Chapter 2

Danny sat the blue bank folder on the kitchen table, not sure what else he could do with it, and looked at the book he had found while at the bank. The top left of the cover called itself the Nick Zone, but he guessed the book's actual title was Stage Fright, the unfamiliar ghost holding a blue glowing hand over his head as he held a defensive hand towards it. The more he looked at the picture of himself the more he was sure it was slightly off, as if it had been drawn close to reality but not close enough.

He looked up, wanting to talk to someone about what he had found, but remembered his parents were going to be out for most of the day shopping for lab equipment. He smiled as he added silently to himself, if Dad's in charge of driving, they'll end up at the grocery store too.

Turning around, he left the kitchen for the stairs up to the second floor, heading for Jazz's room. He stopped at the cracked open door and rapped his knuckles against the wood. "Hey Jazz, you in there?" Danny called out, not remembering if he saw Jazz's new Volvo outside.

"Huh, what?" Jazz's voice asked, startled.

Danny gave a slight push on the door only to be surprised at it not moving. He turned his head intangible and poked it through the wood to look down and see a box of books resting against the door, blocking his way in. Looking up he found Jazz, rising from her desk as she rubbed her eyes. "Fall asleep at your desk again?" Danny asked as he phased his way through the door and book box.

"I need a better desk chair," Jazz complained, putting hands behind herself as she stretched her back out. Dropping the stretch she added, "This one is starting to hurt."

"They're not designed for you to be sleeping in them," Danny pointed out, surprised at how empty her room looked as he gave a glance at the closet. Turning back to his sister, pushing away the realization she will be leaving in a couple of weeks, he said, "Hey, I found this while I was out today." He handed Jazz the book, keeping hold of the paper as she looked the cover over.

"Stage Fright," Jazz read aloud. "Not the first story I've seen them do about your ghost self, but a kids book is a cute approach."

"Look at the rest of it," Danny pointed out.

Jazz opened the book in her hands and started flipping through the black and white picture book, her eye brows raising in surprise. "Why is this about you and your friends?" she asked. She stopped on a page, getting Danny to raise his head and see her on a page showing him as Fenton with his ghost sense escaping with the neighboring page showing him mid transformation again, like the back cover had.

Not letting her comment about that, he added, "It gets better, this was with it." He handed her the folded paper, getting her to close the book and hold it in one hand as she unfolded the paper on top of it.

Jazz ran her eyes down the page before she said, "It's a list of your powers." She looked up at him and asked, "Where did you find this?"

"At the bank," Danny informed.

Jazz flipped the book back open, turning to the second page where that same image of him as Fenton with his ghost sense leaving him sat below the list of chapters. She pointed towards its even page as she read, "Copyright 2005, Viacom…" her voice fell away before she quickly turned around towards her computer, jiggling the mouse to wake back up the screen.

"Do you recognize it?" Danny asked, hoping they could get somewhere.

"No, but I figured I could look it up," Jazz admitted, sitting the book on her desk so she had both hands free to type. She gave a glance to the open page as she said, "Viacom International, what are you?"

Danny stepped over so he looked over her hunched back only to see the search come up with nothing. "How can there be nothing?" Danny asked.

Danny froze as Sam's scream cried through-out the house.

Jazz stood up, turning towards Danny as his panic mirrored on her face.

"Come on," Danny said, grabbing her wrist to turn her intangible. He dropped them through the floor, going below the kitchen to the lab where it sounded like Sam's voice had come from. He stopped them before they could touch the basement floor, keeping Jazz floating beside him, as he looked around for the cause of Sam's voice. "Sam!" Danny called out.

"Danny, over there," Jazz said, pointing with her free hand.

