocked. "…What? What gave you that idea?"

"Robin is under the impression that since you weren't affected the same way as the rest of us you made some sort of deal with the Puppet King," Raven explained, annoyance underlining her tone.

Danny kicked off the covers, feeling hot. "That explains a lot," he said, remembering the irritation of Cyborg and Starfire. "But I can tell you honestly that I've never met the Puppet King before." He looked straight at Robin. "You were the one saying that I had to earn your trust. If you don't give me that chance I can't do it."

Sheepishness crossed Robin's face now. "Sorry," he mumbled, ashamed. He turned away slightly, scratching his head.

That issue partly solved, Danny looked at each of the other Titans now. "So…answers?"

Raven began speaking, taking down her hood much to the surprise of Danny. He saw that she had purple hair, eyes, and a jewel-like thing on her forehead. "First of all, we just want to say thank you. We would still be puppets if it weren't for what you did back in that warehouse. You risked your life and for that we are all grateful." Raven reached into her cloak and pulled out something that Danny recognized: the chain from his belt; the hat was still at the other end of it. She laid it next to Danny. "Thank you."

Danny felt uncomfortable. "Um…there's really no need. It wasn't that big of a deal…"

"But it was," Starfire objected. "Last time Raven and I managed to overcome the Puppet King. This time it was just you and you were pushed for time. On the top of that, there was something odd about the Puppet King's cauldron."

"Which we'll explain later," Beast Boy added.

Danny almost objected this until what Cyborg said drove it out of his mind.

"What you might not understand is that you almost died," Cyborg said. "From what Raven told us, your ghost half and your human half are linked. If something happens to your ghost half your human half is gone. The same goes for the other way around."

"But that's not true," Danny protested. "I took away my ghost powers one time and I was just fine."

"Were there any unusual side effects?" Raven asked. "Did you feel different?"

"Like how I felt when battling the Puppet King; I felt human." Danny looked down at the DP emblem on his hat. "I didn't realize then how important my ghost half was, though. When it came back I was relieved."

"You say that you took away your ghost powers," Raven said. "Yet you also say that your ghost half returned. Are they the same thing?"

Danny frowned. "Well, yeah. To me they are. Without the ghost powers I don't have a ghost half."

Raven pulled up a chair from seemingly nowhere. "You need to understand, Danny, that your ghost half is different from your ghost powers. Your ghost half is a part of you; your ghost powers come with your ghost half. You can still have your ghost but not have your powers. But if you take away your ghost half, then your powers are gone as well. Having no powers doesn't mean you're still not half-ghost; but not having your ghost means you're human. With this in mind, can you clarify what happened when you took your ghost powers?"

Even though his head was spinning with everything that Raven had told him, Danny managed to sort through it and answer. "I went into the same ghost portal that gave me my…abilities originally. Only this time, I'd gone into it with the intention to turn back into a human."

"Why?" Beast Boy interrupted, confused. "They're really cool!"

Danny sighed, recalling the conflicting emotions back then that had played such a big factor in his decision. On one hand, he had enjoyed being able to turn into a ghost-fighting ghost but on the other he had wanted a normal life. Add to that the Masters' Blasters and you had a teenager that didn't want to do it anymore.

"I was tired of it all. My double life, my enemies, my archenemy who was the mayor"—that raised eyebrows—"and the new ghost fighting team that was sponsored by him. I was just sick of having to deal with everything and wanted a normal life. So even though my friends and sister were against my decision, I recreated the accident and became human. The only difference was that I had a white streak in my hair." Danny touched the place where it had been. "My parents thought I had dyed it; I didn't know why it was there. It just was. What I did know and was glad for was that I was finally normal. I didn't have to deal with it anymore."

"That sounds a lot more complicated than what we have to deal with," Cyborg said after a moment's thought. "A double life, enemies – although we have those, too – and a mayor for an archenemy." He frowned on that one. "How does that go anyway? Aren't your enemies ghosts?"

