Author Note: Please review! I'm uploading the epilogue next!
~CWA

Chapter 26:

Third Person:

It took another three hours before Gear was able to do enough to wake Danny up. She had inserted a lesser amount of pure ectoplasm, and mixed ectoplasm (a weaker form of it mixed with various other chemicals), into his system- not enough to make him all powerful, but enough to make his system wake up and want to repair itself. He opened his eyes groggily.

"G-Gear? Are you okay?"

Gear smiled and nodded,

"Are you?"

"Yeah," Danny said as he sat up and rubbed his head, "I think so."

"Good," Gear said as she whacked him upside the head.

"What the- Gear!"

"You're an idiot, Double D," Gear said firmly before giving him a small hug, "You're an idiot for trying something that dangerous. You're an idiot for risking yourself and Dani, and even those X-Men. But… thanks for the save and everything you did."

Danny smiled as Gear pulled away. He looked around- the other X-Men were there, waiting for an explanation, he wagered. Professor X was the one in the back, watching everything and giving Danny a nod of encouragement. Jean and Scott were standing close to each other, but Jean kept sending concerned looks towards Gear. Dani was at his side, smiling- happy that he was okay. Kurt and Kitty looked happy as well. Logan and Storm were standing by the Professor, watching as Kurt and Kitty welcomed Danny 'back to the land of the living', not realizing the irony in their words.

"Okay, so you all want an explanation then," Danny rubbed the back of his neck.

"Yeah man," Kurt said, "That'd be nice."

Danny took a deep breath.

"It's probably best to start at the beginning… I'm not a human. I'm not a mutant. I'm… I'm dead. My real name is Daniel Jack Fenton. I lived in a place called Amity Park, where my parents were kind of…ghost obsessed. When I was fourteen, they built this machine. It was designed to view-"

"-A world unseen," Gear interrupted, thinking of the song that Tucker and she came up with.

Danny looked at her a bit annoyed, but continued,

"Yeah. The Ghost Zone. See, they believed that ghosts lived, per say, in a dimension connected to ours- that dimension was the Ghost Zone. The problem was, it didn't work. At least, not until I took a look inside it. Uhh Gear, can you explain the technical parts?"

"Sure," Gear shrugged, "Basically the blast from the portal shocked him with thousands volts of electricity, which should've killed him, except it didn't because at the same time, he was shot with pure ectoplasm all over his body. While the electricity killed him, the ectoplasm was working to keep him alive. It bonded with his DNA- but only half of it before he got out of the portal. As a result, he became a halfa- he was half ghost, half human with the ability to switch between both forms. He even protected the town from the shit ton of ghosts that escaped."

"Wait," Kitty said, "Shouldn't that have been like over the news?"

"True," Gear agreed, "But the problem was there was a Guys in White base in the town- they never let the news reach anywhere outside of Amity. Though I think the time the town was sucked into the Ghost Zone, it was deemed 'town mysteriously missing' all over the country. Not sure though. Back then, the Guys in White were a joke so we actually didn't take them that seriously till recently."

The others shared a look of disbelief except for the Professor.

"Do you believe this Chuck," Logan asked.

"I have no reason not to Logan. I saw it happen in his mind," the Professor answered.

Logan whistled lowly as Danny continued to explain,

"I was half ghost. Was being the key word. Not too long before we came to Bayville, I died. The Guys in White, a ghost-hunting government branch with no morals and lack of respect for the law, captured me. They... They tortured me. They-"

Danny shook a bit before he continued,

"They did a lot of things- vivisection, electrocution… They forced me to watch these video screens- showing what they did when they… They killed my family. My parents, my older sister- they killed my best friends and their family… I wanted to just die. I thought… I thought if I was dead, then at least I'd be with them. And anything as better than suffering through being cut open, put together and then opened again. One day, however, I was alone. I was alone and I-."

Tears bristled at his eyes a bit. Gear looked over in confusion and in concern as he continued,

"I took my own life. I grabbed one of their scalpels and I slit my wrist."

He showed his wrists, they barely noticed the scars, but the scars were still there. Storm let out a horrified gasp.

"No," Kurt whispered.

Danny's hands shook and Gear looked taken back. She wasn't sure what to think of that revelation. Dani grabbed Gear's hand and squeezed it tightly. Danny continued,

"I actually died and when I when I woke up, I lost my memory. I remembered faces, but not names or anything else. I didn't even know my own name until I had this flashback, but… I was able to track down Gear. I remembered her face. She explained a lot to me. She heard about mutants here and wanted to check them out, so she invited me to come along. She heard about the Institute and thought I would be able to pass for a mutant, so she wanted you guys to find out about my powers and invite me in so I could report to her."

Everyone turned to Gear, who gave a sheepish grin,

"I just wanted to make sure you guys were the good guys, geesh."

"It's true," Danny chimed in, "But I never expected to… Feel like I belong, to feel alive, and have a new family, new friends… Please… Please let me stay here… I- I-"

"Young Daniel," Professor X said firmly, "Dead or alive, ghost or not, you did a very brave thing, saving young Gywn. You are an X-men. You will always be one of us and you will always be welcomed here. That extends to you too, Miss Gia."