Danny followed her finger, surprised to see an old tube TV hooked up to the ghost portal that sat open. The TV and the open portal wasn't what surprised him, their parents leaving things they were working on running was normal and he could count how many times he had come down to the lab and the portal was closed on one hand some months. What the TV played surprised him as he watched a recording with multiple cameras of his first encounter with Freakshow. His eyes were red as he held tight to the staff, Sam and Tucker trying to convince him he was good while Freakshow tried to convince him to give him the staff back.

"I don't remember this part," Danny mumbled, knowing there was a lot about that encounter he still couldn't remember due to the mind controlling staff. He floated closer to the TV, hoping to watch the rest of what was recorded and figure out how someone could've recorded it, only to feel himself being pulled into the TV.

"Danny?" Jazz asked, panic in her voice.

"Jazz," Danny said, starting to push away from the force only to feel it stronger on them. He gripped tighter to her wrist, hoping she could anchor him down but realized too late he was still holding her afloat above the floor. He let out a scream as the TV grabbed tight to him and sucked him in through the screen. He felt electricity dance across his body and tasted coper, hoping he wouldn't let go of Jazz as they traveled through some strange portal.

"What on earth?" a female voice asked as he thought he saw a way out of the portal.

Danny followed the light, hoping he was keeping Jazz safe as he fought for a way out of this weird world they had ended up in. He gasped for air as his head broke through only to be pushed out of the portal, skidding to a stop on carpet with Jazz laying right beside him.

"What the heck?" the female voice asked in shock.

Danny looked up, seeing a black sofa with odds and ends stored underneath, to see a girl with dark brown hair leaning on one knee. She held a controller in her hand as she stared at him, her eyes wide behind her glasses. He turned to his left, checking that Jazz was still beside him and her wrist was still in his grasp, to see her staring up at the girl sitting on the sofa.

"What? What?" the girl asked, her voice rising in pitch as she sat back. "Nope." The girl quickly sat the controller on the sofa beside her and got to her feet, walking towards the hallway. "Nope, this can't be happening."

Danny let go of Jazz's wrist to get himself up to his feet. He held out his hand to help her up and turned his gaze back to the dark brown haired girl as she stopped just inside the hallway, both hands on her head.

She turned around and looked at them before asking, "How?"

"Through the TV, I guess," Danny offered, turning to give a glance at the large thin screen sitting on a short book case. He looked at the screen to see it paused on credits with an image of himself behind the names. Turning back to the girl he said, "Name's Danny, this is my sister Jazz. Where are we?"

"My living room," the girl said. She shook her head and dropped her hands as she said, "Sorry, Virginia. No, you're not real! How are you here, in my living room?"

"Not real?" Jazz echoed.

"You're a cartoon," the girl said, shaking her head. "A wonderfully flawed cartoon from 2004." She took a breath before stepping back to the sofa. She picked up a slim PDA, touching the screen before putting it to her ear.

"No, don't call anybody!" Danny exclaimed, holding out his hands to try and stop her. "Look, we're leaving." Danny grabbed hold of Jazz's hand and turned around, pulling his sister along with him. He took a breath as he took in the paused screen before him before taking a step forward and putting a hand on the screen only to be stopped by its physical properties.

"Andrew, I need you," the girl said into the device. "I think I've finally lost it. I'm seeing things. Cartoons are supposed to stay in my head, not be right here in front of me." She let out a laugh, the laugh sounding not normal, in response to something the person on the other side of the call had said. "They're trying to leave through the TV," she added.

Jazz pulled her hand from Danny's as he looked at his hand, trying desperately to come up with a way to return them to Fenton Works. It wouldn't be easy to fly himself and her back to Indiana, but he could do it. But it would take a few days. He had never flown that far with a passenger before. He turned his hand intangible again, trying to mimic the feeling he had while they were traveling through the screens, and pushed it through the TV only for it to go through the thin screen and out the other side.

"My fiancé is on his way over," the girl said, holding the device in both hands. She aimed it at Danny as he turned to look at her over his shoulder only to hear a click of a camera. "If you vanish before he gets here, at least I'll have some proof. Either I've totally lost it, or you're really here. Either way is crazy."