"That's a long story I'd rather not go into right now," Danny said, smiling sheepishly.

"But if you were normal then," Starfire said, "how is it that you are a half-ghost again?"

"I thought the ghost fighting team that had popped up could handle everything. And since the town seemed happy to have humans for heroes I figured Danny Phantom could go. But when the Earth was threatened by an asteroid that ghosts couldn't turn intangible I had to do something. My plan was that if we could recruit enough ghosts to turn the Earth intangible then we wouldn't have to worry. I went into the Ghost Zone, or the ghosts' home, with my friends and sister to try and get them to help." Danny smiled wryly, remembering the incident. "It failed miserably and they attacked us. I ejected my friends in a pod and tried to escape. The ghosts combusted the vehicle I was in and continued to hit me with their ecto-rays. I don't know what happened after that except that I was suddenly in my ghost form. I managed to fight off the ghosts then."

There was silence for several minutes. Each of the Titans was watching Raven, who was looking at Danny's cap.

She touched the emblem before meeting Danny's eyes. "Once a half-ghost always a half-ghost."

Danny was silent, waiting for her to go on.

"While there are certain exceptions to that kind of a rule," Raven continued, "in this case it's suitable. You were human then…sort of. That white streak in your hair showed that you still had your ghost genes; they were simply dormant."

"Genes?" Robin interrupted.

Raven frowned at the boy wonder. "Don't interrupt, Robin. You're the one always pushing for answers."

Robin didn't look too sorry. "Just wondering how his being a half-ghost is in his genes when he got his abilities due to an accident."

"My parents always say that ghosts are made of ectoplasm," Danny said, remembering one of his dad's long rants. "They're a different species so they have DNA, which is made of ectoplasm. The ghost portal that my parents built and that I activated on accident – hence receiving my powers – ran on ectoplasm. I was inside the ghost portal when I activated it, meaning that I got the full brunt of it."

"Forgive me for asking but why were you in a ghost portal when activating it?" Cyborg asked immediately.

"My dad put the on button inside it," Danny said, shrugging. "He's put it outside now since the last time it was wrecked and since I told him but at the time it was inside so everybody – or me – who activated it got electrocuted by ectoplasm. In any case, that ectoplasm was bonded to my DNA, giving me my ghost half. Therefore, my ghost half is in my genes."

"Exactly my point," Raven said, taking over now. "Your DNA isn't easily changed. It takes a great deal of power, or even magic, to do anything with a DNA strand. But once it's radically changed, like your receiving ghost genes, it can't easily be reversed. The damage, or benefit, has been done. So when you went back into your ghost portal to try and reverse what happened, your ghost genes went dormant. The attacks from other ghosts gave the ectoplasmic DNA enough energy to become active again."

"I remember thinking that I would die if my puppet's light went out. I still don't understand the details, though."

"If your DNA dies, so do you," Raven explained. The other Titans remained silent as she continued to speak. "So if even half your DNA dies, you die, too – or you're at least horribly handicapped. The glow your puppet had was how much energy your ghost half had left without being bonded to your human DNA. Because it was really only 'half' a ghost, it needed more energy to be able to survive like a regular ghost does.

"Every time you used a ghost power of yours you sapped energy from your puppet, diminishing the glow. If the glow had gone out, you would have died because your ghost half would have died."

"But weren't my two halves separated? Or were we still linked even though my ghost half was a puppet? I know you guys didn't have control over your bodies." Danny stopped talking, frowning as he tried to figure it out. "How does this Puppet King's magic even work?"

"We don't know a ton about him," Robin said. "This is just the second time we've come face to face with his magic. And then his magic was completely different. For one, his cauldron was green and then it turned blue once you destroyed the remote. And then he didn't use his remote to take out our souls. That was done by some mist that wasn't there the last time."

Danny thought for a moment. "Okay then… What was the same then?"