"What's your name?" Jazz asked, her voice coming through the window between the living room and kitchen as the faucet ran.

"Amanda."

"Sorry Amanda, I thought some tea might be a good idea," Jazz said as clicking could be heard. The sound stopped before she put a tea pot on the stove and left the kitchen for the hallway. She smiled at the girl and said, "I saw your collection of teas, which one's your favorite?"

"Vanilla caramel, though right now I think I need the one with chamomile," Amanda said. "It's one of the pink boxes."

"You said we're a cartoon?" Danny asked, taking a step away from the TV as he gave the credits one last look.

Amanda audibly swallowed as she nodded her head, the device still gripped in her hands at her chest. "Danny Phantom, aired between 2004 and 2007," she informed as if facts would help her. She smiled as she looked down at the device in her hands before adding, "My favorite cartoon as a kid."

"Wait, it ended in 2007," Danny asked. "But it's 2006."

"Then where are you?" Amanda asked, looking back at him.

"What do you mean?" Danny asked, unsure how to answer her.

"How to ask this without giving you spoilers?" Amanda asked herself aloud as she slid the device from her hands into her black pants pocket. "What was the last major event for you?"

"The Disasteriod," Danny offered, still not sure if that was what she wanted in response.

"Oh, so you are passed that," Amanda said, surprise on her face. The surprise fell as she mumbled, "Makes sense, the show only gave us one proper summer and that weird faux summer."

"Danny, you remember that book you found?" Jazz asked as the tea pot on the stove let out a whistle. The sound died away as she worked in the adjacent room, her voice continuing, "I think we're in the world that was printed."

"Stage Fright?" Amanda asked, turning to a short bookshelf beside the sofa. She poked at a spot in the books only to freeze. "Where is it?"

"Did it have a piece of paper with it?" Danny asked.

"Yeah, and it always sits here, between my book and Transformers," Amanda said, running her hand across the line of books. She turned to Danny and asked, "Wait, how'd you know it had a piece of paper with it?"

"I found it today at the bank. It's on Jazz's desk," Danny admitted. "But how? Everyone's not supposed to know about all of this." He looked up as the girl stepped over to her desk to the right of the TV and picked up a thick DVD case, closing it to hand to him.

"Like I keep saying, you're a cartoon," Amanda offered as he took hold of the case.

Danny looked at the cover, seeing himself as Phantom on a green background, the complete series written in big letters at the bottom of the cover. He flipped it over to see himself, his best friend, and girlfriend on the back next to a blurb talking about 'all 52 original episodes'. Looking closer at the copyright at the bottom he was surprised to see it dated 2014. He looked up at the brown haired girl and asked, "What year is it?"

"Two thousand twenty-two," Amanda said. She let out an airy laugh before adding, "Doesn't look it, but I'm four years younger than you." She stepped to Danny's right and grabbed hold of an action figure from her tallest bookshelf and held it so he could see a disproportionate version of his Phantom self. "I used to have everything, this, the Burger King toys, the Nick Mags." She handed Danny the toy, getting him to shift the case to one hand and take hold of the toy. "Be careful, his legs are a little floppy. I've got his tail somewhere around here."

"Tail?" Danny asked, looking over the toy to see its knees were lose and the joint at the waist wiggled. "I'm not this scrawny, am I?"

Jazz stepped back into the living room with a mug in hand and walked over to Amanda as Danny tried to get his little action figure self to stand on the DVD case only to realize the knees were too wobbly. Jazz put a hand on Amanda's shoulder and handed her the tea before turning the computer chair around. "Here, sit down."

Amanda did as she was told, silently looking down at the tea in her hands.