"I read up on his magic after our first encounter with him," Raven said. "His magic deals with our spirits, or ectoplasm, and how to pull it out of our bodies and give control of them to the caster. Because ghosts are also made out of ectoplasm, when his spell targeted you it immediately pulled out the strongest source of ectoplasm in your body: your ghost half."

"But that wasn't my actual spirit," Danny said. "It doesn't give me life. Shouldn't the Puppet King have managed to trap my spirit in a puppet if he tried again?"

"What we're guessing is that the Puppet King's magic only works once on a specific individual," Robin said. "He didn't try and take Raven's and Starfire's spirits after his first failed attempt. So after his magic only pulled out half of you, he was just left with your human half and had to tie it up."

"What happened after I destroyed the cauldron?"

The Titans shared looks, something that Danny found foreboding. Nobody shared looks in answer to a question unless it was really bad.

"You doused the flames," Raven said slowly, sounding cautious. "But that sapped all the energy from your ghost half. You're lucky that your effort was enough to stop the Puppet King from doing anything else."

"We returned to our bodies," Starfire said, also sounding like she was trying to think through what she was saying. "But only Raven was free to see what happened."

"Was it bad?" Danny asked, dreading the answer. "You guys sound like somebody died."

"You almost did," Raven said. "Your puppet disintegrated before I could do anything. Then, as I was trying to do something that would stabilize your human half, you did something strange."

Danny remembered the blinding pain that had prevented him from doing absolutely anything. He had felt when his puppet disintegrated. And now he realized that the feeling had been familiar. It had been a pain deep in his core; a pain that had come from his very molecules as something else was being bonded to them once again.

"My ghost half was reintegrated into me," Danny whispered, feeling the truth of those words sink into him. It felt like he'd heard those words before, spoken from a different mouth; he just couldn't remember where.

"What do you mean?" Beast Boy asked. "Do you know what happened?"

"Maybe." Danny stared off into space. "I just remembered that the pain I felt then was familiar. It was something that I'd felt when I first had my accident. And now, I think that because the Puppet King had literally pulled out my ghost half, and maybe even half of my DNA in the process, it wasn't easy for it to join my normal DNA again. I must've gone through a second 'accident' in order to reincorporate my ghost DNA." He looked up at Cyborg. "That must've been why you couldn't get any readings on me at first. My ghost energy was still fluctuating too much."

"That makes a lot of sense," Raven said, seeing Cyborg slowly nod.

"Since that matter's cleared up, could you explain to us about the ghost that was accompanying the Puppet King?" Robin inquired.

"In case you didn't hear him scream his name out, that was the Box Ghost. He's in a category similar to the Cake Ghost."

"So he's not very dangerous," Beast Boy guessed.

Danny smiled, remembering Pandora's Box and what had come from that. "No. But he wishes he was." Then he remembered the Box Ghost from the future and what kind of damage he had wrought. Repressing a shiver, Danny turned his thoughts to the present. "Does that cover everything you guys wanted to know?"

"I think so," Robin said.

"Great." Danny swung his legs over to the side of the bed. He noted that he was wearing something akin to a hospital gown. "Now, could somebody get me some real clothes? I'm really getting hungry."

Starfire brightened up. "Victory feast! I shall do the preparing!"

Everyone turned green at that.

Thankfully, there was no victory feast of Starfire's making. Somehow or another, Robin had managed to distract her enough that Danny could make himself a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Cyborg accompanied him and made some omelets even though it was no longer morning.

By the time Danny was halfway through his first sandwich, he was accompanied by the rest of the Titans. Raven sat next to him, apparently to say something that Danny was waiting for. Cyborg was scarfing down his omelets; Beast Boy was doing the same but with tofu; and Robin and Starfire were lounging on the coach.

Raven finally spoke. "You really feel normal?"

Danny swallowed his most recent bite. "Definitely. You wouldn't believe what happened to me after my original accident. I dropped everything. Random parts of me kept turning invisible at impromptu times. Then I couldn't figure out how to make myself solid or visible again. In addition to all that, my ghost fighting was so bad that even the Box Ghost beat me at first."