"Give me," Jazz ordered, taking both the toy and DVD case out of Danny's hands. She sat them both on the desk beside Amanda before taking hold of Danny's shoulders and moving him towards the sofa. "You too, sit," Jazz ordered, getting him to sit down in the spot Amanda had been sitting when they had first arrived. She stepped over to the other side of the sofa and picked up a wireless keyboard, the controller for a game console, and a book, sitting all in front of a stationary bike on the other side of the sofa. Danny watched as she left the room for the kitchen only to come back with two more mugs, handing Danny one with a green dressed elf.

Jazz took the seat beside Danny with a maroon mug in her own hand and took a sip of her tea.

"She's really like this?" Amanda asked, looking at Danny with a smile.

Danny returned the smile, nodding his head. "Yeah."

"I just thought we all needed a restart," Jazz informed, resting her mug in her other hand in her lap. She looked up at Amanda and said, "Sorry for intruding. We're Jazz and Danny Fenton."

"Amanda Weir." She took a sip of her tea before asking, "How are you going to get back?"

Jazz turned to Danny, her lips tight as if she was waiting for him to answer.

"I don't know," Danny admitted, looking down at the tea he had still yet to sip from. "I tried going back the way we had come but…"

"I'm surprised you can still use your powers here," Amanda admitted.

Danny looked up at her and asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, your world's ghosts are completely different from the ghosts here," Amanda offered. "As your mother said, your ghosts are ectoplasmic manifestations of post human consciousness, right?"

Danny nodded his head, silently wondering what else ghosts could be made of.

"Here, ectoplasm doesn't exist," Amanda admitted. "I blame you and the ghosts I've grown up with, but getting big in the paranormal has taught me enough. Ghosts here are more…" she paused a moment before continuing, "electric? I mean, for the most part, if you're ghost hunting here you need to have an EMF reader with you. Ghosts create a strong electromagnetic field around themselves, so an EMF reader will help tell you if a ghost is near. But there's, shoot, is it just three?" She put her mug on a coaster beside her computer screen and rose to her feet, stepping over to the large book case to lean down and pull out a large hard back book. She turned around and flipped it open, skimming through the pages as Danny noticed a skull on the cover. "Ha! Here it is, it is three." She stepped over to the sofa and sat herself down in between the two, showing them a page printed in mostly green. "Here, my world's three level of ghosts. Apparitions, which would cover your regular ghosts, your post human consciousness," she looked towards her left at Danny and added, "You'd be under that category." Looking back at the book she pointed to a list close to the center fold of the page. "After that you've got hauntings, which is basically time loops." Turning to Jazz she added, "Most fascinating case of it I've read about was where a lady as a child was abused but as she grew up she hid the memory from herself, but the house didn't forget. Go forward forty years, her parents have died and she's living in the old house only to be tormented by her younger self running down the stairs screaming." She looked back at the book and continued, "And the last type, poltergeists. Living people who are typically unhappy that end up creating ghost-like actions or events. Typically it's moving objects like with telekinesis. A lot of people don't realize it's them doing it, so they blame ghosts but the moment they're out of the house, the activity stops."

"You said you've grown up with ghosts?" Jazz asked.

Amanda let out a snort of a laugh. "Yeah." Turning to Jazz she answered, "First ghost I knew the name of was Mrs. Carter, she had died in the house but was still taking care of it and us after we moved it."

Danny sat his mug on the floor beside his feet and asked, "Can I take a look at that?" Amanda let go of the book, letting him slide it over onto his lap so he could flip through the slick colorful pages.

"My family has always had a close connection to the spirit world here," Amanda continued explaining to Jazz, giving the girl a shrug.

Something about Amanda saying ectoplasm didn't exist here didn't sit right with him, getting Danny to tune out of their conversation. He trusted Jazz to let him know if anything she said was something he should know as he flipped to the back of the book. Finding an index, he found only two mentions of ectoplasm. Flipping to the first he found a section aimed to test the reader if the pictures were real ghosts or not, the index pointing to a picture labeled as an ectoplasmic spiral. The picture was dark, where he couldn't see what had actually been the subject of the print, with what he would describe as an electronic light line along the top. He flipped to the second page that mentioned ectoplasm only to read that it was a hoax. "But it's not a hoax," Danny mumbled only to realize he had interrupted the girls talking. He looked up at the two, seeing they had turned to him, as he added, "I've used my powers here. And with how much ectoplasm I have in me, shouldn't I be feeling something if there's none here?"

"But you've also been only Fenton here," Amanda pointed out. "Your human self could be protecting Phantom's side."

"But my kids had problems-"

"Wait, you already know about your kids?" Amanda interrupted, her eyes wide. "How?"

"Long story," Danny tried to throw off.

"Do you know their names?"

Danny eyed the girl, wanting to get back to his point.

"Sorry," Amanda offered. "Just wanna know how close Butch Hartman got, since, you know, my ten year old self's cartoon crush is sitting right next to me."

"Wait, you had a crush on me?" Danny asked, taken off guard.

Amanda's cheeks flushed pink as she gave him a slow shrug.

The front door unlocked itself, catching Danny's attention. He turned to see a man wearing an orange hat over his curly hair walked inside. "Amanda?" the man's deep voice called out.

Amanda rose to her feet and turned towards the door, putting both hands behind her back. "Hey," she said, waiting for the man to drop off a tote bag and his hat at the hat wrack by the door. The man stepped down the hallway and into the living room only to stop and look at Danny and Jazz. Motioning towards the siblings, Amanda asked, "You do see them, right?"

The man nodded his head slowly as he mumbled, "I'm glad this doesn't happen to my fandoms."

"Says the one who made ponies in real life," Amanda retorted. "So I've not completely lost it yet, huh?"

"Danny and his sister, right?" the man asked.

"Jazz."

"Sorry, I haven't watched many of the episodes. I'm Andrew." He looked at his fiancée and asked, "Are they… show accurate?"

"My secret's not really a secret here, is it?" Danny asked, looking up at Amanda.

"Not really," Amanda said with a shrug. "I mean, you're a 20 year old cartoon now, but that's the only way you'd be keeping anything like a secret by this point."

Danny quickly debated in his mind before throwing a glance towards the action figure of his Phantom self still sitting on top of the DVD case. He looked up at the couple and said, "Going ghost." The light formed around his waist, splitting to reveal him sitting in his black and white costume. As soon as the light left his feet and hair a sharp pain stabbed him, forcing him to bend at the waist and fall over the book still open in his lap.

"Danny!" Jazz called out, jumping to her feet to step closer to him.

"His ectoplasm," Amanda said. She dropped to her knees and tried to look at Danny only for him to be forced to close his eyes against the electricity that sparked through every limb. "Danny, change back!"

He forced the lights to reappear, gasping for breath as the pain started to fade away. He opened his eyes, looking up through black bangs as he realized he had wrapped his arms around his stomach. Slowly sitting up, careful of any more pain that might appear, he looked up at Amanda and asked, "What was that?"

"Like I said, this world doesn't have ectoplasm," Amanda tried as Jazz pushed aside his bangs to check his forehead with the back of her hand.

"But I still have access to my powers," Danny pointed out.

Jazz took her hand back and said, "You're also burning up."

"Ghosts still exist here, they're just different," Amanda reminded. "You're also a powerful ghost. I mean, at least in the show, you're able to start and learn a power after seeing someone else use it. Your Ghostly Wail came ten years earlier because you saw your future self use it. Shoot, you dived straight into Doom without even thinking that might be something other ghosts wouldn't even be able to do if they wanted to."

"You're starting to creep me out," Danny pointed out. He sat back in the sofa, thinking back to his tea beside his foot but wishing he had something cool to drink instead. "And I'm the one with ghost powers."

"Okay, so I'm a fan…" Amanda said, shoving her hands in her pockets as she looked away from him. "With a P.H."