"I can sympathize with you when it comes to being unable to control your abilities," Raven said. "Unless I keep my emotions under strict control, I will do something that I don't intend."

"Yeah." Beast Boy leaned over to Danny. "You should've seen her after we watched this horror movie. She kept insisting she wasn't scared. That same night, we were all attacked by these horrible monsters straight from the movie. Robin finally got the idea that it was Raven—" His plate smacked him in the face, cutting him off from saying anymore. When it slid down into his lap, his green face, dripping with runny tofu, was scowling heavily at Raven.

Raven had absolutely no expression on her face from what Danny could tell. Thinking that he could guess what had happened, Danny continued to eat. It was when his last sandwich only had a couple of bites left that he finally said what had been on his mind since the fight.

"I don't think that was the Puppet King."

Everyone stopped doing what they had been and sat at the table with Danny.

"What do you mean?" Robin asked.

"Did you see his eyes? They weren't the same color. I know what ghost eyes look like and he had them. But they were the strangest eyes I've ever seen." Danny shivered as he recalled them. They had looked evil. "And there was that green mist. I know that was a ghost. Of sorts…"

"That green mist was a ghost?" Robin had his usual serious face on.

"My ghost sense went off. I felt my puppet grow cold when the Puppet King released it that second time. That's when I knew. Then there were your eyes. After you guys were mindless zombies, your eyes glowed green."

"That was not the case last time," Starfire said, looking at Raven. "Our friends' eyes had only a faint hue about them. It was simply because they refused to talk that we knew they were not our friends."

"You were all overshadowed then," Danny said. "And…" He remembered what that mist had done when approaching him. It had stopped. He didn't know what it meant, just that it wasn't good. Not wanting to tell them that information yet, he said something else. "And the Puppet King's voice had echoed. That's a characteristic ghosts have."

"But the Puppet King isn't a ghost," Cyborg protested. "We know that ourselves."

"He must've been overshadowed then," Danny said, bringing up the thermos that was on his waist. "I know that once I sucked in all that green mist he collapsed. I also know that he had been the Puppet King for a short time in that fight; whatever it was that was overshadowing him told me that it had to recuperate."

"I remember it saying that," Starfire said.

Danny nodded. "That leads me to believe that it was a ghost doing the work and not the Puppet King. Then, the other things you guys are telling me also lead me to believe that it might've been a ghost. I saw a face in that green fire; a face that I know belonged to a ghost. Whatever ghost it was, I can tell you right now that I don't know which ghost it was. I may be familiar with a lot of ghosts but I know that I haven't met all of them. But what I do know is that if the Puppet King was overshadowed by a ghost, it explains a lot of things."

"So we're facing a new threat," Robin said. It sounded almost like a question.

"It's in the thermos." Danny shook it. "I don't think we'll have to worry."

But something told him that he would have to worry. And that he would have to worry very soon. He didn't know what that something was. He just knew that it wasn't over.

Not yet.

Thanks to fadedphantom, DGirl101, buddybuddy96, Phantom-Danny, SpartanCommander, Shiva the Sarcastic, musiclover9419, Waterdog, Angel Cullen Mew Chimera, TNTgod, FantomoDrako, Copa-Phantom, Teribane, stick fight3, deadlydaisy8o8, PinkPanther123, X-Whitemagic58-X, Hyperpegasi, AndyCandy12, lokoforsonic9559, starr1095, Tara Prustat, Lord Darken, xbusterz, tiger phantom, Ryu The Reaper, Nikitchi-tan, DBack47, and Ndasuunye for reviewing!

DGirl101: I'm not sure but I think you reviewed twice... Thanks for the support; I'm glad you liked the last chapter. :) I hope you didn't get into too much trouble...

TNTgod: Heh heh. Hopefully you didn't think I was dead again...