"She's gotta point though," Jazz said, getting all eyes on her as she held her elbow in one hand and chin in the other. Pointing to Amanda she added, "And because you saw his life as a TV show, you could see things none of us would have. That list of powers and ideas that was with the book, you put that together, right?"

"Back in high school, yeah," Amanda said with a nod of her head.

"And how much of all of that do you still remember?" Jazz asked.

Amanda turned around and woke back up the computer monitor that had been on a silent screensaver since they had fallen out of the TV. Hitting a key on her keyboard she shrunk down the documents that had been left open to expose a painting of Danny as Phantom flying through the sky as her wallpaper. Turning to look back at the three, she motioned towards it with both hands and said, "Does this answer you? I've been re-watching the series even to complete my list of Fenton inventions and his powers." She turned back to the keyboard and mouse, bringing back up two text documents to show an organized list.

Danny closed the book, sitting it beside him on the sofa, and forced himself to his feet. His knee bent backwards a moment, his legs feeling a little wobbly on him, but he forced himself past Andrew and Jazz to Amanda's side. He leaned against the back of her computer chair and looked at the two documents up. On one the last entry was something labeled as a sunburst, from number twenty Control Freaks, right above it was what she had labeled as duplication minus, with a short entry saying it was his first try and he had ended up with two heads. Danny quickly recalled what that was referring to, when he had originally planned a training weekend with Sam and Tucker and had gotten pulled into a science trip with his mom.

Looking at the other document she had up he saw two columns in this one, the most recent describing the Fenton Ghost Fighting Jumpsuits his parents always wore. He looked back at Amanda and pointed towards the mouse, asking, "Can I?"

Amanda nodded her head before she said, "Sure, just tell me if I've got something wrong."

Danny leaned forward and grabbed hold of the mouse, noticing it was wireless like the keyboard on the sofa had been. He clicked on the document with his powers, seeing she had labeled his transformation as Going Ghost.

"What are you planning to do with all of that data?" Jazz asked.

"I'm a fanfiction writer," Amanda admitted. "I'll test out story ideas with characters I don't have to worry about and if I like how the idea can be implemented, I'll use it in my own series. But I like to use characters I like. Right now I'm writing you guys, but I just got off of a seventeen episode kick of writing Oswald stuff. Eventually I'll go through another Code Lyoko kick, I rotate."

"Are you this creepy with those other shows?" Danny asked, clicking onto the folder that housed the files she gave him access to, going back to see four folders above a long list of what he guessed where completed stories.

"Keep going back and you'll find all the folders," Amanda said, eyeing Danny as he was caught snooping.

Danny looked up at her before doing as she said, noticing Code Lyoko had three main folders. He started clicking around, finding her organization a bit confusing. His stomach let out a loud growl, reminding him that the last time he had looked at a clock it had been a couple of hours before dinner. Glancing in the bottom right corner of the screen he noticed it was now past seven.

"Oh, have you two not had dinner?" Amanda asked, getting Danny to look up at her.

"Dinner would be nice," Jazz admitted with a nod.

Amanda stepped over to the cluttered table against the kitchen wall and grabbed a purse that held characters Danny was unfamiliar with, getting him to release the mouse and stand straight over the computer chair.

"Do you want me to help?" Andrew asked.

"No, you've got game night anyway," Amanda tossed off as she stepped over to the stationary bike to slide on some flip flops. She threw the purse strap over her head and hung it at her hip as stepped back over to him. "But I don't have enough food in here for two teenagers, you know that."

"Maybe they'll get you eating enough," Andrew silently wished before giving her a quick kiss on the lips.

Danny looked over at Jazz, wondering if she heard Andrew's comment.

"Text me when you get home," Amanda wished as Andrew left to pick up his stuff by the door. Amanda looked at the two, getting Danny's attention, before she said, "Come on, you two. Food Lion trip."

"Food lion?" Danny echoed, wondering how a lion had anything to do with food.

AN: How many of you have imagined something like this?